With a leap into empty space, Daven reached back in the nick of time. He took the rope, swung a few more meters out across the chasm, and when he felt it go taut slid down. Then he was swinging back again. Seconds later, his violent impact against solid ice almost dislodged him.
"Scrag!" he yelped, choking. The youth's grip loosened, slightly, from shock. Knotted cord made a strange, silvery rasp in metal gloves before he managed to slow his descent.
Daven did not wait to recover his breath. Continuing to rappel down as fast as he could, muscles screaming from the unfamiliar exertion, he hardly registered the immense drop. Don't look up. This mantra dominated his thoughts, kept him going. Don't look up. Don't look up. Don't look up.
As he dipped below the ridge, he had seen their turret again, angled-upward seventy-degrees. The scattered bodies were not visible from his position. Scorch marks, and the craters dotting the camp, however, were. His band's turret was half-melted. Glowing-red slag encircled the end of the cannon's enormous barrel, a bloody beacon in a stark-white wasteland. Motes of molten durasteel spiraled skyward, and were then beaten back-down by the frozen wind.
A thick veil of ice crystals suffused the air on Hoth. They caught and reflected watery sunlight, and made everything shimmer as if the whole world was underwater. It lent the scene an ethereal, dreamlike quality. But this was a nightmare. Daven clenched his teeth, making for the hole in the cliff face. Ten more meters. Just ten more meters, and stop thinking about someone cutting the rope. Just reach the cave, and 'and then' will take care of itself.
Two weeks prior he messed up, and had to lay low for a while. Clabburn Tundra was not ideal, but the boss on this job was known to him. Solid woman, really. Daven hoped the Svaper was rotting in Chaos. She offered him an easy gig with generous pay, was upfront about the 'Hoth' detail, and promised he could leave in a few months if he chose. After the greater galaxy forgot his face, and how much that polstine shipment was worth.
When he arrived, their operation seemed solid. Because it was. A perfectly-maintained J-1 proton cannon, engineers who could keep it perfectly-maintained even here. Sprogs who could fire at ships that barely skimmed the planet's atmosphere, and still hit six-times-out-of-ten. A fine setup. Knock down a few ships, offload cargo, collect some scrap, siphon some fuel, rinse and repeat until the cannon paid for itself.
It worked twice. Their confidence was high. Then today.
Idiot Svaper had not expected to miss their quarry. The Weequay sprogs certainly had not expected the fancy JV-7 escort shuttle to enter atmosphere, let alone land. The first burst of ion cannon-fire sent those schuttas straight to Chaos in pieces, and Daven hoped they were impaled on all six gates. Kriffing stupid, careless, stupid sleemo mudscuffer prolapsed gizkas! This was their fault. This was their fault for picking that ship!
His heart almost beat its way free of the male’s ribcage as a faint, distant voice reached his ears. "Your cowardice is a powerful asset." Daven froze. Burying his face in the cliffside, he whimpered. "You've outlived the others. Do you suppose that is an achievement?"
Low, modulated and full of mockery, that voice sent a chill down his spine. Nobody's cutting the rope. Don't look up.
His objective was still perhaps three meters below. Daven released the rope.
When he landed, a jarring impact went up his legs, through his spine and rattled Daven's brain in his skull. His shoulder hit the wall and he collapsed, then crawled forward several paces. Lurching half-upright, he went past a Starhawk speeder bike at the entrance.
Pale blue lichen glowed on the walls and ceiling here. He had been outside since dawn. Now for the first time he noticed the deafening wind in the chasm, as it shrieked by just outside the tunnel. Maybe he imagined the voice. He could not possibly have heard it. Maybe he got away. Don't be stupid. They're like akk. You don't 'get away.’
Daven and his companions never expected their quarry to be one of 'those.'
When he drew his blaster, fumbling it, and fired at the Starhawk, the sudden burst of noise alarmed him. Daven dropped the blaster, and automatically bent to pick it up. Then his gaze rose to take in the swoop.
When an especially-dim sprog learned his role did not require him to have it, the Weequay stored the Starhawk in their cave base, protected from the elements. The side was now lightly-burned. Aiming, he fired again, this time at the fuel tank. He spun and dove further into the cave.
Nothing. The lack of a cataclysmic explosion made him look back. Other than a fresh scorch mark on the bike's seat, it remained intact. Daven shot at the swoop, missing, and then fired again and screamed, "Explode you shukking schutta!" As soon as the words left his mouth he turned and sprinted down the largest nearby tunnel.
He maintained his grip on the tiny holdout blaster throughout. It became heavy as lead in his hand when that cool, even male voice echoed down the passage, unmistakably close. "One assumes running gives you the illusion of control."
As Daven pivoted he slipped on a wet patch and fell hard. He grunted and then kicked to propel himself backward on his rear, scooting and firing at a robed shadow.
The shadow walked through the hail of blaster bolts, slowly, patient as a nexu stalking its prey. A brief eruption of scarlet light chased away the cave's washed-out illumination. His lightsaber's crimson blade crackled to life, and caught Daven's one shot that did not go wide.
Just as quickly the lightsaber switched off, at the same moment a blaster bolt slammed into the wall beside the youth's head. It left a bright orange bullseye on the ice. He sprang upright and kept running.
“So dim. So skittish! I'm reminded of a Kaadu I once ate."
