Aboard the Theedian Starmist
Oz'ymysc shivered and his orange eyes widened. Sweat beaded on his brow. There was a spot in the brain... just there... all he had to do was squeeze a little with the Force. That was all it would take. He stood in the shadows outside the bridge of the passenger liner Theedian Starmist, poised to act. In the Force he could feel the struggle in the cargo bay, a tumult in the back of his mind. They had to succeed. They just had to. If not, he would have to do it. It was wrong, it reeked of the Dark Side, but it would be necessary. Mind tricks were one thing, but he didn't think any mind trick would convince the bridge crew to drive their ship into the binary star looming large in their cockpit viewscreen. He would have to make them.
As he considered it, his desperation had given him the answer. The Dark Side beckoned and pointed toward a doorway to power. He knew now what to do to dominate the helmsman's mind and make him kill them all. His heart broke at the thought. The Universe had come to this; his last act as a Jedi could be to plunge to the depths of the Dark Side in death while killing hundreds of innocents. A choice, he thought bitterly, between bad and worse, no, between penultimate and ultimate horror. He closed his eyes and silently begged the Light to remove the need for that choice, as the battle in the cargo bay raged...
The blast doors crumped shut with a soundless detonation and a searing flash of crimson light. The Bloodstone was crushed; Mujhar Din's spirit could rest. As one the biologicals slumped to the floor as the sudden silence beat on their ears. The keening wind, which had tried to hurl them through the blast doors' narrowing maw along with countless crates and boxes, was gone. It had dragged the voice of its passage higher and higher up the register until they all thought their ears would bleed as the gap it fled through constricted. Zon and Gal lay gasping against the blast doors, only the tenuous thickness of that slowly closing durasteel barrier had kept them from flying into the void with the dead Anzati. Nearby, 3gammaZed stood impassively, hand clamped around a stanchion, oblivious to the psychic storm that had swirled around all of them. Shen fainted. Legs still locked in a deathgrip around a cable, she hung upside down as shock mercifully took her overtaxed consciousness. The adrenaline had finally run out as she hung on in those last moments, the charred end of her wrist shoved into her tunic, the sweat dripping from her forehead snatched and blown into space. Ran Jorin peeled himself from the expanded metal of the droid cage, gently untangled her, and laid her on the deck.
The pulsing silence lasted mere moments. A claxon sounded, more red lights appeared, flashing this time from security beacons over the cargo hold's access door, and hidden speakers blared.
"This is a
Security Intruder Alert! All passengers return to quarters immediately
and await further instructions. Thank you for your cooperation. Repeat.
This is a Security Intruder Alert! All passengers return to quarters
immediately and await further instructions. Thank you for your
cooperation.
The
speaker subsided, but the light and the claxon kept up their strident
rhythm...
Oz'ymysc sagged against the bulkhead in relief. He had felt the
end of the Bloodstone even here. The Light had answered, the
choice taken away, but the awful knowledge remained. He turned
and ran for the turbolifts, needing to be with his companions. He
buried the Dark Knowledge deep in his brain, banished it from his
thoughts, yet it was still there grinning and scratching at the walls
he had put up around it, waiting for a crack.
Down a distant corridor the Twi'lek could hear running feet and shouted
orders as patrols of Ship's Security started searching the drifting
ship...
To be continued... AT ZARCON!