Chapter 3: Bloodlust of the Species’

“So much cargo on the ship! We could make quite some profit off of it,” one Huk noted, lugging a small crate from the ship to be scavenged.

“Forget about selling, we could use such things for our own use! Perhaps against those dirty Kaleesh,” another Huk noted, scurrying around the other Huk’s crate.

“Stop your coveting, both of you,” snapped another, larger Huk, “These supplies are not for our picking. Czerka is to take possession of it all as we will be paid well for their return.”

The Huk’s beedy eyes scanned the barren fields paranormally, expecting death or intrusion at any moment, “And regarding the dirty Kaleesh we must hurry. Need I remind you we’re on their territory, and despite our victory against them they can still…”

The Huk’s words were finally drowned out by a boiling pot of all the sounds of war. Blaster fire raining over head, smoldering bodies of fellow insect comrades, infamous war cries of the hated species, blood and excruciating brutality; all thundered and shrilled at the Huk’s ears.

After the fall of a handful of their species, his comrades had finally taken the threat to concern and as some scavenged any and all weaponry from the ship, another handful prepared themselves for combat through their own physical means of combat.

The Huk took immediate cover behind the ship, out of sight, and reached for a radio on his alien like utility belt.

“Scaper 7, this is Ev Khar-kag. We’re under attack and require immediate extraction of materials scavenged from the attack on the Corellian Transport. I repeat, we need immediate assistance and extraction!”

[hr]

Xiom somersaulted violently as an angry Huk went charging at the Kaleesh with all its fury. Having witnessed the Kaleesh warrior slay three of its brethren already, its persistence had risen to a boiling point, overcoming all of the Kaleesh’s weight and defenses.

Xiom felt the rigid dirt graze across his back as his body continued to slide by the Huk’s force, and once his body lost momentum he forced his warrior spear up in protection as the Huk’s scorpion clawed back limbs went for his neck. He felt the pressure and weight that the Huk urged against his only means of defense and cringed as its weight and muscle became even more forceful.

Just as Xiom felt his muscles tire from holding the Huk’s lethal claws back there was a rain of lasering fire that shot over his body, clustering and soaring into the Huk’s body. The black, miniature pupils in its large tear shaped eyes grew twice their size and the Huk’s weight was no more.

Xiom heaved the carcass off of him and turned to see where the fire had come from.

“Yousa be welcome,” Mart Ma said, slapping in a new clip into his Blaster rifle. Xiom gave a curt nod of thanks to the Gungan and turned to proceed to his killings.

He turned back to the Huk infested ship and saw three Huk’s standing at one of the entries to the ship, all armed with confiscated weaponry from the ship. They cocked their blasters and readied to fire. Before they took offensive action, however, Xiom grabbed his old enemies body and raised it as a shield as he began charging towards the stream of fire.

The Kaleesh occasionally staggered and grunted in his dash as he felt some shots graze his arm, hip, and legs yet continued on daringly knowing his torso and head were shielded completely by the body.

Xiom felt his weight (and his makeshift shield’s) crash into another body and he tackled down upon it as it crashed by his weight.

The downed Huk’s second appendages felt around in the air for the reptilian nemesis’ body while being weighted down by Xiom’s weight its feeble attempts cut short as the Kaleesh’s spear found its way through the Huk’s skull. Two bodies now had lain motionless. Xiom quickly returned to his feet and retrieved his polearm at the sound of the Huk’s cocking their weaponry from new loads.

With grace and a warrior’s momentum he swung right with his pole for the insect’s neck. Intinctly the Huk swerved its head and countered it with its secondary claw, grasping onto the tip of his blade. With his opponent partially exposed, the Huk fired madly upon Xiom, aiming for his hearty chest. In foresight, however, Xiom sidestepped from the fire allowing the pellets of laser to impact upon his own brethren.

Both Huks screeched in pain as lasers pelted each other; Xiom had predicted the other Huks attack from behind as well and knew his perfectly placed dodge would injure them both. As his current opponent staggered in pain from the brief burst of blaster pistols from its own kind, Xiom made an uppercut for the Huk’s skull, bearing claws rather a fist.

Turquoise juices oozed at Xiom’s blood stained claws and from the new orifice he had created and soon the creature fell limp.

Xiom gave a few flicks of his fingertips to rid the Huk’s blood off and turned to meet his second foe. The Huk’s brow narrowed violently and its pupils gleamed with a seething hate for his foe. Quickly it scavenged another blaster pistol in a nearby crate, cocked both, and unleashed a deadly fire upon Xiom.

With no reasonable defenses now to turn to Xiom crouched and did his best to cover his masked face and chest from the blows with his combat-taped arms. Xiom roared in pain and anger as his arms and few other spots on his body took the burning, excruciatingly painful shots.

Each shot took a bit out of Xiom’s tolerance and endurance yet with each painful hit he found more will and reason to do his best for the endurance of the shots. Little by little the blaster pistol’s lasers seared off parts of his warrior tape and began smoldering and breaking his maroon skin.

