Star Wars Fanon:Sandbox

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Play in the Sandbox

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A standard freight turbolift carried the twenty-five surviving members of Desann's Reborn army from Cairn Base's central module to the massive ventral docking bay where the Doomgiver had been berthed just a standard week before. Nicknamed "the Harbor," it sported fewer defensive turrets than the main hangars which were being used for evacuation. It was therefore an obvious weak point.

The Reborn heard and felt nothing of the turbolaser and ion cannon blasts that pounded Cairn Base’s shields. Nor did they see the TIE pilots locked in stomach-twisting duels with Rebel X- and B-wing starfighters as they shepherded transports into the Resolute II’s belly hangar. However, all of these things and more came to them in a way. The same Force that they used as a weapon connected all things, and it bathed them in a sort of outer glow of the battle.

On the more mundane side of things they had the announcements over the intercoms. There was also Vrekis at the front of them, who occasionally cocked his head while listening to reports on his helmet's built-in comlink.

“Rebel transports are inside the Harbor,” he announced dispassionately.

Rune stood near the shadowtrooper, his arms crossed, surrounded by his blind brothers. Their mental essences pervaded the Force, flooding it with their pent-up fury, their almost childlike anticipation, and Rune had no choice but to breathe it in. He shared in it just as he had before facing Katarn and Skywalker, and with each passing moment he became more and more one of them again.

I can’t be, a small part of him thought. I have a destiny—

The turbolift slowed. Vrekis turned around and spoke, as he always did, without preamble. “The Rebels must not be allowed out of the Harbor until the last shuttles are ready to leave. Gates one through three on sublevel seven lead to the reactor complex—Atlan, you’ll go there with…”

He rattled off several names, then went on like that, splitting them up into several groups assigned to different sections of the Harbor. He ended with, “Jakkara, Koresh, Rell, and Rune—you and I will get off here on and stop them from heading up to the hangar bays. Understood?”

“Understood,” answered the Reborn together. Rune looked from side to side, trading obscure glances with a few of them. Most wore the amber hood, but a few others had red, a few more blue or green, but every one of them looked the same as Nelvish. They all had the same mask, including Rune himself, but he knew himself to be more than the mask.

Looking at Vrekis, Rune realized that there was no one else whom he feared. To be given the shadow armor, a Reborn had to prove himself stronger, more capable, and more cunning than all those around himself. Each one had been hand-picked by either Master Desann or his apprentice, Tavion. Moreover, there was still much about the Force that Rune was ignorant of. Were its more powerful wielders able to read the thoughts of the weaker, just as they all could anticipate the motions of their enemies in combat? Would Vrekis be able to sense Rune's disloyalty?

There was no way of knowing. Then again, if Rune didn’t live through this battle, it wouldn’t matter what he had thought or desired.

The turbolift stopped and opened its door with a jolt, and then he was running with Vrekis and three other Reborn.

They streaked through defensive checkpoints with Force-enhanced speed, overtaking squads of stormtroopers laden with heavy blasters and other equipment. Rune felt as though his destiny was receding behind him, but with each meter he crossed, the less he cared, and the little part of his mind that cried futilely for him to stop grew quieter and quieter. Just as well—stepping out of line while surrounded by the others would be a death sentence, and if he stopped thinking those rebellious thoughts altogether, there was no need to worry about Vrekis sensing them.

The last doorway came into view. In wordless accord the Reborn’s lightsabers hissed to life in their hands, and Rune let his concerns slip away into the frozen heat of his blade. Passing the threshold, they burst onto a large cargo staging area like shockball players onto a court. Dead Imperials and chunks of smoking metal littered the floor, and the ragged survivors of a stormtrooper platoon hunkered behind makeshift barricades,—mostly made up of cargo containers—as they tried to hold off an advancing swarm of hostiles. The appearance of lightsabers brought a spray of blaster fire their way, but the Force was with the Reborn, and their shining blades twirled and spun to intercept the shots even as they skipped over the treacherous terrain.

The boarders’ faces were exposed—Humans, most of them—beneath large, neck-guarding white helmets, and they wore either blast vests or light armor. As Rune and his brothers broke ranks and charged the intruders at full speed, he saw eyes widening with alarm or narrowing with determination. Rebel scum, he thought, showing his teeth.

He became part of a wall of destruction, a bloody tide crashing into the rebels and carrying them away. Sparks flew as bloodshine blades swatted bolts into the floor and cut blasters in half. Panicked cries and yelps joined the pulse of energy weapons as Rebel marines backpedaled or tried to leap out of the Reborn’s way. Lightsabers traced sweeping arcs through the air; severed arms flopped to the ground, molten arcs were slashed through armor, and still-helmeted heads tumbled from shoulders and went bouncing across the deck.

