Hauntings

The Lament’s Claw; a Heraklon-class frigate exited hyperspace short of its destination, again. Elizac smashed his foot against the console as he read the diagnostic report, again.

Warning: Hyperdrive unresponsive.

Warning: Low Power.

Warning: Main Engines offline.

Warning: Low Power.

System rebooting…

Warning: Low Power….

“It’s the blasted same! Each and every time!” he cried out. “No matter what system I repair, patch or bypass no power is reaching the engines or the hyperdrive to sustain propulsion.”

The trouble with the engines and the hyperdrive were one of numerous complaints that had occurred ever since Yuthura, Juhani and himself had selected the closest Republic aligned world in the Mid Rim as their destination. If it wasn’t a power shortage, it was the opposite. Twice now he had to flush the system and perform a manual reset to prevent the engines from overloading. In the cargo hold he was getting reports of strange sightings; figures darting in and around corners. Items and other personal affects being misplaced and some even reported witnessing the belongings seemingly moving of their own accord.

What Elizac would do for a glass of Corellian brandy right now? Sith’s blood he’d even take Starfire ‘skee at this point. It may taste like blaster fire and go down as well as a Hutt touching its tail but it was something! At his wrist his comlink chirped to life; alerting him of a communication from within the ship. Rather than walk around with Yuthura and Juhani Elizac had thought it more prudent to gift both of them with his frequency. What a poor decision that had been. They had been contacting him none stop; Juhani being the worst of the two.

With every minor fluctuation of the ship’s power grid she had contacted him. Worrying over the other tubed Jedi in sick bay. Already knowing who it was he reluctantly accepted the call. “Yes Juhani?”

“Again...?” her tone was always incredulous but she never outright accused him of wrong doing. Her presence aboard his ship had made it difficult to sucker up to Yuthura. “Yes again. I’ve rerouted power for the tenth time today. Anymore and all the wiring of this ship will be laying in the halls! Plus I don’t know how much more the ship can take. The engines alone have been fixed three times, the hyperdrive another four. I’m running out of spare parts.”

“Are we any closer to the Mid Rim? Can this ship make it on sublight engines alone?”

“Do you have any idea how empty and vast space is? Probably not since most of you Jedi sit inside your comfy temples all day and night…” he really didn’t have time for this.

He was beginning to envision another better tasting brandy when his cybernetic eye detected movement to his left. Its reticle panning on the edge of oblivion; pleading with him to turn so it could fulfill its primary function. Elizac dismissed the icon with a rapid blink only for it to reappear seconds later now pointing to his right. “We aren’t making anymore jumps. I’m going to run a diagnostic on the engines and the hyperdrive. After that I’m sending out a distress call hopefully we’re close enough that someone will come and find us.”

“By your own words we aren’t near the Mid Rim territories yet, the Sith could pick up our broadcast and we’d be back right where we started!”

He let out a groan into the comlink. “Then you think of something…” Elizac plucked the comlink from his wrist and tossed it onto the console. He’d be back for it later, until then he’d enjoy the peace and solitude of his diagnostics.

After ten minutes of the smuggler not responding Juhani assumed the man had disabled his comlink. Ending it on her side with a single button press she stretched and began pacing, every odd step taking a quick glance over to the floating bodies of Belaya and Tanzaar. Neither was back to one hundred percent, but the kolto was doing its job and mending their wounds. The real challenge was the psychological scars.

After checking with the medical droid Juhani decided it was time to visit the refresher, maybe wash her grief away and maybe if she got around to it apologize to Drehar.

Yuthura worked to hand out rations, reminding everyone they had plenty to go around. Twice she had to stop squabbles from turning into full blown riots; the most recent had been over a presumed theft of a wedding band. Not as skilled in mechanical workings as Drehar she had done her best to keep herself busy by performing the more menial work. Cooking, cleaning and meditating between she had worked to the brink of exhaustion and was on the verge of collapse as she returned to Drehar’s quarters and fell asleep as her face hit the pillow.

Drehar scowled at the melted power coupling, tossing it over his shoulder like the scrap it was. Even with no power being carried to the engine the couplings had melted down to their most basic components.

It just didn’t make any damn sense.

