Chapter 52: Only me

The screams had cut out completely as soon as the Leviathan had departed, though it had left me with a mild headache. However, it was nothing I couldn't work through. As such, I could actually do some work now.

It took a sacrifice of time and power, but I was able to make a crude bowl from a football-sized rock to drain some blood into.

After eating some rations to regain the sugars lost from bloodletting and switching on a glowrod, I got to work painting a more stable array onto the cave to conceal my presence.

It was long and tedious work, so I allowed my mind to focus on planning for the coming days.

Killing a Leviathan was simple in theory, but much, much more difficult in practice.

According to the beastiaries I'd found in the academy archives and my own pre-existing knowledge, Leviathans had hides thick enough to shrug off nearly everything short of concentrated turbolaser fire. Had I the resources, that would be my preferred method.

Specifically, looking down on the planet from high orbit as the main guns of my dreadnought turned the monster into a crater and never getting within physical eyesight of it.

Pity I didn't have that.

Lightsabers could get around their armored skin like they did nearly everything else in the galaxy, but that also involved getting into melee range of a Leviathan, which presented its own problems, most notably being that they were still skyscraper-sized monsters that could breathe fire.

A single lightsaber strike would not be enough to kill one, even if I had a lightsaber in hand.

Which I didn't have either.

Of course, that didn't take into account that getting into melee with them was a trap to begin with. Leviathans developed blister traps across their bodies as they aged that detonated when struck, draining the life force of anyone stupid enough to get that close and hit them.

And that was just the physical aspects of the creatures.

Leviathans weren't anti-Jedi army killers for their physical abilities alone. If that were the case, this would be so much simpler.

No, they also interefered with the ability to call upon the Force. Usually, this was manifested through creating disruptive screams inside the mind or by inducing crippling headaches.

There were also some footnotes in the bestiaries that said there were unproven claims that a Leviathan could also trigger obsessive behavior. I'd experienced the screams and headaches first-hand and could attest that those at least were true.

Despite all that, the fact remained that they could be and had been fought. Jedi kill teams had hunted most of the existing Leviathans to near extinction during and after the Hundred Year Darkness, with Corbos as the only place in the known galaxy where they could be found.

Unfortunately, documentation on precisely how they accomplished that on foot was not available in the academy's archives.

Aside from turbolasers, the Sith beastiaries had all agreed that Force Lightning was also effective against them, though they had been vague on how much would be needed to actually kill one. I decided to edge on the safe side and say a lot. Possibly more than I could generate on my own.

All of which meant squat if I couldn't concentrate enough to generate the lightning in the first place. I needed a defense against their mental interference first. I had three days to figure one out, figure out how to kill a Leviathan, and carry out said plan.

It didn't seem like nearly enough.

As I finished the last sigil, the spell took effect and the "ink" burned into the ground and walls. Carefully, I released my hold on my power, slowly allowing it to flow freely again. When no screams followed, I let out a sigh of relief.

The ward worked, which gave me a safe space to work with. Well, as safe as I could be on this desolate world. At the very least, my basic necessities had been taken care of. I had a week's worth of food and water provided by my handlers and the cave provided shelter from the elements.

For a task that I had three days to complete, it seemed at first glance that my handlers were being generous. But in truth, they were not.

It was a threat. They had provided the supplies to keep me fueled long enough to accomplish the task and a little more than I actually needed.

It gave the false hope that I had more time than I actually did. If I did not complete my task when three days was up, that hope would turn to despair. Once the shuttle left, it would be all I had. Day by day, my supplies would dwindle bit by bit, no matter how much I rationed it.

Even with the Force bolstering me and the wards keeping me safe from the Leviathans, I would only last six days after my supplies ran out before dehydration set in. Probably less, given Corbos' climate.

Corbos was a dead world in a way that not even Korriban could match. The Leviathans aside, living things simply did not survive here for long, no matter how they tried to adapt. Anything that set foot on its surface and did not leave soon after…died, whether to the inhabitants or to the planet itself.

There had been dozens of attempts to recolonize Corbos in the centuries since that last battle. All of them had failed and not just because of the Leviathans. The Hundred Year Darkness had left its scars, in more ways than one.

Thunder rumbled ominously in the skies above, threatening to lash out.

