Hello fellow bloomilkers! In my never ending quest of star wars fandom I have undertaken (my first ever) attempt at a novel/novella/short story in star wars fan fiction. I recently created a custom (pictured below) which I thought was so cool he needed a book about him. So I started on! Soon I will be integrating one of my other custom figures in to this book as a character. I mainly wanted to share with you all and see what you thought. Please let me know if you love it, you hate it, you think something should be added or take out. Any grammar corrections or spelling corrections are also appreciated! This is just the prologue but im quickly writing more and hope to have a decent amount in the coming months. Thanks for stopping by and taking a look.
Questions comments and critique are ALWAYS appreciated, they make me better!

This is ALL FIRST DRAFT, so I plan on going through and cleaning everything up at least two more times.

I recently added in a chapter between two and three as well as more story for everyone!

Prologue

Caught in a familiar situation once again. Some times devourian, sometimes quarren, this time aqualish. Standing at the center of a ring formed by 8 snarling fang faced humanoids, each harboring some form of illegal weapon, be it blaster or blade and each slowly advancing inward closing the diameter of the circle down to a mere ten feet.
“You all don’t have to die” said the crimson and white figure being flanked at the center.
A low rumbling gurgle emanated from a short aqualish with pitch black eyes while he made a slow yet steady advance staring in to the dimly let burgundy eye sockets of a bone white helmet in the shape of the top half of a human skull.
“No, I don’t want to kill you”. Said a mid-pitched static sounding voice from inside the helmet
The short aqualish let out a rumbling roar followed by more rumbling from deep in his throat. “You are not my bounty”.
The skull helmeted being lifted its right arm and sharply pointed at a burly two meter tall aqualish with a glinting gold M.E.C class mercury-based-blaster.
“He is”.
The aqualish with the golden gun hunched over and began a rampaging charge towards the armor clad entity in the middle, raising his blaster to bludgeon the helmet staring in to his soul. As the burly beast approached the figure pivoted to its right with uncanny speed dodging the feral creature. In his primal rage the aqualish had no more time than to take another step carried by his momentum. Suddenly a pair of heavily armored gauntlets shot out and latched around the aqualish’s neck. Instantaneously a subtle pop rang out from the center of the circle and the companions of the now limp creature each let out a hideous throat rumble as they observed their friends head faced in the opposite direction of his torso. The lump of flesh in the armored figures hands fell to the ground with a heavy ‘thud’. A short gust of wind kicked up a thin layer of sand which rolled across the barren rock spotted dunes and continued out until out of sight.
The armored figure calmly bent over as he drew his vibro knife from the sheath mounted to the outside of his right thigh. A model E.J.M 1700 blade from the Czerka Corporation appeared, with the ability to cut seamlessly though even the thickest of ronto hide. While bent over the crimson being reached down and lifted the dead aqualish’s arm. Not even bothering to turn the blade on the figure began hacking in a sawing motion, slowly removing the three fingered hand from its wrist. The figure arose and let the bleeding wrist fall to the sand.
“Thanks”. “Bye”.
In disbelief of what they were witnessing the remaining seven fang faced figures stood still as their bulbous eyes tracked the motion of the armored individual slowly walking out of the circle in the empty spot left by the aqualish that charged. The short blue eyed aqualish screamed in a blind rage, hoisted his type B.L.F.B electric charged hold-out pistol in the air and fired twice. In unison the other 6 figures followed suite each firing their blasters, two drew melee weapons and began a rampaging advance towards the figure now walking away.
Howling and flailing the short aqualish reached the helmeted entity first and fired point blank at his helmet. Almost in a blur the helmeted man shifted his head to the left dodging the jolt from the gun. The bolt continued on towards its fired path and struck another aqualish between the fangs. A bolt of electricity sparked out in a spherical form from the point of impact and detonating the struck creatures head, and the lifeless body quickly slumped to the ground. Without being phased the rest of the aqualish continued their boundless charge. Still staring in to the beings glowing red eyes the short aqualish was momentarily stunned by the unintended murder of his brother in arms.
The armored figure then delivered a powerful uppercut in to the short aqualish’s ribs, cracking three and fracturing two others. Doubling over in pain the next thing to be felt was an elbow plated in armor driving down in to the back of his skull with the force that a hammer would strike an anvil with.
This time no longer phased by their teammates demise the creatures reached their target and began firing and swinging wildly. Now more careful are more aware of the close proximity to their teammates they took special precaution not to strike one another. The three aqualish who brandished blasters fired intermittently whenever an opening between the two beings in the melee skirmish appeared.
To the left of the armored being there was a peach colored aqualish who wielded an oversized battle ax, a favorite weapon of a lower level intelligence beast. Not vibro enhanced but dangerous none the less.
On the right an antiquated weapon was swinging toward him, a vibro sword. Abandoned decades ago in the old republic the weapon was clumsy and technologically primitive. Utterly ineffective unless being wielded by an Enchain handmaiden, the only known sect to still use such a weapon.
The armored being drew his blaster from its holster and fired three shots in rapid succession leaving carbon scoring marks on the aqualish with the battle ax. Two on either side of his upper chest where his lungs should be and one in the center of his face. Pivoting one-hundred and eighty degrees while both dodging an incoming blaster bolt witch whizzed right past his head and turning to face his opponent with the sword. The opponent lifted his blade in to the air and made a deft downward slash in an attempt to cut the armored figure from collar bone to waist. In the midst of the diagonal strike the armored figure raised his left arm and a metallic cable shot eight feet from his wrist towards one of the aqualish who was firing his blaster from what seemed to be a safe distance, while at the same time raising his right arm to intercept the blade with his gauntlet. The low monotonous hum that always accompanied an activated vibro weapon ceased as it came in contact with his gauntlet. Without giving his opponent a chance to recover a white hot flare flashed from the armored figures back pack and he shot in to the air. When the aqualish regained his sight the armored figure was now hovering ten feet above his head being supported by two twin thrusters at the bottom of his backpack.
Seeing their opponent as now being an uncovered target the two remaining aqualish with the blasters began an open fire as the one with the sword dropped his weapon to draw a mini hand canon. Though all the blasters being used were primitive and inaccurate, none of the shots connected.
The armored figure shifted his momentum and began to spin around quickly in a stationary position. Hefting his left wrist in the air the arm with the cable attached, spinning quickly he turned the aqualish at the end of the cable in to a living wrecking ball. The aqualish at the end of the noose flailed wildly as it struggled to get air in to its lungs. All motion to him was a blur until an ear splitting CRACK erupted from the aqualish’s spine snapped in two as it met with the skull of one of its companions. Unphased the armoed figure continued with his momentum pulling in his arm to increase the velocity of of flying creature. No more than two seconds later another thunderous sound emanated from the shattered spine of the asphyxiated creature in to the ribs of another. Whit one last pull the armored ban completed another revolution before pressing a button on his wrist and the cable uncoiled from the limp aqualish’s neck and began to retract itself back in to its wrist mount. Its ragdoll body glided through the silt filled air until colliding with a rocky outcrop, though no sound accompanied as there were no more large bones in its body to be broken.
The armored figure then deactivated his jetpack and gently glided towards the sandy dune he was once standing on.
The single reaming aqualish raised his blaster and arms in the air, throwing his head back and letting out a deafening throaty grumble he lowered his torso to initiate another charge. A split second later his dead body crumpled to the ground. The armored figure drew a dart from his backpack and reloaded the firing chamber for the next time he would need one, and began to walk away.
From behind him the short pathetic creature with the caved in skull and obliterated ribs rose from the ground and lamely crawled through the sand towards the mystical suite of armor quickly vanishing in to the distance. It belched a grumbling barely audible sound which cut the silence of the gently whisping wind and alerted the armored being. The skull helmeted being turned around and began walking back towards the dying beast slowly. As he approached another low grumble came from the beast but was interrupted by a bubble of blood which welled up from his throat and burst splattering tiny droplets around the dune.
“Why do you need to know”? came from the static sounding voice.
Another grumble and a few scratchy sounds came from the aqualish.
“What makes you think that you deserve to know the name of the man who you your life in the hands of”? he responded. “I had no vendetta against or you friends, par that one” pointing at the aqualish half buried in sand and a bleeding wrist.
“But now I do”.
In a shocked tone the aqualish whimpered in fear and responded.
“What do you mean what for? You owe me for the three blaster bolts I had to waste on your friend”. The armored figures hand reached in to the fanged beings pockets and fumbled around for a few seconds.
“No credits? What a shame. I don’t allow my dues to be unpaid”.
The aqualish groveled at the bone white boots of the figure before him and pleaded for its life.
“No, I won’t leave you here”.
Suddenly the aqualish found that he was staring down the pitch black barrel of the armored man’s blaster. A soft red glow appeared deep inside the chamber and exploded in to a violent flash of red. The aqualish’s smoking head fell in to the sand and quickly started being covered by the increasing blowing of the sand.
“Now you owe me for four”.

Chapter 1
Deep in the musky catacombs of underground Coruscant millions of beings from thousands of species wandered crawled and crept along the permacrete roads. Some drunk, some depressed from exponential gambling losses, many both.
Among the slurry of humans and aliens walked a light blue, almost purple twi’lek with lekku that stretched down to the back of her knee, around of which were common lekku-wraps a thin strip of rose colored cloth which wrapped around in a crisscrossing patter from her head to the bottom of the tails. Though uncustomary to twi’leks of the female gender she wore a loose fitting burgundy robe covering most of her skin from her shoulders down to her waist. There the robe turned in to a dress and hung down low gliding mere inches above the floor as she glided across the rough terrain of the city street. Slung from her shoulder and resting on her right him laid a maroon kath hound hide sachet with just on simple latch to open and close the bag with matching colored elbow length gloves covering both hands and forarms.
She walked through the thick crowd in the direction of an ally way even more dimly lit than the street already was. No citizens traveled in to or came out of the ally way, and most seemed to walk slightly faster when they looked over there should and gazed inside it.
Being Coruscant the possibility of there being any number of dangers in the ally was highly likely, ranging from a simple bumbling drunk asking for money to pirates with an insatiable thirst for gambling but low on credits.
No passing bystander took time out of their brisk walk to warn the dainty looking twi’lek of these possible dangers, under the assumption and ever one in the galaxy could fend for themselves.
The twi’lek kept walking towards the shadowy rift until just at the mouth of it. Without hesitation she entered in to the shadow and from the street she disappeared in to the black. She continued her walk at the same pace remaining unmoved by the city womp rats scurrying around the floor and only looked for a moment when she steeped in a pile of goo that smelled like a fusion of bantha poodo and week old Jawa Juice.
Up ahead less than ten feet from where the twi’lek stood were three singular colored tubes of light slowly moving around and making subtle twitches. Each of the lights illuminated a few inches in dull colors of green blue and yellow. Even from their muted colors, in all likely hood form being diluted in to any number of substances to increase to volume but at a decreased potency it was quite apparent where the lights originated. Death Sticks. A favorite of low lifes, as the cost was not extreme, but the side effects were. The hallucinogenic drug produced a twisted version of reality enhanced by bright colors and was highly addictive. With each dose, the user's life was shortened, and the successive dosages took away larger chunks from a lifespan.
The twi’lek continued to silently step, gliding over to the users until within earshot and calmly announced “Hello gentlemen”.
“Whatiswhosthere!” screamed a man from inside the shadows.
The man then began to fumble with the glowing green tube in his hand after must having dropped it after the startle of the woman’s voice. He juggled the tube for a few seconds until it fell a mere couple inches to the hard ground and shattered, spraying a fine mist of green liquid that seeped in to the cracks in the rocks.
“Kriffing defels always spookin’ around in the shade! That was my last fix!” exclaimed the stammered man while still in the dark. The voice of another man rang in and dictated “Lerry you nerf! defels don’t speak basic!”
Having had enough of the men’s yammering the lavender colored twi’lek reached in to a pocket on her backside and pulled out a common glow rode. Between her two hands she grasped it and cracked it in two illuminating the surrounding walls in a vibrant flash of light. One of the men let out a loud “YAARG” while the other spat out a few vowels as they were momentarily blinded by the white light.
Seeing the men for the first time the twi’lek observed one with a long white beard, who had just dropped his death stick. Another, the one who had made the vowel sounds who had almost no heir on his face at all and a third in the back bobbing his head in an intermediate pattern, clearly being too intoxicated to understand what was going on around him. The twi’lek began to speak,
“My sincere apologies gentlemen, I did not have any intention of disturbing our recreational activities. I will be more than willing to replace any damages I may have inadvertently caused due to my negligence.” Taken slightly aback by the strangers’ kindness especially at this level of Coruscant, the man with the beard fumbled over his words for a moment with his pent up anger slightly subsiding.
“That’s right! Umm … you sure will!” He stated in an uneasy and unsure tone.
“Please take these as my condolences.” Said the twi’lek as she reached in to her breast pocket and revealed three vibrantly colored red Death Sticks with glistening specks of black inside them. She then handed one of the Death Sticks to each man and then returned to her standing position.
The bald man let out a shocking sound before saying “son of a gundark! Them is the brightest Death Sticks I ever did lay my eyes on”! Each man began to coddle is photo-fluorescent tube eyeing them with little actual inspection. The man in the back drew a needle from his pocket and began assembling the set up for him to immediately consume his new found prize. The same main raised an eyebrow in confusion before exclaiming “Aye! Either you been sniffin to much spice or you’re the dumbest girly I’ve ever seen. Aint nobody give out Death Sticks this nice without no catch.”
“No catch” claimed the twi’lek in rebuttal. “I simply wish to recoup the losses of which that incurred” The bald man looked back again at the Death Stick in his hands the back at the twi’lek.
“Hey now, what’s these itty bitty black dusts inside my stick”? Said the bald man.
“I got them too”! The bearded man yelled in conjecture. The third man continued to just stare at the tube he was given in the back of the ally. Unfazed by the high level of observance that did not usually accompanied a stick head the twi’lek look at the second man and replied “Very observant. In fact these are a brand new strain of Death sticks my associates engineered. I’m here handing out samples. The minute specks you see suspended within your Death Sticks are a combination of ground krayt dragon scales and rock wart venom. The natural porousness of the krayt dragon scales absorbs most of the natural toxins from the raw rock wort venom giving quite a potent jolt when ingested on injected. They re-engineered the pre-established formula for Death Sticks and not only mixed their new solution together using a hutt slime saline mixture which acts as the perfect catalyst to mix the new ingredients but they also use the finest additives that credits can buy to ensure perfection In their creation.”
“Ooh… right.” Said the bald man
“Krayt dragon teeth, we know about them. We used to catch them in the lakes on Tatooine. Isint that right lerry?”
“Sure is nomie” .Replied the man with the beard.
“Very well. I shall be on my way then”. Said the twi’lek.
“Wait a minute! You owe me two! One for the freebie and one for the stick of mine you broke”! Yelled the man with the beard. The twi’lek turned around and began to walk away ignoring the request of the scruffy bearded man. From behind her the sound of skidding rocks echoed in the ally as the bearded man leapt towards the twi’lek and wrapped his hand around the satchel which lay on her waist. His feet slipped out from under him in the pool of foul smelling goo but even as he fell he did not relinquish his grasp on the satchel. As he plummeted the threads of the bag split and it slammed to the ground along with the man, spilling its contents. A puff of black smoke shot from the bag as a small mound of = finely ground rock poured out which glittered in the light of the white glow rod.
“You imbosile”!
The twi’lek shouted, breaking her concrete demeanor for the first time. Quickly she removed the elbow length glove from her right arm exposing a large area of flesh with brightly colored red blotches covering the majority of her arm with only a few areas still exhibiting the calming lavender of which her natural skin tone was. Her arm shot down to clutch the bearded man around the neck and then with a powerful thrust hoisted him in the air despite him clearly weighing at least thirty pounds more than her. Her violet tinted eyes turned a threatening ruby red and she gazed deeply in to the eyes of the man just assaulted her. Suddenly a sizzling sound came from the man’s neck and smoke began to rise from where the twi’leks hand was placed. The bearded man began to scream in horror as red sparks traced up each individual hair on his neck smoldering one at a time. The smell of burnt hair and flesh filled the ally way and the man’s neck began to turn black as bits of burnt skin chipped away from his body as a result of the intense head being shot from the twi’leks red hand.
Without warning her grip loosened and the man crumpled to the ground in a heap and began gasping for air. He pawed at his neck only to feel blackened flesh with patches of melted beard fused together.
Gazing down at the smoking man the twi’lek spoke
“Unfortunately my master needs you alive”. Then abruptly she fitted her glove back on, re-concealing all traces of discolored skin on her arm. She then bent over and delicately scooped what black dust she could back in to her broke satchel. When she was done she picked it up and walked away without sparking the man writhing in pain on the ground a second glance.

