> Unsubstantiated reports of widespread attacks in Akushima Prefecture have sparked renewed fears of an uprising among Tavit-wey clans. Prefectural officials are urging residents to stay indoors until the situation is brought under control.

>

> Royal officials stress that the incidents are still being investigated and that the alleged disturbances appear to be localized to Pratikaya. Prefectural officials did not return our inquiries, but security officials speaking on background indicated that there is 'strong evidence' linking these attacks to the radical Asantu-sar movement.

- Majida Guhri

Inusagi Today

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41:03:30 GrS

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Pratikaya's sakoola festival wasn't a tenth the size of the one at the capital, but even so, traffic above the city was crowded with outbound vessels taking visitors to their home towns throughout Akushima. There were even a few small liners heading for orbit with off-world visitors.

As the Aerosine skimmer began its descent toward Pratikaya, Lyra was the first to notice lazy columns of smoke hanging over the city. "What the..." She poked the intercom button. "Seelam, what's happening?"

There was a delay before Seelam responded. "It's not clear, my lady, but there are reports of attacks on citizens, explosions, and damage to many buildings." He paused for a moment. Inside the car's luxury cabin, everyone was staring out the viewports now. They could just make out the sound of chaotic communications over the speaker. "The security teams seem confused. They're saying that Asantu-sar are staging indiscriminate, mindless attacks and... taking their own lives with explosives, my lady." Seelam sounded disgusted and horrified at the same time.

"Mindless?" She flicked a dark glance at Rendix. "And they're detonating? Are you sure, Seelam?"

"I— as I said, my lady, the reports are confusing. The attacks seem to be concentrated near the spaceport, though. I will reroute us to the manor."

"What's the situation there?"

"Secure for now, my lady."

"Are the Asantu-sar fanatical?" Sera probed.

"I doubt it. From what I've heard they're committed, but they're not homicidal zealots." Lyra's face grew pallid. "What if this is what we saw on Lantillies?"

"Sera-sha?" The upbeat expression Reiko had been wearing all morning dissolved.

"Spaceport," Sera announced, patting the engineer's hand. "We need weapons." Her green eyes were sharp.

Beside her, Taz nodded and got the same grim-faced look Lyra saw on Enarc.

Doc, think you can use the Force to see what we're up against?"

"It's worth a try," he said, leaning back and closing his eyes. Taz's lips moved while he whispered the Dahannist meditation and probed through the Force. Seconds later he opened his eyes with a soft exhaled breath. "There's darkness out there, like I felt on Lantillies and Enarc."

"So we're dealing with the same stuff."

"On my planet!" Lyra steamed. "Whoever brought it here—" She keyed the intercom. "Take us to the spaceport, Seelam."

"But my lady," protested the footman, "surely the manor is the safest place for you."

"Don't argue, Seelam," she snapped, feeling tense and horror-struck. "Land at my ship's hangar."

"Yes, Lady Lyra," he acknowledged after a second and turned the airspeeder.

Skirmishes raged everywhere. As they circled the small port and approached the Skipjack Chimera's hangar pit, Lyra could see violent struggles at the terminals, hangars, and maintenance buildings. A few of the clan's security troops were putting up a valiant defense but the spaceport was lightly guarded. She counted at least fifteen separate altercations. Her heart fell into her stomach when she saw bodies lying on the ground, and evidence of the kind of explosion they'd seen on Lantillies. "Rendix, look."

"I see them." Sera had a cold, composed expression.

"What are we going to do, Sera-sha?" Rei's voice shook a little.

"We'll be safe on the ship, Rei-sha."

"There's something else," Taz interrupted. "Some kind of intelligence."

"What do you mean, Doc?"

"I felt a powerful presence in the Force, exerting some kind of influence over the attackers."

Sera nodded grimly. "Makes sense. The guy on Lantillies was mindless. But did you notice on the way down? They're attacking in groups. Cooperating."

Lyra felt sick thinking about the possibility. "One idiot going berserk was disastrous. If they can work together the carnage would be unimaginable."

The speeder touched down and Sera bolted through the door. The others were hard on her heels as they descended into the hangar and rushed up the freighter's boarding ramp. Everyone headed to their cabins, converging minutes later in the lounge. Sera was in her combat armor, her G9 rifle slung over her shoulder. Reiko had the new DL-51 blaster that Sera had given her on her birthday. Taz and Lyra had armed themselves as well. The sudden commotion brought Tetris and the other droids streaming from the engineering compartment.

Taz was about to inquire as to their next move when he suddenly winced and issued a painful groan. "He's calling me," he uttered in amazement, his face slack and pale. "Like Nanvarr did, but harder, more focused."

"Who's calling?" Lyra asked, a concerned hand on his shoulder.

Taz swallowed against rising nausea. "Whoever's directing those people."

"Why?"

