It burns.
Even as he floated, weightless in this soothing bath of bacta, the pain still lingered. Like a dull ache it lingered around his stumps where the prosthetics were surgically applied. The gruesome integration of cybernetics to maintain his life support was seamless as partitions of his skin were grafted with metallic coating and artificial tissue to restore what was lost. Gone was the reddish hues and charcoal color of his burns, now a ghastly chalk white pale sheen. Breathing through his respirator apparatus, he didn't focus on anything but the hours he'd spend here to help rehabilitate his crippled body.
But the memory always lingered.
A flash of arcing light, a careless act of arrogance and nothing but fire. Flames consumed him and made him a husk of what he was. Gone was the proud physique he had honed over arduous months of warfare spent in the gritty Clone Wars. He was now broken, empty and alone. Only his master was there to remind him there was nothing to go back on. Anakin Skywalker is dead.
There is only Vader.
"Lord Vader?"
The voice was a familiar constant for the cyborg Sith. He was one of the few attendants who never left the premises of the Dark Lord's fortress. To call him a butler would underwhelm his significance and to call him his colleague could oversell his prestige. The closest he could come to referring him to was a 'servant' with close ties to his master, the Emperor.
Opening his eyes, his golden irises bore through the glass of the nearly complete transparency of his tank and saw the dark silhouette of the man. His body was completely covered in block cloth, leaving only his aging face exposed. Despite his increasing decrepit state, he looked no worse for wear and kept an impassive stare that held no fear of the incapacitated Sith before him.
Still, he could not repress a twitch of surprise when Vader's voice did speak through the breathing apparatus' comm linked to the tank's audio.
"What?" He harshly inquired, straightforward and impatient, not wishing to be disturbed for no idle reason.
"My Lord," Vaneé intoned, bowing his head to him once more as he explained. "You wished only to be notified if, in the possibility one Obi-Wan Kenobi was discovered. From the reports indicated, it seems that there is a strong possibility he and some rebels have taken over a decomissioned Old Republic era space station. If what the archives revealed are accurate, they are in possession with a small fleet of archaic yet powerful starships and weapons they can use to harass the Empire with."
The Dark Lord digested the information carefully. He had followed leads that led nowhere and others that turned out to be misinformed. Each time those that had failed him were punished severely, so a repeat of such a thing couldn't be made. Yet there was always a chance something or someone was trying to manipulate him into a position he wished to be in. For all of his caution and temperament he hardened over the past few years he knew, deep down, if he squandered even one potential lead he could lose his chance for closure.
Something he desperately yearned behind the stern and coldness of his new body.
After what seemed to be a long couple of minutes of daunting silence, only complemented by the breathing echoed out of the comm and the bubbling of the tank, he finally answered him.
"Vaneé. Bring me my suit and ready my shuttle," He glared, his eyes becoming a tint of red that mingled with the passive gold. "I will deal with this problem myself."
"Yes, my Lord," He bowed, leaving him to his silence and endless pain; along with the infinite furnace of rage that boiled unseen within his husk of a body.
The Devastator's engines thrummed in a melodious thuum that vibrated passively across the whole of the massive vessel. The Star Destroyer was Vader's personal one, handpicked and upgraded dozens of times, ensuring it was built to last and surpass future generations of destroyers. Of those that entered into its personnel he had only elected the best, most of them veterans from the Clone War who've yet to deteriorate. Only a few of the deck officers, mechanics and its Captain were ultimately substituted to suit his needs.
But there was only one place that Vader presided in. His personal chambers, dimly lit and only illuminated by thin luminescent lights that surrounded the spherical quarters. Leaning back on his personal seat within the white immaculate interior, he was closed off from the outside, enabling him to breathe normally without his mask. The atmosphere and oxygen regulation within the small space ensured his weakened lungs would manage and didn't need his constant concentration of the Force to relegate anything machines didn't do for him.
