Falling rock grit kept mucking up Corporal Doth's helmet visor. He took his left hand off the blaster's foregrip and smeared it away.
"More spice." A strand of crystal gold glittered along the rock wall in the cold thin air. The hair-thin strands seemed to shiver like cobwebs, but they were kriffing sharp to the touch.
Jadkins snorted to his left. "Rather industrious of pirate-scum. Resurrect some old spice mine and hijack slaves to do the work for them."
"They raided Imperial convoys. That's not industrious, that's terminal stupidity."Doth replied.
"Well, I got the cure right here." Heyth tickled the underside of his scattergun's pump.
Up ahead, Sergeant Yaesin motioned for a halt and put his hand on his bucket, two fingers extended as he listened to orders from the Persecutor's XO. Doth and the other two troopers took up overwatch positions while they waited.
They were all feeling a little blast-happy. Interdicting pirates wasn't the best use of crack Imperial troops but ever since the Treaty of Coruscant there wasn't much use for crack Imperial troops. Until the war kicked back up, all anyone could do was drum their heels and try to avoid going mad. Vaping anything, even pirates, helped take that itch off.
Not that Corporal Doth was getting sloppy, no sir. The only thing worse than being relegated to pirate mop-up was getting mopped by the undisciplined, sloppy, scum-spawn. So he checked his quadrant and kept his scopes tight.
Still, would it be too much if they put up a better fight?
Sporadic blaster fire could still be heard echoing in the mining complex's tunnels, but it seemed most of the pirate scum had been on the raiding ships when the Persecutor dropped into the system. The survivors they'd followed back to this asteroid complex had only been reinforced by a skeleton crew. In retrospect, ten squads of troopers had probably been overkill, but the gunnery boys had already had their fun atomizing the rattling soup-can frigates and scavenged fighters.
It was still a pretty big rock and forty men wasn't enough to secure all this space. Scanners had mapped a deep maze of tunnels underneath the central facility and what pirates were still alive seemed to be fleeing there. That was fine by Doth. The squads had been planting charges and blowing through airlock doors as they went. As soon as they were boots-off, the Persecutor would pop the dome with some turbolasers and give cold vacuum the honor of finishing off this pirate nest.
Sergeant Yaesin's helmet turned and he nodded at Doth and the rest of the team.
"Thaunta squad's calling in. They've lost contact with Corporal Grembor. We're going to be playing nurse-droid."
The fire-team moved quickly through the hand-carved tunnels, helmet lights bobbing and blasters steady. Other troopers passed them, shepherding long lines of gaunt-faced, rag-draped figures up the tunnels to the main airlocks.
The slaves had been a surprise, but they'd fetch a nice bonus from the Ministry of Labor when the Persecutor rolled into port. Most of the slaves were proper Imperial stock and complying smartly, but there were sporadic reports of some of the more alien scum not getting the hint.
In Grembor's case, it looked it'd been something that a blaster bolt hadn't been able to put down.
The four troopers found their missing comrade in a dead end corner of a dug out spice shaft. Grembor's visor was cracked, hissing oxy out into the thin air. He appeared to be unconscious. Jadkins whistled. Judging by the wall behind him, it looked like something had picked him up and hurled him twenty meters.
"Think we got a Wookie on the loose?" Jadkins asked. Nasty bastards, Wookies. Looked like something that should be lying on the floor, but Emperor help you if they got those long paws on you.
"Saw some Houk running with the other pirates. Maybe one of them." Heyth contributed.
Corporal Doth bent down, Grembor's blaster was missing. He panned his helmet lights across the rocky floor. Not a whole lot of dust, the ground was hard-cooked igneous. Doth switched his visor mode to thermal.
"Footprints, Sergeant."
He pointed out the bright white glow-trails jutting out from the cold black rock. The impressions of five toes and a heel were still warm enough to be pretty clear. Doth frowned and cocked his helmet. If it'd been a Wookie or a Houk, it'd definitely been a small one.
