Star Wars fic: AU: "What is Lost" (1/2)
Mar. 17th, 2007 05:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bedlamsbardTitle: What is Lost
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
bedlamsbard
Fandom: Star Wars
Rating: PG-13
Summary: AU. You can't go home again.
Author's Notes: Takes up ten years after a slightly different ending of Revenge of the Sith. Also see notes at the end.
Disclaimer: Star Wars and its concepts belong to George Lucas.
Jocasta Nu. Shaak Ti. Cin Drallig. Jurokk. Four Jedi masters against ten thousand clones. It was a suicide mission.
The Jedi had no choice.
“Let me stay,” Anakin said desperately. “I’m a better fighter than any of you. I can buy Bene and the others time. You need me.”
Drallig’s strong hand closed on his shoulder. “We need you alive, Skywalker. You and all the younglings, all the Padawans. You’re our future. Us, we’re old. We’re the past. Save them – take them somewhere safe, away from Coruscant, back to their families – and you save the Jedi. Do you understand me?”
Anakin looked down at the elaborately tiled floor. “Yes,” he said, in a very small voice. “But –”
“Obi-Wan would want you alive, Anakin,” Shaak Ti said, voice as calm as if she was lecturing a classroom of younglings. “Always remember that.”
Nu swept into the Great Hall. “The Databanks have been wiped,” she said briskly, only a hint of pain in her librarian’s voice. “No Sith will ever have all the Jedi’s secrets. The Archives are locked – forever, if need be.”
The four masters moved to arrange themselves in a straight line across the front of the Great Hall, lightsabers in their hands, but still unlit.
The thump of booted feet echoed through the Temple.
“They’re coming,” Jurokk said unnecessarily.
“So they are,” Ti observed calmly. “Anakin, the power, if you please. Then go. Don’t sacrifice yourself.”
Anakin raised his hand – his flesh hand, not his metal one. The lights flickered, dimmed, and went out, plunging them all into darkness. Not simply in the Great Hall, but all through the Temple. He’d done this once by accident when he was fourteen; now he did it on purpose.
Night fell on the Jedi.
Anakin backed away toward the back of the Hall, unlit lightsaber leaping to his hand. He head still hurt, less and less with every minute that passed; Jedi still fought and died on other planets, but there were fewer of them now. Now, the fight had come to Coruscant itself. To the Temple. To the very heart of the Jedi.
There is no emotion, there is peace.
Ships were taking off from the Temple, filled to the brim with younglings and Padawans, piloted by knights and senior Padawans. Other, smaller groups were spreading through the city, looking for Jedi sympathizers, quick ways to get off the planet – somewhere to run to. Somewhere to hide. Anakin had to get to his own ship, his own younglings. He had to get off-planet. He couldn’t take his eyes off the four Jedi masters preparing to die in front of him.
There is no ignorance, there is knowledge.
The doors opened abruptly. Anakin saw the dark familiar shape of clone troopers there, lit by the lights of the city behind them.
One by one, four lightsabers sizzled into life. Four Jedi masters stood as one, faces lit by the ghostly glow of their blades.
“You shall not pass,” Jedi Master Shaak Ti said.
There is no passion, there is serenity.
The sound of blasters was the clones’ only reply. Lightsabers moved only as blurs, but several bolts made it past. Anakin’s lightsaber sprang into life in his hand.
“Skywalker!” Jurokk yelled, breaking the spell. “Run!”
Anakin ran.
Clones made it past the masters and followed him, out to the landing docks of the Temple. There were still younglings in the hall, gathered together under the tutelage of older Padawans.
“Run!” Anakin yelled, and turned back. He could do what he’d said he would. He could buy them time to run and hide – to live. His lightsaber swept the air around him, parried back blaster bolts, sheered through clone armor and flesh and bone. He fell into battle trance, unaware of anything except the swing of his lightsaber.
There is no chaos, there is harmony.
When he came out of the trance, dead clones littered the floor around him. Not all the dead were clones, though – Anakin saw Padawans riddled with blaster holes, lightsabers still in their hands – even younglings, dead in the halls of the Temple. Some held their own lightsabers, others had snatched up their fallen comrades’. Some even held clone blasters.
All of them were dead. Anakin stared at them blankly, lightsaber in his hand. Why hadn’t they run? He’d told them to run.
More footsteps – the thud of booted feet in unison. The clone troopers had made it past the line of Jedi masters.
There were still younglings in his ship, waiting for him. Anakin Skywalker turned and ran.
-
-
Of the planets that had been involved in the Ten Systems War some years earlier, Ixtapa had probably come through the best; only one major battle had been fought there and that had been on the small eastern continent, which boasted, rather than a population of respectable citizens, a population made up mostly of smugglers, bounty hunters, slavers, and fugitives from Imperial justice. Still, the Battle of Ixtapa hadn’t been so bad as such things went; it hadn’t devastated the planet, as some of the battles fought in-galaxy during the Clone Wars had, and the continent was still occupied – roughly the same members of the population that had been there before the battle and some time before the war as well.
The capital of the continent was Per Macchu; smuggler’s bay was the least of the names it had been called in its years as host to the worst of the Outer Rim. It served as refueling station to any number of semi-legal ships on their way through the Outer Rim, as well as boasting a booming market in slaves and other illegal goods: Imperial weaponry, drugs, and the odd pirated starship. As such planets went Ixtapa was as good as any of the others, and better in some cases: unlike Tatooine, it wasn’t ruled by the Hutts, and unlike Kyr, it didn’t have a civil war tearing up the planet. Distant from Mid Rim edge of the Outer Rim as it was, it also garnered little if any Imperial presence, not being an Empire planet or worth adding to the Empire’s small collection of Outer Rim planets. For anyone planning on avoiding the Empire, it was a good place to hide.