In his hand, he looked at a cycling holo-feed, giving him more of what he already knew. The identities of these rebels were surprisingly unknown, along with a figure many could describe as being narily close to the one he knew as Master years ago. Security of the old facility was tapped into by outgoing probes that kept its sensors observing it, alerting it and transmitting it back. The ship they had stolen had caught the hooded assumed Jedi in the act but had made no attempts to reveal himself or destroy the surveillance equipment monitoring their activities.
"This is either an elaborate trap, or the most amateur group of insurrectionists I've seen yet," He mused to himself, his voice raspy and guttural without his helmet's audio projector. He almost smiled with dry amusement. Even if this wasn't him, yet again, this would be another part of his training to truly proving himself to the Emperor and becoming stronger with every victory in battle.
The sensation of a slight shudder rang across his secure seat and spherical life support system. Reaching out with the Force, he could feel the hull quiet and the engines burn less bright. Judging from the myriad of emotions of the crew and the Captain many meters away from him at the Devastator's bridge, he knew they arrived. Closing his eyes, he concentrated on the empty vacuum, passing his extension across an unseen fabric of energy that dwelled strongly in this vicinity.
There, he felt a presence of an unusual sort, masked and indistinct. It was within the space station, Carrick Station to be exact. Once a major staging ground during the height of the Great Galactic War over a thousand years ago, it was supposedly left alone due to its defunct purpose and it being relatively untouched during the Clone Wars. This planet itself held no real value during the various campaigns as its tech and silent ships were too old to be used in a more current era of technology.
But now, something drew a band of rogues to it and he was determined to find out why.
With the lowering of a level, his helmet drew his head back into darkness and then the red lens interior of the outwardly black colored mask. Kickstarting the respirator system with a few clicks of his breastplate's control panel, he turned automatically on his seat and rose in a swift movement. Stepping quickly forth, he moved with surprising haste out of his chambers and into the halls.
Troopers and the like parted way, giving him a wide berth as he moved forward. They didn't matter to him. All that did was finding out the mystery of this ancient station has. Twists and turns followed him straight to the bridge, bringing him to the back of the captain of the ship. He'd turn around, showing a commendable stoicism in the face of the much taller and intimidating superior standing in front of him.
"I've assume we've arrived, Captain?" Vader inquired in a level, knowing tone.
"Yes, milord," He nodded, hands placed behind his back and eyes looking at the eye slits for respect. "We've detected a number of life signs within the station. We can only make estimates but it seems anywhere from fifty to sixty, give or take."
"Is the station online?" Looking over the Captain's head, seeing the outline of it through the bridge's reinforced viewing glass. It possessed a typical shape of its time, being close to that of a jelly fish in how a long stem rose up towards a mushroom top. With four dorsal-looking fins attached in quarter distance apart from it, the station looked to have suffered no damage that wasn't repaired over a thousand years ago; if one could study closer, they'd also see it's exterior lights and communications' array seem to be blinking with active power.
"It was started, by my educated guess, an hour before our arrival," The Captain turned, stepping aside to let the Dark Lord step up next to his right to preview the ancient orbiting platform. "We tried establishing contact, but it seems they have kept their comms quiet, for the moment. The stolen ship they used must be docked inside.
"If ships was what they were after, it'd only take a handful to act as basic skeleton crews to steer them out and leave with what they could. It's my humble opinion that they didn't come to this location without wanting to attract someone. If that is us or someone else, I cannot say."
"This place is strong in The Force. Full of emotions; old echoes of what once was and is no more than whispers of those long since dead," Vader spoke levelly, his arms crossed over his broad, armored chest. None could see the crease of his brow, furrowing at the station's orbiting exterior and attempting to find anything specific. When he found the strange presence, glossing over the whole of the inside, he let out an audible snarl. "There is a Jedi on board. It is likely the reports, both the probe and the Devastator's systems, are being deceived."
With widening eyes, the Captain's look of alarm was all he could say. Not wanting to doubt the Sith Lord, he turned to look at the station, wondering why it looked so eerily alive yet so empty at the same time. It wasn't a matter of if, in his experience serving under Vader his 'hunches' were never wrong.
Relying only on instinct, he barked out a few orders in rapid fire, "Shields up! I want us to ready weapons and prepare for battle! The enemy have lured us into a trap-!"