Sergeant Yaesin checked the power cell on his blaster rifle and nodded. "Right then, Jadkins, Heyth, get Grembor stabilized for transport. Doth, you're on me."
Doth one-handed his blaster, letting the sling stabilize his aim, and took up the scanner pack. The tunnels ahead were criss-crossed with all sorts of rare-earth minerals and crystalline echoes from the spice deposits.
The two troopers followed the footprints through the passageway and down a tunnel. They came out into a smaller chamber, really just an extra-wide tunnel. Glowlights hung on bare cables and shipping crates and other scrap piles had been tossed haphazardly in here.
The scanner pinged softly and Doth checked the readout. He message Yaesin over their internal comlinks. "One humanoid ahead, Sergeant, behind that stack of durasteel."
The stack in question had been shoved up at the far end, where the tunnel tapered into a sharp corner. The lights in that area were all burnt out and it looked like the crates had been gathering rock-dust for a decade. If it wasn't for the scanner and the thermal-vision, the troopers would've ignored it completely.
Yaesin's helmet bobbed an acknowledgement. His hand flashed forward and Doth took up his blaster in a two-handed grip. The sergeant motioned Doth right as he drifted left and that was apparently the point when their unseen quarry realized the jig was up.
The sharp triple choom of a Blastech Z-12 lit up the dark tunnel. Scarlet lances struck all around them, vaporizing softer sediment and splintering harder igneous into shards that clattered off plastoid plates. Doth rolled for cover, snapping in behind a rocky mound thrusting up from the ground. He looked across the divide at Sergeant Yaesin, crouched behind a durasteel crate and shook his head.
This scum's got all the accuracy of a drunken Jawa.
Then again, maybe it was a drunk Jawa. Whoever was shooting didn't know enough to have the blaster extend past the cover. As the energy bolts left the barrel, the cast-off light was bouncing off the surrounding surface, effectively backlighting a small hunched figure wormed deep between some shipping crates.
Sergeant Yaesin's voice crackled over the blasterfire, calm and clipped with training and experience. "Corporal, leapfrog right." Yaesin popped up to a hip-crouch and started laying down accurate bursts of fire. Rock walls splintered and chipped and the shooter ducked their head down.
Tactics of blindly rushing forward in a solid wave of chrome belonged in the recruitment holos. Real firefights were more Dejarik than smashball, pinning down the opponent with more accurate suppressive fire while your pieces moved into superior positions to flank them from the sides. Maybe less visually stunning, but the heart rate still kicked up just the same.
Corporal Doth took the opportunity to roll out of cover and zig for a stack of rusted durasteel barrels. He waited a two-count to aim and then he started peppering the rocky cover, cueing Yaesin to break from cover into a short sprint left.
Their attacker spat some blaster bolts at Yaesin as he sprinted but Doth was there to pepper the durasteel stacks. This time his bolts were tight enough to strike the edges around the narrow gap. Molten durasteel splattered and the shooter's small head ducked back down. He might've heard a hiss.
Doth moved up next and together they drew the noose tighter on the shooter. A perfect game of Dejarik. Doth dashed for the next piece of cover when Yaesin's covering fire abruptly stopped covering.
"Sithspit! Stun! Stun!"
What? Yaesin's sudden, panicked order snapped Doth out of his rhythm. He fumbled for a moment, dropping his aim to toggle settings and the shooter took that moment to try to break out of the noose they'd been drawing tight.
The figure leapt up from the ventilated shipping crates. He caught black hair and yellow eyes and a glinting slave collar and then red flashes as a trigger got jammed. The blaster rifle vibrated and jerked in the slave's undersized grip spitting fire crazily across the cramped tunnel. Two bolts pounded into Doth's armor, cracking plastoid and flinging him back. He hit the ground with a ronto-kick, momentarily stunned.
The little schutta's blaster clicked empty, it hurled past him as she turned and darted away. Then the adrenaline surge kicked into his roaring ears and Doth jerked his blaster up and squeezed the trigger. A fat blue cone leapt out and struck the shooter square in the back and she cartwheeled across the ground.