With one final twist of his spanner he was done. Wiping his oiled hands free with a rag he pondered as he absently double checked his work. Elizac had suspected sabotage after the fourth day of mishaps, but during those incidents no one was in the area. Both Yuthura and Juhani, the captured prisoners and farmers had been right where they should have been.

He continued pondering this as he left the engineering bay and made his way to communications. He had passed fewer and fewer droids on his route, the droids had suffered just as much as the ship had. The recharging stations had become faultier and faultier until finally it had stopped working all together.

Juhani had suggested they equip and arm a few of the farmers to guard the prisoners but both Yuthura and he had given a look that said “want to rethink that?” He had been **** to charge three of his **** droids by hand which had eaten up the remainder of his free time. The other droids had been left abandoned at their recharge station.

The Communication array was restricted to everyone but himself and only he knew the code to the door. Elizac felt a cold chill run through him when he punched in the ten digit code and walked in.

The room was larger than the others on this level; it had been designed so to better store and operate the state of the art array he had paid so many credits to obtain. That precious system; their only lifeline to the outside was a charred husk. The controls were wrenched from their housing; the wiring gutted the monitors smashed and circuitry melted; just like the power couplings. As he was inspecting for anything salvageable the door behind him locked with a thud and the lights extinguished themselves, plunging the room in darkness. “Lights,” the cyborg whispered and then shouted but nothing happened.

Walking over to where he knew the door was he felt around for a panel when the room’s temperature plummeted. In seconds a thin frost coated the terminals, the floor and him. Each breath produced a small puff of air. An unnatural wind blew through the room carrying a voice which echoed off the walls and inside the vents.

“Whether you like it or not, you work for me Drehar…”

A normal man would have dismissed the ethereal whispers as nothing more than a delusion. But Drehar recognized the voice; he had heard it once in his office and again when his eye had been plucked out; like a fresh Fanback egg. He also knew the voice belonged to a dead man…

So it was natural for the smuggler to fire wildly in an enclosed space, in the dark screaming to the celestial bodies of space. When the locked door opened without a prompt from him he took it and stumbled into the hall into the arms of Juhani.

“What the hell are you doing? What’s wrong?”

Drehar jabbed the mussel of his pistol into the dark room like a finger. “In there! In there! He’s not dead!” Juhani followed the barrel and for a split second saw an outline of a man. Just as she was reaching for her weapon the lights flickered back on revealing the damaged communication array.

Weapon in hand the Cathar scanned the room but found no trace of the figure she may or may not have seen. “What happened in here Drehar?” she shouted into but Drehar was gone. He had run while she had been clearing the room, making a mad dash for the escape pods.

He was on the verge of boarding one when Juhani had caught up with him her lightsaber humming away. “What’s going on!?” she shouted. Drehar froze deciding between the live Jedi in front of him and the dead one behind her. Drehar telegraphed his choice when he attempted to dive into the escape pod only to feel Juhani’s hand at the back of his neck tugging him backwards; slamming him into the wall opposite of the pod.

“Answer me Drehar! What is going on? Did you destroy the comm system?”

“He’s alive! He’s still alive!” he blubbered crawling at the hem of her robes like a small frightened child begging for their mother’s attention and affection. Even when she dislodged his grip he crawled back mumbling the entire time. “He’s still here, he knows what I want. He’s angry! Don’t let him take my other eye!”

Juhani escorted the deranged smuggler to the medical bay while Yuthura had an encounter with the supernatural of her own. Lost to exhaustion and having surrendered to sleep she didn’t hear or see the door to the room malfunction; opening and closing without any sign of ingress. Lying on top of the sheets, Yuthura rolled onto her back propelled by unspoken words of lust and longing. Slowly the belt loop around her waist became taut and then fell slack as her pants began to maneuver themselves down to her ankles. A small simple wrap of cloth served as the only remaining barrier between the shade and Yuthura’s womanhood.

Saliva pooled at the corners of the shade’s lips as it placed its hands on either of her ankles and slowly drew them apart and lowered itself between her parted thighs. It could not smell nor taste while in this state of being, but its presence here was not to bring about its own pleasures. This time, it was her turn.

Kisses; soft and subtle as not to stir her into consciousness began making headway up from her ankle to her inner thigh as hands worked with a delicate touch to massage what the mouth ignored. Yuthura let out a stifled moan as her body began to react to the stimulation.

