LOTF: Collision/Chapter 6

Warden Rheskk thought he was experiencing the worst day of his life. Trandoshans were cold-blooded and Rheskk was no exception, but he felt his own biology couldn't compare to the brutality of the murders of his Brotherhood guards on the streets of Mos Anek. He paced back and forth before several bodies, working out his next move. The killers had used the guards' own blasters, and even worse, a lightsaber to dispatch them. A lightsaber! He could still smell the wounds with his heightened senses, and their murderers' trails, ever so slightly, but he didn't need to follow it. He'd already dispatched his best pilots to chase the killers, and they would have executed them by nightfall. Or, so he hoped; they'd eluded patrols for the last two hours. The only loose end he hadn't yet accounted for was how he was going to cover up the deaths. There was no way he would allow anyone on Anarto to know that the Brotherhood's prison had seen its first escapee under his watch.

As if challenging his very thoughts, Rheskk's priority holocommunicator began to ring, and he pulled it out and activated it to be met by none other than the scarred face of Cyana Bastra. "Warden Rheskk," she greeted him. "How fares the prison?"

"Ahhh!" Rheskk screamed. "I-I mean, ah, yes, Madam Bastra! You honor me. The prison runs smoothly as always."

Cyana sighed in disappointment. "That's what I thought. I did not give you this position to allow Jedi to kill our men and escape with inmates who wield more power against us than the entire Imperial Senate. And you hold the audacity to lie to me about it?"

"I-I swear, Madam, the situation is under control! As we speak my forces hunt them down!" He frantically assured her.

"That's not good enough, Rhessk!" Cyana angrily hissed. "Catch them yourself or you will be Mos Anek's newest and lowest prisoner, and I doubt your peers will be happy to see you."

"As you say." Rheskk meekly answered.

The connection closed, and Rheskk looked up, a new resolve building within him to prove himself. Snarling, he stormed off to the armory to retrieve his blade for the coming battle.

...

"The fighter isn't coming back," Taran decided. Linora stirred from her sleep, opening his eyes to see Taran sitting, keeping watch over her and Ganner in the dark canyon, moonlight pouring in from above. Shaking off the shadows of dreams already forgotten, Linora sat up.

"That should be good, right?" She asked, already expecting the coming answer.

"It is. But it's not." Taran grimly replied.

"And why's that?"

Taran gazed into the night skies contemplatively, the enduring fire shining off his eyes from the stars. "I know the Brotherhood. My escape will have alerted a select few individuals offworld. If I'm right about who, the warden of that prison will be coming to visit us personally."

Linora frowned. "Hold on. With all this commotion, you never even told us. What is the Brotherhood?"

"They must've wiped you; there's no way you couldn't know."

"Wiped me?"

"Years ago, before I got here, the Brotherhood was an underworld superpower. They made the Hutts and Black Sun look like fools, and they did it all from the shadows. The Brotherhood's greatest strength was that no one knew for sure it existed, and they easily took over the spice and slave trades with none of its competitors being the wiser, for they didn't realize they had lost their control. All of this was made possible because of one man.

The leader of the Brotherhood was known to most as merely "The Boss", his true identity hidden as one myth inside of another. He was ruthless and brilliant, with a will of cortosis and the wrath to match it. However, crime was never the Boss' true goal, but merely a means to the end of amassing as much power in secret as possible. He extended his influence in all branches of the Galaxy, turning Senators, law enforcement, and generals alike. By the Clone War's end, he had spies within the highest echelons of both sides. All the while, as his grand concoction began to take form, he began to fade away into the shadows even from the Brotherhood. His orders were mysteries, their purposes, unknowable.

At first they were unusual, mundane at worst, but as time grew on he began to ask the improbably and then the impossible of his servants. He wanted weapons unheard of, powerful enough to take on the Galaxy, droids that were undefeatable..." Taran looked down and sighed before continuing.

"But he overplayed his hand. Got too big, and made too many enemies. Eventually, it caught up to him. Plans began to fail. Lives were lost. His weapons began to turn against him, and when they did, they began to cast a light on the Brotherhood. The boss knew he had to disappear, and he sought revenge on those who he thought had failed him. A quick death wasn't easy enough, so he turned a city on Tatooine into a prison for the people who knew too much to live, but keeping them around was also a way for him to have access to them if he thought he might ever need them again. That's why I'm here. I'm just a tool to be forgotten unless I'm convenient again."

By the end of his story, Taran had grown more visibly weary and angry. A brief period of silent contemplation followed, finally slowly broken by Linora. "And the warden?"

Taran grinned slightly. "A pushover. Frightening to his subordinates to be sure, but he's never been a real fighter, and he's hardly fit for the command he has. If he could, he'd run from the Brotherhood. Truthfully, we need him to come here in order to steal his access card and get out of here."

"Is that so?" An angry, deep voice — Rheskk's voice — loudly hissed. The voice echoed around the canyon, obscuring its origin and rousing Ganner.

"Your incompetence is what brought you here in the first place, Taran. You were bested by a group of criminals, and half their minds were under your control!"

"And yet you are unable to defeat me." Taran mocked him. "Look at you, forced all the way out here because you couldn't keep an old man in a city. You're a joke."

Approaching from the shadows, Rheskk snarled and drew from his back a long vibroblade, which hummed lowly as he activated it. "This blade is forged from cortosis, filth! You would challenge me?"

Ganner stood up and began to draw his own weapon before Taran motioned for him to stop. "I appreciate it, but this is personal." Taran told him. He stood up and assumed a combat stance with no weapons of his own.

"Do your worst." Taran goaded him.

Rheskk charged Taran, each step making more apparent how much larger he was both vertically and in muscle. He swung, and Taran ducked and rolled between Rheskk's legs, quickly popping up on the other side. As Rheskk turned to face him again, Taran spoke again. "All right, you can kill him now."

Rheskk stopped in his tracks. "What?"

Taran held up a small card in his hand. "I just needed to be sure you had this."

On cue, Ganner quickly activated his lightsaber and stabbed Rheskk from behind. Rheskk dropped his blade, gazing down at the hole in his chest in surprise as Ganner deactivated his weapon.

Taran returned the card to his pocket. "Don't take this personally; you were merely the weakest link. I'll say hello to the boss for you." He said as he pushed Rheskk over onto the ground, lifeless.

"OKay, we won't have much time now." Taran explained to the others, walking away from Rheskk's body. "If we're fast enough we can slip through security and be on Anarto II before anyone realizes what we've done."

"Hold on, what?" Linora objected. "We never agreed to go off-planet with you."

"It doesn't matter. The Brotherhood has seen your face now, and whatever you've seen here, it's nothing compared to what they're capable of. You're not safe anywhere anymore, and the only chance we have is to attack them directly."

"You planned this, didn't you?"

"Linora," Ganner interjected, pulling her aside. "Whatever we're dealing with, they're clearly big, and it's possible they know who I am. Taran says they're already going to be after us, so the way I see it, this is an opportunity for us to make the most out of a bad situation."

Linora sighed and turned back to Taran. "All right, I guess we're in. What's the plan?"