What felt like a heavy couch struck Daven from behind and carried him several meters ahead a snowdrift, piled-up where the corridor made a sharp turn. One hand in his pocket, he rolled sideways - and the snow sizzled and became vapor. In an instant the black figure stood over him. Red accents on his jet black saber hilt caught Daven's eye. For the fraction of a microsecond he saw them, the boy thought of blood dripping down that incandescent blade.
He whipped the bag of blinding dust from his pocket into the Sith's eyes. A thick arm rose to block, but he made a sound and lurched even so. Mindless with fear, Daven kicked high at his attacker's upraised wrist. His ankle was seized in a vice grip, and twisting to put a hand under himself, Daven lashed-out with his other leg at the point of the robed man's elbow.
He let go, with another constrained grunt. The youth skittered out-of-reach, shooting while he fled. The lightsaber wiped away the first blaster bolt. Ignoring the second as it whizzed by his ear, the Sith continued to wipe yellowish eyes. They were inflamed, red like his weapon. His callous smirk of the past few minutes was gone.
The Sith spoke slowly, his voice half an octave deeper than before. "Impressive. You missed." He wiped his face again, listening to receding footsteps. "At two yards, no less."
0000
Clutching his chest, Daven slowed. A marionette with strings cut, he immediately slumped down.
How long had he been running so far? The tunnels got wider, and then suddenly narrowed or shrunk, at times forcing him to advance bent-double. There were crystalline pillars lining his way, as if this place were the antechamber in one of the great Hutt estates on Nar Shadaa. Then, suddenly, the walls were smooth and bare as a prison cell.
Certainly he had been lost for awhile. Not that it mattered, yet. One disaster at a time. Daven refused to think about the fact that he was lost, until sure that the Force user was gone.
For a few minutes, the only sounds were his labored breathing, and the steady drip from hanging icicles. He might have stayed there longer, legs splayed, propped against the wall, except it bothered him. The drips came exactly one second apart. Like they were keeping time. Something about it frightened Daven. At last, he rose, pausing while the blood rushed back to his head. Once his vision cleared, he trudged on.
The dead-end ahead was a high, flat wall of blue ice. A concentration of luminescent plants framed the oval surface of a perfect natural mirror. He saw his haggard face, took in huge, vacant grey eyes a shade lighter than the cloak about Daven's shoulders. He drew the thick cloak tighter. Slowing near a branch in the path, he spared a glance that way. When he refocused on the mirror, an indistinct shape loomed behind him.
Daven dove aside as a long, crackling tendril of electricity, colder and brighter than the glowing lichen, lashed through the air where he had just stood. Unable to run now, he stumbled and staggered along, free hand on the wall. Rounding another bend, he came face-to-face with a man.
Daven covered his mouth to stifle his scream. A few scant traces of flesh hugged the grinning skull. He heard pounding feet. A male corpse hung upside-down from the low ceiling. Their cold-weather cloak hung in tatters like a curtain before him, still secured to the long-dead sentient's withered throat. Bright cyan eye sockets flashed, infested with lichen.
He sprang behind a convenient mound of snow. Huddled there, half-buried in the dry powder, he blinked fast. The human could not hear anything now, but kept still, glove still over his mouth. Daven tried to slow his heart rate through sheer willpower. Surely the Force user heard it? That, and the painful roar in his ears, was deafening.
Then, at last, the scrape of a boot on snow. He became aware of a skeleton partly-submerged in his snow pile. Only the barest remnants of clothing remained on bare bones. Their head rested on their shoulder, peering sidelong at the new living, breathing company. Hot blue eyes bored into him.
The footsteps approached. Daven and the skeleton stared at each other, unblinking.
When his pursuer spoke, the Sith's voice was pitched lower than before. "I'll burn you."
Daven thought the skeleton seemed to lean in closer. It held his gaze, refusing to let him go. The deep voice resounded unnaturally in this wide passage. "Peel the flesh from your bones. Break your fragile mind as I've done to countless other insects. Take this offer. Imagine how much worse it gets, if you keep wasting my time."
The bootsteps slowed by the mound, and then they stopped.
He dared not breathe. Whether it was exhaustion, terror, or this simple additional effort to hide his presence, he felt lightheaded. When Daven was at his limit, it came. A hoarse, menacing chuckle that erased all his awareness of the snow inside his collar, scorching his skin. That chuckle came from directly above. The Sith was right there.
"Stupidity. It irks me. I have a previous engagement, but . . . Perhaps I can spare the time."
He shut his eyes, but the tears still flowed. The sound of the bootsteps began again. This time, they were departing, down the wide tunnel.
It was two minutes before Daven released the air in his lungs. He fell forward on his face as though shoved over by a strong man. Panting and gasping, it nonetheless only took him half-a-minute this time to rise. Lucky. He was so, so lucky. Daven had gotten lucky rarely enough to know he should take advantage.
Cursing himself for the forty-second delay, he went back the way he came, in the opposite direction his pursuer headed. He had no idea where to go, no inkling of where he was. He could not have cared less. At the moment, he had to disappear. That was the mission.
He advanced one pace into the tunnel.
"Let's not rush this, boy."
Daven ducked, swiveled and went to one knee, scooping up a fistful of snow as his blaster rose to eye-level. His knee banging on solid ice made him flinch.
I’m about to die, huh?
