It was a day after her violent encounter with the fellow acolyte that Tanya finally reached the edges of the Valley of the Dark Lords - a name she considered a bit too on the nose, right until she got close enough to fully grasp the magnitude of the place. It made the Valley of Kings from her old world's Egypt look puny.
Tombs lay upon tombs upon tombs; some grand pyramids dwarfing anything made on Earth in scale and splendor, others nothing but an entrance underground. And this was the lower Valley, the resting place of lesser lords. The main attraction was presumably still waiting for her to be seen.
It would have to wait some more. Tanya's stop was here, in the tomb of one Lord Sarvas Revil, dating back over two thousand years, to the days of the original Sith Empire. Despite his resting place, he appeared to be a bit of a non-character, if the excerpt from the Sith archive provided to her via her datapad were to be trusted. To paraphrase his extensive list of achievents: 'He caught a terentatek, at the cost of the lives of thirty slaves, two apprentices, and nearly his own'.
More lives joined the cost of this singular 'triumph' when an archeological expedition aided by Academy adepts uncovered Revil's resting place and released his pet, somehow still alive after milenia of being buried in the tomb of its late master. And predictably, upon tasting freedom, the thing, seeking to honor the escapee pet tradition, started chewing - only people, in half, instead of cables.
And Tanya was to venture into its lair, to record all of the beast's potential hiding spots, so that the extermination crew sent after it wouldn't be ambushed. An ideal assignment for someone both disposable and in need of being tested.
Yet even in this suicide mission there was an opportunity to advance her interests. Her task was done primarily for the Korriban's local garrison - and if she played her cards right, it could serve as a way to gain an in with them.
Of course, this one courtesy, done out of obligation rather than the 'goodness of her heart', wouldn't achieve anything beyond getting her name into a report or two. In fact, Tanya was banking on it.
She wanted to garner a reputation as useful to the army - to achieve it, she didn't need to show any extraordinary feats of compassion and charity. Considering where she was, such behavior could very well be detrimental, raising suspicion about her motives.
No, what she needed was to show results; get her name into enough reports the army will consider her an asset, one they could extend little favors to; favors such as access to their medical facilities should she get injured - which she'd need in order to check for, and should she find them, remove, any tracking chips within her body. Escaping Korriban without doing so would be impossible.
With a sigh, Tanya abandoned any further fantasies about her escape, refocusing on getting to her destination.
Seeking a silver lining in a hopeless situation; just what has Being X driven her to…
=(×)=
The location of Lord Revil's resting place wasn't hard to find: It was the only tomb cordoned off with heavy blaster emplacement. "Currently", Tanya added blithely, seeing remains of barricades surrounding several other entrances. Just what did the Sith choose to bury themselves with?
She approached the military encampment, stopped from reaching the tomb proper by a fully armored imperial trooper. The suit must have possessed some manner of thermal regulation - otherwise, between his torso encased in the armor's red metal and the frankly uncomfortable looking bucket-shaped helmet, the man would have already fried in the rays of Korriban's sun.
"Sergeant Pike, Korriban's Seventh." The buckethead introduced himself. "Please wait a moment, I need to make an identity check."
"Of course, sergeant." Tanya replied, catching herself instinctively taking an 'on duty' stance of polite attentiveness.
Her change of posture hasn't gone unnoticed. "Had some military training, miss?" Judging by the sergeant's voice and what she felt of him in the Force, he was genuinely curious. "You Chiss generally are the sort, if the rumor mill is to be believed."
"This militarism was one of the reasons I never planned to run from the Empire to the Ascendancy; There was no way I would agree to a Chiss conscription after having escaped the Imperial one." Tanya thought to herself. "No, I did not." Technically true - this body never saw combat before Korriban. "My parents merely instilled in me a healthy dose of respect for authority." Also not a lie.
"With any luck, I won't be much of an authority to you for very long. Any hopeful fully inducted into the Academy outranks a lowly sergeant like me by default." A resigned sigh escaped the soldier's lips. "Anyway, you're clear. I trust you have been briefed?"
"I was." Tanya nodded curtly. It was important to not seem overeager and maintain an air of professionalism - even though she wanted to hear more from the sergeant, especially any information from the boots on the ground the Sith may have not known or purposefully omitted.
To her dismay, the soldier didn't deign to elaborate. "Then I won't waste any more of your time miss." The man said, handing her a holorecorder and three glowrods. "Recorder has night vision built in, good for reaching where conventional light can't. When you are done, return to me with it; I will handle things from there."
"Thank you, sir." She nodded. "Will that be all?"
