by Murasaki99
"Come on," said Jix. Grabbing Praji, he pulled the trooper's less-damaged arm over his shoulders and strode off down the hall toward the place where a pair of guards in blood red robes maintained station outside a lift tube.
"Let go," hissed Praji, pulling back as hard as he could. He was too weak however, and his efforts to impede Jix's progress failed. The Corellian moved inexorably toward his destination. All too quickly he arrived at the lift tube and halted in front of the guards.
Since his hands were occupied, Jix gave the guards a polite nod. "Good evening. The Witch of Dathomir says you're the only ones who can cure this man of his wounds."
"The old woman is crazy, and so is my companion," said Praji in a desperate rush. While the Imperial guards were drawn from the ranks of stormtroopers like himself, they held themselves apart and aloof. The two groups maintained an uneasy distance, and given the guard's reputation as killing machines, Praji would rather have been anywhere but here. "Please tell him," here Praji tipped his head toward Jix. "To go away."
The guards stood motionless for what seemed to be a very long time. They might have been conversing over their internal comlinks, but it was impossible to tell since no sound emerged from their closed helmets. At last one of them stirred and spoke. "What wounds?"
"Oh, these." Jix turned, forcing Praji to turn with him and expose his back to the guard's gaze. "Pick up his tunic, and have a look."
The guard who had spoken first reached out, grasped the lower hem of Praji's black tunic and tugged upwards, exposing his shirtless lower back and the bloody bandages encircling it. The second guard moved slightly as if he too were looking at the injury. Another long silence ensued. Jix waited patiently. The first guard released Praji and stepped back. The lift doors opened silently, disgorging another two guards who took the place of the first pair to either side of the doors. "It is time for us to go off duty." The guard lifted an armored hand and gestured. "Bring him." Turning away, he and his companion entered the lift and waited, holding the doors open in mute invitation.
"You're not going in there, are you?" asked Praji. He tried once again to pull away from Jix but the effort was futile and left him even weaker than before.
Jix grinned at the stormtrooper commander; that crazy, careless, Corellian smile that Praji had learned from hard experience meant trouble. "Sure, we're going in. How else are we gonna get you patched up? Regular medical treatment hasn't worked, so what else are we gonna do?" His antic grin widened. "Besides, what could it hurt?" Before Praji could even begin to answer those questions, Jix had marched them into the lift and the doors closed behind them.
“This’s a bad idea,” Praji muttered as the lift shot downward into the lower levels of the keep. “We might never get back to…” He ceased before he could say ‘Lord Vader’ aloud. Although the Sith Lord was a loyal servant of the Emperor, Praji understood the political delicacy of being in service to two masters and throwing it in the faces of the Emperor’s Chosen seemed to be ill-advised.
“Enh. We die here, we die there. What’s the difference?” Jix shrugged, seemingly unconcerned about the risk he was taking. “Job’s only half-done and you’re more than half-dead. That makes success less likely. If they can repair you, we might actually be able to finish what we started.”
“Repair? M’not a droid, Sergeant.” Praji stared straight ahead, scowling. “Why’s the lift full of mist?”
Jix took a quick scan of the interior of the lift. "There's no mist in here, Commander." To the guard on his right he said. "He's getting worse."
"Sith poison burns in his wounds, we can feel it."
The lift slowed and stopped, the doors opening silently to reveal a brightly lit, sterile corridor indistinguishable from the interior of a star destroyer or any other standard Imperial facility. Without being asked, the second guard took Praji's left arm over his shoulder to assist Jix. The first guard stepped ahead of them. "Follow me." Without looking back he led the way down the corridor. Perhaps two hundred meters from the lift he touched the controls of a door which looked like all the others in the hallway. The door opened and the guard gestured them in. Jix pulled Praji through the opening, allowing the guard helping him to take the lead. Inside the entrance they stopped. At first glance the room appeared to be full of men in red and black armor, but a quick headcount told Jix the number was actually only twenty. Still, twenty Imperial guards were far more than even he cared to take on. They seemed to have entered a ready room, with Guardsmen either coming on duty, returning from duty, or discussing the day's work. Many of them looked suspiciously alike, enough so that Jix assumed they were clones. All heads turned at their entrance and the quiet rumble of conversation died away.