Back in her musky hotel room in the depths of underground Coruscant the twi’lek opened the bottom drawer of her cupboard and removed a large bulky state of the art holoprojector. With the name ‘STOIF and Co.’ printed on the side in large red letters it was the first portable projector available to the public and came with a hefty price tag of twenty five thousand credits. Kneeling down on top of her legs on the floor she placed the machine in front of her and dialed in a complex code. A small
Static-filled nautolan face appeared roughly a foot above the projector.
A beep rang and a voice began talking “Thank you for choosing Stofi and Co. brand to make your holoprojection call today. If you need any assi … “. The face disappeared and a numerical count down in aurebesh began to count down from ten. The violet twi’lek lowered her head in anticipation and as a sign of respect. A new wavy blue tinted image appeared above the projector again, though this time the face being pictured was a frightening visage. The image had a well-defined cheek bones and a strong jaw line, despite the mostly colorless picture displayed by the holoprojector the man’s jet black hair, cut short with a V-shaped peak sticking out from the front of his scalp was quite apparent even through the poor connection and fuzzy display. The man in the image tilted his head a few degrees down to look at the bowed face of the twi’lek, and then he spoke.
“Adept Bloo. My star pupil. I trust your mission was a success as always?”
With only a fraction of a second delay Bloo replied “Yes master.” as she raised her head to meet the man’s eyes.
The images shifted and the sound box on the holoprojector faded in and out as the man spoke.
“Do not lie to me adept. Even from this distance I can feel your uncertainty in the force. Tell me what has gone awry?”
Staring in to her masters piercing eyes Bloo took special precaution to answer in a timely manner.
“One of the sacrifices leaped at me and tore my satchel. I lost a substantial amount of our Sith Obsidian”.
Exhibiting a measurable amount of distaste the master addressed the adept.
“This is disheartening adept. Not only were you unable to anticipate the actions of the life form who attacked you, but also as a result of this failure you lost much of our precious resource. We need that Sith Obsidian adept. It is what allows us to draw in those who consume it to our base here on Mustafar. Its pull in the force which is generated by Mount Deska, where we get our Sith Obsidian from, creates a pang in the chest of its victims so powerful that they have no thoughts except to use every available resource to find where their where it came from. Without our Sith Obsidian we have no option of bring living beings here other than through kidnapping. An action we cannot afford to commit at this point in time as we face the danger of drawing unwanted attention to ourselves. We must wait until I am no longer bound to this planet of magma and rock before we can move to the next step of our plan”.
Knowing full well the extreme rarity of the Sith Obsidian, only found deep inside Mount Deska, a colossal volcano on the planet’s surface which had been imbued with the dark side of the force that her master had discovered before he found her. A feeling washed across Pesta Bloo that she did not often feel. Failure. And shame.
“What have you to say for yourself adept?” her master said.
“Nothing master”. A stern voice replied.
“I have no excuses for my pitiful short comings”.
“Very well. Return to Mustafar at once. Your new prizes should not take long to arrive. May the force break your chains adept.”
“May the force break your chains master”. Bloo replied.
The hologram then instantly cut out indication that the transmission had been cut from the other end. Unsure of what possible chastisement she may face when arriving back at the barren world she sat and contemplated for just a moment. Despite whatever her gut instinct was she was a Sith adept to Darth Volkanas, the most powerful man in the galaxy.
Standing up with nothing to pack other than her satchel she was ready to depart back to secret base of the Sith. Before leaving the room she bent over and lifted the holoprojector on to the bed and took a moment staring at it. She then raised her hand and faced her palm at the machine. With an inkling of concentration screws and bolts on all sides of the machine began to unthread themselves. After a few seconds the last of the facets came off and the face plates collapsed in on themselves. Bloo then reached straight in to the clump of electronics and wrapped her hand around the still warm memory unit. With a strong tug she ripped the unit out of its housing, snapping multiple wires attached to it. She held it up to eye level and tightly gripped it with her fingers. Smoke began to rise from the memory unit and a small flame shone through her closed fingers. She opened her hand and let the melted piece of slag roll of her pal ad on to the carpolium floor. A burning smell drifted upwards as the red hot electronic burned a small divot in the floor before it cooled itself off. Stepping over the slagged tech Bloo exited the room and made her way to the spaceport.

While in the air taxi Bloo glanced around at her surroundings taking in all information and tactical reference points she could. Rising from the lower levels of the planet hundreds of floors zipped by in seconds, thousands of buildings which climbed skyward for tens of miles and millions upon millions of sentients living their lives day in and day out without a purpose. They disgusted her. She reached docking bay 53 there where her AAFB Space Trudger star fighter was parked, a space ship specializing in ease of ability to travel long distances through hyperspace. The fighter was a U-Shaped vehicle with two blocky engines mounted on either side of the U shaped prongs. The sleek design allowed for little draft due to the lack of mass in the middle allowing it to glide easily trough hyperspace, contrary to how most vehicles suffer. Estimated to travel point one past light speed it was the fastest hyperspace faring ship that money could buy, through it had no weapons what so ever. Trying to reach her fighter as quickly as possible while navigating a Couriscanti customs office she upheld the utmost patience through the grueling endeavor.
“Check your bag ma’am”? A scruffy voice sounded from behind her.
“Ma’am this is a random security check, I must check your bag”. The man repeated.
Bloo gazed at the man before her for a moment before raising her right and making a swiping motion less than two feet from his face.
“You do no need to check my bag” Bloo said and then turned around and continued walking down the line. A hand covered in dirt and grime shot out from the crowed and grabbed her at the upper bicep. “No ma’am, I do need to check your bag”
Despite the burning intensity to lash out at the man and set a ball of fire ablaze between his ears Bloo remained calm and locked eyes with the man. This time creasing her brown and concentrating hard she repeated the motion with her hand. “You do not need to check my bag”.
For a moment the man stared at Bloo with eyes slightly gazed over. Though in a moment he blinked rapidly and shook his head a few times as if waking up from a shallow nap. “I’m sorry ma’am. He then released her arm. “I will have to call security if you do not allow me to check your bag.”
Cursing violently inside her mind Bloo reluctantly handed the man her torn satchel while wondering what she had possibly done wrong. Staring at her was a man, not a hutt or
Toydarian, it was a human male. Clearly less than intelligent and more than weak minded to be the victim of a Sith mind wipe. “Please do be careful with it. It belonged to my departed grandmother”. Bloo lied to the man in the most pathetic tone she could muster. The man took the bag a waved a paddle over the bag which showed a perfect X-ray of the bags contents.
“This isint spice is it ma’am”?
“No sir”. She replied. “They are my grandmother’s ashes”.
The man gave Bloo a disgusted look and thrust the bag back towards her direction. It took her another three standard hours to reach her star fighter. From there she eagerly took off and left Coruscant. For Bloo she hoped it would be the last time she ever saw the planet.


Ch 2
“I’m not a body guard”.
“It’s not an escort job, not a bodyguard. We will pay fifty thousand credits; you know I’m good for it. I’ll even pay you half up front.
“Im not an escort Troy”
“Come on Taxton. We’ve known one another for over twenty years”.
“Im to old for this Troy. You know I don’t need the credits. I need to hangup my armor and return home. Right now there is a kriffing nanny droid spending more time with my daughter than I have my whole life”.
“Well than do this for me Vaylin. This can be your final blowout. One last job for Vaylin Taxton. Then you can go retire on whatever world you want. The Stoif company needs you” Troy said as he looked down at the aging man in the reverse facing pilots’ seat of his starship. Out the viewport behind him there was not much visible. Only the silhouette of the refueling station mounted to a random asteroid and the few speckles of glowing stars in the distance. Vaylin Taskton, once the most feared and revered bounty hunter in the industry sat before Troy Stoif. Now with thinning white and silver shoulder length hair and bags under his eyes. His facial stubble was unkempt and shaggy. Though even while sitting the top of Tasktons head still almost reached Troys shoulders. Taskton stood up and slowly meandered over to a sealed cabinet which was as tall as the hallway. Taskton let out a huff of air before addressing his friend.
“Whats the job”?
With a smile creeping over Troys face he was quietly pleased to know that Vaylin was even willing to entertain taking the job. Knowing how to speak to such a man he cut straight to the chase.
My men have recently found a very interesting crystal on a backwater world called Illum. A world of ice and naturally forming crystals it would only by pure chance in which we came across this unique one which can serve the purposes we need it for. This crystal which we have since named the Lavma Crystal us a naturally forming element. By both design and coincidence this Crystal generates extremely high levels of bout heat and radiation. This radiation is quite possibly the exact kind we have been searching for. You see, we have developed a new form of space based transmission towers we plan on putting on all planets and areas of space so we can increase both the connection and distance of our holotransmitters. In the forty years I have owned this company this may be by far the greatest possible innovation we have discovered and it is practically in the palm of my hand. I am singly handedly creating a galaxy united.”
“So you want me to be body guard to a crystal for you. Who would even know”?
“Under normal circumstances no one. But because of the outrageous levels of radiation the Lavma crystal gives off its presence will be highly detectible to even the most half-witted space pirate. Despite the face that I found it if anyone else gets a read the crystals energy signature they will more than likely deduce the incredible power it can produce and try to take it for their own pet projects. In addition a will personally pay you a bonus of ten thousand credits, up front, if you are willing to see this matter from excavation to delivery. “
“So I am playing body guard for you aren’t I”? Taskton said as he gazed down at a glowing green keypad mounted in to the wall in front of him and what entered what seemed to be like a thirty digit code.
Cringing at how contradictory he sounded to his previous statement Troy couldn’t help from stumbling over his first few words. “No…well…yes. There’s really not much of anything on the planet to guard from.
“Not much is not the same as nothing Troy”. Taskton said as the cabinet door slid open and he hunched over to procure an unseen item from the closet.
“There really are little dangers Vaylin”. Troy desponded desperately. “There’s a native species of beasts not much bigger than a Nabooian Tuskcat. No big problem right”?
Vaylin stood up and walked towards Troy with a bowl shaped object in his hand When he reached better light Vaylin saw it was Vaylin Tasktons infamous helmet. The color of bone and the shape of a mandabileless human skull was a visage recognized all across the galaxy. Inside each eye socket was a red infrared film which glowed an eerie tint of crimson when the photoreceptors inside the helmet were activated. Often time it would be the last light one would see before being plunged in to eternal darkness. He then thrust the helmet out towards Troy but kept a strong grasp on it, clearly not willing to hand it over to even such a close friend. He turned the helmet around in his hands and pointe at a deep gash tracing frown from the back the helmet to where his neck would have been when wearing the armor. “Do you see this”? Taskton asked. Troy nodded while watching the helmet. “This is from a a Naboo Tuskcat.”
Feeling a dry knot well up in his throat Troy swallowed hard but continued listening. Taskton twisted his hands so the top of the helmet faced Troy. “This is from an angry dug who’s brother I killed on who was camping out on Ryloth. Pointing at an angry black carbon scored mark. Turning it again he revealed a dent with a piece of jagged metal protruding ever so slightly front in even surface. This was done by a giving with a magne-steel tipped cross bow bolt on Bespin that I was hired to kill, I still can’t get it out”. Looking up to face Troy he spoke again. I have owned this helmet for nearly four decades Troy and none of these blemishes appeared on its surface until the last five years. I’m losing it. I’m not as fast on my feet as I once was. I actually allow my hunt to land hits on me. I’m getting weak Troy.”
Swallowing the knot in his throat Troy waited a moment before replying.
“Who cares if you’re not as good Vaylin! Your still the best! No one else could hold a candle to you. Do you want me to go and hire someone else? Is that it? The Bonjwi’ Brothers perhaps? You could run circles around those trandoshans. What about Reave? That blasteded devourian doesn’t have half the talent you have. I ask you because I know you can do this Vaylin. You won’t even have to do any killing. This will be an easy one, I give you my word”.
Placing the helmet back in to its case with in the closet, he closed the door and entered in another long code. The light on the panel went from green to red and a soft feminine voice announced “System Armed”. Taskton let out another sigh, shook his head back and forth a few times, his long white hair brushing against his shoulders before looking up at Troy. “I’m going to need a lot more details” he said. “And I want it all in advance”. Exuberant on the inside Troy began spewing forth information with confidence for he knows the most powerful man in the galaxy was on his side.

CH 3
Deep down on the lower levels of Coruscant, Lerry awoke after a restless night of sleep filled with horrific night terrors, hallucinations and withdrawal symptoms. Ever since that Twi’lek gave him and his friends those amazing DeathSticks their lives had been a living hell. When they slept they dreamt of the same planet, burning in red and black flames. Every night they awoke in sweats, screaming at the atrocities of which crossed their unconscious mind and actually feeling the intense heat given off by the planet. On this particular morning Lerry decided he could not take it anymore. He was still breathing heavy from the violent convulsions he suffered at night and felt the ever rising pain in the pit of his stomach, pulling him towards some unknown place and when he woke up saw his two friends who shared the dark alley way with him. He pulled himself up, his wet shirt sticking to the ground, and bent over to shake the knee of his wounded friend.
“Hey Benny, wake up. “ The man with the bloody cloth wrapped around his neck twitched about before opening his eyes, then rose, scratching at the crimson bandage where his beard used to be. Now burned off and all that remained was a patch clip job and black, charred skin.
“What do you want?” Benny said in an extremely scratchy voice, clearly in agonizing pain from exerting even as much effort as talking, which caused uncomfortable vibrations in his neck.
Lenny stood up from his puddle of sweat to walk over to his other slumbering friend.
“We need to get out of here. Today. We need more of those DeathSticks, I cant keep going without them and you don’t look like you can either. They are excellent pain killers you know.” Pointing at the Benny’s wounded neck.
“And how do you suppose we do that Lerry? For all we know that crazy fire Twi’lek might no even be on Coruscant anymore! And im not to eager to find that she-mynock again.”
“Come on Benny, she was just a salesmen, a nobody, well go straight to that corporation and they will hook us up. They gave us free samples in the first place right? Maybe we can be testers or something.”
“We don’t even know who, or where that corporation is!”
“I know where it is Benny. That red planet.” Benny sat for a moment and pondered the ball of fire which now so often encompassed his dreams, and much of his waking thoughts. As much as he wanted to disagree Benny felt a pain deep in his stomach that told him what Lerry was saying was right.
“But-bu…we don’t even know where it is.”
“We’ll find it Benny. But one thing’s for sure and that is it aint’ here. We need to get off Coruscant.”
Lerry leaned over and woke Moes, a smaller man with a Mon Calamari style fishing hat on his head and accompanying lures vest.
“Hey genius, wake wakey.” Moes raised from his slumber with glazed eyes and unruly red hair which hid beneath his hat.
“Wha…dinner time?”
“No. We’re going to get more of those DeathSticks.”
In quite an uncharacteristic manor Moes curiosity was instantly peaked and he perked up at the sound of his beloved drug.
“But first we need a ship.”
“Alright, problem.” Benny responded. “We don’t have a ship!”
Lerry leaned over and slapped Benny in the face.
“We’re gonna’ get one stick head!” The three men drew closer together in a close huddle as if hiding from any of the non-existent security cams and police droids in the alley way. They were all silent for another moment until Lerry spoke up.
“Alright Moes, you go out of the ally and find the richest looking person you can and draw him back in here. Say you need help because your girl fell and hurt her or something. Then Benny, you hide in the corner and choke him when he comes down the alley. Il’’ fight off any blaster or weapon he draws, then we’ll take the codes for his ship and be on out merry way.” The other two men were quiet for a moment, Benny hated killing, but when he entertained the idea of refuting Lerrys plan a heavy knot formed in his stomach and told him to just go along with it. Moes then piped up “Well, no reason in wasting any more time.” He then turned around and walked out the ally, working purely on a feeling in his got to draw in a man to kill.
Nearly an hour passed in the darkness of the alley and no a soul entered. Moes was still at the mouth of the blackness was trying quite futilely at luring a stranger in to the trap and began to feel he was drawing to much attention to himself. Hordes of citizens – and otherwise- passed in front of him paying less attention to him then a krayt dragon would to a tickworm. Moes gazed in to the sea of people until his eyes fell upon a male Ithorian dressed in quite official and opulent robes, surely he had a nice ship. Like all Ithorians this one had a long neck protruding outward from his body and a hammer head shaped appendage at the end where his eyes lay. But because of the elongated neck Ithorians could no speak basic, and Moes could not speak Ithorian, but most were able to understand it. On the verge of throwing in the towel Moes decided to give the task one last attempt as he ahd done nearly twenty times in the last hour. He darted from the alley way drawing unwanted attention to himself from passers by all around. He met the Ithorian face to face and pitched the same plea he had time and time again expecting the same response. But this time the Ithorian seemed to show a sense of urgency and his body motions told Moes he wanted to help. Half astounded and excited that the tactic had worked Moes grabbed the Ithorians arm and began trailing him back to the alley. When he knew he was close he alerted his team mates which may have well scared the Ithorian but Benny and Lerry were too fast. Seeing their prey Benny leaped from the corner to grapple the large humanoid.
“Where in the heck is his neck? How do I choke something that aint’ got no neck?” Instead he latched around the beast’s torso and began trying to wrestle him to the ground. The Ithorian shook Benny of turned and tried to run away as fast as he could, not bothering to draw a weapon to defend himself. Lerry though appeared from the shadows and leapt at the running Ithorians feet in a successful attempt to trip him up and both begins landed on the ground with a hard thud. Benny then retrieved a rusty pipe from the corner and heafted it to swing at the long necked being. Lerry then, for the first time, got a look at who exactly they were attacking.
“Don’t do it Benny! Hes an Ithorian they are peacefully, he won’t hurt you!” he yelled but his crys were in vain. The rust microsteel pipe came down cleanly on the Ithorians long brown neck, painlessly ending his life.
“You slime ball Benny! You kriffing space slug! I told you not to kill him. Ithorians would never fight back, he would have given us the keys and he could have lived! But you killed him!” “I…I…I’m sorry Lerry! I didn’t know what else to do! I didn’t know they were a peaceful people.” Benny Stammered. Lerry grumbled more swears to himself before speaking again.
“Well… what’s done is done, let’s get his stuff, get the ship, and get out.” He bent over to start going through the Itorians robe, when he touched he he noticed it was fine gold stripped shimmer silk, worth easily five hundred credits. He disrobed the being and tossed the cloths to Moes.
“Looks like your getting a new look buddy!” Lerry the continued looking picking the pickets of the corpse in front of him. He reached in to his front pouch and pulled out a card which made him turn a sickly pale.
“Whats wrong Lerry?” Benny asked. Lerry stared at the card for another moment before announcing the detrimental news.
“He was a senator…”
“What Lerry?”
“The Ithorian was a senator! A representative from Ithor! We are so done. We need to get out of here.” Lerry grabbed the data pad, assuming it had the ship codes on it and began running from the alley, hardly even waiting for his comrades. The trio made their way through the city bumping in to passers, receiving death threats, and drawing unwanted attention from them all the way to the space port. When they arrived they skipped every line and threw out any items that may be considered contraband. All three men were sweating profusely by the time they reached the last check point, for waiting was not a good thing criminals to be able to handle. When they finally reached the last representative for security Lerry handed the data pad to him praying that he would be let passed and make it to the ship safely. The guard pondered over the pad for a moment before looking up with a threatening look on his face.
“Now wait a minute!” You aren’t the Ithorian representative from the Galactic Senate! Guards, we need to detain these men and investigate!”
“Run for it!” Lerry yelled at his friends before upper cutting the customs officer in the jaw and ripping the data pad from his hands. The three men bolted past the security bars and made a beeline for the ship yard to retrieve the Ithorian’s ship but within a few seconds a squad of armed and armored Courscanti guards began perusing the offenders.
Both parties made it through the glass doors separating the customs terminal to the ship docks and Lerry spotted the ship that he had seen on the data pad and aggressively attempted to find the unlock codes from the pad.
The guards still in hot pursuit shouted threats and warnings but none of the men paid any attention or gave any signs of forfeiting. The head guard, after making the threat multiple times raised his blaster and set it to standard charge power and leveled the sights at the red haired man tailing behind the other two. Clutching the grip up pulled his finger around the trigger and a red bolt shot from the muzzle and made direct contact with the back man’s right thigh.
Lerry dropped to the ground with a scream of pain and began pleading for his companions to save him.
“Lerry! Benny! You can’t leave me! Help help they will kill me!” Both men hesitated for a fraction of a second, they had all sworn to one another that they would lay down their own lives for either of their friends but before they turned around each felt a strong pushing force in the pit of their stomach telling them to ignore their fallen comrade and they continued running.
The two remaining men were in luck and just by chance the datapad that Lerry had commandeered had an automatic unlock feature for the starship that it was slaved to. Lerry hit the button on the data pad and the ramp began the seemingly infinite process of lowering its back hatch. The two men had no weapons and no defense’s to protect them from the onslaught of the guard which was gaining on them fast.
The same trooper who fired at Moes gave the order for an open fire on the two remaining men and like soldiers ready to execute a prisoner of war they raised their blasters and unleashed an onslaught of red energy beams towards the running junkies.
The ramp to the ship was now half way down and filling quickly with stray blaster bolts. Benny could hear the clicking of triggers and fizzing of bolts as the burned through the air all around him, some hitting the ship, the ground, and even one scorching a fist sized hole in a loose piece of the tunic he wore. Lerry was a few paces ahead of him when Benny made a ultimatum choice. He unleashed a hidden burst of speed and as he passed Lerry snatched the data pad from his hand and continued on traveling ahead of him. He approached the ramp and leapt. The ramp which was still in motion and tried to enter the small hole which was growing, ever so slowly, larger. The top half of his torso landed on the ramp and in his fateful leap drove his shin in to the sharp bottom of the ramp. He could audibly hear the crack and felt warm blood dripping down his leg but there was too much adrenaline in his blood to let that slow him down. It would be another four seconds until Lerry reached the ramp and that was to long for him to wait. He had to, at no matter what cost reach the red planet in his dreams. He hit the open button again activating the close feather and the gears of the ramp stalled for a micro second then began working in reverse. He ran through the ship towards the cockpit but did not get far enough to escape the horrible sounds that followed.
A large thump came as Lerry smacked in to the closing ramp, expecting it to be opening instead of closing and let out a blood curdling scream, which was quickly replaced with an increased rate of blaster fire. His friend was dead. With his broken femur benny made his way to the cockpit and ignored the ships need for a warm up session, and flared the thruster to the ship.
The troopers only gazed at the body of the man they had just slain at the foot of the ship for a moment before a thunderous crowed echoed from the bowls of the ship. The engine was ignited and the thrusters flared to life right in front of where the troopers were standing. A blast of heat comparable to the temperature of Coruscants sun shot from the engine and nearly disintegrated the band of troopers. Turning armor, weapons, and flesh to dust.
Benny heard the ship groan and creek from the incredible stress put on it after such a sudden activation. His mind flashed to Lerry, then Moes, and then those images were replaced by the red planet. The ship took off before Coruscants air traffic control had been mobilized and he shot through speeding traffic in to the atmosphere, and then in to light speed.