"Yes. And, uh, good luck." In the Force, Tanya could feel guilt and compassion radiating from the man following his words. Was he pitying her?
"Appreciated, sir." Despite her efforts to maintain a cordial air in their conversation, Tanya couldn't manage to fully hide the distaste in her voice at the sergeant's words. Empty pity and well-wishing were something she had long since acquired a dislike for.
=(×)=
The tomb's entrance wasn't much, befitting the one note character of Lord Revil - a hole in the rockface, adorned with runes of Sith writing. A fresh addition decorated the relief - four deep gouges in the chiseled stone, left behind by something with claws strong enough to cut through solid rock. Tanya didn't have to guess the identity of their author.
She took out her datapad in order to review all information given to her about the beast. According to it, a terentatek was a bipedal, five meter tall, spiny monstrosity all but immune to force abilities, as well as small caliber blaster fire. Killing it would take heavy - and expensive - hardware; which is why the Sith, normally unconcerned with loss of life, chose to take measures to prevent the extermination crew from being ambushed.
Which in turn was the reason she was here. Tanya entered the tomb, stepping carefully to avoid pebbles and other debris. Trusting in the holorecorder's night vision, she also forsook any light - she couldn't risk alerting the beast. She still tied an unlit glowrod to her belt just in case. If she was forced to run, doing so with her nose in the camera would be the height of stupidity.
=(×)=
The catacombs proved more expansive than their owner's sparse history led her to believe. After two hours of exploration, she found eleven chambers among their serpentine corridors; nine of which had been explored by the prior group of spelunkers. Each one was covered in runes, and housing all manner of items: from ceremonial vessels, to sarcophagi, and even a group of broken down droids in one of the two previously unexplored chambers.
The droids were what got Tanya's attention the most. She couldn't prevent the possibility of encountering the terentatek; not with the tools provided to her. What she could do was give herself every possible advantage in escaping the ravenous monster should running become necessary. And the humanoid droids, while far too old and rusted to function, would still make for passable decoys to place around the tomb's corridors in hopes of distracting the thing and giving herself more time to get away.
Tanya got to it, dragging the machines around and positioning them in places that would attract the most attention without standing in the way of her possible escape routes. To better sell her ruse, she posed them with pickaxes, shovels, and other tools of civilization found within the nine chambers explored by the previous expedition… Well, eight of them.
The ninth went against the grain, containing dried-out bits of torn bodies and the splashes of a new rusty-red paint job instead of excavation equipment. It was the ground zero of the expedition's massacre - the monster's holding cell, judging by the broken down stasis machinery at the chamber's center. Inspecting it, she concluded the creature didn't return to it after being freed; a layer of undisturbed dust having already settled over everything in the room.
Another thing of note was a sturdy lever, helpfully labeled 'Emergency B. Door?' by an archeologist's note. Tanya pulled at it slightly, testing whether the old machinery even worked and wasn't rusted stiff. To her relief, the lever followed her hand without much struggle, and she could hear unseen gears of an ancient mechanism move in response. Satisfied, she stepped away from the device, as to not risk setting it off prematurely.
It was another potential escape tool - if Tanya could lure the beast inside, she could trap it behind a layer of reinforced metal. To that end, she made sure to make the droid decoys placed within the room look just a bit more convincing than the rest, even giving one of them an alight spare glowrod.
With her work to increase her chances of survival done, Tanya began to diligently record the room, corpse bits included. There was no point omitting them; anyone with the clearance to view her footage would have likely already seen their Sith superiors create scenes of butchery far worse than the one before her.
With her musings and recording finished, Tanya went in deeper, the tomb's corridors continuing to be a challenge to navigate. The crypt was built like a labyrinth; It even had a man-eating monster in it.
=(×)=
She found the first fresh sign of the beast's activity two rooms and around half a kilometer of corridors later: A statue of some robed figure, possibly the tomb's owner, which had been used as a scratch post by the beast, leaving behind deep gouges in its torso, and a pile of shit at its feet. Less than two days old by the sme-
-Tanya's instincts flared up, and she contorted her body, thrusting her spear behind her, the action met with a hideous screech as she felt something being impaled on it. She cracked her glowrod, to see a corpse of some manner of giant fly-bat hybrid illuminated by its light. That definitely was not the terentatek.
With the animal at the end of her spear no longer moving, and no sign of any more of its kind coming, Tanya tried taking a calming breath; only to choke on the beast guano's putrid aroma. She rolled her eyes to the accursed heavens; as always, her 'blessings' kept piling on. She needed to speed her survey along, before her back broke under their weight.
