Post
by Praeothmin » Wed Jul 17, 2013 10:39 pm
I'm ba-ack!
Completed chapter 84...
Chapter 84
Wednesday, July 31th, 2374, 05:36 (18:36 Taris time)
He was standing in an arena, the crowd loudly cheering him and his opponent, an aging man well over fifty years old, with light-skin, gray eyes and gray hair, his hairline somewhat receding.
He was tall, a quick evaluation by Tharnok making him close to six feet three inches, with broad shoulders, and no apparent paunch.
The man was in shape, and held his double-bladed sword confortably, indicating he was well accustomed to its feel and weight, giving Tharnok the impression that the man was certainly good with it, though he didn’t know how he could know this.
He wore a Combat Suit that offered some protection without hampering its wearer in combat.
While the armor was too light to protect one efficiently in all out battles, it did offer sufficient protection in a Duel, where ability to evade was as important as being able to resist blows and energy discharges.
It certainly offered better protection than his own uniform, he thought.
While he could see the material was thicker than standard uniform fabrics, it felt too light, too confortable to be mistaken for armor by anyone.
And so there he was, standing in front of a Duelling opponent, wearing no armor, and wielding no weapons.
Once more, he doubted the wisdom in accepting this fight in exchange for credits.
The worst part of the deal was that, according to Carth, it had been his idea.
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Wednesday, July 31th, 2374, a few hours earlier
He was let out of the tank he had been submerged in, dried up and given his repaired uniform so he could dress himself.
“What do you mean, who am I?” Carth asked with panic in his voice.
“Just what I said: I do not know who you are, yet I can see by the way you react, and the familiarity you display with me that we are acquainted.” Tharnok said to the soldier.
“But I have no memory of meeting you.”
“Hello Tharnok,” The smaller man said, “My name is Zelka Forn.
I am a Doctor, and I was the one who took care of you.”
“Why did I need taking care off?” He asked, having no recollection of being injured, though his left shoulder did feel a bit stiffer than his right.
“You were in a fight, according to your friend, prior to being brought here, where your shoulder was injured through the use of a Disruptor Pistol.” Zelka explained.
“You were losing blood fast, despite your efforts to close the wound, and your fight upon entering my door only increased the blood flow.”
Tharnok looked at the man and saw no deception in his eyes, the man’s body posture betraying no unease, only calmness.
The man's explanations only brought more questions to Tharnok's mind, so he asked them.
Zelka, as it were, didn't have much to say, as he had only encountered Tharnock when Carth and he had come seeking help for his wounded shoulder.
Carth, on the other hand, knew more, which was normal in the big man's head, as they knew each other.
He told the giant man about the past two days, explaining that Tharnock, like Carth, was a soldier stuck on the planet by the Sith blockade, and that they were trying to gain enough money to get off by buying passage from a smuggler, after finding a lost friend of theirs.
But the big human felt that Carth wasn't telling him everything, and so he told him about his suspicions.
The soldier's face clouded, confirming his doubts, yet still he remained silent, still he wouldn't divulge anything else.
“Are you holding information from me because of Zelka?” He asked the soldier.
“Do you fear him learning something dangerous about me?”
“Yes!” Was the only answer he received from Carth.
“While I can guarantee your secret would be safe with me, I also understand your friend's reluctance at revealing important secrets about you to total strangers, even a stranger who saved your life... After you saved his.” Zelka added with a genuine smile.
“Although, if it can help assuage your friend's uneasiness, allow me to be completely honest.” The Doctor said.
“I am fully confident that you and your friend,” He told Carth, “Are with the Republic.”
Carth was surprised by this revelation, but tried to suppress his emotions.
Zelka's expression showed him he had seen the man's surprise, as if he was expecting it.
When neither Carth nor Tharnok spoke up, the man continued.
“First, let me thank you for not insulting my intelligence by pretending it isn't true.” Zelka told them honestly.