One of Per Macchu’s many cantinas, this one on the edge of the Traitor’s District downtown, was The Sand and Stone, run by a Ten Systems vet and Ixtapan native called Zsuzsi Dj’onz. She served any number of disreputable types, some more regularly than others, and one of these regulars actually lived in The Sand and Stone, renting a room above the cantina for almost as long as the business had been in Zsuzsi’s seven-fingered hands. He’d fought in the ending days of the Ten Systems War with her; although he hadn’t come to the Outer Rim until the last year of the war, she’d known him for a fellow war vet even before he’d picked up a blaster. Clone Wars, he’d told her later, and flashed a blinding grin, one that was tinged with more sorrow than he’d probably meant. With the fighting done he made his living the same way most of the Outer Rim did: hovering on the edge of the legal and sometimes outright illegal, though really, neither one existed in more than name out here. Unlike most of the other guns for hire in Per Macchu, though, Zsuzsi trusted him, despite – or maybe because of – the bitter twist to Nakin’s scarred face, the sense that he’d seen and done more than even she’d ever dreamed of – and all of it the right thing, or close enough to pass on the Rim. Honor was a rare quality out here, almost nonexistent, but he had more of it than any other being she’d ever met.
-
-
“Get your damn feet off my table, Starkiller,” Zsuzsi snapped, flicking a raggedy towel at his boots. Nakin took them down, grinning lazily.
“And here I thought you loved me, Dj’onz,” he said amiably, picking up his glass of tsa-tsa juice and swirling it around. When he knocked it back, it stained his teeth the crimson red of bright blood.
“I love your credits,” Zsuzsi informed him, sweeping the towel over the spot on the table where his boots had been resting. “The rest of you I can take or leave. Especially your dirt.”
Nakin squinted at the bottom of his boots. “This isn’t dirt,” he said indignantly. “This is sand.” He squinted some more. “From Chiang, probably,” he added. “Last planet I went to where the port was in a desert.” He rolled his shoulders back and Zsuzsi winced at the pops she heard.
“Not that I care or anything, but you oughta take better care of yourself. Keep the rest of your body from going the way of that pretty face of yours.”
Nakin ran a hand reflexively over the ruined skin of his face. “I dive out one window –”
“One window that’s glass, not transparisteel, and that stuff shatters. And how many feet up did you say it was?”
“Too many,” he said shortly, still touching the fine tracery of scars over his face. He took his hand away and picked up the glass again, frowning at the remaining skin of juice on the bottom of it. “When’s the next shipment of tsa-tsa coming in? It’s had to have been at least three months since the Duurs were here last.”
Tsa-tsa was native to the western coast of the north-northeastern continent and, despite numerous attempts to grow it elsewhere, only grew to its natural strength in its native environment. Half a dozen times a standard year the migratory Duur traders came through Per Macchu with their shiploads of goods from all across the planet, and for the week or so they stayed the Mil Maiaya market never closed, even after Ixtapa’s twin suns went down.
Zsuzsi shrugged, the old wound in her shoulder aching with the movement. Storm coming in, maybe. She glanced out the window at the pale sky, discerning the dark shape of clouds in the distance, closing in from the mountain on the savannah. “Nothing’s going to be able to land in a storm,” she said with feeling; the army’d had to land on the savannah in a storm once, years ago. They’d lost more ships than they’d landed.
Nakin stood up and came over. “Nothing I like better than a little bit of hell on my front porch,” he said dryly. “Never thought I’d see anything worse than a Tatooine sandstorm till I came here, but hey, what do you know. Nothing natural, anyway,” he added, shadow on his face for a moment before he shook it away. He picked up a piece of fruit from the bowl on the table and bit into it, eyes on the coming storm. It’d be here by the evening, maybe; the next morning at the latest. On the savannah you could forecast the weather days in advance.
The door of the cantina banged open and Zsuzsi turned, plastering a smile onto her face. “Hey,” she said cheerfully. “What can I do for you?”
The newcomer walked like he had a plasma rifle up his ass, Zsuzsi noted silently, and he was packing. She could see the holster beneath the line of his jacket. “I was told I could find a Nakin Starkiller here?” he said, looking at the almost empty room dubiously. Most of Zsuzsi’s regulars were out so late in the morning, and Nakin was the only other one there, due to his abnormal sleep habits.
She jerked her thumb over her shoulder. “That’s him. Try not to piss him off; he hasn’t finished paying off the last damage he did to the place yet. You planning to order something while you breathe my air?”
He flicked an eye at the menu on the edge of the bar, looking vaguely bewildered by the no doubt unfamiliar list of foods and drinks. “Something to drink,” he said, and flipped a couple of credits over to her.
Zsuzsi caught them in the air. “Coming right up,” she said.
She caught the murmur of their conversation as she dug around in the cooler, coming up with a jug of cariik juice and a clean glass along with a few rare ice cubes. Nakin was threatening him, as was to be expected. He made a career out of threatening people, and somehow managed not to piss them off permanently when he did so.
“Because,” he was saying, a little of his Tatooine drawl in his voice now, something Zsuzsi hadn’t heard until years after they’d met, “I’m just that good.”