Chapter 4
Approaching the glowing red planet Bloo gazed at the world which had been her home for the last five years. Thousands of volcanoes covered the world’s surface, many in a state of constant eruption. A clear view of the planet was impossible due to the never ending eruptions which rocketed billions of megatons worth of ash and soot in the atmosphere creating a dusty barrier completely encasing the red world and shielding it from any prying eyes. As she entered the atmosphere that entire she saw, all that there was to see was a barren landscape of crushed obsidian, ash and flowing lava. She glided downward towards the direction of their hidden base, no less than a few miles from Mount Deska. Below her ship trudged a group of Mustafarian Lava Fleas. Standing over thirteen feet off the ground the giant beasts look exactly like their pest like miniature counterparts, just on a much larger scale.
Because of the planets extreme remoteness in the Atravis sector, well away from organized civilization the planet her master had chosen to make his base on had no security comm to greet new comers or interrogate them for information. With the inability to dig underground on the planet, unless you were a lava flee, due to the extreme heat and it being prone to lava collapses her master and his organization was forced to build their base in the most opportune place available. With little protection this was behind nothing other than a large volcanic ash mountain which was only large enough to conceal one side of the base when being viewed from a specific angle. Quickly approaching, she soared over the singular mountain and the base came in to view. Only a few small structures speckled the land scape in part because each building needed its own shield generator to protect it from the blistering heat of the planet. Because of this no building, not even her masters quarters was unnecessarily large or opulent. The only sizable structure in view was an enormous, unconventionally shaped rectangular landing platform. It was more of a community platform being used by over sixty star ships of ever make and as opposed to the classic one ship to one platform rule. Each ship was brought here by the hundreds of beings drawn to the planet through the consumption of Sith Obsidian. Because most of the victims were low-lifers and junkies they often had no physical way to reach the far out planet of Mustafar but the pull inside them was so strong they would take any course of action to reach it. More times than not it involved incapacitation or even murder of the rightful owners of these starships which were then hijacked to make the multi-light year jump to the Atravis sector where Mustafar lay.

Darth Volkanas sat cross legged on a rocky outcrop with his eyes closed. Sitting patiently he sat on the cliff face as lava flowed around him in one general direction until it fell off the edge in a cascade of magma. His red skin was contrasted by his black Sith tattoos. They traced all over his body in curious lines and patterns. On either side of him were 3 columns of raised lava and in-between each pillar was a ring of lava raised from the pool on one side which arched over his head and met back in to the lava pool on the other side. Sensing one of his adepts quickly approaching he snapped his bright red eye lids open and dropped the lava he had been levitating around him. He stood up with nothing more than his jet black cape and loin cloth blowing in the hot wind. Made of force smelted obsidian the garments had the flexibility of cloth by the hardness of obsidian. With the compound being able to be cut to a finer point than any know natural substance the perimeter of his cape had been whittled down to a razor sharp edge. He raised his hand and summoned over two pieces of obsidian floating down the lake and they started gravitating towards him. He set one foot on each stone, each being only mere inches across and as a result his toes hung off the edge of both, no more than a few centimeters above the scalding lava. The rocks then started moving upstream towards a standard looking building with the blue aura of a heat shield encompassing it tightly. Constructed by the enslaved Shorter and more Stocky Mustafarians from the south side of the planet the buildings were sturdy yet quaint. Stepping off the stones after reaching a shore of ash and rock, still smoldering at a few thousand degrees due to its close proximity to the body of lava Darth Volkanas set a bare foot on the land and began to walk towards his dwelling. With his quarters being the closest to the lava than any structure in the base it was a short walk but before he reached it a loud boom sounded from out in the distance. Because of the topography of the planet, with its barren landscape and rolling hills the sound was able to echo off the mountains and travel hundreds of miles from where it originated. As usually followed by such a sound the ground itself began to shake violently and a mountain of ash from the hill guarding their base began sliding down one slope at high speeds. Most defiantly a result of one of the unstable planets super volcanoes erupting, a common occurrence in the region of which occurred more than a few times a week. Volkanas approached the building and used the force to tear a human sized hole in the blue energy shield which surrounded the cylindrical structure. Because of the buildings need for constant protection from the heat the shields throughout the entire base had no off switches, and the only way to surpass their protective aura was to rip them open, a feat that could not be done with bare hands. Though without the shields the buildings, even with heat treated duracrete would turn to nothing more than a pile of slag within hours of exposure to the extreme heat. He knew that within minutes his adept would arrive and would confront him. Opening the door he walking in to the chamber and walked towards his throne observing its hand crafted beauty. He assumed the seat on his glossy obsidian throne which faced directly towards the door where his adept would enter. The throne was positioned higher up than the floor forcing who ever addressed him to look up at him, giving him an air of strength and power, even more than the one he already radiated through the force.

Pesta’s Space Trudger landed easily on the platform as close to the walkway as she could. She dismounted from the cockpit and had to make a concerted effort to keep her heart beat and breathing under control for her master could most certainly feel her apprehension if she let it show through body signs. She opened a cabinet on the side of the walkway towards the exit of the platform and removed the strongest personal shield that was in stock. One of the other adepts had found that if he rewired each unit to maintain a less batteries time he could reroute more power to the strength of the shield for better protection from the heat. A fair trade off considering the bare ground could easily reach a few hundred degrees. She donned the machine slinging it over her back and sliding her arms through the mounting straps. She reached behind her and flipped the switch to the on position and a shimmering blue light appeared around her. She punched a hole in the shield of the space port and ventured out in to the unprotected outdoors. While most of the planet was relatively hospitable, albeit on the hot side, her master had chosen to set up base in the middle of a magma mote which spilt as it came around the mountain and re-met directly in front of her masters cabin. With only a short distance to travel to her destination she began a walk which would only take a few seconds. On her way to her master’s chamber she passed the prison, which was built to hold the sacrifices until they were ready to be used. To her right were a trio of short plump Southern Mustafarians collecting lava from the lake using a four and a half foot black spoon tool and an equally as black collection vat, likely the lava would be used to create more heat resistant bricks to the store room that was currently under construction at the base.
Pesta approached her master’s quarters and gazed up at the building. A cylindrical body with a half a sphere for a roof and four tusk shapes spikes protruding from the sides of the body and reaching towards the sky.
Pesta reached around to her shield generator and flipped the switch to the off position , for even though her master would see the generator and know that she had been using it would be too willing show weakness to enter his quarters with the shield still active. She opened a hole in the shield with the Force and the blue aura flickered on and off, struggling to fill the hole torn in it. She walked through the shield and placed her hand on the door know. She slowly turned and pushed revealing her master sitting there on his throne before her, seeing him for the first time in months he was no less threatening. The inside of the room felt like a sauna as drastic amounts of heat were radiated from her masters burning hot red skin. As customary she entered the room and bowed on one knee and dropped her head in the presence of her master.
“Rise adept”. Darth Volkanas announced in a bellowing voice.
Pesta rose to her feet and looked her master in the eyes, refusing to let her gaze falter for even just a moment. Volkanas let silence fill the room the room, giving his adepts mind a chance to wander. After close to three minutes of silence and his adepts unfaltering posture he broke quiet air in a commanding voice.
“My power is growing adept. Can you feel it”?
“Yes master”. Pesta replied.
“Has your power grown adept”? Volkanas questioned with his face remaining in a stoic nature.
Pesta thought back to the customs port on Coruscant, to where she had failed to use to the Force successfully to get her past the random security check. Despite these thoughts she promptly answered. “Yes master”.
“Do you want more power”?
“Yes master”. Pesta replied, caught off guard by the question. It was only the second time in nearly the three years she had been adept to Volkanas that he asked her that question. The first being when she first signed herself over to his service and she gained her unique set of Force abilities. It also meant that if Volkanas was offering her power it would mean less that he could harness, for they only had so many sacrifices. Despite the little that she knew of Sith lore from millennia past, she did know that Sith Lords were very resilient to relinquish their power, much less to offer it to another living being.
“I want you to make the next sacrifice adept”. Darth Volakans said from his seat atop his throne.
It was a privilege and an honor to combine her Force energy with that of Mount Deska’s.
“You will meet me at the top of the Volcano in six hours adept. You many choose your sacrifice to take with you to the Volcano. Do not be late”.
“Thank your master”. Pesta said as she stood up and walked out the door.

Exhibiting a rare amount of pleasure visible both in the briskness or her walk and the levity of her step Pesta made her way straight over the prison. Being the furthest building in the compound from the lake of lava, and at the outer rim of the base, the prison had to energy shield to protect it from the heat. This meant that the captives inside also had no protection from the intense heat the planet produced. Not having to tear down any shield Pesta opened the door to the prison revealing a dark unlit room with four silhouetted figures inside. Natural light from the lava illuminated the room revealing two bothans, each with a long snout and ears perked up on either side of their heads. Both had creamy white fur with patches of black and burnt fur where they had likely been hit by flying magma or been caught by a burning rock while digging for Sith Obsidian. Grasping each other tightly in fear and their fur standing on end in alertness the both turned to look at the figure in the open door. In the corner curled up in the fetal position was a flat faced, large nosed snivvian , one that she was personally responsible for bring back to Mustafar. After having laced Sith Obsidian in to a party of snivvians Corellian Whiskey while on Coruscant six of the twelve members who attended had made their way home and the one laying huddling before her was the last one alive. Lying against the wall opposite the bothans was the dehydrated body of a mon calamari. With its once moist skin now leathery and tight over its body the smell of red tide was potent in the room as the dead mon cal rotted. Apparently the blue skinned fish headed species need more moisture to survive than what was available on the dry heated planet. What a shame Pesta though to herself, the mon calamari was going to be her choice for sacrifice. Looking up at the violet twi’lek in horror, the three being in the room all cringed and pointlessly tried inching themselves further away from her. Pesta raised her hand and extended her index finger point at the large of the two bothans, clearly a male. She knew that wasting sacrifices was a horrible atrocity, as it meant less power for her master but he had told her to pick and she wanted to pick the strongest.
“You. Kill those two”. Shifting her eye sight to indicate that she was talking about the snivvian and the smaller female bothan, still cowering in the male’s arms.
“No”. He announced.
“I won’t do it! You can’t make me”!
He held tightly on to the female both next to him and she buried her head in his bare furry chest.
Wanting to waste no time getting to Mount Deask Pesta had little patience for the groveling. She raised her arm fully extending her fingers and pointed at the larger bothan. The dark room lit up as a line of fire as thick and as fluid as a whip shot from the violet finger in to the bothans chest. The creature’s fur singed all around the impact point and his chest began glowing on the inside as the Force Magma began to pout from the stomach cavity from inside to out. Smoke rose from the body and it slumped to the ground, burned and scorched from inside to out. Pesta then turned without hesitation to the snivvian and repeated the demand.
“You. Kill her”. Gesturing at the female bothan.
The snivvian shook his head subtly but then glanced down at the charred corpse in from of him. Not wanting to face the same fate, or worse, he slowly rose and advanced towards the female bothan. The bothan hollered in terror, realizing it was kill or be killed and she rose and extracted her claws from her paws. She fell back in to a defensive position and waited for the first strike. The snivvian charged and pinned the bothan against the wall, driving his shoulder in to hers. The bothan impacted the snivvians chest with a powerful uppercut and pierced the flesh so deep she scratched his ribs. Retaliating the snivvian lifted his knee driving it in to the bothans stomach before yelping in pain at the impact of bone on bone but the impact was so strong it caused the bothan to double over as she spit blood from her mouth. The snivvian reached down to wring the bothans wide open neck but the collapsed to the ground after having realized the bothan had used her claws to sever his Achilles tendons. The bothan swung, shattering the snivvians knees, he fell to the ground with an echoing crunch as his skull fractured on impact. The bothan took advantage of the opportunity to deliver the coup de grace to the unconscious bothan and plunged her claws in to the snivvians neck, ending his life in the most humane way possible.
“Very good”. Pesta remarked. “I will take to you”. She walked over to the bothan whose fur was matter with ash and now blood and placed a hand on her wrist. The bothans eyes widened in fear and as a primal instinct she pulled away and instinctively swung at the woman who just laid hands on her. Equally astounded that the Forced technique Pesta had implemented which should have dropped the bothan unconscious on contact had failed Pesta pivoted away from the strike and staggered backwards. The bothan took a step forward and swung again. This time Pesta threw her wrist forearm up absorbing the blow and then twisted her arm so she once again held the bothan by the wrist.
“SLEEP”! She shouted, exerting as much Force energy as she could muster. A few seconds delayed and the bothan continued to struggle but this time it body fell limp and it sank to the ground.
Pesta breathed heavily. Realizing that once again her ability to grasp and successfully utilize the force had failed. If her master was to have felt her failure in the Force, making it now twice in one week which she had faltered, he would most surely revoke her rank of adept and in all likelihood kill her.
Making haste in an effort to waste no time Pesta opened the cabinet on the wall adjacent to the door and removed a pair of stun cuffs and strapped them on to the bothans furry arms. She then retrieved a circular device from the cabinet with a clear node on top and six black holes spread evenly on the perimeter of the round device. She placed the device in the center of the bothans chest and pressed the clear node in the center. The device activated and was brought to life by a sublet whirring sound. The node light up a pale blue and six mechanical fibers began extruding from the slots on the device and constricting the bothan with in the arms. They reached around her back until a soft click sounded three times, indicating each arm had hooked up with another on the bothans back side, making a make shift net. She then tapped the node again twice and the blue light changed to green. This time the device emitted a constant buzz and the bothan began to rise from the ground, being elevated by the thirty-six tiny repulsorlifts which had opened on the bottom side of each arm. She then unstrapped her personal shield generator and placed it in the prison supply cabinet. She did not want to openly show her master any sense of weakness at such an integral time as this. Pesta then used the force to pull along the makeshift repulsor sled which supported the bothan and exited the prison. She gazed ahead at the gargantuan volcano which lay in the horizon. She began the long trek to reach Mount Deska.