Even before reaching the cloth the shade could perceive dampness which made it smile as it worked. With its hands occupied; working on the other thigh now, the shade carefully tugged at the tasteless panties with its teeth performing a brief game of tug-of-war. Either through its efforts, Yuthura’s own juices or a combination of both the panties fell away. Another moan this one much louder escaped the still unaware Twi’lek as the sudden blast of cold air broke against Yuthura’s no longer concealed sex.

Yuthura was slowly becoming aware that something wasn’t right. A cold blast of air touched her groin and she instinctively tried to close her legs but felt her legs struggle against something that lay between them. Her mouth was dry her voice horsed. She tried to lift her head to see what was happening but lacked the strength to do so.

As she gathered herself to call upon the **** sleep closed her eyes once more. She awoke again as the wetness plunged itself into her. Wiggling, twisting and caressing her vaginal walls in its attempt to memorize every inch of her. Again she tried to close her legs but felt them **** apart and pinned to the mattress. Yuthura’s body thrashed as it struggled to keep up to the movements of the tongue bending this way and that as her hands clawing at both sheets and her invisible assailant.

When she was reduced to a gasping mess, too confused to see straight she had thought it was over and sent a weak hand grasping for the end table that held Zag’dosiz’s lightsaber. But the shade was not done and began a new attack, this time on Yuthura’s swollen clit. Much like the shade had done to her lekku once before it played with her “button” licking it at first occasionally poking at her urethra to keep her excitement up before transitioning into sucking on her clit and vagina. It all came to a finish when she felt teeth leave a mark on her bean.

Yuthura’s body betrayed her as her entire body arched itself off the bed; her mind going blank as pleasure ravaged her. The bed was coated with her love juice and a sleep not born of exhaustion but fulfillment took Yuthura to a dreamless rest, she would stir six hours later her strength restored and a flower resting alongside the lightsaber.

Juhani had spent the last seven hours awake; trying to make sense of things. Drehar had been retrained his own medical droid administrating a mild sedative to calm the hysterical cyborg after he had drawn his pistol and attempted to shoot Michael’s cadaver.

While the man rested Juhani inspected Michael’s corpse for any signs that the deranged Captain’s tale could be something other than fiction. Michael’s body had remained where it had been laid with no clear indication it had been about prowling the ship. She had not felt anything, no disturbance no malevolent presence. But there were techniques that allowed ****-users to mask themselves and hide their ****-sensitivity completely. Of course there was another answer…

During her travels with Revan she had accompanied the redeemed Dark Lord to Korriban; birthplace of the ancient Red Sith. There amongst the tombs in the Valley of the Dark Lords in search of the Star Map she, Revan and Jolee Bindo had come across the spirit of Ajunta Pall; who had anchored his soul to the physical world through primeval rites of alchemy.

The spirit was in a delirious state when it appeared before her and the others. Teetering on the edge of madness having withstood centuries of loneliness Pall had begun to question his actions as a Sith Lord. But despite these doubts the spirit attacked when Revan failed in the spirits challenge in retrieving his sword and they were **** to do battle.

It had been a demanding ordeal battling a spirit composed entirely of **** energy. All three of them had drawn heavily on the rejuvenating power of the **** to get them through the battle. Juhani even noted Revan taking a few combat stimulants during the brief interludes of the skirmish.

If Michael had become one such spirit, confronting him in such a confined and delicate space would prove disastrous for her and the other passengers. Drehar sluggish movements –the effects of the sedative becoming less apparent- brought Juhani out of her contemplation.

“Vher is te?”The cyborg slurred raising his head off his pillow.

“What?”

“Where is he?”

Juhani had no answer for him. She could neither lie to the man nor confirm his belief. Either way the man would panic and only spur himself deeper into his own paranoia. Instead she had hoped to have the droid administer another sedative to buy herself some added time but the droid had been against giving another dosage before checking with its patient.

The medical droid shuffled over to the recovering Drehar. “How are you feeling sir?”

“Where is that bastards body?! I want it vented into space right this instant!” he roared as Juhani stopped the one armed man from getting out of his bed. She was just about to calm him down when a bemused voice spoke out from the doorway behind her.