As Xiom’s arms began growing hotter, redder, and even more smoldered he found salvation from a familiar echoing shot and the blaster pistol had seized fire.

He looked up and by some distance away he could see vividly the smoking barrel of Jomaen’s rifle. “Always like you,” Jomaen called out to him, over the chaos, “Come to a close call and have a friend watch your back.”

“I guess a thanks is in order then?” Xiom replied in a playfully competitive way.

Jomaen chuckled at his response and snapped back to aggression as he heard the angry screech of a charging Huk with vibrodaggers in hand.

Xiom was tempted to charge after it as well yet instinctly stopped as a familiar hissing and cackling sounded towards him. He turned to see four more Huks appear from the ships direction. Three had been carrying vibroswords (presumably confiscated form the ship) while the last had been armed with a similar blaster rifle from before.

Xiom sighed and prepared for battle once more as he brought up his spear. Xiom watched them all carefully, they held their ground with their flickering blades. Xiom guessed with he might be able to take on two Huks at a time…given the blaster rifle could be disarmed…and still that would leave one. That was when he knew there’d be a gamble of his own life in the matter, but Xiom had a reputation of luck on his side, as if there was a force watching over him assuring him life…

Xiom gave the spear a twirl within his clawed fingers, squinted his eyes for a focus on the rifleman, and arched his spear through the air. When it game to spear throwing, Xiom was a decent throw, however he had much preferred close-combat.

The spear’s decent upon armed Huk had come close for its kill and could have succeeded had not another’s vibroblade deflect and shatter it in mid air. Xiom’s eyes grew large seeing the vibroblades searing might destroy his spear into fractions of pieces. He had taken some time and quality into making his only means of offense…and now it was gone.

A larger gamble was now at hand and Xiom felt skeptical with the new scenario. He could feel the rifleman’s finger begin to squeeze around the trigger and quickly Xiom took the opportunity to evade.

[hr]

Like a fanatical pinball, blaster fire ricocheted from every direction, bouncing off carapaces and scavenged weaponry and a trio of Huks were down. Ben breathed off the overheating fumes that danced from his blaster pistol and admired the three bodies, all had been armed with more advanced guns then his simple pistol yet all three lacked the training within their weaponry and the ability to gun sling like no other.

“Too slow,” Ben commented to the corpses.

His raising ego ended sharply as a duo of more insect soldiers came charging at his right, screeching their war cry, and before Ben could react there was a proverbial cyan orb that soared through the air, straight for the two. Ben’s initial reaction was to tuck and roll away from the expected explosion. A satisfying explosion followed by bodies flying overhead caused Ben to get back to his feet and turn to thank his Gungan ally.

“BEN! BEHIND!” Mart Ma screamed.

He turned without thinking, brandishing his pistol once more, and fired point blank into a charging Huk’s torso. It staggered with wide eyes full of surprise and agony and Ben unloaded four more shots into its chest. It soon fell lax, carapace smoldering.

Ben cave a curt salute to Mart Ma whom simply grinned back.
[hr]

Jomaen was tackled once more by another raging Huk, this one unarmed. The Huk had managed to use one of its claws to knock his rifle out of his hands while the other arched back ready to make a clean cut for his neck.

Luckily for Jomaen, he still had once available arm to reach back with, recalling his last victim’s possessions. He felt the warmth of a vibrodagger twirl within his fingers as he reached back to confiscate a corpse and swiftly wedged it into the insect’s feeble neck as the Huk’s claw came within centimeters of his own neck.

He kicked off the insect’s weight from his lying body and slowly got back to his feet only to feel that irritating, mutual plunge of weight against his body again. He fell forward from a Huk striking from behind. Face buried in the dust and body pinned down, Jomaen had no resistance against his attacker and began feeling the agonizing claws of the Huk rip against his back.

Jomaen roared in absolute pain and rage as the Huk persistently ravaged against his back. As Jomaen felt his newly constructed cape and short warrior cloak rip against the Huk’s merciless wrath there was a ping of salvation as Jomaen felt no longer the Huk’s claws rip against his back.

The warrior found the strength to get back to his feet and thrust the Huk’s dead weight off his back and he retrieved his rifle. Before him he saw a smoking pistol belonging to Ben. Jomaen hesitantly gave a respectful nod to the human before noticing the Gungan release hellfire upon a group of charging Huks.

Jomaen cocked his rifle and took part in the slaughter.

[hr]

“Where’d he run off to?” Hissed a Huk, bearing a vibrosword.

“He’s behind that crate,” growled the rifleman, motioning over to a crate that two Huks had begun moving from the ship.

All four slowly went to approach it, going as slowly and cautiously as possible. Their luminescent cyan eyes focused on any movement from the crate, anticipating retaliation. Their slow march cut to a stop as something soared overhead. It plopped right in front of them and blinked a menacing red.