An older man in dark robes rather than red armor approached them, his keen pale eyes flicking from Jix to Praji over to the two guards and back to Jix. The guard who had let them in removed his helmet, revealing a shock of black hair and a chiseled face that looked as if it had never been young. "Master Kenedy," the guard said, offering the man in black a crisp salute. "This warrior requires treatment now or he will perish of his wounds."
Kenedy walked around the group of them, pausing behind Praji. Like the guards, he lifted Praji's tunic to look at his back. "Tell me," he said, returning to stand in front of Jix. "How did he come by his injuries?"
Praji waited in the deepening haze that fogged his vision for Jix to say something typically stupid, offensive, trite, or all of them at once. Much to his surprise, Jix spoke simply and clearly, without any of the attitude that usually caused most military people to want to shoot him after ten words or less.
"By the will of the Emperor, stormtrooper Commander Praji and I were carrying out an assignment for Lord Vader on a planet not on the charts. We were supposed to arrest and bring in a suspected Jedi. We didn't find a Jedi, but we did find someone who must've gotten his hands on a Jedi artifact of some sort. With that, he kidnapped a bunch of civilians. While we were rescuing them, he sent some sort of beast after us. It was a predator like a gharzer, or a really large panthac, but bigger than a gharzer and black in color. I've got pretty good instincts, but this thing was on us before I even knew it was there. The Commander here got between it and me, enabling me to get the civilians into the ship. By the time I came back with a heavy gun, it was trying to remove his spine with its claws. He was armored up but that hardly slowed it down. He'd shot it a couple times with his sidearm but the thing wouldn't die. I finally managed to get in position and blow its head off with an E-web. It was still twitching when I dragged the Commander aboard the ship and lifted off." Jix pointed with his free hand at Praji's back. "When I tried to clean the wound and perform initial first aid, I found the blood running black. I put down on this planet to find enough water to rinse it out good. That's when that crazy witch appeared and said no amount of washing would help remove the poison. She said only you could do that, so here we are."
Praji turned his head and blinked at Jix, trying to get him into focus, unable to think of anything to say. After having endured the Corellian's misbehavior for more time than he cared to think about, to actually hear him speaking the plain truth left Praji astonished. At last he worked a little spit up in his dry mouth. "Who are you and what have you done with Sergeant Jixton?"
"Shut up or I'll kill you," growled Jix out of the side of his mouth.
"That's more like it," Praji exhaled in relief. "You had me worried."
"I really will kill you one of these days."
"Promises, promises." Praji's pale lips curled up momentarily in a smile.
Master Kenedy ignored the byplay, turning slightly to address the guards in the room. "We will need the strength of everyone here to neutralize Sith poison. Such an effort is not done lightly. Who will speak for him?"
"I will." The response had come from the first Guardsmen, the one with black hair. "He is a warrior of courage and worthy of the effort. If you will permit, Master Kenedy, I will take the lead in the healing."
Kennedy nodded. "Very well, put him here, and we will get started." From a recess in the wall he pulled out a force field frame. The device was sized to hold a human in place by means of a variable strength force field. Although physicians used frames of that sort to support seriously injured patients during surgical procedures, the device had a darker reputation as an interrogator's tool. Jix felt Praji tense up as he was maneuvered into position and the force field activated. Jix let go his hold and pulled his hands free with an effort. Praji hung neatly suspended in the middle of the field, nearly weightless, his feet several inches off the floor and arms slightly spread away from his sides.
"Should have killed me when you had the chance, Sergeant," he whispered in a barely audible voice.
