Kapitel 4: PRECIPICE - Chapter 4
Omen's permanent crew came from the same human stock as Korsin: the debris of a noble house, launched skyward centuries before in the whirlwind that formed the Tapani Empire. The Sith had found them, and found them useful. They were skilled in commerce and industry, all the things the Sith Lords needed most but never had time for with their world-building and world-destroying. His ancestors ran ships and factories, and ran them well. And before long, mingling their blood with that of the Dark Jedi, the Force was in his people, too.
They were the future. They couldn't acknowledge it, but it was obvious. Many of the Sith Lords were still of the crimson-hued species that had long formed the nucleus of their following. But the numbers were turning—and if Naga Sadow wanted to rule the galaxy, they had to.
Naga Sadow. Tentacle-faced, Dark Lord and heir to ancient powers. It was Naga Sadow who had dispatched Omen and Harbinger in search of Lignan crystals; Naga Sadow who needed the crystals on Kirrek, to defeat the Republic and its Jedi.
Or was it the Jedi and their Republic? It didn't matter. Naga Sadow would kill Captain Korsin and his crew for losing their ship. Seelah was right about that much.
Yet Sadow need not lose the war, depending on what Korsin did now. He still had something. The crystals.
But the crystals were high above at the moment.
It had been a night of horrors, getting 355 people down from the lofty plateau. Sixteen injured had died along the way, and another five had tumbled into the darkness from the narrow ledge that formed the only apparent way up or down. No one doubted that evacuation had been the right call, though. They couldn't stay up there, not with the fires still burning and Omen precariously perched. The last to leave the ship, Korsin had nearly soiled himself when one of the proton torpedoes had disengaged from the naked tube, tumbling over the precipice and into oblivion.
By sunrise, they'd found a clearing, halfway down the mountain, dotted with wild grasses. Life was everywhere in the galaxy, even here. It was the first good sign. Above, Omen continued to burn. No need to wonder where above them the ship was, Korsin thought. Not while they could follow the smoke.
Now, walking back into the afternoon crowd—less an encampment than a gathering—Korsin knew he never need wonder where his people were, either. Not while his nose worked. "Now I know why we kept the Massassi on their own level," he said to no one.
"Charming," came a response from over his shoulder.
"I should say they are not very happy with you, either." Ravilan was a Red Sith, pure-blooded as they came.
He was quartermaster and keeper of the Massassi, the nasty lumbering bipeds that the Sith prized as instruments of terror on the battlefield. At the moment the Massassi didn't seem so formidable. Korsin followed Ravilan into the fiendish circle, made even less pleasant by the stench of vomit. Florid monsters two and three meters tall sprawled on the ground, heaving and coughing.
"Maybe some kind of pulmonary edema," Seelah said, passing around purified-air canisters salvaged from an emergency pack. Before connecting with Devore and securing a place on his team, she'd been a battlefield medic—though Korsin couldn't tell from her bedside manner, at least with Massassi. She barely touched the wheezing giants.
"We're no longer at elevation, so this should subside. Probably normal."
To her left, another Massassi hacked mightily—and mutely regarded the result: a handful of dripping scar tissue. Korsin looked at the quartermaster and asked drily, "Is that normal?"
"You know it's not," Ravilan snarled.
From across the clearing, Devore Korsin charged in, shoving his son into Seelah's hands before she was done wiping them. He seized the brute's massive wrist, looking for himself. His eyes flared at his brother.
"But Massassi are tougher than anything!"
"Anything they can punch, kick, or strangle," the captain said. An alien planet, however, was an alien planet. They hadn't had time to do a bioscan. And all the equipment was high above. Devore followed Seelah, backing away from the sickly Massassi.
Eighty of the creatures had survived the crash. The captain learned that Ravilan's assistants were burning a third of those survivors, even then, over the hillside. Whatever unseen thing it was on this planet that was killing the Massassi, it was doing it quickly. Ravilan showed him the stinking pyre.
"They're not far enough away," Korsin said.
"From whom?" Ravilan responded. "Is that depression a permanent camp? Should we remove to a different mountain?"
"Enough, Rav."
"No witty comeback? I'm surprised. You at least plan that far ahead."
Korsin had fenced with Ravilan on earlier missions, but now wasn't the time.
"I said, enough. We've surveyed below. You saw it. There's nowhere to go." There were beaches at the bottom of the bluff, but they terminated against the oily cliffs that began the next mountain in the chain. And going farther along the chain meant trips through tangles of razor-sharp brambles.
"We don't need an expedition. We're not staying."
"I should hope not," Ravilan said, his own nose turned by the smell of the fires.
"Your brother—I mean, Eldrak Korsin's other son—wants to return to the ship right away. I agree. We must report to Lord Sadow."
Yaru Korsin stopped.
"I have the transmitter codes. It's my call to make." He looked up at the second, more distant smoky plume far above.
"When it's safe."
"Yes, by all means. When it's safe."
The captain hadn't wanted Devore on the mission. Years earlier, he had been relieved when his half brother had abandoned a naval career, drifting into the Sith's mineralogical service. Power and riches were more easily had there, searching for gems and Force-imbued crystals. With their father's sponsorship, Devore had become a specialist in using plasma weapons and scanning equipment.
The recent conflict with the Jedi found him in high demand—and assigned, with his team, to Omen. Korsin wondered whom he'd played a joke on to deserve that. He'd been told Devore officially answered to him, but that would have been a first. Not even Sith Lords were that powerful.
Wöchentlicher Energiestatus
-- Power-
Rangliste 
-- Power-
Stein