ED : Chapter 32: Arc Two IV

Unlike the ground floor where the summit was being held, the service tunnels remained at a normal temperature for the Tynnans who serviced the various pipes and conduits down here. Meaning they were only a few degrees above freezing.

Which would have made hurrying along in Yaddle's wake a miserable proposition, if it hadn't been for my Matukai training. I noticed how cold it was, but the cold didn't touch or slow me, if that made any sense.

I wondered about the two foot tall, five hundred year old Jedi Master's tolerance for the cold in clothes no more suited for these temperatures than mine, then I experienced a sharp desire to slap myself for being an idiot.

Only now remembering that Yaddle had survived a century trapped underground, with her Padawan's garb rotted off of her back, fed meager scraps only when it suited generations of her captors, and enduring Force alone knows whatever other privations.

All the while defending herself constantly from deadly predators with what amounted to a pair of chop-sticks!

I stopped worrying about the Jedi Master, then much more prudently began worrying about myself. Someone, or multiple someones, had prevented two Jedi Knights and an entire squad of Tynnan soldiers from reporting in.

A big part of me was trying to hold out hope they'd all just gotten stunned or otherwise non-lethally incapacitated, but the bigger and more realistic portion of me was quietly whispering.

"Since when do Sith, Dark Acolytes, or the minions of same show the slightest hint of mercy? If Knights Swan and Tassu are alive, it's only because someone thinks they can be Torture-Turned."

Looked at in that light, I found myself wondering whether or not it was selfish of me. Hoping they were still alive, if that meant they were becoming everything they'd both spent a lifetime training to oppose.

Suddenly, I shook my head briskly from side to side. Grimacing, as I reached out with my senses slowly yet surely. Already nearly certain of what I was about to find.

Traces of fear, anger, pain, and interwoven with it all in a nauseating swirl which even now made the Force's natural song in this place shriller and less harmonious than it should be.

The Dark Side's emanations, faint yet definite. The tunnel we were jogging down was only perhaps eight or nine feet wide and a little more than eight feet high, but the presence of the Dark Side made it feel even tighter and more restrictive.

The walls and what portions of the ceiling I could see amid the pipes, power-conduits, and occasional junctions were a polished off-white.

The same color as the floor, actually, but that at least had been left rough enough to prevent one from slipping easily. Implicitly, I understood my cataloging of environmental minutiae was to prevent my becoming tight and anxious while playing follow-the-leader.

The part of my mind concerned with survival was doing what it could to keep me from pissing away energy I was going to desperately need in the very near future.

Yaddle had just begun to turn the corner ahead and to our right when she suddenly back-flipped. I saw numerous bright orange blaster streaks hit the wall just ahead of her with the hiss of evaporated condensation and scorched stone. Reaching out through the Force to enhance my hearing, I heard a low, rasping, older masculine voice speaking to someone I guessed wasn't present.

Given that he was describing what he'd seen of Yaddle to whoever-it-was, I surmised the leader of these ambushing scumbags was speaking to someone via communicator and glanced downward.

My own wrist-comm had gone dark sometime in the last few minutes. Telling me the shooters had some kind of short-range jamming device. A theory confirmed when Yaddle quietly conveyed her comm was inoperative as well.

Reaching over my shoulder with my right hand, I plucked the spider-droid I'd brought with me from my pack. Holding it up so it could leap atop the pipes overhead, I quietly informed the Jedi Master.

"If our assailants aren't in possession of Mandalorian or Echani-grade battlefield communicators, my spider-droid can jam their communicators so long as they remain within one hundred and twenty meters of Spider-R2. Should I go ahead and jam their communications, Master Yaddle?"

Nodding her assent, I gave the requisite order and heard the quiet skittering of the reconnaissance droid atop the pipes as it worked to draw as close to it's targets as possible without getting seen.

My presently Force-enhanced hearing caught the sounds of men cursing beneath their breath, then a deeper woman's voice reporting their communications were now being jammed.

This was followed a couple of seconds later by a pair of clink-trrinnks, but Yaddle and I were already throwing ourselves backward as a pair of thermal detonators were artfully banked off two walls to get them rolling in our direction.

I began reaching out for the explosives with the Force as it trilled sharp notes of warning at me, but my superior had already beaten me to it. Sending both gray and silver orbs on an arcing course that got them around the corner and perhaps a third of the way back to their point of origin before exploding.

I just barely had time to discontinue my Force-assisted hearing before the explosion. Meaning my ears were only ringing and my stomach a bit unsettled, rather than permanently deafening myself or ending up on my ass.

Glancing downward at the interface screen on my wrist below the darkened comm-band, Spider-R2's half-dozen eyes simultaneously offered me high-resolution and infrared imaging of the view down the hallway occupied by the shooters.

Minimizing the IR-feed, I counted four big, fairly muscular human males, a lean six foot plus woman with white skin and silver hair I took for an Echani mercenary, and a Rodian wearing two nearly full bandoleers of grenades that otherwise looked like an anemic child in the presence of his physically imposing companions. They were all perhaps fifteen meters away.

Crouching no more than a half-dozen pace beyond the closest of the two basketball-sized craters in the granite like off-white corridor's floor at the mouth of a T-intersection.

What very much disturbed me was the fact that nothing I was seeing would have been a problem for Knight Swan or Tassu. Let alone the two of them together, with an entire squad of veteran Tynnan soldiers to support them.

Everything about these mercenaries, with the exception of the Rodian's grenades bespoke gear choices which would have been easy to either smuggle onto the planet or acquire from Tynna's local criminal element.

Nondescript easily disassembled and reassembled blaster carbines, basic breastplates, and simple wrist-communicators. All things being equal, with this being everything the six could bring to bear, it would be simplicity itself for me to disarm and incapacitate them on my own.

Which made the warning the Force was keening at me even more piercingly than during my close call with the hssiss something of a mystery. Albeit one I was in absolutely no hurry to disregard by charging in and getting myself killed.

"Your perceptions, a credit to you and your Master, these are. Lies of the dark side, confronted with, we are. Something altogether more perilous, they conceal"

Yaddle murmured after reaching up to touch my right hand. Causing what remained of the ringing in my ears and the slight disturbance to my physical balance to fade and finally vanish a few moments later.

I glanced down at the small holographic display on my wrist as the Jedi Master spoke. Finding that I needed to suppress a gasp of alarm, as the previous image wavered and shifted like a heat distortion. Revealing the true nature of the threat before us, or at least that portion of it ready to show itself.

...

Hey guys can you throw some power stones to Elevate the ranking.

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