"You must leave now, Sergeant Jixton," said Master Kenedy. "What comes next is for our eyes alone. Return for him in the morning." The training master pointed toward the door and Jix, uncharacteristically compliant, began to walk away.
Pausing, he half turned to fire a last comment at Praji. "I'll be back for you, don't do anything stupid while I'm gone." Without waiting for a reply Jix strode out the door, followed by two of the Guardsmen. They returned a short time later to report that Jix had left the building without incident.
"It doesn't look like I'm going anywhere," Praji muttered to himself, watching as the guards in the room gathered around him, forming a loose circle several layers deep. Let's just hope there's something to pick up in the morning, he thought as they drew closer.
“Master Kenedy, would you get some water while I remove this?” the first guard spoke from behind Praji. A moment later the Commander felt the fabric of his tunic part as the Guardsman used a long-bladed knife to slice away the blood-stiffened material. Kennedy left without comment, moving into the room beyond Praji’s field of vision.
"I don't believe I have your name," said Praji, trying without very much success to split his attention between the man behind him with the sharp blade and the men grouped around him watching in silence. Some of the guards passed forward through their company medical items such as bandages and dressings. These were given to the guards actually working on their patient. The air in the room felt chill against his sweaty skin as his tunic was removed. Praji heard the second guard click his tongue as he surveyed the injury.
"Well, that is ugly."
"Yes, the gouges go lower, too, see here?" Praji felt the brushing of fingertips against his thighs and flanks. "Must've been some kind of felinoid to be raking with its back claws like that. Might as well strip all this off and give us a clear field to work in." A moment later Praji felt the waistband of his breeches loosen and fall away as the fabric was sliced open from hip to knee.
"I am Arre Corvan," said the first guard, unexpectedly responding to Praji. "Master Kenedy you have already met and my comrade here is Kyle Hannad.” Hannad tapped Praji’s hip with the flat of the blade in acknowledgement and kept on cutting the black fabric.
Praji grunted as the cloth was pulled away from wounds he didn’t know he had on the backs of his legs and buttocks. Kenedy returned bearing a deep bucket of water and several other items tucked in his arms. He passed the bucket to Corvan.
“Yes, some sort of beast with enhanced claws to be tearing through ‘trooper armor as if it was cloth.” Hannad pulled off the last strips and inspected the front of his patient. “You’ve got some on your stomach too. At least it didn’t kick any lower or you’d have been gelded.”
“Was trying to keep it from pouncing on Jix and the others. Wasn’t able to hang onto it very well. I took it on the arms and chest first, then as we rolled around it grabbed onto my back and just dug in. It had six legs.”
“That explains why there are so many rake-marks,” said Hannad.
“Jixton said you shot it?” Corvan rattled something metallic from behind.
“Yes, on rapid fire, three or four fair hits with my blaster.” Praji hissed out a slow breath as hands felt around the deep wounds in his back, probing carefully. “Didn’t even slow it down.”
“Sithspawned beasts have abnormal vitality – one of the reasons the ancient Sith generated them for tomb guardians and the like. You’re lucky Jixton had an E-web.”
“I’m lucky Jixton is Jixton and didn’t have the good sense to run away from the thing. He just kept shooting till he’d vaporized its head, which finally did the job.”
“Without taking off your head,” Corvan observed.
“He IS good. Even I’ve got to admit it.” Praji stopped speaking as warm water suddenly splashed over the injuries on his back, igniting a fresh fire in his flesh. Liquid stained both red and black ran down his bare legs and feet, dripping onto the floor. When did they remove my boots? he wondered, vaguely troubled he had no memory of anyone pulling them off. More water splashed on him, sparking fresh agonies as it rinsed away blood and poison.
"What exactly did the witch tell you? You don't often meet Witches of Dathomir so far away from their homeworld."