Slashing to his right, Rune split a marine in two from shoulder to hip. Guided by the Force, he ducked under a burst of three bolts from his left, then kicked the Rebel who had fired it in the ribs. The man stumbled away, almost regaining his balance before Vrekis slashed through his lungs. The shadowtrooper was only passing by and spared neither victim nor ally a glance.

The Reborn spread out farther as they finished clearing the platform. Rune felt flashes of darkness in the Force as Vrekis and Koresh each telekinetically crushed a marine’s neck some meters away. Goaded on by the rush of battle, Rune pursued a lone Rebel to the edge of the platform, deflecting his hopeless shots before launching him howling into the abyss with a Force push.

Rune’s eyes lost the flailing body in its descent, and his Force sense failed him as well. There were too many lives, too many deaths, all too close together. Pausing there on the platform’s edge, he was briefly overwhelmed by the sheer scale of the Harbor. Without the Doomgiver’s command tower filling its center, he could see a panorama of firefights raging on every level. Hundreds of troopers and marines swarmed between folded-up docking claws and air lock tubes, and across gargantuan conveyors like kretch insects picking over a half-stripped carcass.

Laser bolts flew through the open air of the Harbor in every conceivable direction, creating a dazzling tempest which was being weathered by the compact hulls of at least two dozen Rebel boarding craft. Rune was familiar with the class: the old Delta-class DX-9 troop transport. Cumbersome but quite durable, their repulsorlifts emitted a deep, penetrating groan as they deposited fresh squads of marines onto the networks of platforms and catwalks that banded every level and sublevel of the Harbor. As soon as each transport was emptied, it would drop back down through the bay’s magcon field and out into the void, where dogfighting starfighters blurred past.

Squinting down through the aperture, Rune wondered if the Imperial fighter complement was doing as good a job of keeping a clear way for their transports as the Rebel ones were for theirs.

To his left, Koresh—one of the green-hoods—shouted at him over the noise of battle. “Let’s move, Rune! We’re needed on the next platform!”

Rune turned with a nod, and the two jogged to catch up to their brothers as they started across a catwalk. Oddly, Vrekis actually waited for the pair and then proceeded to bring up the rear.

Rebels had overrun the next loading area and were already shooting at the Reborn as they approached. Again Rune and the others went in as a unit; together, they were strong with the Force indeed. A flurry of bolts came their way, only to be deflected back into those who had fired them. Two marines at the back of the squad lobbed fragmentation grenades, but Vrekis reached out with the Force, and the explosives veered off into space, exploding harmlessly one level down.

Undaunted, the Rebels increased their rate of fire and spread out, hoping to catch the Reborn in crossfire as they closed in. However, the Reborn only intensified their own defense, and the faster their victims fired, the faster they died.

Soon the second slaughter came to a close. The remaining three Rebels tried to retreat through a wide doorway into the rest of Cairn Base, only to be showered with bolts from within the corridor. Seconds later, a squadron of stormtroopers charged out onto the platform. Several of them toted PLX-2M portable missile launchers, while the four at the rear were lugging E-Web heavy repeating blasters. As the former spread out across the platform and the latter began setting up their emplacements, one lone trooper looked at the group of Reborn and pumped a fist into the air.

Glory for the Emperor! thought Rune as a crazed smile warped his face. Looking about, he caught sight of Vrekis near the platform’s edge, and his brothers starting to gather around the shadowtrooper there. Rune joined them, and together they peered out into the chasm and found that the fighting was only heating up. Among the standard Rebel troop ships still swarming into and out of the Harbor, there was now an incoming complement of Gamma-class ATR-6 assault transports. In every respect the bigger brother of the Delta-class, these lumbering winged beasts were twice as large and boasted heavier shields and armor, not to mention greater firepower. Mercifully, the Rebel gunners seemed reluctant to use their turbolaser turrets inside the Harbor.

One of these assault transports alighted on a loading dock one level down, its repulsors giving off a deep, penetrating growl. The Imperials there were dug in already, but the kell dragon had thick hide, and both their E-Web fire and the occasional salvo of missiles failed to punch through the vessel’s deflector shields. The marines scampering from its hatches proved less impervious.

But even as the Reborn’s eyes were about to wander away from that spectacle, the Force held them there. True, Rebel strategists were contemptibly indifferent to the lives of their own men, but this was not what it seemed. The air crackled with an omen of rising hostile power—and Rune recognized the omen.

He was not surprised, then, when the real danger revealed itself; when another barrage of missiles streaked over the heads of crawling Rebel soldiers and toward the landed transport, only to inexplicably arc upward and loop back upon the stormtroopers who had fired them. The explosions swallowed them up before they could even scream, and charred pieces of plastoid armor and E-Web chunks rained onto the dock.