To her mounting frustration, as she went deeper, she encountered more fly-bats, every one of them adamant about slowing her down; seemingly downright eager to bother her and die by her blade as long as they managed to waste even a second more of her time. Tanya got so fed up with them, that she started swinging into the dark on gut feelings alone, every time catching a creature mid-pounce from ambush. They died like the rest, predictable, unnecessary deaths. Did the stupid animals not understand that the sooner she was done, the sooner she'll leave?!
As she went deeper into the tomb, slaying fly-bat after fly-bat, Tanya heard a faint rumbling echoing from the very center of the labyrinth. The closer she got to it, the rarer her encounters with the flying critters became, eventually stopping entirely. She must've been nearing the lair of the late Lord Revil's pet monstrosity.
Her assumption has proven correct over half an hour of careful, painfully slow exploration later. Even curled up and snoring, the terentatek's spiny form must have been at least three meters wide.
The chamber the monster chose as its nest was far more spectacular than the rest of the brown, rune-strewn tomb; mosaics decorated its walls, and the interior was lined with jet-black obelisks adorned with faintly glowing writing.
Tanya didn't stop to admire it in detail, taking the recording as quickly as possible; the snoring beast being a great motivation to hurry. The mission completed, her only concern was to remain in one piece for the foreseeable future.
A future the terentatek might have some objections to; the creature woke up, filling the chamber with snorts and sniffs as it did.
Tanya didn't wait for dread to set in, disappearing behind the corridor in a mad dash as soon as she heard the creature's breathing begin to change.
Yet despite this considerable head start, she could feel the beast slowly gaining on her, the ground shaking with its every stride. Thankfully, the noise of its pursuit stopped for a moment, replaced by the clutter of metal and a roar of frustration - the beast was fooled by one of her decoys. A small relief; the thing resumed its chase not three seconds after it stopped to demolish the droid. Still, it bought her some precious time.
Tanya made best use of it, her breakneck sprint not slowing down for even a moment; The fear of being torn apart by the Sith aberration she drew on for motivation soon replaced by her determination to survive, and hatred of Being X and his schemes. Gritting her teeth in a snarl, Tanya redoubled her efforts; the trap she needed to lure the beast into still far away.
She surged forward, even as her lungs burned and legs screamed in pain. "Just a little closer," Tanya lied to herself, forcing her legs to perform a 'last ditch' effort corridor after corridor. Finally, finally, she reached her destination, dashing into the holding cell and climbing to latch onto the upper wall's chiseling in a herculean effort she was almost sure her body shouldn't be capable of.
Clinging for dear life, Tanya waited for her pursuer with bated breath, ignoring her lungs' pleading for air. She didn't have to wait long; the thing barrelled into the chamber no more than five seconds after her, pouncing on the decoy droids with a furious roar.
This momentary distraction was enough for Tanya to act; Falling down from the ceiling straight onto the blast door's lever, she activated the device and dashed out of the room before the beast could realize what was happening.
As soon as she did, the last embers of her strength left her. Collapsing on the stone floor with her head spinning, Tanya heard the blast door's mechanism going off, witnessed its groaning descent from the top of the frame… before stopping with an audible screech of rusted machinery.
She saw her impending doom as the terentatek slowly turned around, dropping the remains of a decoy droid out of its claws.
No, no, no! NO! She refused to go out like this! She heard the mechanism go off! Being X! He must have stopped it, under the pretext of the old machinery failing!
The beast made one leisurely step, then another. It didn't need to hurry anymore. Its prey was going nowhere.
Addled by dread, hate and desperation, Tanya's mind refused the reality of the door not working; reaching to it with her fingers curled into claws, as if wanting to correct this flaw in the universe with her bare hands. The air hummed with built-up pressure, and with a few groans of protest, the metal gave in; the falling durasteel finally cutting the bloodthirsty sithspawn off from pursuing her; leaving Tanya heaving and puking on the stone floor.
=(×)=
Seven hours; at this point Pike was fairly certain the Chiss wasn't coming back. Not with all the roaring he heard coming from within the tomb.
"Aight, prepare the probe droid." He turned towards corporal Shrett. "I'll make the report for the overseer."
As soon as his second-in-command left, one of the boys standing watch at the tomb entrance ran up to Pike. "Sarge, it's the sithling! She came out!"
He followed the soldier to the resurfacing adept. By the looks of her, swaying, shaking, and with her clothes caked in dust, vomit and sweat, 'came' was too generous a word. "Miss, are you alright?"
The Chiss gave Pike a look befitting such a stupid question. "Sergeant, I sprinted non-stop for over twelve minutes, in complete defiance of biology, and possibly thermodynamics. I very much am not 'alright'."