He shook his head, as much a visceral act of resistance against the building compulsion he felt through the Force as to answer Lyra's question. "He knows I'm here, knows I can use the Force. I... he wants me for something."

Sera's worried look disappeared an instant later, replaced by hard calculation. "If we neutralize him, maybe we stop whatever's happening."

"Going anywhere near him is a death sentence!" Lyra cried, remembering what she'd seen in Brondvin's recording.

"No, Sera's right," Taz managed through clenched teeth. He sucked in stressed breaths while he worked to resist the compulsion that the other's mind was exerting on him. "That was Force energy. It was deadly to the Rayeths, but I can fight it." I hope, he added to himself. "I need to find him and end this madness."

Lyra looked unconvinced, but arguing would be useless. Seelam hovered near the boarding passage. "Find out what's going on with the security teams at the spaceport, Seelam, and let them know we can provide support. We can use the cargo bays to move people, too."

"As you wish, my lady," answered the footman, though he looked like that wasn't a very good idea.

She looked at Sera. "You're the soldier here. What next?"

"How are your teams equipped?"

"Blasters and patrol speeders."

"Any armor? Heavy weapons?"

Lyra shrugged. "Some light armored vehicles and maybe a couple of blaster cannons. The Eta fighters could probably scramble too, if their crews and pilots are here."

"You remember how hard it was to take down that Hrakian, even with my blaster." She looked stony and turned to Seelam. "Tell your troops to avoid closing with the attackers. The drugs they've taken give them at least twice their normal strength, and they're more resilient too. Your teams need to take head shots and use the heaviest blasters they have. And warn them that the attackers may spontaneously detonate."

Seelam blanched beneath his short beard. He cast a worried, incredulous look at Lyra. "My lady?"

"It's true, Seelam. I watched an attacker explode after he'd ripped a man's head from his shoulders." She shook at the horrid memory. "Tell them that if they begin glowing from within to move away quickly, at least three or four meters."

"Y-yes, my lady," he said, growing even paler. Nevertheless, he repeated the information into his comlink, then listened to the response. "Senguru Raga has arrived with more troops to secure the spaceport, my lady. Senguru Pavurati remains at the manor, and Senguru Bilarupal is coordinating security efforts at the city center."

Lyra perked up. "Uncle Shin? Tell him we're on our way to assist!"

Sera took Reiko's hands. "Doc and I are going to find whoever's doing this. You and Yuzu need to stay here and help Lyra, my love."

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"Alright." Reiko gave her a small, nervous nod and followed it with an intense, brief kiss. Then she took a deep breath and let her years as a Rebel on a combat vessel take over her jangling emotions. "Yuzu, spin up the reactors, and let's get weapons and shields online."

"Of course, Mistress," Yuzu acknowledged and headed for engineering.

"Ariel, prepare to receive wounded," added Taz, wishing he'd tried harder to find a bacta tank and surgical equipment before they left Ansible Free Station.

"I will, Master Taz!"

Tetris whistled and beeped a question.

"Yes, I'm sure Yuzu would appreciate your help, Tetris."

The astromech responded with a descending trill as he wheeled after Yuzu.

Lyra put on an obdurate face. "Come on, Rei, let's get the Chimera up there." She leaped up the steps toward the cockpit and did her best to ignore the feeling that something awful was about to happen.

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Lyra left the Skipjack Chimera idling on a patch of permacrete crowded with outbound ships near the spaceport's departure terminal. Taz and Sera met her at the boarding ramp. Reiko trotted up behind, her blaster in hand.

"Shouldn't you stay aboard, my love?" asked Sera while she attached a range extender to her rifle's barrel.

"Kalli, Yuzu and Tetris will watch the ship. I— want to help."

Sera cradled her face. "You're my brave girl, but stick close to Lyra, and no heroics from either of you! If things get too hot out there, you retreat. Those crazed attackers might be strong, but they can't get inside the ship. Got it?"

Both of the women nodded. Sera went up the ladder and through the top hatch. Lyra slapped the button to lower the boarding ramp.

Sounds of blasters mixed with horrifying screams and brutal, animalistic cries. Tourists and Inusagians poured indiscriminately through the terminal's exit doors, desperate to reach the waiting ships. Lyra shouted and waved, pointing toward the long ramp of a big Corellian Star Shuttle, flanked by the clan's security troops in their dull green jackets and pants. Her entreaties were lost in the din and mindless fear, though.

A child, dragged along by his terrified mother, stumbled and sprawled a few meters from the terminal. An instant later a snarling man smashed through a tall window, the sharp glass shredding his clothes and slicing into his skin. He raised blood-stained arms and leaped toward the visitors who were frozen in panic.