“You are surely wondering how I know this.” He began, but was interrupted by Tharnok.
“You know this because you've seen a uniform similar to Carth's not too long ago worn by someone who identified himself as a member of the Republic, and by judging from the looks you keep shooting subtly at the door to my left, that person might even still be here.” Tharnok told an astonished Doctor, Zelka's face telling him he had scored home with his assumption.
Carth's face displayed equal surprise, the Soldier no even trying to hide it this time.
After barely a few seconds passed, Zelka smiled, nodded, and walked towards the door Tharnok had indicated, inviting both he and Carth to follow him.
They entered another room similar to the one they had been in, another Medical Bay, yet this one was much bigger, as Tharnok saw more than a dozen tanks similar to the one he had been in, all of them containing a wounded person inside.
There were at least four different races of humanoids in the tanks, some igniting sparks of recognition in the big human.
What caught his attention rapidly were the uniforms hanging on the wall next to the tanks.
All were similar to Carth's, some even armored like his was, and all had identical insignias braided to it.
Tharnok assumed, even though the insignias did not seem familiar, that they were Republic in origin.
“I keep getting these people brought to me in great secrecy by some of the better citizens of this section of Taris, telling they were found in Escape Pod wreckages all over the lower levels.
Some I couldn't help,” Zelka said sadly, “while these people here are healing well, although not nearly as fast as our big friend.”He added with what suddenly became a suspicious frown.
Zelka looked Tharnok over again, seemingly for the first time, his gaze lingering on the man's belt, as if he was expecting to see something there he wasn't seeing.
He looked in Tharnok's eyes with a glint of mischief.
“Lost something, have you, Master Jedi?”
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The blade passed close to Tharnok’s head, too close for the big human’s comfort, yet he had somehow once again evaded the blow, with a practiced ease that kept surprising him every time he did.
Tharnok’s opponent seemed surprised as well, yet with each missed attack, the man renewed his efforts in the hope of finally connecting with his big opponent’s body, and with each attack, Tharnok’s opponent, Marl, was getting closer to his goal.
Marl was good, the big human could see, his attacks coming very naturally, flowing easily from every movement he made, as if he was simply walking with a double-bladed sword in hand.
Thanrok understood now why the crowd had cheered so loudly when the grey-haired warrior had been presented by the announcer before the duel had started.
His own cheers, as loud, if not louder when the announcer had reminded the crowd Tharnok was fighting unarmed, had surprised him immensily.
He had wondered if the people cheered because of his previous fights, which he’d been shown by Carth in Zelka’s office, or because some of them suspected he was a Jedi as Zelka had.
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“What’s a Jedi?” Tharnok asked the Doctor, a question which brought great concern to the man, as well as to Carth.
“Your wound must be more serious than I first believed,” Zelka told Tharnok, “For you to forget something as common as what the Jedi are.
Tell me,” he added, “Do you remember what a starship is?”
“Of course!” Tharnok replied.
“They are space vehicules that you use to travel from planet to planet.”
For some reason he could not explain, though, this knowledge seemed new to him, as if it had been something learned not too long ago.
Even explaining what starships were to Zelka, the big man still felt some slight disbelief at their existence, as if the concept was still somewhat alien to him.
He saw the Doctor looking at him, his smile coming back slowly, as if he was coming to peace with something.
“Well, I woulnd’t worry too much about it, because Jedi are very resilient, from what I’ve heard, and since your friend hasn’t denied my claim, I can thus be assured you are, indeed, a Jedi.” Zelka said with some degree of smugness.
Carth was about to say something when the Doctor silenced him with a raised hand.
“No worries, my friend, as I was already suspecting Tharnok was a Force-user as soon as I saw him, or rather, didn’t see him take out those two thugs a day ago.” Zelka told the Republic Soldier.
“And I am very glad that he is a Jedi rather than a Sith.
I can assure you I will surely not tell a soul of what he is, as he saved my life, and from the reports I received from some of my underground informants while you were fretting over him, Carth, you two have been doing a lot of good in a very short time, it seems.