“He is, too,” Zsuzsi said, sliding the stranger’s drink over to him. “No one better. Is he trying to hire you for smuggling or mechanics?” she asked Nakin.
“The latter,” Nakin drawled. “We got a deal?” That was to the stranger, who’d picked up his glass and was sipping it, looking pleased.
“Yeah,” he said. “Can you come now?”
“Sure,” Nakin said. He snatched a cariik from the bowl in front of him as he stood, moving toward the stairs. “Just let me grab my kit and I’ll be right out.”
Zsuzsi rested her hip against the side of the booth. “So,” she said, tray tucked under her arm, “you from off-planet?”
“Yeah,” the stranger said. He held out a hand toward her. “Jer Traynt. Nice to meet you.”
“Zsuzsi Dj’onz,” she replied, shaking his hand with her free one. “You’re not from the Outer Rim, are you?”
“Alderaan,” Nakin said from the stairs. “Mountain district, if I’m not mistaken. That right, Lieutenant Traynt?”
Traynt raised his head, looking startled. “How did you know?”
“I spent some time in the Core when I was a kid,” Nakin said casually. “I can tell an Alderaan accent when I hear one. And an Imperial officer.” He slung his bag over his shoulder, having shrugged his jacket on sometime between going upstairs and coming back down. “Let’s go.”
Zsuzsi blinked once. “You’re lucky he’s not in a bad mood,” she told Traynt, keeping the surprise out of her voice. Off-worlders didn’t need to know Ixtapan secrets, even if Nakin wasn’t Ixtapan by birth. “Usually he can’t shut up about how much he hates the Empire.”
His face carefully neutral, Traynt drained the last of his drink and stood up. “What was a Rimmer doing in the Core?”
“Trust me when I say you don’t want to know.” He nodded at Zsuzsi. “See you, Zsuz. Keep someone for me to beat up, yeah?”
“Don’t stay out too late,” she shot back. “Fight night tonight.”
-
-
“Nice,” Nakin said brightly, slipping a hand along the starcruiser’s sleek side. “Modified Nubian, right? I’ve done some hyperdrive work with these before – how long has this one been battle-fit? The guns might be misbalancing it, which’ll throw off the hyperdrive depending on how much the original design of the ship was changed –”
Traynt and the first lieutenant, Perrik, shared looks of mutual confusion. “The Nubians were commissioned about three years ago,” Perrik said. “The Erebus has been out for about a year now – in-Core work; it’s never been farther out than Naboo in the Mid Rim, where the original modifications were done.”
“That’d do it,” Nakin said absently, eyes and hands still on the ship. “Naboo hyperdrives are designed to work with the shape of the ship itself – there’s enough leeway for small changes, but big changes will definitely throw off the ‘drive, especially in conjunction with a long jump. If that’s what it is, I can fix it, but I’ll have to completely reconfigure the hyperdrive.”
“How long?” Perrik asked crisply.
“Not really sure,” Nakin said. “I’ve never done this before. Shouldn’t be too hard, though. I can fix anything.” He leaned down to pick up his toolkit, the old, soft leather automatically curving into the palm of his hand. “Especially with the Empire paying by the hour.”
-
-
“Is it what you thought it was?” Traynt asked when Starkiller stepped into the bridge, the doors sliding open silently and quickly for him.
“Pretty sure it is, yeah,” Starkiller said, running a hand over his short-clipped blond hair. He’d shed his leather jacket somewhere along the way and was standing in just his shirt, sleeves rolled up to his elbows, gun belt slung low on his hips. He swung a hydrogrip idly back and forth from his other hand.
Traynt turned toward him, back to the databank console. “You can fix it?”
“Sure,” Starkiller said, spinning the hydrogrip up and around his wrist. “I need the schematics for the ship, though. The originals and the modified ones.”
“Of course.” Traynt turned back to the console, pulling up the schematics for the ship. “I’d put them on a chip, but that’s against regulations, so –”
“Never mind that,” Starkiller said, taking his words as an invitation and coming forward to lean over Traynt’s shoulder. “I’ve got a good memory.”
Traynt pushed away from the control board, stepping up towards the holomap on the wall. Imperial ships moved across the galaxy, blinking in and out of hyperspace; the Erebus itself was stationary in the dot labeled Ixtapa. He pressed the tip of one gloved finger to it, watching the planet expand to the size of a fist and a scrolling list of its traits appear in midair next to it, the rest of the map shrinking down to a small spiral near the corner of the ceiling.
…seven continents, five habitable by standard Core humans, including Luminae (also known as the northern continent by the natives), Selket (the northeastern continent), Merapesh (the eastern continent), Xelxerah (the southern continent), and Kimmeriaa (the north-northeastern continent).
They were on Merapesh. Traynt called up the information on it.
…capital city is Per Macchu, a small trading city on the edge of the Keklaarah savannah, base for a number of smuggling operations. Likely hideout for Jedi, despite the natives’ animosity for both the Old Republic and the Empire –
Traynt stopped reading and turned, feeling eyes on his back. Starkiller was still bent over the console, but there was something –
“You know, I’ve never really seen a gun belt on a mechanic before,” he said casually.
Starkiller twisted around slowly, straightening. “Clearly you haven’t been on the Outer Rim very long. Just wait until you see what the whores wear.”
“No, I don’t think that’s what it is.” He leaned forward, one hand on his blaster, unbuckling the strap of the holster, the other behind him, ready to sound an alarm that would alert the rest of the ship. “Because, you see, I’ve never seen a mechanic with a lightsaber.”