I tossed the now-empty bowl over my shoulder. It was made from good, sturdy rock, so I wasn't worried about it breaking. I heard it land on the floor behind me with a thunk before clattering to a stop.

I walked to the cave's entrance just in time to see the rain begin to patter against the stones outside. Within a minute, the first few unsteady drops quickly morphed into a torrential downpour thick enough that it obscured everything more than ten feet away from me.

If the cave hadn't been a bit elevated, I might have been worried about flooding.

Cold winds swept past me, sending a few errant drops to splash against my boots. Even through my armor's insulated bodysuit, I could still feel a bit of chill, indicating just how cold it actually was.

I pulled my heavy outer robe just a little bit tighter to try and ward it off.

I really had found myself in a place even more miserable than Korriban, hadn't I? At least there had been life on that murderous desert hellhole. And warmth.

Here, there was just…nothing.

Only me.

I shook my head and turned back, only to pause as I spied a glint of something on the ground, revealed by the light of the glowrod. I approached carefully and knelt, prodding at it with my left hand.

What I had thought was stone was simply hardened mud, which had been cracked by the bowl when it landed. Chips of dirt were easily brushed aside with my fingers.

I tilted my head to one side as I uncovered my prize and the dull gleam of durasteel greeted me, completely untouched by rust.

A smile slowly started working its way onto my face, but I kept myself from getting too excited. Instead, I placed my palm on the exposed metal and pushed my awareness into the floor beneath me.

Information flowed into my mind as I delved deeper, past the durasteel plating. I followed the dull sparks of long-dead circuitry that snaked into the darkness far, far below.

The sheer enormity of it was too much for my mind to fully process, so I was forced to partition it, push out "junk" information. Once I had done that, I could finally grasp exactly what I had unwittingly uncovered.

This wasn't a cave. And these weren't mountains.

...

My boots made contact with a solid surface with a heavy thud as I landed in a crouch. The sound reverberated through the dead space, growing softer and softer with each repetition as it traveled farther away.

Beneath my feet, the metal grating of the walkway I had landed on groaned from the impact but showed no sign of giving way. As I moved to stand, I raised my lit glowrod overhead to light my way.

The room I now found myself in was cavernous, the darkness stretching out beyond my light. A few other catwalks were visible, though several were only hanging by one or two cables.

Aside from that, it was surprisingly intact for a three-thousand-year-old wreck.

From my scans, it seemed the cruiser had crashed nose-first, crushing the bridge and the forward positions under the weight of the rest of the vessel.

The "cave" I had found had actually been an exterior access hatch for the engineering section, blown open by the crash and caked over by centuries of mud.

I closed my eyes for a moment, reorienting myself based on the mental map that had been etched into my brain. It was a crude thing, but sufficient for basic navigation. With a few more leaps, I was at "ground" level.

There were no bodies, but that didn't really surprise me. With as intact as engineering was, the surviving crew was probably able to evacuate and possibly take some of their fallen with them.

Through broken walls, I could see the outlines of dusty consoles. Stepping over the debris, I walked into what I assumed was the control room. Placing a hand on one of the consoles, I pushed tendrils of the Force into the circuitry to see if I could at least get some lights back on.

Navigating the maze of machinery, my will snaked up and into the main power core, though I quickly departed. The ship's main core had a hole the size of a school bus in it, likely the reason the it had gone down in the first place. That wasn't getting fixed anytime soon.

However, ships of this size should have a secondary core or possibly even a tertiary core, to handle things like emergency subsystems at least. Namely lights and life support.

My mind zipped along the network of cables until…ah ha! There it was!

The secondary core wasn't damaged, just offline. All it took to trigger its warm-up cycle was a flick of mental effort. As I pulled myself back to the physical, the smaller core hummed to life, sending power through corroded circuitry. Overhead, cracked yellow lights flickered on, banishing the gloomy darkness.

But just as I was about to feel satisfied with myself, the universe decided I was getting too smug.

Suddenly, some piece of machinery sparked. A blaring horn sounded off as the lights abruptly switched from faded yellow to a bloody red. As that noise stopped, it was replaced by another.

From somewhere deep in the crashed ship, the shriek of something inhuman echoed back.

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