"Well, as my grandma, a once Sith concubine, said: 'The Dark Side of the force is a pathway to many abilities some might consider unnatural'." Pike grinned under his helmet. He risked a force-bitchslap for that one, depending how much of a prude the Chiss was.
Luckily for him, the woman merely gave him a deadpan look. "I am almost certain your grandmother had a much different context in mind. But in a way, your words are a relief: it's good to know even serving on this dustbowl did not deprive the army of its infamous sense of humor."
"We'd go insane otherwise." Pike sighed, humor leaving him as quickly as it came. "Literally so, as the poor bastards from Fourth would attest… if they were able to do anything besides babble incoherently and shoot at everything that moves."
"Are soldiers going mad a common occurrence?" The woman raised a questioning eyebrow.
"Sadly, yes." Venom directed towards the Academy crept into Pike's words. "It's one of the reasons Korriban garrisons have such a high turnover rate; whole squads regularly go rogue, disappearing into the desert, only to later turn up raiding what little civilization this dustbowl has."
"I can't imagine them being much of a problem." The Chiss creased her brows. "Without food or water, they should keel over in a matter of days."
"I wish that was the case." The sergeant sighed tiredly. "This cursed rock has a way to keep its puppets alive. Sometimes nothing except a bolt to the head will do them in. Those under the Korriban's spell can go on to cause suffering for a looong while."
"That would explain why we were given cortosis weapons." The woman's words sounded incredibly bitter.
"You are right on the money, miss; Academy loves to use the mad goons for live fire exercises during adepts' trials. Speaking of which," Pike said, steering the conversation back towards a less depressing topic, "seeing as you're alive, I take it yours was a success?"
"Greater than I would have expected. I managed to cage the beast in its once holding cell, behind a layer of durasteel." The Chiss smiled. "If the exterminators move quickly, they will find the thing trapped like a fish in a barrel."
"The boys will no doubt appreciate you gift wrapping the ugly for them. I'll make the report immediately. Oh," snapping his fingers, Pike turned back towards the alien, "while you wait, would you like a cup of caff, miss? Tastes like watered-down dirt, but it sure will get you back on your feet."
A wistful sigh escaped the woman's lips. "Yes, that would be much appreciated. No sweeteners or condensates, please."
Pike nodded. "Caff duty, give the lady the meanest black one you have! I'll call pest control in the meantime."
Pleased with himself, the sergeant began humming as he typed a report on his datapad. It wasn't everyday that you got an opportunity to build rapport with a possible future Sith.
So of course Shrett chose this moment to rain on his parade, coming up to him with a probe droid in tow. "Oh, the sithling's alive. Guess we won't be needing this then." He gestured towards the machine floating beside him.
The Chiss froze solid at the sight. When she finally spoke, her tone was frigid. "Probe droid. You had a probe droid. That explains the guilt I felt from you earlier." The woman said, narrowing her eyes in accusation.
"Ehm, yes." Pike admitted, bile rising up his throat. "Please understand, we've got orders. Under threat of 'disciplinary action' no less." He laid the air-quotes as heavy as he could - there was only one kind of disciplinary action for grunts like him. "We were allowed to deploy the droid only after deeming your expedition a bust."
"Is that so?" The adept drawled out with a Tukata-worthy growl. To Pike's relief, the furious, puppilless eyes focused not on him, but on the Korriban's sky, dedicating to it a string of venomous-sounding alien curses…
…Only for them to suddenly stop, replaced with a hideous, insane cackle as the woman palmed herself in the face. She went like this for a while, Pike eventually joining her with some non-committal chuckling out of sheer awkwardness.
Crazy alien.
Eventually, she calmed herself down, taking a deep breath. "Of course. How could I be so stupid! It is a test after all, planned by people actively disregarding proper allocation and utilization of human capital in their pursuit of being cartoonishly evil. Well, I got its message loud and clear."
"Glad to hear it, miss." Pike shifted awkwardly in his stance. Sith badmouthing other Sith was nothing new. That he could easily stomach, even join in after testing the waters. Acolytes insulting full-fledged Sith though had a tendency to get the heads of those they were chummy with on the chopping block when they inevitably overstepped and got themselves disemboweled.
At least he thought what the Chiss directed at the Academy were insults.
Better not dwell on that. "Out of curiosity, what was this message?" Damn him and his stupid mouth! He just thought not to dwell on that!
"A very simple one, sergeant: 'Unless you seize it yourself, nothing will be provided to you'." The adept chuckled darkly. "'There is no help coming; You are, and always will be, alone'."