“Payment for a job,” Starkiller said easily. His hands were open and empty in front of him; he’d put the hydrogrip down on the edge of the console.
“I don’t think so.”
“Good guess.” All of a sudden Starkiller was in front of him, his fist flying forward into Traynt’s face. Bone didn’t shatter when he connected, but it was enough to send Traynt flying backward into the wall, crumpling down onto the floor.
Starkiller leaned over him, eyes narrowed on concentration. He raised his hands to either side of Traynt’s face. “You don’t remember anything,” he said, voice soft and clear and sure, with the crispness of Core World syllables in it now. “You tripped and fell.”
“I don’t remember anything,” Traynt repeated obediently, murkiness behind his eyes. “I tripped and fell.”
Starkiller leaned over him, face open and honest. “You all right, Lieutenant?” he said. “You took a bad fall.”
Traynt ran a hand over the back of his head, feeling blood on his fingers where he’d hit the wall. “Mmm,” he said. “I should probably –”
“If you have a medic, this would probably be a good time to call him.” Starkiller said.
“You may have a –” Traynt blinked. He remembered – he didn’t. He did. A metal cylinder on Starkiller’s hip – no, two of them, hanging off his gun belt where they’d normally be covered by the fall of his jacket. Abruptly, he snaked an arm around Starkiller’s waist to touch one.
“Hiding something?”
Starkiller jerked back. “Like I told you,” he said carefully, “it was payment for a job. Guy’s starfighter was trashed.”
“I don’t think so,” Traynt said, and hit the alarm.
Starkiller was on his feet in less than a heartbeat, his booted foot coming around to hit Traynt hard in the jaw. When Traynt passed out, he was already spinning his blasters out of their holsters.
Not the lightsabers.
-
-
Perrik came running at the sound of the alarm, blaster out of its holster and clone troopers flurrying around him. Most of them were carrying tranq guns rather than blasters; they’d come to Ixtapa prepared to neutralize a Jedi, not kill one. It would certainly be enough to take down one mechanic, even a well-armed one.
At least that’s what he was thinking until Nakin Starkiller leapt down out of the starcruiser, blasters in each hand. Perrik turned his charge into a duck and roll out of range, blaster coming up as Starkiller kicked one clone in the face and shot two more, not even glancing to either side as his arms shot straight out and then forward again, taking two more clones with dead center shots in their foreheads. The slower clones, the ones who’d been on guard around the hangar were still running in; they stopped by the doors to aim more carefully.
The first handful of tranq darts went awry. Starkiller batted them out of the air or ducked them or both; Perrik was fairly certain he’d only touched ground to launch himself upward again. Carefully, Perrik sighted down his arm, knowing that all of Starkiller’s attention had to be on the clones, and fired.
Starkiller’s spin kick turned into a controlled fall. He hit the ground and came up again, jamming the butt-end of one of his blasters into the space between helmet and armor of a clone coming up behind him and firing in the same motion. One tranq dark took him in the neck and he spared a moment a moment to yank it out with two fingers, but the next few sprayed him across the front and he didn’t bother taking those out, just went on fighting, kicking and punching and firing his blasters.
Perrik stood up. “Isn’t this stuff supposed act faster?” he demanded of the third lieutenant, Cafferti, who’d come in with the clones out back. He was holding a plasma rifle in one hand
“Thirty seconds,” Cafferti said.
“It’s been two minutes and he hasn’t blinked,” Perrik snapped as Starkiller’s heel sent a clone flying backwards into two more. “We don’t have enough clones to take this kind of losses, not until Lady Yulalli arrives. Take –”
Starkiller went down. It was abrupt, with no buildup, and Perrik hadn’t seen any of the clones’ blows connect recently, so the drugs must have finally worked their way into his system, at three times the length it should have taken. A Jedi, maybe? But not Hellsbane; Traynt would have recognized him. Perrik stepped over to Starkiller as one of the clones dropped to his knees to tug the blasters out of his hands and put binders on his wrists and saw the lightsabers still clipped to his belt. He hadn’t gone for them, and every Jedi or Jedi trainee Perrik had ever met had gone down fighting with a lightsaber in their hand. Not a Jedi, just a thief.
“Go find Lieutenant Traynt,” he said to Cafferti, who’d stepped up behind him, young face painfully earnest. “See him to a medic if he needs it.”
“Yes, sir!” Cafferti said, and didn’t bother saluting, just dashed up the ramp into the Erebus.
Perrik squatted down next to Starkiller’s limp body, taking the mechanic’s chin in hand. He hadn’t paid much attention to him when Traynt had brought him in earlier, just registered him as a possible, but improbable, threat and hoped that he’d fix the Erebus before the Dog arrived.
There were scars on Starkiller’s face, a faint spider web of white lines some years old, another, older scar cutting against his right eye, more scars scattered around his mouth and across the curve of his cheek. Perrik cocked his head to one side, trying to remember if he’d seen the face on the Imperial broadsheets or not, and couldn’t. He’d have Cafferti run a picture through the databanks for a match to be sure, but he really doubted they’d turn up something. A Jedi would have gone for his lightsaber, and he wouldn’t have carried two. Perrik let go of Starkiller and unclipped the lightsabers, weighing them in the palm of his hand.
“Take him inside,” he said, nodding towards the cruiser. “Make sure he’s tied down securely. I want to interrogate him when he wakes up.”
-
-
Go to part two.
Author:
bedlamsbardFandom: Star Wars
Rating: PG-13
Summary: AU. You can't go home again.