Reiko yelped a warning and sprinted forward without thinking. She barely registered the shouts behind her and tried to aim as she ran but she knew she'd never be able to get off a clean shot even from a few meters away. She got to the boy a second before the attacker, a haggard-looking man whose dark eyes were bloodshot and devoid of even a vestige of humanity.

She closed her eyes just as a screeching sound and a terrific blast of heat passed by her close enough to singe her face. The man's head erupted and he flopped to the ground. Astounded, she looked over her shoulder. Sera was prone atop the starboard docking ring, her G9 resting on its bipod. The commando's calm, deadly grimace never wavered as she shifted aim, squeezing off another shot, then another and another. Each time, one of the monstrous drug-fueled attackers dropped to the ground, their heads blasted away.

Uncle Shin was beside Hudson, his long curved jiden-sho in hand. "That was brave but foolish, honored guest Reiko." He grabbed the mother while Rei scooped up the boy. "Let us withdraw. We are still in danger here."

Indeed, they hadn't moved more than a few meters when the dead man's body ballooned and glowed with an angry light. Seconds later he exploded in a gruesome mess.

Reiko hugged the boy to her, shielding him from the awful scene, then handed him to his shaking, wailing mother. Raga beckoned to a female guard who rushed them toward the three-engined transport. As soon as they'd been hustled inside the big ship lifted, its ramp still extended.

"Rei-sha!" Sera exclaimed in her earpiece, "Are you hurt, my love?"

Taz looked over the shaking engineer with the practiced haste of a combat medic. "She's fine, Sera."

"Just scared," Reiko added, pointing at the remains of the man. "Is that what happened on Lantillies?"

Sera's voice was full of relief and gentle remonstration. "I said no heroics, remember?"

"I ran before I had a chance to think."

"So like you."

"Uncle Shin!" Lyra cried, embracing the old man.

"Lady Lyra, it is dangerous here. You should leave for the manor immediately."

"That's not happening, Uncle. We're here to help." She jammed her blaster into its holster. There were so many civilians rushing around, and unlike Sera, who'd resumed calmly dropping attackers with precision shots from her rifle, there was no way she'd be able to hit the right target. The screams and chaos continued inside the terminal, but Sera's sharpshooting had cleared the permacrete of hostiles for the moment. She slid down the ladder and joined them at the bottom of the ramp.

Shin nodded to the others and directed a handful of troops toward the terminal with crisp hand signals. "Honored guests, I regret meeting under these grim circumstances."

Lyra shook her head. "What's the situation, Uncle?"

The man's face was a stern mask. "We face nearly a hundred attackers like those you have seen. There are many casualties. We lost seven troops before Seelam delivered your warning." He tapped the Type 33T Andharai pistol in its holster on his hip. "Our hand blasters have had some effect, but with all of the noncombatants..." he took a two-handed grip on his sword. "We must fight them at close quarters."

Taz grunted against the nausea that still stabbed in his gut. "Here," he said to Lyra, unhooking the combat vibroknife from his belt. "Just in case." He turned to Shin. "These people are under the influence of a drug, Senguru."

Shin's gray eyes narrowed. "Are you certain?"

"We saw the same thing on Lantillies, Uncle," Lyra seconded. "It turns them into mindless killers with incredible strength and resilience."

"And there's a powerful Force user here who's controlling them," finished Taz.

"Why would anyone do such a thing?"

"We don't know yet. Sera and I are going to find whoever's doing this and stop them. Lyra and Rei will stay with you to help here."

"Very well, honored guest Oktos."

Taz took Lyra by the shoulders and kissed her fiercely. "I'll be back soon. Stay safe, Ensign Nimor."

"You too, Officer Oktos," she answered just as fiercely, despite the hint of fear in her voice.

Taz looked at Sera. "Ready?"

The question was unnecessary. She grasped her rifle in one hand while Reiko held the other "I love you, Rei-sha. You'll be safe with Lyra and Mr. Raga." She kissed her again. "Take care of her, Imp."

"Rei and I will be fine. Get out of here, Rebel," Lyra answered.

Sera squeezed Lyra's shoulder, then she trotted away with Taz, weaving through the chaotic crowd toward the city.

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Agonis's small armada of stealth droids transmitted from dozens of points around the city and Sykes took them in with a sweep of her sharp eyes. The images showed scores of people, willing addicts as well as the Sith scientist's experimental subjects, raining their mindless havoc upon the hapless Inusagians and off-world visitors in Pratikaya. Five of the Misery's mysterious hooded crew members sat at panels monitoring individual transmissions.

"Where is the spaceport feed?"

HL-0T regarded her with its big compound photoreceptors. "Regrettably, there is a malfunction in the holotransmitter for that droid, Madam Sykes."

Agonis waved a hand. "It is no matter. You can see that the drug is effective. Is this not the sort of chaos and corruption that Zann demands?"

She had to admit it was. But she didn't need to tell him that just yet. "I thought the induced psychosis was random."