Thought it was within clear view of their base, the closer Pesta got to Mount Deska the more of her vision the enormous slab of rock encompassed. The volcano was the largest she had ever seen and was so massive it actually encompassed nearly five percent of the entire planet, a number so large it was usually only held by forests and oceans. Because of the nature of Mount Deska being a shield volcano it was more wide than it was steep, but still did not make the unassisted journey up the side of it any easier, much less with an unconscious Bothan in tow. Her garments were scorched and full of burn holes half way through the trek as a result of magma being thrown in the air due to falling rocks and burning pebbles being thrown around during rock slides.

At the top of Mount Deska stood Darth Volkanas, who gazed down in the the bubbling pool of lava stirring around in the main pipe of the enormous volcano like a pair of twi’lek dancers swinging to the fluid tune of the Bassaxaphone. His gaze shifted from the swirling lava to the ornate silver cube in his hands. The Chu-Gon Dar cube, the key to his power and his unique set of Force abilities, including its ability of tranmoguration – the ability to change one object in to another. Now it had been fifteen years since Volkanas had found the cube while on a quest around the galaxy to uncover sith artifacts. When he entered the Mustafar System nearly fifteen years ago by sheer accident he felt the pull that the planet had on him and he was drawn in. He spent days searching, finding many other weaker artifacts but not the source of what drew him in in the first place. Within a week he uncovered it, buried beneath a mound of Sith Obsidian at the base of Mount Deska. He knew the power the cube could generate and decided he would take that power for himself. He made the journey up the side of the volcano which had dark side energy rolling of it in wave but he soon made it to the top, bloodied though from the journey. He stood as he did now at the mouth of the volcano looking down in the dancing lava. After his first successful journey up the mountain he extended his arms over the main pipe and held the cube at arm’s length. After a moment of concentration is tensed ever muscle in his body and let out a scream which embodied power as he poured nearly every ounce of Force energy in his body in to the cube. He could feel his arms weaken and his muscles give out, his bones began to feel fragile and he struggled to stand. As the force visibly flowed from his hands in to the faces of the cube he held it began to glow vibrant, blinding silver as light burst off it in a pulsing motion in time with his heartbeat. Then with the remaining Force energy he had he lifted a singular line of lava from the pit below and it spiraled upward un till it entered the bottom face of the cube. The bright silver light changed to bring red, the color a Kardokian Black Smith would look for when smelting one of their legendary blades. He suddenly felt his hands on fire, like someone was taking level ten plasma cutter and slowly, manically, running it across each and every finger at the same time and he found he could not let go of the cube. The skin on his palms and fingers began to blacken and flake off as it burned away from the intense heat the cube was generating and the burning sensation continued up his harm tracing like a constricting crystal snake all the way to his elbow. As the skin flaked off his brown natural skin tone was replaced by a burning red color, the color of hate and anger and the Sith. The red appeared in blotches and traced from fingertips to elbows only with few spots of his natural skin color showing through. After another explosive flash the cube dimmed and Volkanas dropped to his knees. In
In shock he flipped his hands back and forth in front of his face, each completely red and seeming to emanate heat. He was profusely sweating and reached to unbutton his shirt to see if all his skin had gone through the metamorphosis. He grabbed the piece of cloth on his chest to unbitten the shirt but instead steam began to rise and a low sizzle came from the cloth where his hand came in contact with it. He quickly pulled his hand away astonished by the sensation he then stared at the hand for a moment longer before slowly inching it towards his face. As his hand got closer his face got hotter until contact was made and the skin on his face began to singe where his fingers touched. He was not as shocked as the last time but none the less quickly pulled his hand away once again and knew that now he could craft this ability, hone these skills, and become the ultimate power in the galaxy.

Looking up from his flash back Volkanas saw a violet head appear above the lip of the volcano on the cliff side. At this point Mustafars sun had gone down and the only light in the pitch black region of the planet was the glowing pool of lava the flowed through the landscape, basking the area in a colorful pallet of red and yellow glows. He also noted the female Bothan behind Pesta, curious as to why she was here with the smaller of the two, and not the male. Allowing her to speak first as always Pesta continued over to her master and knelt down in the hot dirt in front of him.
“I am ready master.” Pesta said with her head bowed. Without acknowledgement or pretty greetings Volkanas spoke”Why did you choose to bring the female Bothan? Was the male not superior?”
“He was physically stronger master by his mind was week. I commanded him to kill the female and the Snivvian and he refused, he would not have made a strong sacrifice.
“Then you have chosen correctly”. Volkanas replied in a satisfactory tone.
“Are you ready to make your sacrifice?”
“Yes Master.”
“Are you ready to attain more power than you have ever thought possible?”
“Yes Master.”
“Are you ready to become my apprentice Pesat Bloo?”
“Yes Master.” Pesta was certainly not expecting to be asked to enter an apprenticeship but she was more the prepared mentally and physically to take on the responsibility.
“You may begin the sacrifice my apprentice”. Volkanas bellowed in a low voice. Having learned early on that using one’s own Force energy to channel through the Chu-Gon Dar Cube was extremely taxing on the one’s own physical energy and life span Volkanas had begun to capture sacrifices from across the galaxy to use their Force energy instead, then reap the results from the cube. Fifteen years ago he had had to secure sacrifices himself which mean much time away from the planet where his power waned to capture slim and filth from the outer rim, each with little power to offer. This was until he had discovered the awesome effects of Sith Obsidian which could drawn all but the most strong willed individuals to Mount Deska, a volcano infused with the Dark Side of the Force where he could then use for sacrifices to make his own power grow.
Pesta rose from her knees and hit the release button on the still unconscious Bothans levitating chasse. The furry body collapsed to the ashy ground kicking up a cloud of dust from the impact. Pesta took the Chu-Gon Dar cube from her master’s hands, cupping it and walking out towards the lip of the volcano to hold it over the violent lava below.
She then, while straining incredibly hard, to levitate the Bothan, slowly raising her from the ash and moving her till there was no ground beneath her and only a boiling pit of lava. She looked at the pitiful creature in front of her and then the cube, and then back at the Bothan and began the ritual.
She began by drawing Force Energy from the Bothan, ripping it from his soul and pouring it in to the cube. The more Pesta leeched from the Bothan the paler the animals fur became, until it was a dull grey and began to drop from the dying body in patches. After a full thirty seconds the Bothans face became decrepit and its skin began stretching tighter and tighter over its bones. Like a Corellian Corba Fruit drying in the sun the Bothan shriveled up until it was barely recognizable as even having once been a humanoid looking form.
Black energy visibly traveled from the Bothan to the cube and it began to glow a bright red. Having been seriously taxed by sustaining the levitation of the Bothan Pesta began to feel her muscles ache and her skin burn from the heat of the lava. She then dropped the corpse hanging in front of her to the pit down below and the body plummeted until meeting the liquid magma below, it sizzled with a satisfying pop and sunk in to the oblivion of Mount Deska.
Pesta began initiating the second part of the ritual and started drawing a stream of lava from the volcano and brought it up until it entered the bottom face of the cube. Instantly she felt as if her whole body was hot and on fire. She broke in to an instant sweat and felt as if she would collapse any moment. A red light exited the cube and she let out a wail of horror. Uncontrollably she dropped to her knees but held her grasp on the cube. Pestas violet face began to smoke gingerly as two red lines appeared from the top of her eye lids and traced up to her eye brows, each burning towards her ears then angled back up to trace over he for head and burned down her lekku, burning off the criss crossing tail wraps she so often wore. The pupils of her eyes changed to a fiery ruby red and the blotches on her arms, now reaching her shoulders. Another red line traced from both shoulders and angled down ward, as well as straight across to meet right above her chest and formed an inverted triangle on her chest. Her vision began to blacken to the point where she nearly passed out. But now she was Sith, and could not let her body fail her indomitable will. With her muscles on fire and bones unwilling to comply to the commands of her body she ignored the pain and rose to her feet, still with the Cube in her hands and bowed, presenting it back to her master.
Volkanas accepted the gift and with an approving look on his face and proudly looked at his apprentice. “very good.” –he remarked- “You have completed the ritual without letting the cube consume your own Force energy and destroy you, you have proven yourself worthy. From this point forward you are now Sith and will no longer go by your given name. You shall from this point forward be known as Darth Illence. As my apprentice now I have two missions for you.”
Knowing that there was no way to gain any time for rest Darth Illence rose, weak and fatigued she need to visit a refresher and give her body a chance to heal, but she also must comply to every single one of her masters demands.
“Unfortunately both missions are of dire importance. Because you are now my apprentice I have no need for the other two adepts. You will kill them.”
The statement caught Illence by surprise. Darth Volkanas had always separated his three adepts by sending them all on missions at the same time and rarely was more than one ever in his presence, as a result of even after three years of serving him she had only come in contact with the others less than a handful of times. In fact not only had she had little contact with either of them she also knew very little about either of them. Of the little she did know was that one of them was a Human Male named Koldy and the other was a Zabrak female named Taysha, she was the one who was able to re-wire the shield generators to output maximum power. She had no idea where to find either of them but she would hunt them down, and she would kill them.
Volkanas interrupted her train of thought as he began to explain the second missions; ones that repercussions would change the course of history for millennia to come.
“As you know that all our actions over the past years have been in preparation for my departure of this fiery planet and as per our plan Adept Taysha has finished her development of my portable life support system which will both allow me to keep magma from Mount Deska pumping through my veins and administer regular doses of Sith Obsidian in to my blood stream and thus she has exhausted her usefulness. The machine had the ability to cleanse the lava as it regulates through my body similar to a Rodian Dialysis Machine. The only flaw thus far, until now that is, is our inability to find a suitable power source to regulate such a device. I have felt ripples in the Force, an ancient sith relic has been uncovered and years to be in the hands of a Dark Lord once again. The Force has told me this relic has the power to support my machine in turn which will allow me to leave this barren hellscape, where then you and I, master and apprentice can begin out empire. Find this relic Darth Illence, than you and I shall rule the galaxy! Go now apprentice.
“May the Force break your chains my master.”
“May the Force break your chains my apprentice.”

Ch X
From the cokckpit of his starship Vaylin Taxton gazed out at the blackness of space and the infinity of what was the galaxy before him. He had been to hundreds of worlds and met thousands of people, and in the grand scheme of things he hadn’t even seen thousandth of a percent of what it had to offer him. That was his second greatest regret. His first was he had missed every single one of his daughters first five birthdays. And for that reason, this job, a bodyguard job, was going to be his last one. He had accumulated wealth enough for twenty kings but it no longer mattered to him. He now had a legacy, a blood legacy. A blood legacy who he was going to travel the galaxy with. He would see its boundless edges with his wife and his daughter. They would see the rocky castles of the Doan mining colony, the floating cities Ithor and the infinite forest below it and the castles of Aldearan.
Vaylin shook his head clear, knowing full well that even being the slightest bit distracted before even what should be a simple job like the one that lay ahead of him could spell disaster in the long run. He rid his mind of the future and the fantasy and delved back in to the here and now. His chair swiveled in its mounted position as he turned and stood walking to the other side of the cockpit and scooping up a data pad lying on a control console before making his way back to the store room to take his third run on taking stock of his items. He scrolled down the list checking items off one by one, first the Customary: Blasters, armor, whipchord, medipacks. Then the mission specific: Cleated boots, ice picks, flame thrower fuel. Lastly the Just-In-Case items: Four sticks of detonate, Thermic detonator, and his favorite, a hand sized seismic charge. The device was usually used in constructing or excavation the little stick which fit in his palm had the power to collapse a cave, or a sky scraper.
He unpacked his armor taking note of all it had been through with him, the entire suite had been laced with a combination of both thermal and radiation protection cloth to protect him from some of the most dangerous elements the galaxy had to offer. After donning the armor he moved on to the weapons case. The case divided in to two different shelves when opened from the top, providing a layer of trays worth of weapons on either side when fully extended. The large weapons case housed ten pistol sized weapons, three blaster rifles, fifteen utility pieces, two heavy blasters, and one rocket/grenade launcher. He then opened the two other identical cases on the initial cases flanks to it to display his entire arsenal. He decided he would travel relatively light this trip as the terrain would already slow him down and there was no direct need to kill anything, or defend from it. Despite the fact there was never not a threat to be found when he was assigned to a job.
He drew his plasma knife and holstered that in his outer thigh holster, the vibro knife went in to the identical holster adjacent to the first. He then drew his pair of twin Karsta blaster pistols and their accompanying strap on belt holster and fastened that to his armor. He took his Pimran blaster, a highly powerful and conceable blaster, though only good for two shots a maximum and placed that in the specially hollowed out area on the bottom of his boot. From the case on the left he chose a personal favorite of his, deadly against flesh and pointless against droids, his double barreled flame thrower. With the capability to shoot flame up to twenty standard feet away and burn at a temperature high enough to turn rancor bone in to dust. He placed it in his back pack and then drew one of the two rocket launchers from the first case and complimented it with a pair of Nukecorp Blastisimo Nuclear War heads. He had never had a need to use one; he also had never found the need to level a mountain, yet. He began to close the cases but quickly reopened them as he looked down at his data pad. He had forgotten his favorite weapon. Both a deadly accurate and near impossible weapon to defend from Vaylin grabbed the longest whipchord that he owed and strapped it on to the specially designed cuff on his wrist. The chord which was made of bungisteel had the ability to shoot from his wrist over thirty feet and create a noose around its target. From there a selection of buttons on the side of the whipchord’s housing allowed him to do any number of things, including constricting the life from the opponent, disemboweling them with the chords razor sharp exterior and even dragging them back towards him to finish them off any way he choose. The best part was it was the ideal weapon for taking live targets. I could completely incapacitate any living beast or being he had encountered thus far and there was no danger of accidently hitter an artery and losing your bounty on a live-only missions. After getting fully loaded-out Vaylin took a final look at the mission briefing on his data pad. He selected the document sent to him by Troy and opened it.
Mission Code Name: Crystal Blizzard
Primary Objective: Successfully uncover and retrieve ‘Lavma’ Crystal from planet Ilum, sector Ilum sector and transport to starship Troy’s Tirade.
Arrive at Cates City-Agamar
Mission Details:
Arrive in orbit above Ilum 0700 hours
Land at designated zone 0830
Arrive in mining zone 1200
Load crystal to transport ship 1600
Load crystal to Troy’s Tirade 1750
Depart Ilum system 1850

Suggest Materials:
Thermal Suite – Planet approximate temperature -187 degrees
Radiation Suite – Lavma Crystal may radiate unidentified radiation
Personal Defense Weapon – Planet may have unidentified hostile beasts