Author's Notes: Takes up ten years after a slightly different ending of Revenge of the Sith. Also see notes at the end.
Disclaimer: Star Wars and its concepts belong to George Lucas.
Jocasta Nu. Shaak Ti. Cin Drallig. Jurokk. Four Jedi masters against ten thousand clones. It was a suicide mission.
The Jedi had no choice.
“Let me stay,” Anakin said desperately. “I’m a better fighter than any of you. I can buy Bene and the others time. You need me.”
Drallig’s strong hand closed on his shoulder. “We need you alive, Skywalker. You and all the younglings, all the Padawans. You’re our future. Us, we’re old. We’re the past. Save them – take them somewhere safe, away from Coruscant, back to their families – and you save the Jedi. Do you understand me?”
Anakin looked down at the elaborately tiled floor. “Yes,” he said, in a very small voice. “But –”
“Obi-Wan would want you alive, Anakin,” Shaak Ti said, voice as calm as if she was lecturing a classroom of younglings. “Always remember that.”
Nu swept into the Great Hall. “The Databanks have been wiped,” she said briskly, only a hint of pain in her librarian’s voice. “No Sith will ever have all the Jedi’s secrets. The Archives are locked – forever, if need be.”
The four masters moved to arrange themselves in a straight line across the front of the Great Hall, lightsabers in their hands, but still unlit.
The thump of booted feet echoed through the Temple.
“They’re coming,” Jurokk said unnecessarily.
“So they are,” Ti observed calmly. “Anakin, the power, if you please. Then go. Don’t sacrifice yourself.”
Anakin raised his hand – his flesh hand, not his metal one. The lights flickered, dimmed, and went out, plunging them all into darkness. Not simply in the Great Hall, but all through the Temple. He’d done this once by accident when he was fourteen; now he did it on purpose.
Night fell on the Jedi.
Anakin backed away toward the back of the Hall, unlit lightsaber leaping to his hand. He head still hurt, less and less with every minute that passed; Jedi still fought and died on other planets, but there were fewer of them now. Now, the fight had come to Coruscant itself. To the Temple. To the very heart of the Jedi.
There is no emotion, there is peace.
Ships were taking off from the Temple, filled to the brim with younglings and Padawans, piloted by knights and senior Padawans. Other, smaller groups were spreading through the city, looking for Jedi sympathizers, quick ways to get off the planet – somewhere to run to. Somewhere to hide. Anakin had to get to his own ship, his own younglings. He had to get off-planet. He couldn’t take his eyes off the four Jedi masters preparing to die in front of him.
There is no ignorance, there is knowledge.
The doors opened abruptly. Anakin saw the dark familiar shape of clone troopers there, lit by the lights of the city behind them.
One by one, four lightsabers sizzled into life. Four Jedi masters stood as one, faces lit by the ghostly glow of their blades.
“You shall not pass,” Jedi Master Shaak Ti said.
There is no passion, there is serenity.
The sound of blasters was the clones’ only reply. Lightsabers moved only as blurs, but several bolts made it past. Anakin’s lightsaber sprang into life in his hand.
“Skywalker!” Jurokk yelled, breaking the spell. “Run!”
Anakin ran.
Clones made it past the masters and followed him, out to the landing docks of the Temple. There were still younglings in the hall, gathered together under the tutelage of older Padawans.
“Run!” Anakin yelled, and turned back. He could do what he’d said he would. He could buy them time to run and hide – to live. His lightsaber swept the air around him, parried back blaster bolts, sheered through clone armor and flesh and bone. He fell into battle trance, unaware of anything except the swing of his lightsaber.
There is no chaos, there is harmony.
When he came out of the trance, dead clones littered the floor around him. Not all the dead were clones, though – Anakin saw Padawans riddled with blaster holes, lightsabers still in their hands – even younglings, dead in the halls of the Temple. Some held their own lightsabers, others had snatched up their fallen comrades’. Some even held clone blasters.
All of them were dead. Anakin stared at them blankly, lightsaber in his hand. Why hadn’t they run? He’d told them to run.
More footsteps – the thud of booted feet in unison. The clone troopers had made it past the line of Jedi masters.
There were still younglings in his ship, waiting for him. Anakin Skywalker turned and ran.
-
-
Of the planets that had been involved in the Ten Systems War some years earlier, Ixtapa had probably come through the best; only one major battle had been fought there and that had been on the small eastern continent, which boasted, rather than a population of respectable citizens, a population made up mostly of smugglers, bounty hunters, slavers, and fugitives from Imperial justice. Still, the Battle of Ixtapa hadn’t been so bad as such things went; it hadn’t devastated the planet, as some of the battles fought in-galaxy during the Clone Wars had, and the continent was still occupied – roughly the same members of the population that had been there before the battle and some time before the war as well.
The capital of the continent was Per Macchu; smuggler’s bay was the least of the names it had been called in its years as host to the worst of the Outer Rim. It served as refueling station to any number of semi-legal ships on their way through the Outer Rim, as well as boasting a booming market in slaves and other illegal goods: Imperial weaponry, drugs, and the odd pirated starship. As such planets went Ixtapa was as good as any of the others, and better in some cases: unlike Tatooine, it wasn’t ruled by the Hutts, and unlike Kyr, it didn’t have a civil war tearing up the planet. Distant from Mid Rim edge of the Outer Rim as it was, it also garnered little if any Imperial presence, not being an Empire planet or worth adding to the Empire’s small collection of Outer Rim planets. For anyone planning on avoiding the Empire, it was a good place to hide.