Yuthura had returned to wearing the standard gray uniform of a Sith officer. She didn’t have anything else to wear and had been **** to clean the outfit several times since their journey had begun. Juhani loosened her grip on the man’s shoulders and was about to step away to interact with the Twi’lek when Drehar; using his sole remaining hand yanked his pistol from her belt, turned and fired.

Two bolts screamed from the pistols muzzle; coating the med bay in a temporary bloom of red. Of the two shots fired, only one struck true embedding itself into Michael’s face. The other ricocheted twice before the shot terminated in some scanning equipment.

Drehar squeezed for a third shot but the weapon left his hand; plucked from his grasp by a telekinetic thrust provided by both Yuthura and Juhani simultaneously.

The pistol broken into pieces as it collided with the ceiling and then the floor. Drehar stumbled to his feet as he regained the uses of his legs. The medical droid had remained stationary; its basic programming having told it to wait for Drehar’s answer. Finally realizing the blaster marring Michael’s corpse the droid and both Juhani and Yuthura’s arm outstretched stepped forward.

“Captain Drehar Elizac requires more rest; please vacate the facility until 0800 hours.”

“I am not resting anywhere near that!” he snarled jabbing his stump of an arm at Michael’s remains which had not responded to being damaged…it was a corpse after all. Juhani slide up alongside Yuthura and spoke in a hushed tone. “It appears Michael is a **** Ghost…” she let that piece of information hang in the air; watching the Twi’lek face change from confusion, disbelief and acceptance rather quickly. “I’ve only encountered one such spirit and there were three of us then.”

Yuthura’s eye motioned toward Drehar in a silent there are three of us. Juhani only shook her head. “He’s in no condition to fight. His mental state is unhinged and I fear he’d do more damage to the ship than the spirit.”

“What do you think he wants?”

Juhani shrugged. “He kept saying he wanted to uphold a promise one of us made. But he never really stated clearly who made what promise to whom…”

At that moment the lights flickered all throughout the ship, three seconds later the entire ship shook. Drehar who had carried himself into the nearest corner turned to the med droid for answers. “What was that? Did we hit something?”

The medical droid tilted its head as if raising an ear to hear the question. “I am unsure Captain, but I shall find out so please return to your bed.” Rotating at its waist the legs followed as the droid brought up a ship’s report. “No damage Captain. It appears all life pods have been launched and-”

“What?!”

“No damage Captain. It appears all life pods have-”

“Damn it!” Drehar screamed turning over everything that wasn’t bolted to the floor. He turned to Juhani with madness born of desperation in his eyes. “This is your fault! If you had simply let me escape I wouldn’t be in this mess!”

“He tried to board one of the escape pods?” Yuthura asked as the three grouped up.

“Yeah, after he had a run in with Michael it seems in the comm room.” Juhani eyed the man. “Why is he tormenting you Drehar?”

“He’s insane! Look what’s he’s done to be in the span of a few days of knowing the bastard.” He waved his stump of a hand around and then pointed to his eye. “He’s maimed me twice and threatened me countless other times!”

“Apologize Captain but there is more.”

“What is it?”

“It appears the ship vented several tankers of fuel and then jumped into Hyperspace.”

The three ran with all do haste towards the bridge. “Why did you fix the hyperdrive!” Yuthura shouted.

“Oh I’m sorry, I should have known some space ghost was haunting my ship hell bent on taking it for a joy ride.” No doors barred their way and they easily made it to the bridge. “Can you get us out of hyperspace?”

Drehar studied the ship’s readings from his seat and shook his head. “No, if I **** us to exit hyperspace now the sheer **** of it will rip the hull apart and even if I did and we somehow survived I doubt we’d have enough fuel for another jump let alone sublight engines. Blasted ghost thought this through…”

The Cathar looked out at the blue expanse that came rushing towards them in a never ending tide. “Can you get the coordinates to where he is taking us at least?”

Another look at the screen and the cyborg smiled; a minor success. “Yes, its 671257 cross 3rb71.” He paused; thinking. “Don’t know those particular set of coordinates. Do either of you two?”

Juhani shook her head while Yuthura’s lavender skin changed turning an almost transparent white. The awful memories, the countless beatings and lashings, the hours of starvation and cruel games her master’s would think up on a whim. Her voice was a shadow of itself, the wounds Michael had inflicted on her when he molested her body was one thing. But these were wounds she had long thought closed. “It’s Sleheyron…my former home.”