Smoke billowed as Rebels clambered to their feet, and a handful of their number stood out: Humans with a handful of aliens, wearing not armor but dark-colored flight suits. Pilots, one would assume, but there was no mistaking the metal hilts clutched in their hands, nor the dangerous glare of their presences in the Force.

“JEDI!” shouted Koresh, thrusting a finger as if he was the only one to have noticed.

Vrekis spoke into his comlink. “Atlan, Jedi sighted on sublevel two-alpha. Meet us there, and we’ll pin them between us.”

With that he started to run—and Rune was running too, still one of the unit, the misgivings of his conscience drowned out in the Force’s hellish symphony that coursed through the Reborn. He had a score to settle with the Jedi; they couldn’t all be as dangerous as Skywalker and Katarn.

They ran, jumped, and landed on the loading dock just as the assault transport began to pull away. The last of the troops it had dropped off were just disappearing through a hatch into the depths of Cairn Base; covering their back was a semicircle of six Jedi. Each of their lightsabers was a different color, forming a mesmerizing rainbow as they twirled and flourished them about. Standing at their center was a Zabrak Jedi whose black hair fell about his shoulders beneath a skull crowned with horns—Rune winced at the sight of him. Bringing a gleaming emerald saber to guard, the alien turned to Vrekis and called, “Your master is dead, dark-siders; you have no hope of escaping us! Lay down your weapons!”

“You are the ones who will not escape, Jedi!” taunted Atlan—another red-hood—as he and six more Reborn appeared at the opposite side of the platform and melded with the shadowtrooper’s followers, becoming a single, uniform row of bloodshine. No more words were traded, and the next moment the tide of battle rose up over their heads.

Master Desann had taught his followers to fight as a team, but strategies and training were little more than an afterthought at the melee’s outset. Above all there was power, there was the Force, guiding Reborn and Jedi alike. Step by step the clash of dark and light played out in a dance too lethal and frenzied for any mortal mind to devise. Each time Rune blinked he found himself in a new position, paired with a different brother against a different enemy, slashing and blocking, spinning through a whirlwind of arcing blades.

It was a beautiful, terrifying contest, all instinct and intuition, all the unspoken grandeur of the Force. But since the Force is a paradox, Rune remained himself even as he lost himself in the violence; and so he did not find it in himself to be shocked when his brothers started to die.

The first was Cyprus. Rune felt a kind of psychic sting, a report of another man’s pain matched by a manic scream. Then, meters away, a flash of an amber-robed body falling, the lightsaber slipping from his fingers; and that was all.

Seconds later: at the Force’s bidding Rune sidestepped, and a lightsaber held by no one blurred past him like a glowing amethyst spear. As Rell twisted away from a duel to block it, the bewitched weapon slowed incrementally, then spun inside his guard and burned through the Reborn from shoulder to waist.

Rune snarled as he turned around, and his rage gave him focus, driving him toward a diminutive, big-eared Sullustan Jedi who was calling his lightsaber back to himself. He stood back to back with the Zabrak and another Jedi, who were struggling to weather a battering assault from Vrekis.

Rune was only meters away from the Sullustan when the Force again saved him at the last second; he ducked, only hearing the dopplerling wwrum of yet another lightsaber as it stabbed at him from above, missing his head and shoulders but leaving one ear ringing.

His new assailant landed in a crouch nearby: a male Human whose dark hair was tied back in a short ponytail—an example of New Republic decadence if there ever was one. Rune moved on him at once; in wordless synchronicity he was joined by Koresh, and the two slashed and stabbed from two directions at once. The Jedi gave ground, but his every step was measured as he expertly spun his sky-blue saber to parry.

The two Reborn didn’t relent, pressing the lone Jedi out toward the edge of the loading dock, away from his allies. Behind them, the melee began to spread itself out, dividing into several smaller duels.

Abruptly the Jedi broke away and ran, his long strides carrying him to a corner of the platform, where several narrow, rail-less catwalks reached some distance out into the chasm.

“Where are you going, Jedi?!” jeered Koresh, his voice high and gleeful.

“Just getting a better view of the place!” the other man retorted. Reaching the beginning of the catwalk, he pointed his blade in challenge and beckoned. “Care to join me?”

Rune barked out a harsh laugh as he and Koresh crossed the distance with a Force leap and renewed their assault. Though the Jedi immediately backed away down the catwalk, they seemed to be in his element now. With only just enough room for the two Reborn to advance side by side, they couldn’t employ most of the more powerful, sweeping attacks that their training had favored.

Once in a while, one of the three combatants would flinch out of the way of a stray blaster shot. Level by level, the far walls of the Harbor glimmered with weapon fire, while plumes of smoke and droning rebel transports troubled the air.