One of Per Macchu’s many cantinas, this one on the edge of the Traitor’s District downtown, was The Sand and Stone, run by a Ten Systems vet and Ixtapan native called Zsuzsi Dj’onz. She served any number of disreputable types, some more regularly than others, and one of these regulars actually lived in The Sand and Stone, renting a room above the cantina for almost as long as the business had been in Zsuzsi’s seven-fingered hands. He’d fought in the ending days of the Ten Systems War with her; although he hadn’t come to the Outer Rim until the last year of the war, she’d known him for a fellow war vet even before he’d picked up a blaster. Clone Wars, he’d told her later, and flashed a blinding grin, one that was tinged with more sorrow than he’d probably meant. With the fighting done he made his living the same way most of the Outer Rim did: hovering on the edge of the legal and sometimes outright illegal, though really, neither one existed in more than name out here. Unlike most of the other guns for hire in Per Macchu, though, Zsuzsi trusted him, despite – or maybe because of – the bitter twist to Nakin’s scarred face, the sense that he’d seen and done more than even she’d ever dreamed of – and all of it the right thing, or close enough to pass on the Rim. Honor was a rare quality out here, almost nonexistent, but he had more of it than any other being she’d ever met.
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“Get your damn feet off my table, Starkiller,” Zsuzsi snapped, flicking a raggedy towel at his boots. Nakin took them down, grinning lazily.
“And here I thought you loved me, Dj’onz,” he said amiably, picking up his glass of tsa-tsa juice and swirling it around. When he knocked it back, it stained his teeth the crimson red of bright blood.
“I love your credits,” Zsuzsi informed him, sweeping the towel over the spot on the table where his boots had been resting. “The rest of you I can take or leave. Especially your dirt.”
Nakin squinted at the bottom of his boots. “This isn’t dirt,” he said indignantly. “This is sand.” He squinted some more. “From Chiang, probably,” he added. “Last planet I went to where the port was in a desert.” He rolled his shoulders back and Zsuzsi winced at the pops she heard.
“Not that I care or anything, but you oughta take better care of yourself. Keep the rest of your body from going the way of that pretty face of yours.”
Nakin ran a hand reflexively over the ruined skin of his face. “I dive out one window –”
“One window that’s glass, not transparisteel, and that stuff shatters. And how many feet up did you say it was?”
“Too many,” he said shortly, still touching the fine tracery of scars over his face. He took his hand away and picked up the glass again, frowning at the remaining skin of juice on the bottom of it. “When’s the next shipment of tsa-tsa coming in? It’s had to have been at least three months since the Duurs were here last.”
Tsa-tsa was native to the western coast of the north-northeastern continent and, despite numerous attempts to grow it elsewhere, only grew to its natural strength in its native environment. Half a dozen times a standard year the migratory Duur traders came through Per Macchu with their shiploads of goods from all across the planet, and for the week or so they stayed the Mil Maiaya market never closed, even after Ixtapa’s twin suns went down.
Zsuzsi shrugged, the old wound in her shoulder aching with the movement. Storm coming in, maybe. She glanced out the window at the pale sky, discerning the dark shape of clouds in the distance, closing in from the mountain on the savannah. “Nothing’s going to be able to land in a storm,” she said with feeling; the army’d had to land on the savannah in a storm once, years ago. They’d lost more ships than they’d landed.
Nakin stood up and came over. “Nothing I like better than a little bit of hell on my front porch,” he said dryly. “Never thought I’d see anything worse than a Tatooine sandstorm till I came here, but hey, what do you know. Nothing natural, anyway,” he added, shadow on his face for a moment before he shook it away. He picked up a piece of fruit from the bowl on the table and bit into it, eyes on the coming storm. It’d be here by the evening, maybe; the next morning at the latest. On the savannah you could forecast the weather days in advance.
The door of the cantina banged open and Zsuzsi turned, plastering a smile onto her face. “Hey,” she said cheerfully. “What can I do for you?”
The newcomer walked like he had a plasma rifle up his ass, Zsuzsi noted silently, and he was packing. She could see the holster beneath the line of his jacket. “I was told I could find a Nakin Starkiller here?” he said, looking at the almost empty room dubiously. Most of Zsuzsi’s regulars were out so late in the morning, and Nakin was the only other one there, due to his abnormal sleep habits.
She jerked her thumb over her shoulder. “That’s him. Try not to piss him off; he hasn’t finished paying off the last damage he did to the place yet. You planning to order something while you breathe my air?”
He flicked an eye at the menu on the edge of the bar, looking vaguely bewildered by the no doubt unfamiliar list of foods and drinks. “Something to drink,” he said, and flipped a couple of credits over to her.
Zsuzsi caught them in the air. “Coming right up,” she said.
She caught the murmur of their conversation as she dug around in the cooler, coming up with a jug of cariik juice and a clean glass along with a few rare ice cubes. Nakin was threatening him, as was to be expected. He made a career out of threatening people, and somehow managed not to piss them off permanently when he did so.
“Because,” he was saying, a little of his Tatooine drawl in his voice now, something Zsuzsi hadn’t heard until years after they’d met, “I’m just that good.”
“He is, too,” Zsuzsi said, sliding the stranger’s drink over to him. “No one better. Is he trying to hire you for smuggling or mechanics?” she asked Nakin.
“The latter,” Nakin drawled. “We got a deal?” That was to the stranger, who’d picked up his glass and was sipping it, looking pleased.