Special Notes: Lavma Crystal must arrive 100% intact for any amount of payment to be awarded
Vaylin decided that against Troys wishes he would not be riding about the Tirade and instead taking his own ship. He never trusted many people and at the top of his list were inexperienced pilots, it doesn’t matter if you’re the best pilot in the galaxy, if a green horn is at the helm your as at much risk as he is. That and he much preferred the comfort of his is own ship, the Interstellar Cartographer. It made him feel safer even despite the fact the ship could have been considered outdated a decade ago. He had to come in to possession of the beautiful Trilacube Star ship when a contract for a shipment of bothan spice that he delivered was not paid for in full by a greedy Hutt. So in exchange for credit Vayling took the Hutts prized ships, along with the last third of the Hutts tail.
The Cartographer was a beautiful ship who’s color scheme was matched by his armor, crimson and white and also had had an incredibly unique design. The ship was designed from a series of four cubes. There was a central, smaller cube which housed the cockpit and sleeping quarters and on either flank of the cockpit were two large cubes, connected by a closed ramp like the ones that connect skyscrapers on Coruscant above ground. A third cube connected in the identical fashion protruded from the bottom of the ship. The uniqueness of the ship came from that the back of all three of the cubes were fully functioning thrusters, designed to with maximum surface area in mind and to achieve maximum thrust the ship was incredibly fast but not quite as versatile. In addition, only the bottom cube was completely filled up by mechanics, the engine, and hyperdrive. Leaving the left and right flank cubes empty and available for storage. Because in Vaylin’s line of work he never knew who, or what he may need to transport. Regardless he had taken the left cube for his own storing his armor, weapons, and even a light walker in there to use as needed.
Breaking his own rules yet again Vaylin allowed himself to gaze out the transparisteel window in to the vastness of space, completely and utterly absorbed in its infinite beauty, for just a few seconds. After taking a deep breath and exhaling slowly he returned to the cockpit and punched in the coordinates for the Ilum system and engaged the hyperdrive. The ship listed slowly forwards and the stars which surrounded him began to blur through the viewport. Vaylin reached his hand down to grasp the lever to reach light speed and slowly pulled back and continued to watch as the stars quickly became white hot lines, and then became nothing more than a blur.
Having it been almost a full standard day since Vaylin had initiated the hyperspace jump he reached down to push the hyperdrive lever back in to the idle position and slowly reverted to real space. Up ahead was a foggy white world which encompassed much of his viewport and seemed to emanate cold, even though the emptiness of space, even from six hundred kilometers away.
As he always did Vaylin had arrive the destination more than a few hours early to take careful not of his surroundings and become acclimated to the area. He took note that the planet had two moons which in his line of work meant they could be used as a viable hiding place is damage was caused to an engine, or assist in a jump to hyperspace by sling-shotting around it provided it had enough gravity. The world revolved around just one sun, so far away that it almost appeared to be just another star in the expanses of the universe.
He also used his time to make a once around orbit of the planet and take note on its topography, and any other notable features. It appeared almost the entire planet was made of ice and was home to some extreme sized mountains.
After completing his orbit and with less than an hour left until Troy’s Tirade was scheduled to arrive Vaylin went through the mental checklist again, being aware of every piece of armor and weaponry on him. Starting bottom up he looked at his combat boots, equipped with razor sharp cleats for this mission and also housing the regular magnetic plates and thrusters stabilizers in the sole of the boots they were a vital, yet often over looked part of his armor. Six thousand Credits. His shin guards, specially fitted around his ankles to provide maximum coverage from low strikes but not sacrifice any mobility. Eight Thousand Credits. Knee guards and plate legs, with more storage compartments and holsters on them than he could ever fill in one mission. Fifteen thousand credits. His crimson chest plate which featured straps on the outside reaching across his chest and back to holster his jet pack and any miscellaneous objects. Twenty thousand credits. Jet pack, with the ability to provide over eight hundred kilograms of thrust sustained for four minutes it was perfect for getting him, and his bounty out of any situation. Thirty-Five thousand credits. His pair of gauntlets , the left equipped with a special Cortosis Weave giving it the ability to block any energy blast and render vibro weapons useless. And the right housing his infamous whipchord. Forty thousand credits. Lastly, the most well-known of its kind in the galaxy, with the ability to strike fear and unrest in to any passerby who gazed in to its red eyes. He removed his helmet and stuck it out at arm’s length and gaze in to the now empty sockets. All the years, all the bounties, all the lives he and it had taken together. Fifty-Three thousand credits. Bringing the entire attire to just under than one hundred and eighty thousand credits. Worth about thirty thousand more than his ship was at current market price.
He turned around and placed the skull helmet on the control panel and had just enough time to sit down in the pilots chair before Troy’s Tirade dropped out of hyperspace mere kilometers in front of his own ship. It was a fairly large star cruiser and likely required somewhere around three hundred crew members to fully operate and dwarfed the Interstellar Cartographer in size comparison by so much he could probably fit two or three of them just in the Tirade’s ship bay. In an effort to get it started and get it over with Vaylin sent a comm message Troy’s Tirade as opposed for waiting for them to contact him.
“This is Interstellar Cartographer contacting star cruiser Troy’s Tirade in regards to mission Crystal Blizzar. Mission Password: Rancor Recovery.”
The speaker continued spewing out static for the next few minutes before a green bulb lit up on the comm channel indicating he was being hailed with a return message.
“Read you loud and clear Interstellar Cartographer, password accepted. Please allow us fifteen minutes to launch our planet side lander and we will be ready to begin the mission.”
“Ready and waiting.” Vaylin decided it was a good idea to give his engines a slow and gentle warm up, which always caused less strain on a ship then blasting off a second after powering up. The wait quickly passes as Vaylin double and triple checked the thermal shields making sure they were operating at one hundred percent efficiency to protect him from the hypothermia inducing cold and to ensure that the engine and life support systems would not freeze solid when landing on the frozen planet. He looked up from his console and saw a hatch open from the bottom of the Tirade and a trapezoidal shaped ship dropped out from the docking bay. The ship drifted a few hundred yards from its mother ship and the engines flared to life. Vaylin’s comm board lit up and was followed by the same voice as before “Cargo ship Zoid’s Trap ready to initiate atmosphere entrance procedure. Please follow our lead.”
“Let’s get on with it.”
Vaylin hit his ships thrusters and began flying through space, closer and closer until the white planet filled his entire viewport. He would soon be able to cross one more planet off his list.

Ch X
Darth Illence sat in her quarters on the fiery red and black planet of Mustafar, sitting on her bunk in an extremely fatigued state. Ever muscle in her body was on fire and ached past the point of physical exhaustion and every fiber of her being urged her body to shut down and repair itself. But she was now apprentice to the dark lord of the Sith and rest was for the weak. She had to push her body past its breaking point, and then past that point to continue functioning for she knew through pain you gained power, and through power you gained strength. She had to keep on pushing her body to make herself stronger, she need to become more physically adept, tone her muscles and increase her stamina. She had to practice her force technique so she could fulfill her master’s wishes and learn everything he had to teach her. She could already fill the new found force energy flowing through her veins and permeating every cell in her body, but unlike her repeated failure as an adept, failure was now no longer an option. Regrettably she had no time to train and uncover the new power she had just come in to possession of, she needed to complete her masters missions.
She pondered on both the tasks that she had been assigned and despite the urgency of both jobs she knew that the Lavma Crystal would needed to be secured first. She could finish off the other two adepts later. Aside from Darth Volkanas the two of them were the only other two people in the galaxy who possessed the same unique set of powers she and her master shared, and she did not like that idea. They posed a threat to her and she would leave to kill them as soon as she returned the crystal to her master. She hefted her fatigued body from her bunk and slipped on a pair of cloths, much less burned then the previous pair. Most Twi’lek females word tight fitting and revealing clothing in an attempt to attain power over others, Darth Illence emanated power and had no need for such a petty tactic. She then also realized she would no longer be able to wear the customary Twi’lek head wraps as the would burn off of her knew Sith scared lekku, but this did not matter to her. She was no longer a Twi’lek, it no longer mattered her appearance. She was now Sith.
She closed her dresser and exited the building, about to make her way to the landing platform to take a ship and begin her journey and as she walked outside, unprotected from the scorching heat, she felt slightly refreshed. She closed her eyes and allowed the hot wind to blow on her for a moment, giving her a cool and relaxed feeling. When she opened her eyes again she was staring about twenty feet out at the lake of lava, it called to her. She began shuffling her feet through the rough pumice and obsidian ground ever closer towards the lake. The closer she got the better she felt, as with each passing step a new patch of bacta was being placed on her wounds. She continued towards the lake until her toes hung over the edge of the bank and were over open molten hot lava. She was aware of the blistering heat snapping at her face, as if she had just been coated in the lava below her, and she loved it. She wanted more. With a sudden burst of rejuvenation Darth Illence used the Force to call over a large stone floating down the middle of the lake to the shore where she stood and stepped out on it. The rock flowed with the running lava and continued in its natural path of travel, Darth Illence atop it. She began to feel blood rushing all throughout her body, her bones ceased to ache and her muscles felt strong and prime. Her eyes turned a deep yellow and veins begin popping out on the whites of her eyes and the Sith scars which now traced throughout her body began to illuminate as the lava did at night. She raised he hands towards the sky with her fingers open, fully extended and her palms up. The lava which flowed around her began to swirl as if it were forming a whirl pool beneath her but instead of sinking it began to rise. A sphere of lava came to life, reaching for the sky, and encompassing her on all sides. She felt her power growing, being unleashed by the dark force energy that the planet held. The sphere grew, and closed above her head, completely encapsulating her in a globe of lava. She clenched her fists and let out a powerful scream accompanied by an incredible surge of force energy, repulsing the lava in all dairections and coating the surrounding landscape with the molten substance. Darth Illence looked towards the sky again, she had harnessed more Force energy in the past sixty seconds than she had throughout her entire life combined.
The Force rushed through her body filling ever vein, capillary, and cell with energy, like a flash flood filling a barren canal. She let her arms down and found she was breathing with extreme intensity and felt that she could complete the Kessel Run on foot. She turned towards the shore and used the force to pullthe rock she was still afloat on back towards the shore, now she would begin her mission. She had no need to return to her quarters to retrieve anything other than her satchel which carried the power supplying Sith Obsidian. After placing the bag around her shoulder she departed for the ship yard.
With over sixty ships to choose from she walked up and down the isles before finally settling on a Centurial Condor, a fast sleek ship designed to be a fraction of a step below military grade, making it still lawful for citizens to own. It had top of the line deflector armor and high caliber cannons, she expected no less from a ship of Drallian design. Though what made this ship in specific appealing to Darth Illence was the modified weapon which increased the size of the ship by nearly fifty percent.
Attached to the right flank of the pancake shaped hull extended a make-shift mounting arm with an anti-material cannon at the other end. A weapon so dangerous no military manufactured it and the only way to obtain one was through having it custom built. Adding even more danger to the weapon was the fact that any structure or ship hit by its anti-material energy would be devastated. The cannon had a muzzle with a six foot diameter which shot an equal sized ball of anti-material energy, on contact the ball of energy would disintegrate any matter it came in to contact with and was known for leaving perfectly spherical chunks taken out of the sides of warships and battle cruisers alike. The only caveat of the weapon was that because of its immense power, and the fact that it used such and unstable power source as anti-matter, it had nearly a fifty percent failure rate, and when the weapon failed the ball of energy would fail at being eject form the cannon and instead explode inside its housing, de-atomizing both cannon and ship along with it. The galactic senate was currently trying to make any anti-material based weapon illegal but in any public forum as large and as diverse as the Senate it would take years before a final decision was reached and even longer to enforce the law.
She settled upon her choice and entered the craft, and set the coordinates for the Ilum system and made her departure on to the first mission of her apprenticeship.

CH X
Landed inside a sunken crater on one of the unnamed moons of Ilum was a Toros Thunder class starfighter. The ship was of standard triangular shape with two crescent shaped cannons protruding on the either side of the base of the triangle. It was one of the most heavily armored ships available on the market and had just as heavy of a price tag to match. The ship lacked in speed and offensive capabilities but with the high levels of armor it could take any beating that a star fighter could pour in to it, but if you could blast your opponent out of the air before a dog fight ensued, the latter two were not needed.
The uniqueness of the star fighter came from its boarding capabilities. The ship had a retractable third horn which extended from the center of the ship outwards, just a bit further than the other two horns. When the pilot wanted he could ram in to an opposing ship the cannon-horns doubled as a grappling device, and the inside of them opened to hold the ships together when the horns pierced the hull. Then the central horn, which ran the length of ship, would extend bringing the entire cockpit forward and drilling in to the captive ship. The cockpit controls would then buckle opening a vacuum free walk way from one ship to the other. This is why the ship was favored among pirates who planned on boarding a cargo ship and stealing said cargo.
The pilot of the ship, Rajun’, sat in the small cockpit gazing out the transparisteel viewport at the StarCraft and star cruiser that had recently entered the system after dropping out of hyperspace no more than five hundred thousand kilometers from where hit hid. The human male had been camping out on the asteroid for nearly two days, lying in wait for their imminent arrival. The human would no longer be referred to as Koldy Colden but instead his proper Sith name: Darth Primus. Darth Primus felt the force flow though him as he was now Darht Volkanas’s one and only apprentice. Having gone through the ritual nearly a week ago he was now a Sith apprentice and was executing the first of his masters orders, to retrieve the Lavma Crystal from the planet Ilum. He had decided he would have to wait to slaughter the other two adepts, the filthy female Twi’lek and Zabrak. Why a master such as wise as Volkanas would choose to take two non-human adepts was beyond him, but for now he had to concentrate on the matter at hand.
Within just a few hours, as per his information the ships which just arrived in system would land on plant and retrieve the crystal, then return to space and load it back on to the mother ship. At which point he would use his ships specialized boarding capabilities to retrieve it from inside the ship, and then make his way back to Mustafar. He reached in to the pocket of his long black robe and removed a handful of Sith Obsidian. He closed his hand around the black dust and let it absorb in to his hand, providing him the vital Force energy he would need in the hours to come. He removed the sleevelss robe, fully exposing his muscular chest and toned arms, of which were covered in the same Sith scars that now encompassed his master’s entire body. He closed his eyes and entered a Sith hibernation trance, and when he awoke he would be ready to take what rightfully belonged to his master, though any means necessary. Then, they would change the course of history.