"Corporal. Status." He could hear Sergeant Yaesin cursing a constant stream under his breath.
Doth's hands ran quickly up and down. Two deformed holes in his chest-plate where the plastoid had melted and pooled, but the armor had done its job. "Minor injuries. Just a a ronto kick, Sergeant."
Sergeant Yaesin clattered past him, boots rapping out a triple time on the hard ground. "Jadkins! Heyth! No listen, forget that nerf-herder, I need that medical kit up here now!"
Corporal Doth staggered to his feet and limped over to where the sergeant was crouched. Sergeant Yaesin rolled the slave's body over. She was ragged and dirty but what immediately leapt out was the blood-red skin. The short talon-like nails, and the bone-spur ridges around the eye-sockets. Thinner ridges bobbled over a stick-thin throat, clamped up tight under a battered durasteel collar.
Corporal Doth's jaws parted company for a good long while.
On the bridge of the Persecutor Captain Yarrow's brow angled down in confusion from his trench-lined face. He descended into the crew-pit and bent over an ensign's shoulder, taking the headpiece from her and speaking directly into it.
"Sergeant, what did you say?."
The transmission was garbled slightly by the layers of rock and space between them, but the breakdown in communication was rather more in the content of the message rather than the audio channel.
"The slave's a Pureblood sir. A Sith Pureblood."
Captain Yarrow looked at his XO. His XO stared back equally shocked. This was a dead-end rock in the middle of nowhere between two star systems. What the devil was a Pureblood doing all the way out here? And a slave at that.
"Ah...understood Sergeant. Ah..." He cleared his throat, "Yes, very good. Bring the-" what, prisoner, slave, lord? What's the proper protocol here? "-bring the individual on board. Be quick about it."
"Yessir."
Captain Yarrow returned the headset to the ensign and slowly stumbled back up to the command bridge and found himself wondering just what the hell he'd set his foot into this time.
Two hours later the asteroid was a vacuum tomb, the Persecutor was in hyperspace, and the captain had been summoned to the infirmary for a medical emergency. When Yarrow stepped off the turbolift, he found four troopers checking their blasters outside the sealed infirmary doors and his chief medical officer on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
"Doctor Lynk, what the devil is going on?"
The gaunt-faced doctor carefully reached up and touched his bleeding scalp with a trembling grip."Captain I'm not going back in there." Dr. Lynk's voice rose higher and higher. "I barely dodged a flying vibro-scalpel and you should see what she did to the droids."
Yarrow pinched his nose and sighed. "What happened?"
Dr. Lynk exploded. "What happened is that you brought a feral Sith into my bloody infirmary!"
"You were supposed to ascertain her condition and report on her status."
"Oh yes. Report. Yes, yes, very good sir." Dr. Lynk fisted his right hand in his left and straightened his back. It was trembling so badly his entire arm wobbled like an out-of-tune sprocket. "Female Sith Pureblood, age estimated somewhere between fourteen and eighteen years of development. The usual amount of trauma and chronic conditions from adverse slave conditions. Reduced bone mass, underdeveloped musculature, and a rather unfortunate body odor."
He paused to rapidly mop at the gash on his scalp before the blood ran into his eye. "Mentally, she alternates between sociopathic angry, and this sort of narrow eyed gleam that makes you double-check the binders are still on."
"Binders?" Yarrow stared at him incredulously, "You put a Sith Pureblood in binders?"
"Blame the 2Vs! They were only following procedures for prisoner treatments!"
"Well did you try to explain?"
"Of course I bloody well tried to explain! She didn't believe me! I explained further which cued the aforementioned flying scalpel." Dr. Lynk folded his bloodied rag up and stuffed it in a pocket. "As far as I can tell that slave has a ten year old's grasp of Basic mixed with pigdin Twi'leki, Cathar, and Gamorrean, all ways of saying back off and kill you and kill you nasty and the things she said about my mother-"
Captain Yarrow jerked his hand up, cutting off his doctor to seize upon a rather pressing contradiction. "But if she was in binders, how did she get her hand on a vibro-scalpel in the first place?"