“Yeah,” he said. “Can you come now?”
“Sure,” Nakin said. He snatched a cariik from the bowl in front of him as he stood, moving toward the stairs. “Just let me grab my kit and I’ll be right out.”
Zsuzsi rested her hip against the side of the booth. “So,” she said, tray tucked under her arm, “you from off-planet?”
“Yeah,” the stranger said. He held out a hand toward her. “Jer Traynt. Nice to meet you.”
“Zsuzsi Dj’onz,” she replied, shaking his hand with her free one. “You’re not from the Outer Rim, are you?”
“Alderaan,” Nakin said from the stairs. “Mountain district, if I’m not mistaken. That right, Lieutenant Traynt?”
Traynt raised his head, looking startled. “How did you know?”
“I spent some time in the Core when I was a kid,” Nakin said casually. “I can tell an Alderaan accent when I hear one. And an Imperial officer.” He slung his bag over his shoulder, having shrugged his jacket on sometime between going upstairs and coming back down. “Let’s go.”
Zsuzsi blinked once. “You’re lucky he’s not in a bad mood,” she told Traynt, keeping the surprise out of her voice. Off-worlders didn’t need to know Ixtapan secrets, even if Nakin wasn’t Ixtapan by birth. “Usually he can’t shut up about how much he hates the Empire.”
His face carefully neutral, Traynt drained the last of his drink and stood up. “What was a Rimmer doing in the Core?”
“Trust me when I say you don’t want to know.” He nodded at Zsuzsi. “See you, Zsuz. Keep someone for me to beat up, yeah?”
“Don’t stay out too late,” she shot back. “Fight night tonight.”
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“Nice,” Nakin said brightly, slipping a hand along the starcruiser’s sleek side. “Modified Nubian, right? I’ve done some hyperdrive work with these before – how long has this one been battle-fit? The guns might be misbalancing it, which’ll throw off the hyperdrive depending on how much the original design of the ship was changed –”
Traynt and the first lieutenant, Perrik, shared looks of mutual confusion. “The Nubians were commissioned about three years ago,” Perrik said. “The Erebus has been out for about a year now – in-Core work; it’s never been farther out than Naboo in the Mid Rim, where the original modifications were done.”
“That’d do it,” Nakin said absently, eyes and hands still on the ship. “Naboo hyperdrives are designed to work with the shape of the ship itself – there’s enough leeway for small changes, but big changes will definitely throw off the ‘drive, especially in conjunction with a long jump. If that’s what it is, I can fix it, but I’ll have to completely reconfigure the hyperdrive.”
“How long?” Perrik asked crisply.
“Not really sure,” Nakin said. “I’ve never done this before. Shouldn’t be too hard, though. I can fix anything.” He leaned down to pick up his toolkit, the old, soft leather automatically curving into the palm of his hand. “Especially with the Empire paying by the hour.”
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“Is it what you thought it was?” Traynt asked when Starkiller stepped into the bridge, the doors sliding open silently and quickly for him.
“Pretty sure it is, yeah,” Starkiller said, running a hand over his short-clipped blond hair. He’d shed his leather jacket somewhere along the way and was standing in just his shirt, sleeves rolled up to his elbows, gun belt slung low on his hips. He swung a hydrogrip idly back and forth from his other hand.
Traynt turned toward him, back to the databank console. “You can fix it?”
“Sure,” Starkiller said, spinning the hydrogrip up and around his wrist. “I need the schematics for the ship, though. The originals and the modified ones.”
“Of course.” Traynt turned back to the console, pulling up the schematics for the ship. “I’d put them on a chip, but that’s against regulations, so –”
“Never mind that,” Starkiller said, taking his words as an invitation and coming forward to lean over Traynt’s shoulder. “I’ve got a good memory.”
Traynt pushed away from the control board, stepping up towards the holomap on the wall. Imperial ships moved across the galaxy, blinking in and out of hyperspace; the Erebus itself was stationary in the dot labeled Ixtapa. He pressed the tip of one gloved finger to it, watching the planet expand to the size of a fist and a scrolling list of its traits appear in midair next to it, the rest of the map shrinking down to a small spiral near the corner of the ceiling.
…seven continents, five habitable by standard Core humans, including Luminae (also known as the northern continent by the natives), Selket (the northeastern continent), Merapesh (the eastern continent), Xelxerah (the southern continent), and Kimmeriaa (the north-northeastern continent).
They were on Merapesh. Traynt called up the information on it.
…capital city is Per Macchu, a small trading city on the edge of the Keklaarah savannah, base for a number of smuggling operations. Likely hideout for Jedi, despite the natives’ animosity for both the Old Republic and the Empire –
Traynt stopped reading and turned, feeling eyes on his back. Starkiller was still bent over the console, but there was something –
“You know, I’ve never really seen a gun belt on a mechanic before,” he said casually.
Starkiller twisted around slowly, straightening. “Clearly you haven’t been on the Outer Rim very long. Just wait until you see what the whores wear.”
“No, I don’t think that’s what it is.” He leaned forward, one hand on his blaster, unbuckling the strap of the holster, the other behind him, ready to sound an alarm that would alert the rest of the ship. “Because, you see, I’ve never seen a mechanic with a lightsaber.”
“Payment for a job,” Starkiller said easily. His hands were open and empty in front of him; he’d put the hydrogrip down on the edge of the console.
“I don’t think so.”
“Good guess.” All of a sudden Starkiller was in front of him, his fist flying forward into Traynt’s face. Bone didn’t shatter when he connected, but it was enough to send Traynt flying backward into the wall, crumpling down onto the floor.