The blackness of space was cold. An anomaly not often felt except when by planets with extreme temperatures and only a select few places in the galaxy. It was truly beautiful. A planet of ice, mountains, valleys, pure innocent and beautiful white snow and clean permafrost with a delicate layer of white fog drifting calmly across the planets barren planes. When this mission was done this would be the first place he would bring his daughter. The innocence and beauty of the planet was only slightly less than that of Gloria Taxton. Vaylin shook his head clear, this time verbally chastising himself for allowing his mind to wander, especially considering he was now in the mission, this was becoming dangerous. He dragged his eyes away from the clean white and instead gazed in to the yellow glow of the Zoids Trap which he was following at a distance likely considered insane by any lesser pilot.
The Trap dropped to a mere two hundred meters above the ground and took a sharp left turn around a mountainous ice shelf, disappearing for a mere second before the Interstellar Cartographer matched the maneuver, except closer to the shelf and at greater speeds. As soon as they rounded the corner Vaylin saw the Traps engines shut off and begin the landing sequence and Vaylin followed suite. The ships set down directly in front of the mouth of an enormous cave which Vaylin estimated to be at least one hundred meters high by fifty meters wide. From the top of the cave hung stalactites made of ice, giving the appearance of the cave being a gargantuan mouth with razor sharp glass teeth.
He began landing his own ship on the flattest patch of snow he could find but when the feet of the ship extended and he came in contact with the ground the snow crunched and compressed beneath the weight of the Cartographer and it sank a few feet in to the snow. He silently hoped he would have no need to leave in a hurry, because digging out a ship buried in snow was no easy task and it would take even longer to warm up the triple engines which would likely be frozen solid by the time the mission was completed. Inside the ship Vaylin powered all systems down, making the choice that it would cost more fuel to keep the thermal shields running than it would be worth. He stood up from his pilots chair and grabbed his helmet from the adjacent console, donning it in an effort to keep his face from suffering frostbite as soon as he opened the exit hatch.
He strode to the stern of the ship and descended down the stairs in to the bottom cube where the exit ramp was. A large beige switch was located on the wall and Vaylin pulled it, opening the hatch and letting in a furious cold, the likes of which he had never felt. The descending ramp only completed its opening sequence partially leaving the door a mere thirty degrees open before it stalled at the patch of ice which kept it closed. Vaylin let out a heavy sigh and made his way towards the ramp, thrusting his body again and again against it, pushing the ice which blocked it back inch by inch until there was enough clearance for him to slip though. As soon as he stepped outside he did just as the ship had and sunk a few inches in to the fresh snow leaving him ankle deep in rough terrain. He then turned and repeated his thrusting against the ramp in an effort to close it but the opening had already begun filling the ship with snow. Vaylin delivered one last heavy thrust and the door thumped closed.
After getting the ship door closed Vaylin turned to see that the crew of the Zoids Trap had already begun unloading excavation equipment and appeared fairly excited for a crew of manual laborers. There was already a variety of multi colored and sized boxes laid on the ground in front of the transports cargo bay, some being loaded on to repulsor sleds and even more being unloaded from the ship. Of all the thirty or so people which were scurrying in and out of the ship most wore shockingly similar attire. A white thinsulate suite with what appeared to be bantha hair for a collar and around the wrists. One of the suites which were different seemed to the body in charge, and the only difference was his apparel was of an inverted color scheme than the others. He wore a brown suite and had it embroidered with a soft looking white fur, in all possibility it was an extremely rare pelt of an albino Bantha with the lining of the suite embroidered in a bright yellow. It was said the genetic mutation that caused lack of pigmentation was so rare in a bantha that it only occurred ever once every few hundred thousand births. The chance of an albino bantha growing to even full size was even rarer, for in their native climate of extremely hot weather the white hair was inadequate to keep the suns harmful rays off their skin.
The man in the brown outfit was directing where to place boxes and crates that continued coming from them ship, pointing and yelling for this to go here and that to go there. After a trio of men all carrying one large box emerged from the ship and were followed a few seconds later by a solitary figure, dressed exactly as the others made his way down the offloading ramp when he stepped on a freshly fallen patch of snow and lost his footing as the snow shifted beneath him. The small box he was carrying glided through the air, avoided all the soft snow on the ground and smashed on the last three feet of the durasteel ramp with a delicate sounding shatter. The man in the brown coat leapt from his vantage point on the box he was standing on and rushed over to where the other man had just fallen. Completely ignoring him he reached for the box and opened it revealing a shattered pile of glass laying at the bottom of synthafoam packing material.
“You son of a motherless ronto! You broke the radiqueller!” A device which was engineered to absorb over forty different types of radiation to provide the most safety possible for those involved in whatever irradiated area was being worked on.
“Now we’re all in danger of being killed by whatever radiation that crystal may give off!” The brown coated man drew a single load single shot Ever blast tech Blaster -Eviscerator. A weapon with only one shot but with enough power, especially at close range, to blow a hole in the side of a rancor, and leveled it directly at the man still on the ground writing in pain from the bad fall he had taken when he slipped. Vaylin saw the brown coated man and instantly his decade toned instinct kicked in. He activated the thruster in his jet pack and a white hot flame shot from the back from the two nozzles on either side, both making a puddle from melted snow from where he once stood and vaulting him towards the two men at a faster speed then any man could run. At the same time he held pointed his wrist launcher at the man with the blaster and out shot a bungisteel chord which proceed to wrap itself around the man’s hand and causing him to drop the blaster. By that time Vaylin had reached the man and leaped on him, tackling him to the ground. At this point the man’s cryo goggles had flown off exposing his face to the cold and he screamed at Vaylin.
“What are you doing? You’re supposed to be a bodyguard and nothing else!”
“You’re right. I’m guarding this man’s life.” He said in the staticy tone through his face mask and pointing at the man still lying on the ground.
“I’m the body guard. And when I’m the body guard there are no casualties. Understand? I doubt Troy would very much appreciate his men turning on one another over a broken piece of glass.”
“That wasn’t just a piece of glass! Without it we are all at serious risk of radiation poisoning from this crystal we are going to uncover!”
“Doesn’t matter. While I’m here, he lives. Got it?” The man being startled beneath Vaylin and his heavy suite of armor turned his face sour and grumbled in agreement.
“Good”. Vaylin stood up removing himself from who he assumed to be the Capitan and walked to the outer fringes of where the men were unloading the equipment. Progress had halted as every man stopped what they were doing to observe the conflict which had just occurred. It only took a few seconds before the abusive Capitan retrieved his now cracked cryo goggles and yelled at the men to continue with their work.
Vaylin watched them unload for another ten minutes before the Capitan ordered them to begin the long trek in to the cave and let each and every man pass before he brought up the rear of the thirty man company. Right before entering the mouth of the cave Vaylin check his heads up display and it was registering the outside temperature at negative one hundred degrees outside and despite the lightness of the snowfall around them it was think enough to cut visibility to a mere ten meters. But as the company advanced in to the cave of rock and ice the snow no longer blew deep enough to reach them and visibility returned for a few moments until the light from outside no longer reached their depths.
Without taking orders each man removed a florescent white yellow glow stick from their pocket and cracked it, basking the room in a somewhat limited, but natural light. The cave had narrowed to a height of only thirty meters and a width of twenty and the men had to travel closer together with their cargo, quickly turning the open space in to a cramped mess as it limited the clearance for all hover sleds and crates being pushed pulled or carried across the slick ice that now completely made up the caves floor. The walls were also mostly ice, which combined with the rock it was formed around. The walls were relatively smooth for a cave but Vaylin deduced that the wind from the outside still had the capability enough to reach in and wind through the cave, eroding the walls to such a smooth pattern. The cave expanded nearly a hundred meters from the entrance before it made its first turn. Vaylin took careful not of each twist and turn from there on out, making sure he always knew the quickest and most effective way to leave in case of an emergency. After roughly a thirty minute trek in to the cave the arrived at an unusual fork in the underground caver. In the north east direction was more of a straight path which felt the same as the rest of the cave, now jagged and rough made of ice and rock. But to the left was an almost hard ninety degree turn which looked very unnatural. The cave instantly narrowed to almost a perfect diameter of ten by ten meters and was oddly evenly cylindrical in shape with no jutting rocks or hanging pieces of ice.
The same Capitan who Vaylin had tackled made his way to the front of the pact and gazed down each tunnel for a moment before yelling “Surge!”
A short stocky man made his way through the thirty men in front of him and addressed the Capitan, but with holding any military salute or acknowledgement.
“Which way?”
The man- apparently Surge- reached to the large backpack behind him which had the words “DANGER RADIATION” painted on to it in black and safety yellow and un-holstered a gun from the packs side and held it out pointing down the right tunnel. The gun had a flat face and a screen on the back angled up towards the user so it could he or she could read whatever readings the gun was taking. A wire traced from the grip of the gun to the bottom of the back pack, connecting the two by a hard wired connection, an electronic connection slowly being phased out in every part of the galaxy.
Surge read the results via the screen on the gun and a node protruding above head height on the top of his backpack lit up a bright green color. He then repeated the process, pulling the trigger down the left hand tunnel, but instead this time the node atop the back pack lit up a bring red.
“The air contains 4.275% radiation. This is the way” The snobby Capitan felt he needed to get in the last word and yelled “You heard the man, this way.” Before the company began picking up and continuing down the oddly shaped cave. Vaylin watched as each man advanced down the corridor but again stayed behind and watched them disappear one by one as the cave turned to a gentle sloping right.
When the last man was out of eye sight he hit a small circular button on his wrist and the visor inside his helmet lit up a cool green and the words “Bioscan” began flashing across the top of the heads up display. He slowly moved the visor around the room giving it a chance to register anything that seemed out of place at the frozen for in the cave. His line of sight passed where the men were about fifty meters deeper in to the cave and the visor still managed to register them as a dull red, highly visible on the caves cool green. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary but over the years he had learned any time of sweep, be it for assassins, spies, or killing devices was utterly pointless if it was not thorough and finished. He pivoted to look back towards the way he the company had just come and the visor blinked as it had when it picked up the bio readings of the men. There was a trio of dim red pin sized spots on the floor. He meandered over to the specks and knelt down in front of them before clicking off the biological tracker on his visor. The three dots in normal light were the same shade of red that they were on the scanner. He switched the bio scanner back on, to ensure it was working properly. The visor should only pick up a mass of biological material which had living cells in it. Meaning, despite being frozen solid, it was blood, and there was still living tissue inside it. It was highly unlikely that it belonged to any of the men who had just passed through the cave, for even if one of them were to get cut and bleed, and the blood managed to drip out of the heavy multiple layers of thermal wear each men wore, it was even more unlikely that any of the men were a species whose blood cells could survive unprotected on below freezing ground for nearly five minutes.
All the evidence pointed towards the probable fact that they were not alone in the cave.. Vaylin rose and broke in to a bisque pace to catch up to the company which had now made their way a decent way down in to the cave. By the time he traced around the third curve he came to the entire group stalled at an opening in the awkward cave, each one of their heads cocked up looking out in to a brightly, naturally lit opening.
Vaylin pushed his way through the men to get at the front of the clogged formation to see what they were all staring at. By the time he reached the front he was as awestruck as they were at what lay ahead of him. Ahead of the group was a fantastic cavern who’s ceiling had holes in it and let through what could have been nothing other than rays of sunlight shining in to the room. Each ray that entered the cavern was bounced off one of the many hundreds of blue patches of crystals that lined the room’s walls and floor. The sizes of the patches ranged from little more than four by four inches in some of the more shadowy areas of the room, all the way to the enormous outcrop in the center of the room who’s central crystals were shoulder height and must have been four feet around. Each crop of crystals had the same basic design of three or four central stalks growing out and a circle of smaller ones surrounding them. The blue crystals were shaped identically form one to the other, each with 6 proportional sides that all ended at the tip with a sharp point. The constant blue color in the room was more vibrant than the sapphires found on Doan in the Galactic Mining Museum. The same man as before who searched for the radiation, Surge, stepped forward, once again shoving his way through the ranks of his peers and stopping mere inches from Vaylin at the front of the heard, but not completely in the open room.
He removed the same gun as before from his back pack but this time kneelt down to be right at eye level with one of the patches of blue crystal jutting out of the wall. He pointed the gun at the patch and Vaylin heard the click of hi Surge pulling the switch but the node at the top of his back pack stayed dark. Even despite Surge having full facial protection Vaylin could see the confusion just based upon the man’s awkward body movements and the way he cocked his head when the screen registered 0.000% radiation.
It made no sense to Vaylin either. Every element known to man contained at least some traces of radiation, no matter how big or small. Without being ordered Surge stood up and advanced in to the middle of the open room, directly towards the shoulder height crystal in the sunlight. He repeated the process yet again the screen came up with 0.000% radiation. Surge looked down at the gun, inspecting it to make sure it was working properly. He hit a few buttons then smacked the side of the gun against his palm, as if that would fix the machine but the results remained the same. He turned to walk back towards the part and continued straight through the men until he reached the tunnel they had just came from. Vaylin could no longer see the man but saw the node atop his back pack, and watched it light up a soft orange after a click came from the gun.
“8.053% radiation…” surge said. Nervous mumbling began to spread through the ranks of Troy’s men. Vaylin thought fast, and never one to pass up an opportunity he reached his arm out and wrapped his hand around a crystal that jutted about eight inches from the wall, he jerked his hand down ward the crystal snapped silently. He slipped it nonchalantly in to his blaster holster, and would move it to a more secure location when there weren’t thirty men about to turn around and look at him. He did not know what he had just taken, but he knew there was something special about it.
Again, on his own will Surge made his way back through the crowd to where Vaylin was and walked back to the open sunlit area. Vaylin placed his hand on his blaster, ready for whatever might happen in such a foreign place. Surge did not stop at the large crystal and instead walked the twelve meters through the open area to where the cave narrowed again in the familiar odd cylindrical pattern. He again shot the gun down the hole and Vaylin watched the node on the back pack light up again, now a bright orange.
“12.216% radiation. The crystal has got to be down this way sir.”
“Very well.” With the slightest bit of hesitation the Capitan ordered the men through the open area and down the cave. Even as they continued down the familiar rout it still spooked Vaylin as to how symmetrical the cave was, unnatural. Despite the queerness of his surroundings he could think of no reason at to why he should call off the mission and or for any special action.
As they continued the journey down the cave was uneventful and cold, the walls were bland to look at and there were no life forms, plants, animals, or bacteria of any kind. The only sounds were the echoing of clicks coming from the men’s cleats on the ice and rock, along with the high pithed whine of the repulsor sleads.
Most bodyguards would take the silence as a good omen, no wild beasts or outsiders meant logically that there would be no random attacks to endanger the lives of those they protected, but to Vaylin it was a foreshadow of disaster. Between the utter voideness of other life forms and the eeriness of the radiation free crystals something was not right. The last mission he had which called for total silence wound up with him ending waist deep in Mershian Quick Muck. None the less the equipment, the men, and Vaylin continued down the cold, dark cave.

***
From behind the men gazed sixteen miniscule eyes, all staring at the newly discovered bipedal species through four feet of solid ice. The five foot long insect used its four needle like legs to back up out of the hold it had dug in the ice and its long slender body slid beautifully through the new hole like a an aerobatic Westafish sailing through air. The insect’s four protruding fangs began clicking together like a human who’s was freezing to deaths teeth would have done but then its large powerful legs lunged forward until its head smashed in to the ice and the teeth began gnawing through the ice turning the solid wall in to shavings creating a new path for it to maneuver through. As a scout its duty was to the queen, and to alert her, and then she would alert all others. And together they would dine.

CH X
The stars that filled the vastness of space reverted from their elongated eternally stretching state back to their normal minute points of light on a black canvas as Darth Illence dropped out of hyperspace. Just then the censors on her control board light up, alerting her to the fact that there was a Star Cruiser sized vessel on the other side of the moon, which turned out to become serendipitous cover, hiding her from ship on the other side.
For a brief moment she felt as if there was some one searching for her through the Force but the sensation went dead as quickly as it had come to life.
Darth Illence shook her head writing it off trying to clear her head and concentrate on the matter at hand.
The presence of a ship on such a remote planet could not just be written off as a coincidence. Somehow, someone else was wise to the fact that a crystal with such power was on the planet. The type of ship that was registered on the radar would have been to large to be used on any time of exploratory or humanitarian mission, and the planet was supposed to have 0% population, other than a few beasts, meaning there would be no body leaving from or returning home. This meant they had to be there for the crystal and she had showed up to the party late which meant that she was late and the crystal was either still on the planet, on its way to the atmosphere, or in the ship and mere moments from departing the system.
She did not sense any colossal Force energy as Darth Volkanas had claimed to sense from across the galaxy but reluctantly she realized that if she even held a fraction of the power that he did she should have been able to sense it too. All the more reason she needed to complete this quest and continue thriving under his apprenticeship. At this point she realized she had a difficult decision to make, she either had to attack the ship under the assumption that the crystal was already on the cruiser and she only had mere moments before it would jump to hyperspace and she would have to track it down, or lay in wait and hope that the crystal was still on the planet or in transit for the atmosphere and abush the transport ship when it arrived.
The cockpit got hot and sweaty as she strained to figure out what would be the correct course of action, and she used up precious seconds pondering each action. She clenched her eyes closed and heard a voice in her head, then opened her eyes again. The Force had told her to kill. Sith thrived off the pain of lesser beings but she shook her head clear of the clouded visions she had. Despite having the Force and the anti-material cannon, she would not have enough power to take on an entire Star Cruiser by herself. Even if she did use the cannon she would risk the chance of de-atomizing the crystal if it was on the ship. This time she sided with her mind over he lust and begun accelerating towards the dark side of the moon to sit and wait for the crystal to come to her. Her ship landed and she waited, biding her time, waiting for the correct moment to strike. She let the power of the Dark Side consumer her, her eyes burned yellow and her stomach grew hungry for combat.

On the second moon of Ilum sat Darth Primus in his cockpit as he watched the Tory’s Tirade hang in the empty blackness of the vacuum of space, awaiting the arrival of the transport ship from down on the planet which would deliver his prize, which he would then take and the depart the system. Although it seemed quite an oddity that the ship appeared empty. It was certainly a rare occurrence for such a nice ship to be left completely unmanned, and even rarer for to have no defensive traps laid aboard, then again Darth Primus was unsure of either of those to be true. A common trap often used by pirates who left their ship to stage a raid was to set up an EMP flare if any other ship got close enough to it which would deactivate every system on a ship for as much as six standard hours. Another favorite trap was for the ship to be put on autopilot and send it self to a predetermined location which it would reach through hyperspace travel, this of course left the planet side pilot abandoned but keep the ship and any remaining crew, or cargo in a safe location which could be retrieved at a later date.
But Darth Primus was very sensitive to other life forms through the force and could sense that there were hundreds of living beings aboard the star cruiser, it was clearly only playing dead. A pathetic ruse Primus thought, for so many to show such cowardness in an area they should have felt safe.
While still examining the ‘dead’ ship Darth Primus felt an intense explosion of Force alertness go off between his shoulder blades. He looked around quickly in the black of space for what may have caused such a disturbance in the Force but his organic eyes betrayed him. He could not see anything with just his vision, and when he attempted to reach out again to sense whatever may have occurred he felt nothing. He reverted to checking the sensors on the starship but they too failed to pick up any foreign object or anomaly that may have caused such an intense feeling.
Less than a moment later the pain spurred back to life, making him feeling like a star had just gone supernova on his left shoulder and he looked out the port side canopy of the ship only again to see black. Still the control panel gave no indication of picking up any ship or physical item, but he could feel whatever it was through the force. Not only could he sense another life form with in close proximity, but unlike the men and women on the star cruiser in front of him this form was not only a one who was adept in the ways for the Force, but a life force he had felt before. One who he had touched before. Shifting in his cramped cockpit Primus craned his neck to view where the Force told him this occurrence was and he again, scanned the stillness of the surface of the moon but no avail. He realized, it was one of Darth Volkanas’s adepts, but she was different. Darth Primus could not decipher which of the two females it was but through the ripples in the force she now radiated power where there had been none before. Then it struck him like a Rancor claw through the chest, he felt a power in the Force he had not felt before, he felt the same power of his Master, and the same power as himself. It was the power of Mount Deska that burned so brightly inside the other adept. Each of the three adepts adept knew that the other had gone through the ritual with the Chu-Gon Dar cube an initial time in order to gain their preliminary powers and enter their adeptness to their master. But he had done the ritual twice; he earned the right to be Volkanas’s apprentice. Apparent Volkanas thought that one apprentice was not enough.
“That traitor…” Darth Primus said to himself with a hate filled breath. Everything fit together now, Volkanas had named both him and one of the other adepts his appretices’s, in all likely hood all three of them, and then planned to pit them against one another and the strongest would survive, and become his true apprentice. Volkanas did not have the power to see which one of the three of them were the most promising. But there should be two, no more, no less. One to embody he power and one to crave it.
Darth Volkanas had broken the precedent, the rule of two set in place by Darth Bane and had broken the tradition of the Sith. He no longer deserved to be a Sith lord. Darth Primus closed his eyes and concentrated, he created a a mental shield around him to block the other apprentice from sensing him as quickly as he had sensed her.
First he would kill this imposter apprentice, then Darth Volkanas and take the power of the Lavma crystal for himself.