"Under normal usage that is indeed the case."

"Then what explains this... concentrated chaos?"

Agonis swept his hand gracefully over the control box sitting on the edge of the holotable. "A precisely modulated signal can be used to trigger the psychic overload."

"Zann didn't order that."

The corner of the Sith's mouth curled into a sneer. "An additional gift, to repay his patronage."

Sykes's thin ruby lips turned down. "That wasn't what we—"

"I'm sure," Agonis interrupted, his voice raised impatiently, "a man as capable as Tyber Zann will find an appropriate use for it, unplanned as it is."

Her frown didn't abate, but Anais decided to let the point drop. On one of the feeds, she watched Breeze-augmented subjects ripping into their victims, decapitating, biting into throats with animalistic ferocity, breaking and tearing limbs. She hid her disgust behind a practiced, bland expression and let her eyes drift away from the savagery after a minute. They landed on the Sith across the table, who regarded her with perhaps the merest smile on his alien lips.

Is he reading my thoughts despite the scrambler? She flicked her gaze to the indicator lights on her bracers. Agonis smiled even more when she looked up.

"Impressive," she admitted, but followed up with a sharp question. "And what progress have you to report on production rate, Lord Agonis?"

"Good news on that front as well," answered the ruddy-complected Sith. "I will shortly have the means to rejuvenate the Rayeths."

"Rejuvenate? Explain."

"I'm sure you have much more important things with which to concern yourself, Madam. You may rest assured that the breeders will be able to produce the crucial isolate long into the future."

"So you require no more Rayeths?"

"Of course we require more!" he snapped another flash of impatience. "Even rejuvenated subjects cannot produce forever. Besides, the more producers we have, the more isolate we can harvest. However, since your people have proven incapable of procuring more Rayeths, I shall compensate for the shortfall caused by their failure in the near term."

Rawl stiffened beside her and growled. The smile Sykes showed Agonis had all the warmth of a Nelvaanian blizzard. "I'll be sure to take that under advisement, Lord Agonis."

He motioned toward the images. "These results meet the requirements you gave me, do they not?"

It wouldn't do her any good to argue with him, much as she might want to. "They appear to be acceptable."

"Excellent." He made a bare nod toward the figure sitting at the controls, and the transmissions faded. Agonis swept an arm toward the door where a robed and hooded figure waited. "My aide will escort you to the lounge where you may refresh yourselves before returning to your shuttle."

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The lightsaber hissed and hummed in Taz's hands, cutting through the crazed, rushing woman whose luxurious clothes and clutching, clawed hands were dark with half-dried blood. A step away, Sera fired quick blasts into a snarling man's chest, then ducked under his sweeping arms. She grabbed him from behind and drove her vibroblade into both lungs before she finished him with an upward stab that severed his spinal column and scrambled his brain matter. They hustled away as one of the corpses began its deadly glow leading to the inevitable explosion.

"They don't all explode," Sera half-stated, half asked as she pulled Taz into an alley off the grassy boulevard they'd been traversing.

"Some kind of random side-effect?" His inquiry indicated he was as much in the dark as she was.

Sera poked her head around the corner of the wood-framed shopfront, sweeping for more of the mindless attackers. A quintet of foolhardy adolescents roamed the empty streets, stepping over bodies and opportunistically smashing the shop windows so they could help themselves to the merchandise within.

Sera frowned. She'd been that kind of thief once, looting stores with gangs of children, then hustling through the filthy alleys of Kor Runal, steps ahead of the security droids and hired thugs that passed for police. The ones who weren't caught or shot would head for an Amberdyre hideout deep inside the city's labyrinth of stinking subterranean tunnels. Then she'd pray that her haul of baubles was enough to avoid a beating, or worse. But it usually wasn't.

She blinked away the memory. "You alright, Doc?"

Hands on his knees, Taz sucked in deep breaths and shook the sweat from his brows. "Fine," he lied, avoiding a bout of vomiting only by a supreme act of will. He fished an anti-emetic patch out of his medkit and slapped it on his neck. "We're getting close."

"How do you know?"

"I feel like my stomach's being turned inside out and my head's being squeezed by a four-hundred-year-old Dowutin. And it gets worse the closer we get."

"So you know where they are?"

He twirled his hand in a vague circle. "There's something else, Sera."

"Spill it, Doc."

"At the instant they die I can feel... fear and sorrow." He looked even sicker. "They're being forced to do this. Some of them, anyway." He was pale with despair.

You can help them all. Unleash your fury.

The familiar, unwelcome dark side presence taunted Taz, driving another battering ram against his mental defenses. "Shut up!" he snarled.

"Doc?" Sera questioned, looking startled.

He waved a clammy hand. "Not you." He tapped his temple and got to his feet. "He has to be stopped. We need to get to him while I can still resist whatever he's doing to me."