Starkiller leaned over him, eyes narrowed on concentration. He raised his hands to either side of Traynt’s face. “You don’t remember anything,” he said, voice soft and clear and sure, with the crispness of Core World syllables in it now. “You tripped and fell.”
“I don’t remember anything,” Traynt repeated obediently, murkiness behind his eyes. “I tripped and fell.”
Starkiller leaned over him, face open and honest. “You all right, Lieutenant?” he said. “You took a bad fall.”
Traynt ran a hand over the back of his head, feeling blood on his fingers where he’d hit the wall. “Mmm,” he said. “I should probably –”
“If you have a medic, this would probably be a good time to call him.” Starkiller said.
“You may have a –” Traynt blinked. He remembered – he didn’t. He did. A metal cylinder on Starkiller’s hip – no, two of them, hanging off his gun belt where they’d normally be covered by the fall of his jacket. Abruptly, he snaked an arm around Starkiller’s waist to touch one.
“Hiding something?”
Starkiller jerked back. “Like I told you,” he said carefully, “it was payment for a job. Guy’s starfighter was trashed.”
“I don’t think so,” Traynt said, and hit the alarm.
Starkiller was on his feet in less than a heartbeat, his booted foot coming around to hit Traynt hard in the jaw. When Traynt passed out, he was already spinning his blasters out of their holsters.
Not the lightsabers.
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Perrik came running at the sound of the alarm, blaster out of its holster and clone troopers flurrying around him. Most of them were carrying tranq guns rather than blasters; they’d come to Ixtapa prepared to neutralize a Jedi, not kill one. It would certainly be enough to take down one mechanic, even a well-armed one.
At least that’s what he was thinking until Nakin Starkiller leapt down out of the starcruiser, blasters in each hand. Perrik turned his charge into a duck and roll out of range, blaster coming up as Starkiller kicked one clone in the face and shot two more, not even glancing to either side as his arms shot straight out and then forward again, taking two more clones with dead center shots in their foreheads. The slower clones, the ones who’d been on guard around the hangar were still running in; they stopped by the doors to aim more carefully.
The first handful of tranq darts went awry. Starkiller batted them out of the air or ducked them or both; Perrik was fairly certain he’d only touched ground to launch himself upward again. Carefully, Perrik sighted down his arm, knowing that all of Starkiller’s attention had to be on the clones, and fired.
Starkiller’s spin kick turned into a controlled fall. He hit the ground and came up again, jamming the butt-end of one of his blasters into the space between helmet and armor of a clone coming up behind him and firing in the same motion. One tranq dark took him in the neck and he spared a moment a moment to yank it out with two fingers, but the next few sprayed him across the front and he didn’t bother taking those out, just went on fighting, kicking and punching and firing his blasters.
Perrik stood up. “Isn’t this stuff supposed act faster?” he demanded of the third lieutenant, Cafferti, who’d come in with the clones out back. He was holding a plasma rifle in one hand
“Thirty seconds,” Cafferti said.
“It’s been two minutes and he hasn’t blinked,” Perrik snapped as Starkiller’s heel sent a clone flying backwards into two more. “We don’t have enough clones to take this kind of losses, not until Lady Yulalli arrives. Take –”
Starkiller went down. It was abrupt, with no buildup, and Perrik hadn’t seen any of the clones’ blows connect recently, so the drugs must have finally worked their way into his system, at three times the length it should have taken. A Jedi, maybe? But not Hellsbane; Traynt would have recognized him. Perrik stepped over to Starkiller as one of the clones dropped to his knees to tug the blasters out of his hands and put binders on his wrists and saw the lightsabers still clipped to his belt. He hadn’t gone for them, and every Jedi or Jedi trainee Perrik had ever met had gone down fighting with a lightsaber in their hand. Not a Jedi, just a thief.
“Go find Lieutenant Traynt,” he said to Cafferti, who’d stepped up behind him, young face painfully earnest. “See him to a medic if he needs it.”
“Yes, sir!” Cafferti said, and didn’t bother saluting, just dashed up the ramp into the Erebus.
Perrik squatted down next to Starkiller’s limp body, taking the mechanic’s chin in hand. He hadn’t paid much attention to him when Traynt had brought him in earlier, just registered him as a possible, but improbable, threat and hoped that he’d fix the Erebus before the Dog arrived.
There were scars on Starkiller’s face, a faint spider web of white lines some years old, another, older scar cutting against his right eye, more scars scattered around his mouth and across the curve of his cheek. Perrik cocked his head to one side, trying to remember if he’d seen the face on the Imperial broadsheets or not, and couldn’t. He’d have Cafferti run a picture through the databanks for a match to be sure, but he really doubted they’d turn up something. A Jedi would have gone for his lightsaber, and he wouldn’t have carried two. Perrik let go of Starkiller and unclipped the lightsabers, weighing them in the palm of his hand.
“Take him inside,” he said, nodding towards the cruiser. “Make sure he’s tied down securely. I want to interrogate him when he wakes up.”
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Go to part two.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-17 05:31 pm (UTC)*Off to read more*
(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-18 05:45 pm (UTC)Good original characters too. Wasn't Starkiller the original name George Lucas had picked out for Luke in the original Star Wars? Or was it something similar?
(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-19 12:59 am (UTC)Yeah, I think Luke's original name was Anakin Starkiller? Something like that -- I like my semi-canonical allusions when I can throw them in.