Nearly eight hours later, more than twice the time it should have taken for the company to reach the projection location of the crystal the thirty men continued their trek through the cave of rock and ice when a large bulky man spoke up from the middle of the pack.
“We have reached the correct depth that the sensors identified, the crystal should be nearby.”
An additional voice chimed in from the back of the group, this time Surge spoke up declaring that the radiation levels were now at 24.285% and reminding each man to keep their faces and other extremities complete covered for maximum protection.
The group continued winding and twisting through the tunnel with Vaylin still heading up the back keeping the ever vigilant eye over men like a mother hawkbat protecting her nest. Another thing he made sure to keep track of was the heads up display of his helmet and taking careful note of the statistics it provided to him as they flashed one by one across the top right corner of the screen. The statistics continued flashing as they had been for the last hour and Vaylin continued to watch

*Depth -109 Meters
*Coordinates: 25 degrees North x 13 Minutes west
*Surrounding Material: 84% Ice, 16% Glacial Granite
*Atmosphere: 2% Tibanna gas, 14% Oxygen, 39% Unidentified, 45% Nitrogen
*Temperature: -194 degrees

The statistics box continued to flip between the various measurements with each on alternating by a few of their respective until it came back to temperature and read

*Temperature: -180 degrees

A fourteen degree jump was quite jump considering they had only traveled a few meters since the last reading had appeared on his screen. In about another thirty seconds the readings cycled again and temperature once again showed, but this time reading as -159 degrees. Even at this depth they should be nowhere near close enough to the core of the planet for the temperature to be varying this rapidly and drastically.
“The temperature is rising at an alarming rate. It has gone up forty degrees in the last one hundred and eighty seconds. There has to be something up ahead causing this and I have a bad feeling about it. I cave made of ice does not just instantaneously heat up under its own power.”
A man dressed as the others, except with his coat embroidered like the Capitan’s but in blue as opposed to yellow fell back to the end of the pack and began talking with Vaylin.
“Officer Quincy sir. I agreed sir, as our body guard Mr. Troy has entrusted our lives in your hands. What course of action would you propose to provide maximum safety for us”?
Great, Vaylin thought to himself. The Capitan was more stuck up than a Wookiee who just lost his home tree and the Officer was more military than a Sullustan. Just what he needed.
His mind told him that for a brief moment the Officer was being sarcastic, both a rare phenomenon and ignorant choice, but he could sense no malice in the man’s words and let it go.
“It’s going to cost us time but we need to send a scout up ahead and have him report back when he has registered that the tunnel is clear for the next few hundred feet, and repeat until we reach or destination. He should be able to tell us if the heat has created unrest or shifting of the ice, we would not want a cave in. In addition I recommend we travel from now on in single file. It would greatly decrease the chances of putting too much pressure on any area of ice or rock that might break under the stress of thirty men and their equipment. The cave is to winding for him to use his comm to notify us to advance when he has found a clear path buy if your scout encounters any trouble I want you to notify him to hit the panic button on his comm and I will retrieve him personally, other than that your men should be aware that all channels should be completely clear.
“Yes sir.”
Despite the complete facial coverings the Officer wore he could tell that he was slightly overwhelmed with how quickly and decisively he had come up with a plan. But Vaylin was used to dealing with lesser men like him.
“Finch!” The officer yelled, his beckon bringing a man with a pair of enormous, outdated mirco/macro goggles strung along his neck to the pack of the company where the other two men treaded along. The officer relayed his plan to Finch and with only the slightest bit of apprehension he accepted his task.
Over the next two hours the party went on a schedule of sitting and waiting for fifteen minutes at a time for Finch to scout ahead, determine the path was clear, then return and retrieve his part members. They would travel however much Finch had cleared in the seven minutes it took him to get ahead and when they reached the check point they would stop again, and wait for the task to be completed again.
The further forward they traveled the higher the temperature in the underground cave had gotten. For once Vaylin Taxton was utterly baffled. He kept going through the list in his head but nothing applied to this situation. It was well known that on certain planets, certain plants and animals existed which would give off heat, sometimes in extreme doses. Such as the rare Fire-krakens found only on Nal-Hutta. But that was the issue, it was not found on the ice world of Ilum. Nothing was. Then he always jumped to the next logical step thinking it was some volcanic vent which intersected the path that they were walking, but the temperature readings were to sporadic to be that. If they were, the distance he traveled should be proportional to the rise in temperature, but it wasn’t. Some time she would take two steps and the temperature would raise twenty degrees and other times he could travel for ten minutes and have a miniscule change of only two degrees. The most confusing issue was that his temperature monitor registered a change in temperature even when the party was at a standstill. No matter how he added it up in his head he came to no logical conclusion.
Despite the fact that he know when he said it, ordering the party to travel single file was an awful idea. It exponentially increased the difficulty of keeping all thirty men under his protection, especially since at some points the last third of them would disappear behind a wall when there were a series of turns in a row.
Vaylin now traveled at the front of the line so he could assist Finch, the scout if need be. They had just begun entering the third hour and seventh trip of the repeated scouting and waiting game and when it was time to wait many of the men sat on the rocky ice and put down their heavy boxes in an attempt to catch a moment’s breath and let their strained muscles relax. Vaylin kept a careful eye on the scout as he turned a sharp corner nearly thirty feet up ahead and hoped that they would come across the crystal soon. Vaylin had yet to even lay eyes upon it and already it had caused him so much trouble and unrest.
Inside Vaylin’s thoughts a sharp beeping sound began ringing, but it came from his helmet, not his imagination, it was the emergency single which Finch must have triggered. Before the third consecutive beep Vaylin had hunched over and dug his cleats in to the wall he had been posted up against, using his leg to propel himself forward gaining an extra burst of speed.
By the time Vaylin was half of the way to corner the other men had realized something was going on and three of them stood to run after Vaylin but it was too later.
A body traveling at what Vaylin’s visor registered at fifty three miles per hour shot from behind the corner and impacted the ice wall perpendicular to the corner with enough force to create multiple stress fractures in the solid block of ice, and kill Finch on impact. He continued his sprit but was shocked, even in his line of business he had seen but a few coup de graces as gory as what followed. Before the body had a chance to slump down from the wall to the floor a white and red blur shot from the corner and entered Finche’s chest, then disappeared. The men behind Vaylin continued to follow in his foot steeps while others let out horrific screams and began sprinting in the opposite direction.
Vaylin reached the corpse and found a perfectly carved two foot cylindrical hole in the corpses chest, but not a hole like he had seen before. There was a physical hole; there was no flesh, no organs, and no bone remaining in the open area. It was as if a desk jockey took a human sized flimsy puncher and just cut the torso straight out of the dead man in front of him.
By the time the three party members reached Vaylin had only a few seconds to examine the corpse when it settled naturally and slumped over, revealing an identical sized hole in the ice which matched the one in Finches chest, and the hole was lined with now frozen streaks of blood. Vaylin looked down the hole, and it got deeper and deeper until the lights from the glow rods no longer reached its depths.
After over four decades of being ambushed, assaulted and attacked Vaylin had trained his senses acutely so that he would be able to hear the slightest rustle behind him or the most tender whiff of fear that would be killers often exhumed and when Vaylin heard the hundreds of staccato tapping sounds, nearly inaudible to the human ear and even less so through the walls of his helmet, but he heard them and that gave him enough of a warning to draw his blaster and pivot to face the beast behind him, but the other three men, without as intense training as he had were nowhere near as alert or lucky.
Reared up on its back legs, and what Vaylin assumed to be the beasts head was mere inches below the three meter tall ceiling, the creature appeared to be about four and a half meters long snowy white worm. Its body was segmented as a regular worms body would appear and it appeared to just be soft tissue, landing the tough chitin like most insects and large bugs did. Along the bug’s entire body were little red, apparently randomly placed red triangular patterns, scarcely dotting the white landscape of the length of the creature, like freshly dripped blood on to clean white snow. What Vaylin could see, of what he assumed to be the bugs face, the only features were a large black bulb, most likely housing one, or more eyes at the center of the head and a few inches lower were four razor sharp looking natural blades which surrounded a feeding orifice.
The creature only appeared to have four legs, ad oddity for either an arthropod or an insect which were in the shape of an inverted ‘V’ and looked as sharp as fangs but think and powerful as well. The front two were still in the air, flailing as the bug came down on to Vaylin and the back legs held the creature up. As its massive body dropped down to his the solid looking fangs began to rotate in a circular motion around the mouth like a hole saw bit attached to a hydrospanner.
By the time its mouth had reached Vaylin he had already completely drawn his Twin Karsta blaster pistols and fired two shots in to the creatures stomach, a red cloud exploded out the other side of the worm as it fell dead to the ground, the blaster bolt burning a hole straight from one side to the other of the soft flesh of the worm.
Before Vaylin had time to re-holster his weapons he heard a blood curdling scream from back the way he had just came.
“Cowards!” He yelled, remarking at the idiocy of the men who had run away, and now he had to chase them and save their lives which they were so stupidly about to give up.

Down the corridor Jax Thompson ran with six other men. He had just seen the body of a man who he believed to have been named Finch’s body fly ten feet in to a solid wall of ice, and that was not what he signed up for. He was her to extract some crystal for communications purpose, not die. So instead of dyeing he ran. Him and the six other men who followed his lead had made it nearly two hundred feet, but they would not stop until they left the cave and they would take the transport ship and leave, without the rest of the crew or not. Jax had already decided this, he would not negotiate with the other men, he would not wait for the ones who stayed behind to catch up, he would leave. And as he finished the thoughts of abandonment for his fellow men he watched about a meter ahead of him as the ceiling exploded. It was like being in a shower of broken glass, billions of tiny shards of ice erupted from the ceiling and blew in all directions, the light from the men’s glow rods danced off each crystal shard and illuminating the room with a billion specks of light of white beautiful light.
Jax was awestruck, and stunned, not because of the miracle happening around him but because of what followed.
Where the ceiling had just erupted an enormous white worm ejected from the hole about their heads and shot straight down in to the skull of one of the men running with him. The man seemed to continue running before the worm managed to burrow through his entire body, and exit, tearing a whole in the man’s stomach before ramming head first in to the ice and disappearing as quickly as it had come. As soon as the worm disappeared in to the floor another patch of the ice on the wall exploded as it had before. This time to Jax time seemed to slow down. He saw the worm, impossibly flying out of a solid wall of ice and enter the side of another one of the men he was fleeing with. The worm was still both inside the a wall and inside the man at the same time, its body so long it acted as a trip wire, forcing the man in the back of the party to smash in to its bulbous mass and knock him over. A torrent of blood and gore erupted from the other side of the man’s chest where his ribs should have been. And like watching the elongated body of a Sewer Serpent break and re-enter a body of water the worm reentered the ice on the other side of the cavern. By the time the head of the beast was gone the tail appeared from the hole where it entered, following the rest of its body the tail whipped like a feral swamp snake and cleanly decapitated the man who was still tripping over its body, then following its current path of travel made its way through the dead man’s chest, and once again spasmed, exploding the man’s torso as if a bang flash grenade had just erupted in his core. The tail flailed once more and the entered the wall that the rest of its body had just disappeared in to.
Jax’s goggles were covered in tiny droplets of blood and through those he could not see. He reached his glove up to try and wipe the red liquid out of his eye sight but only succeeded in blurring his vision even more, it was useless, half the blood had already frozen solid and the other half smudged around on the cryo glass. In his blind run Jax tripped, though on what he did not know, a rock, a piece of jutting ice, or in all likelihood a dismembered limb, but in his fall his leg twisted awkwardly and he landed on his back and his skull smashed in to the ground. Writhing in pain Jax lifted his head and tore the goggles from his face in time to see another explosion of ice, this time from the floor. And the now all too familiar white and red worm acting as a missile ready to end his life and drill a hole in him as it had done to his colleagues. He clenched his body and prepared for death in this cold dark cave on a distant planet. But he watched the worm, coming at him like a speeding blaster bolt, and then a thin dark line entered his field of vision. It looked as if someone had cast out a fishing line in front of the worm and then as quickly as it appeared it disappeared. And as quickly as it disappeared he watched the worm separate in to two halves. As if someone had taken a laser scissors and just cut the beast down the middle. The top half of the beast flew over Jax’s head and the bottom collapsed at his feet, still partially submerged in the ice floor. When the slurry of internal organs cleared he could see a white and crimson figure with glowing red eyes hit a button on his wrist and watched a steel chord wind back up in to a holster on his wrist. He blinked a few times unsure whether or not he was dead or alive, and for a split second believing that the armored figure in front of him was an Angle, like the ones he had been told about as a child. Then he though the red eyes belonged to Lord Nyax, who would come to find and sweep up unruly Corellian children. Maybe this was the punishment for paying himself a little bit more than the other members of Troy’s Company; he was the banker after all. Didn’t he deserve a bit more?
Apparently not. He swore if he somehow made it out of this cave alive he would turn around and be a better banker. He would confess to Troy what he had been doing and return all the funds he had stolen. He blinked a few more times but the same crimson figure stood there, not beckoning to him not coming to reap his soul. He thought for just a moment he was alive and he would be able to finish his life, but those thoughts quickly changed when the armored man drew his blaster from his hip and aimed it what seems right between Jax’s eyes.
“Get down!” He heard the man yell, he did not realize his ears were ringing from the blow he had taken to then head and everything sounded muffled, but he complied. It was always a good choice to listen to the man pointing a blaster at you.
Jax threw himself forward and put his hands over the back of his neck, trying to protect him elf in whatever way possible. He heard two shots from the man’s blaster echo through the cave and saw the red flash of light that accompanied the photo florescent bolts as they traveled through the air and basked the his surroundings in a red glow. Expecting again to be dead for the second time in sixty seconds he instead felt a huge mass land on his spine. It felt as if a tree had just toppled over him and he cried in pain, but was happy to know that from what he had heard, if you were dead you did not feel pain. So that was a good sign. He continued to hear blaster bolts whizzing through the open cave and when he opened his eyes, again saw a constant stream of bring red flashes.
Jax lifted his head for a moment and tried to turn over, but whatever had fallen on him was too heavy for him to just shrug off. He slipped his glove off his hand and probed at the object pinning him down and when his fingers met it he was mystified. It was fleshy, and squishy, yet at the same time ice cold. For a moment he thought it was another one of his companions, who had died from the massacre those white worms had sprung on him but he realized that even if he had been disoriented for a few minutes it would have taken close to an hour for a human body to freeze and feel that cold, and on top of that all the men were wearing full layers of clothing, certainly one of them had not unclothed and been killed only to collapse on top of him. He managed to shuffle underneath the unidentified object so that he was facing belly up managed to get In to a crunch position so he could view what was crushing at him. When his vision cleared and he looked at the object he could not understand, he continued to hear shots from a blaster but was at a loss as to what was crushing him. It was a large cylindrical log with tiny red triangular shapes scattered across the item. He pushed his arms against it and it moved with his push but then rebounded when he let up, like pushing up against a couch cushion. He gave it another forceful shove and the item rolled off his legs and on to the cold rocky floor. Sitting up Jax realized what the object he had been crushed beneath was, it was one of the same giant ice worms that had annihilated his friends.
Stunned Jax quickly shuffled back pack against the wall kicking furiously at the dead corpse as if it would reanimate and attack him. He heard someone yelling off to his side but was to stunned at the dead beast before him. It was then he saw the enormous teeth like appendages the creature had, four of them, each at least as long as his forearm and as sharp as a plasma saw, they were serrated and looked like the kind of teeth a Rancor would envy.
Jax barely had a chance to register what was happening when a huge bulky arm reached out and grabbed his wrists, pulling him to his feet. It was the man with the red eyes, the body guard.
“I said get up!” It shouted at him in a mechanic voice and holding his wrist in a vice grip.
“Listen up! You will now leave the dead, if, and only if one of the dead has a tool which is invaluable to us getting this crystal will you pick it up and take it with you. I have no idea what these worms are or where they came from but the want us dead. Your Capitan is dead, your officer is dead, I am now taking charge of this mission. From here on out this will be the plan, we are going to finish this mission, we are going to get the crystal, we are going to leave, and I am going to get paid. If you work with me I will protect you with my life. If you don’t I will shoot you. If you leave I will shoot you. If you do not assist in the mission I will shoot you. I am a bounty hunter, your families mean nothing to me, and your jobs mean nothing to me.”
Abruptly the armored man departed down the cave. Jax shook his head, not wanting to get left behind to be grub meat for the bugs he grabbed his goggles from the ground and started off following the man. He couldn’t help himself from taking a look at what had happened behind him, and as soon as he did he regretted it. Four of the five other men who had followed him in his pitiful attempt at running lay in pieces scattered all throughout the cave and the surrounding ice was now as red as it was blue. In addition to the multiple pieces of human corpse lay just as many chunks of those worms. From what he could see it looked like something had cut five or six of them clean in half and at least another ten had carbon scoring marks from a blaster bolts of them, and were spilling blood and guts on to the ice.
Jax’s vision finally cleared and so did his memory, he was following Vaylin Taxton. Never one to stay on top of the latest Holo News story or follow popular gossip Jax did not often recognize some of the more prominent faces of the galaxy, but when he laid eyes upon the white and crimson figure for the first time undistorted he knew it could be no one else. Why had he not paid attention before? He would have been a hundred times safer if he stayed with him as opposed to running in the other direction. But that was the past now, and now they were in a life or death situation. They had to complete the mission; they had to get the Lavma crystal. Because if they did not, one way or another it ended in his death.