“THERMAL GRE…”

A dazzling red explosion mutilated two of the Huk’s that were sent flying while the rifleman and one other vibrosword wielder managed to dodge from the fury of the grenade.

Smoke billowed from its detonation point and slowly scattered among the field. The Huks shielded their eyes from the billowing smoke and let an eerie silence ring into their ears.

Within an instant the Huk bearing the blaster rifle felt a sharp pain slash across his arm and had been disarmed of its weapon. Out from the smoke appeared the Kaleesh warrior whom dove for the dropped rifle at the same time the Huk had made to pincer the warrior.

Xiom turned once in possession of the gun and unleashed a stream of bursts into the bug. It staggered and fell into a heap. Xiom looked up to see the Huk raise its sword readily at him and hissed violently.

He discarded his rifle and responded to the Huk’s hiss by cracking his knuckles, “I don’t need a gun to kill you.”

The Huk charged him and Xiom braced himself for a counter attack.

The Huk’s sprint converted into a small jump for a downward slice upon Xiom. Xiom managed to sidestep from the blade’s path while the Huk’s mighty secondary claw had anticipated his agility and counter attack. The warrior went for a claw to the insect’s skull but reached only so far as it was seized by the Huk’s vice grip.

The Kaleesh cringed and growled in utter pain as the Huk’s claw sank deeper and clamped down harder into his flesh however managed to use every muscle in his arm to rip himself out of the clamp, and in turn ripping off the vice claw from its joint.

A splash of blue spurted from the Huk’s arm yet managed to ignore the pain entirely and swung towards his nemesis’ neck. Xiom barely managed to duck in time and anticipated its other working vice coming down on him. Xiom used both hands to grab hold of it before it reached his masked face and gave it a pleasant snap.

Xiom felt the insect stagger in pain once more as it had lost now both of its back-up plan appendages. It swung once more, for Xiom’s stomach.

The Kaleesh barely managed evade as the vibrosword came across his vest and singed his stomach. In that moment Xiom could feel the weakness, the vulnerability in the insect and used the opportune moment to force his claws for the hilt of the vibrosword. The Huk resisted Xiom’s disarming technique but it’s resistance soon proved to be futile as he bore his own claws into the insect’s fingertips and called full possession of the blade. And with one final sweep he decapitated his foe.

Xiom panted in all his grief, exhaustion, and pain. He admired the turquoise liquid dripping from his blade and then looked upon his own and felt the pains of war that he had barely experienced yet grown to love. He felt like a true Kaleesh warrior, not one of his own modern day that simply came of age to achieve such a title, but those of his past whom waged war against the Huk’s years ago. Though so much hell and chaos had been bared within those moments he felt in commune with something…something great. His gamble, his fight, his will to live, his kills; they all felt different within those last moments then any other time he had fought. In fact he almost felt it right then…his pride and power being boosted right then by some sort of essence or abstract being…

“Wow, you really let them have it,” Ben commented as the battle plains were now silent.

Xiom turned to face the other three, whom appeared slightly battle-scarred yet not as bloodied and stained as him.

“Yikes!” Mart Ma exclaimed, “Yousa be bleedin preety goodsa.”

“Battle means blood,” Jomaen said high pride, “And we Kaleesh bear that rightfully.”

Xiom didn’t speak, his mind was clouded by whatever it was he was feeling…yet it had all slowly faded away and he looked around him to wake back into reality…and his eye caught something move behind the ship followed by a light clatter.

Xiom’s attention immediately turned upon whatever was beyond the ship and he readied his newfound blade for offense. He began slowly towards the bow of the transport, senses keen to any movement or sound.

Closer and closer he neared and the response was sudden and unpredictable to the Kaleesh warrior. A blue blur jumped out from its cover, whipping a claw against his chest. Xiom recoiled from the sudden yet hardly severe wound and whipped his head around to see what had hit him. In the distance, he watched the last Huk sprint off into the grasslands noticing something in the palm of its twitchy fingers.

“Let him live for now, Xiom,” Jomaen suggested, “Sooner or later he’ll run into a village. Surely he’ll meet a gruesome punishment there.”

“To Mustafar with that! That bugger stole our data chip!” Ben snapped.

“Data chip?” Xiom questioned.

“Yea! Most important thing we stole from Czerka!” Ben remarked hastily.

“Weesa loose that, weesa no get paid!” Mart Ma yelped panicky.

Xiom’s vibroblade shimmered in hunger for the Huk’s carapace as he twirled it within his claws, “Then I’m going after him.”

“WAIT!”

Xiom’s foot caught hold in the dirt, pausing his ambitious chase abruptly. He turned and caught something Ben had thrown to him.

“It’s a comlink, incase you never heard of them on this rock,” Ben commented, “You’ll be able to keep in touch with us on the ship. We’ll need to know where you are for an extract.”

Xiom nodded in thanks and sprinted towards the hated species, the last thing on his mind was loosing his prey.