I would certainly not want to deprive the poorer people of Taris the possibility of getting some justice for once.”
The man became silent then, and simply smiled at the two Soldiers.
“Thank you for your discretion, Zelka!” Tharnok told the Doctor.
“But you still haven’t answered my question: what is a Jedi?”
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What they had told him had sounded unbelievable at first, even though Carth had told him he had seen the big man do unbelievable things with his own eyes, Tharnok unable to discern even a hint of deception in their description of Jedi and their general abilities.
But then Carth had gone on to detail what he had seen Tharnok do, and the big man had almost decided the Republic Soldier was hallucinating.
But then he had been told of his duelling career and had been shown the footage of his fights.
As incredible as their claims had sounded, Tharnok had received first hand accounts of his prowess in the form of a visual media, evidence which couldn’t easily be dismissed.
He had seen himself display strength beyond belief, even for a man his size.
His speed was such that his fights had to be seen in slow motion for his friends to see what he was doing, even though Tharnok found he had no trouble following his movements in real-time screening.
Then Carth had told him about his extremely high resilience, which Zelka backed up by showing him how he would have been dead from his shoulder wound if he had been any other human being.
Without all that evidence, Carth would never have succeeded in convincing Tharnok to participate in the Duel he found himself in.
Even so, the big Jedi had had reservations which had still been there at the start of the fight.
But the longer he fought, every attack he evaded with an ease that seemed to defy logic, his experienced opponent almost as fast as he was, melted these reservations away, little by little.
Still, Tharnok wasn’t out of trouble, for while his body seemed to respond to attacks as if moving on its own, the Jedi couldn’t conceive how he could win if he continually evaded his opponent’s attacks and threw none of his own.
He was starting to try to analyze Marl’s attacks, to hopefully discern a pattern he could use, when he realized his mistake.
A low side-swipe came from the right, Tharnok barely evading by lifting his left foot over the attacking blade, while Marl continued his movement with a complete pivot.
As the big Jedi was beginning to form a plan of attack, thinking the older warrior vulnerable with his back to him, he received a direct thrust to his abdomen from the other man’s second blade, the pivot too fast for any weakness to be exploited, the move simply allowing the old warrior to reposition himself for another attack.
As the attack doubled Tharnok over, Marl simply reversed his pivot and came back around the other way, swinging a heel-kick at the big Jedi’s face.
All the big human could do was to roll with the blow, the kick still impacting like a mule’s on the big man’s jaw.
Expecting a broken jaw, he was extremely surprised that the attack hadn’t even phased him.
He used the momemtum imparted to his body by the kick to mimic Marl and pivot away from the dangerous warrior repositioning himself after the attack.
Marl’s face showed only slight surprise at the apparent lack of effects both his attacks had on his giant-sized opponent, and so he came hard at Tharnok as soon as his feet had been set.
Two downward swings coming in at angles were sidestepped by the Jedi, then a direct thrust to Tharnok’s face was evaded when the giant man bent backwards under it.
Marl took the chance to send a circular kick at the man’s exposed right knee, bending his opponent’s leg and sending him down on one knee, followed by a right elbow at the side of Tharnok’s head.
The Jedi’s mind was reeling, trying to find a way out of his predicament, pain suddenly flaring in the man’s head from the latest blow.
Marl sent a left knee straight at Tharnok’s face, but the big man’s reflexes took over and he blocked the attack with a left elbow, using the attack’s momentum to get back up to his feet.
As the older warrior advanced, Tharnok side-stepped to the man’s right while throwing a pivoting right elbow aimed at his attacker’s neck.
The attack was evaded by Marl, who as he was taking a side-step away from the big Jedi, swung one opf his blades which connected with his opponent’s right temple.
As consciousness was leaving the big human, lost memories flooded his mind with all the knowledge of one James Reynolds, slayer of living Gods.