"She's a Sith Pureblood, sir." Dr. Lynk's voice was deadpan calm but his eyes were darting between exasperated and terrified. "I expect in rather the same manner that made the rest of my tools start vibrating like fever-wasps."
"Ah." Now it was Captain Yarrow's turn to swallow nervously. "I see."
He'd been lucky enough to have avoided entanglements with the Sith in his military career, but you heard the deck-talk and the stories in the officer's clubs after a few rounds of Corellian whiskey. Most of them revolved around the displeasure Sith displayed when their tempers provoked.
He tugged his uniform and straightened his cap, "You two with me."
The two troopers looked rather displeased to have been singled out but they slipped into step obediently enough. Captain Yarrow paused outside the inner door and nodded at one of the troopers. "Those blasters are set to stun."
There was a discrete finger twitch on control dials. "Yes sir." The trooper said blandly. Captain Yarrow frowned and his voice dropped another octave. "The trooper that fires without my explicit permission will be cleaning trash compactors for the rest of his career."
This time their affirmatives were rather more profound.
Captain Yarrow tugged at his uniform and fussed with his collar. He straightened his cap and finally found no further excuses. "Right then. Open it corporal, let's greet our guest."
The inside of the infirmary was dark. Lights spiz-spazzed weakly in their overhead socket, plunging the stark room into deep shadows. The rack of kolto tanks in one corner spilled ghostly blue light across the rest of the infirmary. Captain Yarrow's boots crunched on broken glass and he heard one of the troopers curse.
The broken hulk of a 2V droid slumped in a corner, one photoreceptor dangled out of its socket the other had been shattered into a fine metallic dust. Captain Yarrow leaned forward and peered into the gloom.
An Imperial captain does not display panic, nor is he ever surprised, especially not on the deck of his own ship. When a pair of cold yellow reptillian eyes flicked open, what Yarrow suffered was merely a temporary loss of balance and a quick redistribution of weight on his back foot.
A pair of yellow eyes stared back and Yarrow nearly jerked in shock.
The Pureblood was perched on one of the biobeds likes a hunched gargoyle. Bone spurs pinched her narrow face around her brow and eye-sockets and coarse black hair fell in a wild tangle down to her pointed chin. Thick sweaty trails slashed the mask of grime on her face to ribbons but the Sith's body didn't twitch a millimeter
Her eyes stared at him, narrow and unblinking as a viper-eel ready to strike from a bed of seaweed. Her mouth tightened but she didn't speak.
Captain Yarrow studied her, then bowed his head. "My lord. My most humble apologies." He straightened from his bow and fisted his left hand in his right. "My men were taken by surprise when they encountered you. I'm afraid they forgot the proper protocols of respect when it comes to Sith Purebloods."
There weren't many stories on how to deal with a violent Sith but as a rule of thumb, excess over-formality couldn't hurt. Besides it seemed to be confusing the spit out of her. Or at least she hadn't leapt at him shrieking and gibbering yet.
"We'll have those binders off, sergeant." Yarrow snapped his fingers briskly. One of the troopers shot him a startled look and Yarrow fixed him with a steel-eyed stare. Captain Yarrow won. The trooper started forward, blaster cautiously lowered.
He'd only gained a few steps when a sinister rattling started up. The trooper paused and nervously looked at the surgical trays and the rows of scalpels, scanners, and blood-clotters jumping and juddering in their racks.
"Um sir?"
One of the overhead lumens crackled out and a bead of sweat thickened the edge of Captain's Yarrow's collar. He fought the urge to loosen it and cleared his throat. "Backstep corporal. Minefield slow, if you please."
"Yessir."
The rattling died down. The slave scooted a little farther back in her nest of shadows.