"I didn't even know they existed," said Praji in between irregular gasps for air. "Jix had heard of them. She was old, and there were feathers in her hair, I remember that."
"What did she say? Be precise."
Praji screwed his eyes shut, trying to force the old woman's exact words from his memory. "Wash ye may and wash ye might, no water will cleanse the black blood from his wounds. In the arms of the red guards he must lie this night, if he is to see the dawn. Waste no more time, but take him hence." Praji paused for breath and continued. "Then she pointed at this manor. By the time Jix had picked me up, she had disappeared. He didn't spend any time searching for her but brought me straight here. The rest you know."
"A fairly specific instruction," said Hannad as he threw water on the shallower scratches decorating Praji's stomach.
"Hold." Master Kenedy's calm voice brought the washing process to a halt. Praji opened his eyes to focus on the older warrior standing in front of him. Without further commentary Kennedy opened a small metal container and dug his index and forefinger into the contents. Tucking the container into his robes, Kennedy reached for Praji's face. "Open."
"Sir?" Praji asked in confusion. Kenedy did not bother with further explanations but took advantage of the Commander's question to thrust his gloved fingers into Praji's mouth.
Something warm and oily slid across his tongue. The taste was bitter and sharply herbal, while the smell of some sort of sweet flower took root in his sinuses. Praji gagged and tried to spit out the substance, but Kennedy held Praji's tongue down with his fingers and tipped the Commander's head back slightly with his free hand to let the stuff roll down his throat as it melted. Kenedy addressed the men standing behind Praji. "You may continue."
Warm water sloshed again over his injuries and Praji clenched his teeth, biting down involuntarily on Kenedy's fingers. The armored gloves withstood the pressure and Kennedy made no attempt to withdraw his hand. Instead of seeming offended by being bitten, his stern face relaxed in a grin. "Very good, Commander, fight, fight on."
Praji could not have made a response even if he had been so inclined. The medicine or whatever it was had made his tongue and throat quite numb. The pain of having his wounds washed out likewise decreased. It did not entirely go away, but it did not seem nearly so important.
The sluicing of water finally ceased. Someone, Praji couldn't tell who, wiped away the excess water with a towel.
"Good enough. Now that we can see what we are doing, it's time for the interesting part." Corvan seemed to be addressing both Hannad and the rest of the guards assembled around them.
To be continued...
Lord Vader's reluctant agent, the Corellian Wrenga Jixton gives new meaning to the phrase "loose cannon", to the point where even Vader considers him problematic and vexing. However, there is no doubt the former gunnery instructor is effective in his own way, and Vader trusts him in a way he trusts few others. While there is no love lost between the two, they do understand each other. Jix is one of the few agents Vader can depend on to work independently - and to get the job done, no matter the obstacles. The Star Wars Wiki maintains an excellent bio on Jix and his appearances in novel and comic books.
One item to be noted, Jix hates stormtroopers for reasons unkown and will go out of his way to kill or damage them if he can. He has been known to take out an entire squad single-handedly. Praji is very much aware of this fact and his first encounter with Jix involved a fair amount of structural damage to a lowtown Coruscant bar.
From the Star Wars Wiki:
"Commander Praji was a decorated stormtrooper officer and honored graduate of the Imperial Academy on Carida. A quick ascendant of the Imperial hierarchy, Praji was promoted to serve as Darth Vader's aide on the Devastator. After failing to secure the plans to the first Death Star on Tantive IV, Praji personally led a detachment of stormtroopers to Tatooine in search of the escape pod used by R2-D2 and C-3PO. " 
If he has a first name, no one has ever noted it. In my set of stories, he is also one of the aides Lord Vader 'gifted' with the Force, as first detailed in Promise and Potential. At this point in time, a little after the events in the novel Shadows of the Empire and before Episode 5, The Empire Strikes Back, Commander Praji is someone with enough Force potential to be a Jedi, but is entirely unaware of the 'enhancements' given him by Vader.