Vaylin continued to watch the temperature meter on his heads up display rise, and it not hung fairly stable around the -60 degree marker, an absurdly high number considering they were over a hundred meters underground in a cave made of ice. He had had enough of this cave. Against his better judgment he had taken the role of leader of the twenty two remaining men and was now leading the group to finish their mission, he was just supposed to be the body guard. Troy would pay him extra. No, not extra, double. But in order to claim his payment he first had to make it out of the cave alive, which at this point may have proven to be a difficult task for any lesser man. He was not, but unfortunately the twenty two men who he was now responsible for were. He had made it out of much worse situations, the forests of Mendark, there was not a creature who breathed in that forest who’s soul goal was not to kill whatever it laid eyes upon. In the last skirmish it Vaylin did not see any of the men draw any sort of defensive weapon, not even a hold out blaster. A fatal mistake in the galaxy these days. He would have to talk to Troy about his policy’s on his men carrying weapons.
They had only been traveling for another thirty minutes before Vaylin learned that the man with the radiation measuring device, Surge, was still alive because the man yelled out another update
“Radiation levels are approaching 30%, we have to be close. Either we find this thing soon or we die from radiation poisoning. Or worse, the machine cannot tell me what kind of radiation this thing is giving off.” The men were beginning to grow hungry, tired, and afraid. There had been no inclination thus far of any incoming attacks, and Vaylin was determined to not let the worms with the razor teeth sneak up on him again. Without letting up for even a minute he constantly scanned the ice on all sides of them, watching for the worms to strike again. He had gathered that they used their fangs, or teeth, to drill through the ice at amazing speeds, and glided as smoothly through such a dense material as a Corellian Gulginaw glided through a night sky. Their white bodies helped to camouflage them, making their bodies indistinct in the already distorted ice but he could not figure out what purpose the red triangles served.
These Razor Worms were un-like anything he had encountered before, they had the offensive capabilities of a trained killer but did not have the slightest bit of protection. Their skin was soft and fleshy, so much so that it seemed if one were to hit a sharp piece of ice while drilling through the cave it could disembowel them on the spot. Another oddity was when killed, neither their blood nor entrails would freeze when it came in contact with ice, but that was easily attributed to it being their natural surroundings.
Because of the new threats and time constraints they no longer employed the scouting tactic and instead all traveled at the same time, but still in single file. For the first time in a few hours Vaylin turned the corner and saw a straight shot path, a rarity in this ever bending and turning tunnel. Another oddity, which took a few more seconds to set in was the fact that out the end of the straight shot there was light. For the past few hours all the men, Vaylin included had grown accustomed to the ambient light given off by the glow sticks that it took them a moment to realized in reality they were in complete blackness, but the constant turns had kept up the illusion of each hall being completely illuminated for the short time the spent traveling through them. But this was not natural light, it was not like the room with the blue crystal which had sun shine entering from the top, they were over one hundred meters underground, no natural light could reach that far, and in addition to all everything else, the light was red. It illuminated the halls as would an emergency light in a government building during a disaster and what was even more eerie was the fact that the light pulsed.
Vaylin drew his Karsta pistols from their holsters and held them in a ready-to-kill position with his finger on each trigger already pulled back half way, only a hairs distance away from firing. Using hand signals he notified the men to slow their advance and be very cautious.
With Vaylin heading the line they reached the end of the straight away which emptied in to an enormous room. Taken aback the men gazed in to the mansion sized opening, nearly completely empty. Though at the center of the room, supported by a column of dark grey rock was a torso sized ruby red crystal. The crystal pulsed as if it was a heart pumping life in to the cave, unsure whether or not it was in illusion Vaylin stared in to the center of the crystal and the shimmering glints of orange that danced inside of it. As if there was a gentle cascade of glistening lava constantly falling from the center of the gem. The room appeared to be an enormous semi-circle with a radius of at least fifty meters. The ice from the ceiling dripped and puddles gathered on the rock all around the room and it finally made sense to Vaylin. The crystal was the source of the heat; it was melting the snow and ice around the room creating this area, though so far underground but maintaining cathedral ceilings.
On the direct opposite side of the room from where the men exited the tunnel lay another identical tunnel, but they would have no need to enter it. They would retrieve the crystal, then return from the way that they came. They had found the Lavma crystal.
Vaylin ordered the men in to the open area and begin setting up the excavation process and the men began to pour in to the room with, motivated by fear. Some of them stayed just outside the entrance and began unboxing tools and setting up equipment. Initially two of the men who carried the largest of the crates made a beeline to the crystal and quickly unpacked the box, inside was a greatly compressed piece of cloth which they took out and began propping up with metal supports creating a quarantined off area leaving the only opening a solitary entrance and exit hole around the crystal. Vaylin assumed the cloth was some protection for radiation, but was unsure if it would really make any difference at this point how much each man did or did not absorb. Simultaneously other men began circling the crystal making a wider girth and assembling stationary lights to illuminate the entire cavern. When the tent was set up a portion of the men walked towards the crystal with some objects in their hands that Vaylin did not recognize. When they reached the crystal the first man activated a large drill he was using and slowly drove it in to the ground in a select few places, making holes that appeared to be at least a foot deep, he was followed by a man who took three bright yellow rods and hammered them in to the rough rock around the circle, making a triangular patter and then adjusted the angle so that each of the rods also came in contact with the crystal, like a tripod to support it. The second man attacked a net across the three supports, most likely to catch the crystal after the rock could no longer support it. Another man came off the wall pushing an enormous canister with a chord attaching it to what looked like a beefed up version of a plasma cutter. When he reached the rock that was supporting the crystal he turned a few of the knobs on the canister and a hissing sound like leaking gas filled the chamber. He flicked a switch on the cutter, a rectangular shaped item with one side missing, but when turned on the missing side light up in to a vibrant blue shimmering pattern. He crouched down to get on level with the support and brought the cutter up ready to chop at the supporting rock and swung, putting force in to it as if he were trying to fell a tree. The cutter made contact with the rock and the shimmering blue transformed in to a vibrant yellow and shaved a few centimeters off the support rock.
He hefted the device again and repeated the swing, shaving off a few more centimeters of rock, but this time when his blade made contact the entire cavern felt as if it might collapse. It began shaking violently and an enormous chunk of ice plummeted from the ceiling on the other side of the room, crashing to the ground and shattering in to billions of little pieces. It startled the man enough for him to flinch and loose his balance, toppling backwards and landing on his rear end. He lost his grip on the cutter and it began swinging wildly taking on a life of its own as a military grade water house would if left unattended. The men inside the tent yelled, dodging the extremely dangerous cutter and tried to get a grasp on it, which they were unsuccessful in doing. The hose the cutter was attached to twitched and sent the hand held part directly in to the machine which was powering it, puncturing a hole in the side. Vaylin was sure whether it was because of dumb luck or expert design but instead of the gas escaping the chamber and combusting the machine coughed and shut itself off, leaving a meter long burn gash in the side of it. Before Vaylin had a chance to remove a few fingers from the man who dropped the torch, and likely ended the mission, the cave shook again, even more violent than last time. Nearly all the men in the room collapsed this time as well as a few thousand credits worth of equipment.
Having never let down his ready position Vaylin readied himself to dodge more falling debris, and save the men from them if necessary. This was certainly the least favorite assignment he had been assigned in a while.
Then as if it were a nightmare, demons began spawning on all sides of him. Close to twenty Razor Worms emerged from the icy walls on all sides of the room, creating a flank around the men on all sides aside from the one that they entered from. The men began to panic and Vaylin was forced to start spouting out orders.
“Fall back on me! Fall back on me! If you can grab anything and use it as a weapon do so! You are now fighting for your own lives I will do what I can to protect you. But I will fail.” The mechanical voice reverberated throughout the chamber and filled the men with a sense of fear, real fear, but power as well, the power to fight death and the power to fight for their lives.
Jax, who had been setting up the lighting fixtures around the perimeter grabbed the base of one of the lights and sprinted full speed towards Vaylin Taxton. His make shift weapon would most likely do little to defend him from such feral beasts but he would use every fiber of his being to survive.
Vaylin had spent the last forty years of his life killing for a living, and through his many missions and adventures he had acquired weapons and prizes. Not rewards for completing a bounty but weapons from the missions. Weapons that were used in defense against him. He had an entire collection and no one but him was allowed to use them. A man did not truly understand the weapon he was using until he was staring down the barrel of it. Vaylin understood all of his weapons. But now he was not killing, he was saving. And now he could not afford to be selfish. He saw a man, like the rest completely covered in thermal clothing rushing towards him with a light stand, at least he had the will to live.
He holstered on of his pistols and reached in to his back pack removing his favorite weapon, the prized double barreled flame thrower. He had earned this one when hes knees were bolted to the floor of a crime lords palace. The Rodian Rezzik thought he could escape paying his dues to him by turning him in to a crisp, but the Rodian flaunted too much, explaining he would be eager to test this new weapon out for the first time , waving the flame thrower carelessly around. That gave Vaylin the opportunity to use his whip chord that the Rodian failed to remove and secure the weapon for himself. That day the Rezzik learned how truly powerful the weapon he was holding truly was. He held the weapon for a moment longer before shouting “Catch!” and throwing it at the man with the light pole.
“First trigger is for first barrel second trigger is for second barrel; you only need one at a time unless it’s something big. These aren’t big. Got it”
The man dropped the light pole clumsily and barely caught the flame thrower. For a split second Vaylin regretted giving away his weapon, even though he only had two hands he knew he could have used it many times more effectively than the inexperienced man he had given in to. But it was too late now. And the man died he died and he could retrieve his weapon.
“Yes sir.” The man responded, still running towards Vaylin, he hadn’t realized it until now but the man sounded no older than twenty five. He was barely even a man.

Jax caught the flame thrower and was in utter chock that the famed bounty hunter had given up on of his weapons and given it to him. Just a man, a nobody. But he swore to himself he would not die today. He now had ample means of protecting himself. He now had a weapon, he was armed, he had no excuse to die. Finishing his spring Jax reached where Vaylin Taxton stood and went to take the weapon lock off safety but it was already done, he took up position and prepared for the fight of his life.

Vaylin watched as the other men ran towards him at full speed, trying to stand from their prone position and again slipping on the puddles that the dripping ice was making all around the room. More and more Razor Worms continued to drill out ice and land on the fringes of the enormous room, but when they were completely emerged from their ice holes they stayed. They did not lunge or attack, the bided their time as a military would when waiting for an order. It only took Vaylin another moment to realize that was exactly what they were doing. The cavern rumbled again and he saw an enormous piece of use begin disintegrating in the wall, first it began spewing head sized chunks then turned to flakes as it was pureed under the fangs of the giant Razor Worm which emerged from the hole. The worm was bigger than all the others, exponentially and Vaylin was shocked when he saw the hole it left in the wall. It was identical to the one he had seen when he came in, and the one they had just exited.
Just then it clicked inside Vaylin’s head, the awkward cave they had been traveling though, all this time was a hole dug out by this giant worm. That explained the unusual symmetry in it and the eerie lack of features; it was all drilled out by the Razor Worm.
By the time the worm was completely out of the ice he realized how massive the size of it was. It stretched easily three meters across and was at least twenty meters long. Both sides waited for the other to strike, with a forty meter no-mans-land in the middle, and at the center of the battle field, the Lavma Crystal.
The colossal Razor Worm clacked its mandibles methodically seven times and both it, and the other Razor Worms did an about face and began drilling back in to the coliseum sized wall of ice. Some of the men who now had created a wall behind Vaylin let out a deep breath as if they had just dodged a bullet, but he knew better. There was electricity in the air, and not just figuratively. The pulsing of the Crystal had changed. It sped up and was no longer keeping time, it was like the hearts of so many men in the room, scared. Vaylin didn’t know how he could feel it or what he was feeling but they Crystal seemed to have a life of its own. And when the Worms retreated it did not cease the increased pulse, it did the opposite. Now even more sporadic and even brighter the crystal dimmed and then bathed nearly the whole cavern in its illuminated red glow, and apparently Vaylin wasn’t the only one who noticed. The men who had lowered their weapons tightened the grips they had and brought them back up, ready to strike. The last of the worms had just disappeared in to the wall the cave shook again, this time more violently than the last to combine. Vaylin looked up, fully expecting to see the ceiling collapse and bury him and the rest of the men alive beneath fifty meters of ice and rock.
The shaking stopped for only a brief moment before an entire wall of the cave exploded. About twenty meters up the side of the cavern the far wall erupted in to a cascade of a billion tiny fragments of crystalline ice and were quickly followed by the enormous Razor Worm that had dug the tunnels they had been traveling though. The entire length of the beast flew through the air, as if it were meant to fly, followed by many of the smaller worms ejecting from the wall at the same time, all landing no more than a few meters from Vaylin. At the exact moment they hit the ground he began to fire.
He first placed two precise blaster bolts in to the face of one of the lesser worms as it made its way towards him in an odd wriggling fashion. The bests were incredibly fast for their awkward size and by the time he had drawn another one in to his sights they had halved the gap between men and worms.
Clearly untrained in military tactics and unsure of what to do some of the men began a valiant charge to meet the Razor Worms head on, a brave yet foolish act. The first man to meet in the middle raised some sort of blunt compressed air tank over his head at went to strike at the worms central eye but the mandibles of bug were long enough that by the time he was in arm’s length three of the four had impaled him, two through the torso and one in the leg. As Vaylin had learned is customary for these bugs the mandibles began twisting, flinging bits of flesh from the fangs and turning the man in to nothing more than a pool of frozen blood and meat.
The giant Razor Worm was now at the front lines of Vaylin’s men and a moment later there were no more of Vaylins men. The work bowled over the men with the power of a grav train, each body that got in its way compacted in to an explosion of organs and splattered all around the surrounding area Vaylin watched as the worm took out seven men and without slowing down at all drilled directly in to the ice behind them, ready to launch another attack and half of the worms of the field followed suite while the other half stayed and engaged in melee combat with the remaining men. One of the worms who charged towards the ice wall make the mistake of slithering past Vaylin instead of killing him, a fatal mistake. As the worm past him Vayling dexterously drew the plasma knife from its mount on his thigh and held out it plunging it in to the worm, he allowed the worm’s forward momentum to tear its own flesh, opening the last meter and a half of the animal and letting its entire innards spill on to the floor. The carcass continued towards the wall and bunched up against it, folding its own lifeless body on to itself. When the sliding worms body passed Vaylin could see three men holding up various elongated tools at a worm elevated on its back legs, jabbing at it like their tools were spears and the worm biting at them and then retracting when one of them struck.
Neither the worm on the men were gaining ground and it was Vaylin’s job to protect them. He hit the thrusters on his jet pack, and vaulted himself forward to try and reach the men who were quickly losing ground, being backed up closer and closer to the wall. Vaylin noted that as opposed to last time when he used the thrusters on his jet pack the ground behind him did not belt, it was solid rock and as a result he traveled further with less fuel. He reached under his boot and grabbed the Pimran pistol and trained it on the worm. He was going to catch the beast by surprise, coming up from behind it and that’s the way he liked it. By the time he reached the worm it had taken out one of the spear wielding men with its tail and looked as if it were about to go in for the kill, it was at that point that Vaylin pulled the trigger and watched a portion of the fat white body vanish from existence.
The felled man at the base of the collapsing worms body uncurled from the fetal position and re-grabbed his makeshift weapon from the ground and quite adeptly returned to his feet. Not more than two seconds later he was running towards another worm who was making its way to the wall of ice. The man caught up and leapt in the air then drove the light fixture in to the tail of the creature.
It was a valiant effort Vaylin thought as he watched the man’s body flying through the air after being catapulted by the worms flailing tail. Though a moment later he realized the action was not completely useless, the worm had not deviated from its path and entered the wall with the light fixture still piercing its tail. The first four meters of its body made it thought but the last two were not as lucky, the spear got caught on the top of the wall the worm had carved and tore a portion of the tail straight from its body, if it wasn’t dead yet it would be soon. Immediately after the end of the worm re-entered the ice the entire structure exploded again, and the worms ejected out, from as high as thirty meters and arched downward for an aerial strike on the men. Vaylin activated his jet pack and pumped it to full power, he shot in the air and began opening fire on the falling worms. Like two star cruisers about to collide in the sky Vaylin rocketed towards the falling missiles pulling the trigger every time he found a worm he had not already put a clips worth of blaster energy in to. As fast he was bound upwards the worms were coming down equally as fast, he had fired so many shots that blood and bits of worms began to rain from the sky.
Vaylin had been so drawn in to the slaughter he was executing on the little worms he missed the point at which the gigantic worm had also vaulted from the wall and did not realize it until one of the worms falling above him exploded in to a mass of gore and the giant Razor Worm took its place. Vaylin shifted his feet so the stabilizers on his boots threw him at a right angle from his current path and instead of meeting the giant Worms razor mandibles he instead was impacted by the bulbous body of the soft skinned creature. He was ripped from the sky and plummeted straight down to the ground while the worm continued on its out angled arc.
Vaylin felt his body crunch and ribs crack as he impacted the ground with the force that the worm threw him. But he wasn’t dead yet and he would not give up. In front of him he heard the worm collide with the ground and slide away, back towards the far wall again, and that’s when it hit him. The worms could not dig through rock, they had to go back to the ice wall and execute their run and hide tactics, but in an open area they had no element of surprise.
“Everyone get to the middle! The worms can’t dig through the rocks, you will be safer there! Now move!”
Half of the remaining men heard him and began charging towards the crystal at the center of the room; unfortunately some of them did not know one of the first rules of combat which was never turn your back on your opponent. As soon as some of the men turned to fell what they thought would be safety they were ambushed by the falling worms and crushed beneath their massive frames.
Managing to work his way to his feet Vaylin too begin making his towards the crystal at the center of the room. He knew he needed to alert the men who hadn’t heard him the first time to make their way to the center as well but he was beat to it by one of the remaining men. The miscellaneous man repeated the message and the unleashed a ball of fire from his hip, turning one of the worms in to a black shriveled crisp. Vaylin was impressed, the man he had given his flame thrower to have not been killed yet and seemed to be taking the leadership position and defending the own men as opposed to expressing only concern for his own life. But now Vaylin had to be concerned for his, he could not protect the other men if he was dead, which he was very close to being. Realizing that when he had hit the ground he had lost his twin blasters he reached for the both the vibro knife and plasma knife still in their holsters on his legs. He sprinted towards the center of the room dual wielding the knives and nearly got side swiped by a worm chasing down another man who had a head start on Vaylin. Seeing the opportunity he lunged and landed on the back half of the worm, digging his knifes in to the soft flesh of the beast but it did not stop its relentless hunt. Vaylin began drawing the plasma knife in his left hand from the worm and repeatedly stabbed it over and over again desperately trying to hit something vital.
The worm bucked and kicked viciously until Vaylin sunk his knife in to the animal for the seventeenth time, at which point it collapsed on top of its own legs and began violently convulsing.
Vaylin dismounted the dying worm, now mere feet from the center of the room and retreated back with the rest of the men who were already hunkering down and holding their position around the crystal. There on the ground, no more than a meter from the crystal laid one of Vaylin’s Karsta blasters, he made a lunge for it and retrieved it before any bug could ambush him. He recovered his position and watched the last few of the men make their way towards the center of the room, many with worms in tow. Vaylin tried to get a lock on one of the worms but the man he was chasing was acting as a shield for the head of the bug, lacing in and out of the blaster sights until the bug was on his heels.
“Duck!” Vaylin shouted and the man hit the ground, following orders before even thinking of them. Vaylin fired three successive shots, the first squarely impacting the bug in its central eye and spraying black fluid all over. The second and third made contact with the upper part of the bugs head where Vaylin assumed the brain to be, he wasn’t sure whether or not his assumption was true but whatever was hit was important enough to kill the bug instantly.




Copyright © 2013 Alexander Bortz

At this point I had no plans to include this 'job' in to the story. I just wanted to set it up to introduce the new character and all his bad-assness

I like it, this is the Bounty Hunter mini from a while back right?


Edit: Can't wait for Darth Volcanas to make his entrance!

You really liked it? At least thats what I assume the heart meant. Thanks! If any one has ANY questions comments or critique I would LOVE to hear it. As soon as I get home ill type up chapter 1 and post it. Right now its all in my note book and takes a while to transfer from paper to computer.

I like your description of the Twi'Lek, really brings her to life!

CH 2 is up!

Some major improvements!

do you have this as a pdf its hard for me to sit and read it on my computer screen

This is really cool-you've done a great job of showing that everyone is slowly converging on each other. The question is how slowly...and who realises it?