Growing impatient, Rune called on the Force and flipped over the Jedi’s head, landing in a crouch behind the Jedi and bringing his lightsaber down to split him in two. But the bloodshine beam of plasma only sizzled through metal, and he couldn’t recover his defense before the Jedi’s boot slammed square into his chest. As Rune landed on his back, the Jedi flicked a stab at Koresh’s face; it missed, but the Reborn retreated a step and hesitated.

“You… will pay for that, Jedi,” Rune wheezed as he regained his footing, wary of the abysses on either side of him.

The Jedi eyed Rune over his shoulder, keeping his blade toward Koresh, and glanced from one Reborn to the other. “I’m afraid I’m short on credits,” he replied, deadpan. “I’ve been going easy on you. You’re on the wrong side. Surrender.”

Rune coughed, clenching down on his pain with sheer will, regathering his power—or trying to. Out there on the catwalk his head was clearer than it had been in the thick of battle, and the Jedi’s words rattled him. With Master Desann dead, the Empire would never be reborn. In a way then, he was on the wrong side—not that the rebel terrorists and their Jedi lackeys were the right side, but still...

“You are a coward—afraid to fight us!” the green-hood snarled. Illumined by the fierce glow of his blade, Koresh’s face was split by a maniacal grin.

That is what we all look like, thought Rune distantly.

A scream rang out from the loading dock. All three men looked to see the Zabrak Jedi falling onto his back—both of his legs were gone at the knees. Amazingly, the alien Jedi kept hold of his lightsaber, but his antagonist, Vrekis, easily shunted it aside and decapitated him with a single stroke. Not a second later the shadowtrooper turned on another Jedi, who was rushing to the alien’s aid too late, and slashed her across the chest. The woman fell, her sun-yellow blade vanishing as she joined the dismembered bodies sprawled about the platform—among which, Rune could not help but notice, at least four more Reborn now lay.

Koresh looked back to the Jedi before him, his eyes aglow with cruel glee, seemingly unperturbed at the deaths of his brothers. “The Force betrays you!”

The Jedi’s voice was low and arctic. “Oh, it does, does it?”

Then he was a living bolt of azure lightning. Closing in on Rune, he feinted on the left, then kicked him in the chest again. Rune staggered back, his breath leaving him in a throat-scorching rush.

The green-hood lunged for their enemy’s back, but the Jedi spun toward him. There was a curving blue-white flash, then a shrill howl as Koresh’s red lightsaber, and the arm grasping it, tumbled from the edge of the catwalk—before the Jedi kicked him in the spine and sent him down after it.

Choking down a deep breath, Rune brought his saber to guard, waiting for another onslaught; he knew that the best course would be to attack, but his concentration had frayed. He levied a silent curse on Vrekis, Nelvish, and all his brothers for dragging him into this pointless, hopeless battle, and on himself for letting them do it.

A heartbeat passed. Rather than charging, the Jedi merely waved a hand. Having only had eyes for their blades, Rune was unprepared for a Force attack. An invisible wave caught him up like a leaf and flung him over the catwalk’s edge.

Tumbling through empty space, Rune let go of his lightsaber and screamed into the Force, grasping at all of its power to slow his descent, to cushion his impact. Far sooner than he expected, a hard surface found him. An explosion of white-hot pain shot from his feet to his skull and blasted his consciousness away.

Moments or perhaps hours later, he found himself splayed out on his back, staring up perhaps six or seven levels at what he assumed to be the catwalk he had fallen from. Compared to before, the Harbor was remarkably quiet, with the report of energy weapons and explosions intermittent and staggered; the troopers were falling back, and the rebels were penetrating into the depths of the facility.

Every bone in Rune’s body shrieked at him. Moving only made it worse, but he shambled to his feet as soon as he dared. He had fallen onto a debris-strewn conveyor belt, one of several which linked the Harbor to the lower sections of Cairn Assembly.

After a few shaky steps, he staggered to his knees beside a mangled, bloody mess which had once been Koresh. Rune flinched away from the sight as well as the stench, panting as he tried to force his strength to return. Yet deep within, there still burned a little ember of exultation. Fate had spared him once again.

Rune waited a long moment, then stood again and found the dead man’s lightsaber nearby. The hilt felt cool and comfortable, just as his own had; one saber was as good as any other. For a brief instant he wondered whether his destiny involved keeping such a weapon after escaping this place. Would it be more trouble than it was worth?

He shook his head and raised his hood, which had been dislodged during his fall, and followed the conveyor belt into the tunnel of dark steel from which it emerged. Nothing was impossible, but plans and speculations were all a fool’s game until he escaped.