"Ah...you'll be pleased to know we've been ordered with all speed back to Korriban...perhaps if you would allow me to remove those binders we can find you more accommodating quarters until your arrival." Yarrow tried a polite smile. "My doctor does need his infirmary back."
It didn't work. The eyes narrowed and Yarrow quickly backpedaled. "But of course my lord it is whatever you feel comfortable with." He gnawed his lips in frustrated nerves. This was going nowhere. He might as well have been trying to coax a gizka out of the air ducts.
Actually...could it really be that simple?
Captain Yarrow issued a quick order into his comlink. A few minutes later, a confused orderly stepped through the door carrying several silver-wrapped bricks and a trooper's canteen. He set the supplies down and exited the infirmary. Yarrow bent down and picked up one of the bricks, feeling her eyes on him the entire time.
"My lord these are rat-"
The ration pack jerked out of his fingers and sailed neatly into her cuffed hands. The Pureblood watched him like a snake as she slit the foil with a sharpened nail and stuffed half the brick into her mouth. Her teeth came down like a rancor cracking bone.
She chewed. "You keep calling me that. My lord." The Pureblood's reptilian yellow eyes flickered in the first blink he'd seen her make. "Why?"
Captain Yarrow stared at her, astounded to hear her speak. Dr. Lynk had made her sound like a raving, spitting mad-girl but her voice was low and cut like a shiv. Sharp and suspicious and husked to a whisper like someone who smoked ten death-sticks a day. Or breathed rock-dust for years he realized and straightened his uniform.
"Well in a manner of speaking, it is what you are. In the Empire, to be a Pureblood Sith is to be above the rest. Even if you are somewhat erm, reduced socially speaking at the present, my lord is the title of address any Pureblood Sith is entitled to by virtue of their birth."
She snorted, like a Gamorrean clearing a nasal cavity and spat something out of her mouth.
"What's on Korriban?"
Captain Yarrow blinked in astonishment. She really didn't know? How long had she been a slave?
"Why...the Sith Academy, my lord. You are a Sith Pureblood. The power in your veins is a rare birthright, with proper training it will be a valuable contribution for the Sith and the Empire."
"Like this?"
Her hands clawed out. The flap on Yarrow's holster snapped open and his personal sidearm flashed across the room, snapping into a double-fisted grip that she pointed straight at him. The guards cursed and jerked their blasters up and Captain Yarrow's voice dropped into full parade-ground bellow.
"Hold!"
The Pureblood didn't blink at any of them. Her thumb stroked the side. She seemed to be making sure it was off the safety.
Captain Yarrow breathed carefully and looked her in the eye. "Pardon my impropriety with a blaster in my face, but that is a child's trick compared to what you'll learn at the Academy."
Her eyes narrowed."What can I learn?"
Captain Yarrow quickly racked his brain, dredging up all the stories and ghastly tales he'd heard late at night in the officers' clubs. "Some have seen Sith shoot lightning from their finger-tips….or strangle their enemies from across the galaxy. I have heard some can levitate and others can implant horrors in the mind that leaves their victims clawing their own eyes out. The power in your blood grants you access to abilities the rest of the Empire can never believe, but at Korriban you will learn it. I swear it."
The Pureblood girl considered his words and her eyes lit up with a new emotion. A cold hunger that chilled Yarrow's spine to see. After a moment, the blaster barrel slowly drooped down and she held out her binder-cuffed wrists.
A/N: For those readers who're wondering why this story sounds suspiciously familiar, consider this an alternate version of the story I started in Korriban: First Lessons. The characters are the same and the plot is the same but let's just say mistakes were made. I realized with my first start at telling this story that I'd allowed the outline to get away from me. I looked at everything I had planned for Tali and everything I had planned for Kory and I realized this was way too much to cram into what's really supposed to be a prequel to the series I'm writing. So consider this the Canon version to the Legends of my other story. No, reverse that. Disney sets a terrible bar. This is the Legend of a Sith Inquisitor and it started a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.