Labyrinth of Death | Chapter 11

Prologue | Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8 | Chapter 9 | Chapter 10 | Chapter 11


Raenen peeked over Moran’s shoulder as the captain knelt beside the wall of the black dome that was the labyrinth. Both stared at a red diode shining dimly.
“Touch it?” suggested Raenen.
Captain Moran pressed the diode. It retreated into the wall. He glanced up at her, one eyebrow raising. “Prepare yourself. This may be a trap.”
Raenen’s hand gripped her blaster unconsciously as the captain rose and stepped back. Something clicked, and Raenen’s blaster finger twitched. A rectangular shape about six feet high retreated into the wall, revealing a dark corridor.
“Let’s go.” The captain entered first, gripping his blaster with both hands. The lights on his helmet switched on, and he cast them across the passageway. His voice echoed back to her. “Smells like a bantha’s behind in here!”
Raenen stepped inside the passageway. The door clanged shut behind her. She jumped, her heart skipping a beat, but resisted the urge to cry out.
She flicked her headlights on and ventured down the passageway. A dark fear grabbed her heart and began twisting. In her vision, the walls of the passageway seemed to close in.
Something grated beside her. She pulled her blaster out of its holster and turned quickly, pointing the blaster at a passageway that seemed to have come out of nowhere. With a look down into its depths, she shuddered and ran after the captain.
He held up his hand, his black gauntlet visible in the illuminance cast from her headlights. “Shh!”
Raenen froze, the fear returning. She held her breath. Everything was silent.
Everything?
A dull clump, clump, clump echoed down the passageway.
Raenen swallowed, trying to conquer her fear, and raised her blaster.
Captain Moran turned and glanced at her. “Wampa?” he whispered.
Raenen shrugged and looked back down the other end of the passage.
Without warning, a door slid between them, blocking Raenen’s path forwards.
Raenen screamed.

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Borj sat at his control pad, watching the labyrinth screen and the flickering blue dots that indicated the detachment of Sith troopers sent to apprehend him. He cast a scornful look at the fallen Sith trooper lying against the wall. The young man’s lips were blue with cold, and his face had taken on a ghostly pallor. Borj laughed softly. Foolish boy.
A red dot appeared in the uppermost level of the labyrinth. Borj grinned at it. A wampa. The Sith troopers had gunned one down so that its light turned stationary, but why should he care? Over a hundred wampas lived in the lower levels of the labyrinth.
He touched the screen just in front of one of the blue dots. A black line extended from the wall and cut off the dark blue path in front of the blue dot. Time to play with the troopers and trap them in with the wampas. He touched the wall on the blue dot’s other side, trapping the trooper in a small room.
Borj laughed and manipulated the wampa’s path towards the trapped trooper. He wouldn’t be able to see the combat, and that annoyed him slightly, but he still enjoyed watching the lights stop moving and darken. He laughed again. Everything was falling into place exactly as he wanted it. And soon, the Sith would no longer know of his existence.

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Raenen’s hands squeezed her blaster tighter. The clumping had been cut off when the wall had slid out between her and Captain Moran. She swallowed, fear tearing at her mind. Wampas. Barras’ more recent communication had informed the captain that he had deactivated the traps and was holding Borj captive. But why was the labyrinth acting up now?
She closed her eyes and collapsed to a kneeling position. “No,” she whispered. “He must have been deceived.”
A sword of anger fought with the flame of fear, the silver blade finally slashing the fear into subjugation. She rose, her eyes hard. “I have a Sith to kill.”
Her feet took her back down the passage. She stopped at the corridor that had appeared a while ago and entered.
The door slid shut behind her. Another blocked her way. She sucked in a breath and kicked the door. It didn’t move.
She looked up, her headlights sweeping the roof. Was that a hatch?
Something rumbled within the walls. Her head swiveled towards it.
Black slits opened near the bottom of the wall. Water flooded out.

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Dmitri Pendragon
Blog Moderator