There was a sudden cascade of bombardments. Not by the aged old fleet that had once guarded this place, nor was it the station's own guns. Instead it was transports that had held occupants a millenia ago. Instead they were chock full of explosives and hazardous materials, exploding in fireballs upon impacting the shielded hull of the ship.
Crash after crash provided quakes to reach all the way up to the bridge, making many stumble and consoles to shortcircuit, sparking and sputtering if not dimming altogether. In a matter of seconds, half a dozen troop transports had bombed themselves along the Devastator's hull in an attempt to cause significant damage.
The Dark Lord hadn't sensed any disturbance at all, as if it flowed with the Force rather than through it in the emptiness of space. Deciding to see just what they were up against, Vader motionlessly enveloped the destroyer in a field of his own design. Making it balloon outward till it encompassed a significant radius, he could now sense things far more clearly minus the station.
"Captain," Vader commanded without moving, his arms having not left its crossed posture during the whole of the attack. "There are several dozen ships that are being masked by the Jedi lurking close to ours. On my signal, release a contingent of fire from all batteries. I shall guide them to their targets."
"Y-Yessir," The Captain nodded, bewildered but not daring to question the Dark Lord's judgement after what just happened. If their shields took too many suicide crashes of that sort, they'd be powerless to stop speeding craft from breaking through the more vulnerable parts of the Devastator. Giving out an issue of commands, unseen gunners manned systems to aim their weapons out into the void, confused but following orders without question.
When Vader felt another wave move in a unified motion, he concluded what was off through simple deduction. They were all being remotely controlled by the station and the need to use pilots were unnecessary, save for the guidance by the Jedi's unique ability. Not until they hit would they even be visible to anyone save for himself at the last second.
Ships closing in, he acted without hesitation. He unfurled his arms and opened his palms to point at the deck of the bridge, a brief shaking felt as his grip on the destroyer was firmly established. Before the eyes of many personnel their mounted weapons moved by an unseen hand, guiding them towards the emptiness of space.
"Fire!" Vader commanded, echoed by the Captain not but a second after.
With a full orchestra of pounding shells released from blaring blasts of enormous magnitude, the Devastator's crew would be shocked to see their attacks rang true. Right before their eyes they'd see a series of explosions of wrecked and impacted transports, each one being consumed in plasma with all of their offensive barrage hitting every controlled ship. In a halo of rapidly vanishing flames surrounding the destroyer, the fragments and wreckage spun haplessly away from it, giving the crew a sudden boost of morale to recover the sudden attack from before.
"We did it!" The Captain exclaimed with surprise and delight.
"It isn't over," The Sith Lord proclaimed, relaxing his hold but keeping sharp as his gaze focused on Carrick station. "The Jedi isn't alone, but those transports didn't carry any of the men you saw capture the stolen vessel they docked here. They were all guided by the platform's control center, and it is a certainty they can seen an endless quandry of their ships that way from the safety of the station."
"Shall we commence bombardment, then?" He queried his superior.
"No. He could still slip out of the chaos and we'd never know for sure. His powers of deception and guile are too dangerous to be let loose," Darth Vader proclaimed, turning to raise a pointed, gloved finger at the captain. "I will go in, alone. But in the event something is to go wrong, I want you to destroy this station and make sure he doesn't leave alive. Understood?"
"B-But milord. What about you?"
"I will manage," Vader intoned, lowering his hand to clench tightly at his side. "The Dark Side is my weapon and I intend to bring its full fury upon this coward. He may have eluded the Empire for years, but he will not escape my grasp."
"Shouldn't you take a squad of soldiers? There's certainly men on board with him," The Captain insisted with a nearly pleading look on his face.
"I understand your apprehension, Captain, but I will not need them," He assured him, already walking away to exit the bridge, leaving the officer behind with only a few parting words. "They'll fall by my hands alone."
The flight towards Carrick Station was one of rapt anticipation. The Dark Lord remained steady through concentration and will, not bothering to hold onto the safety harness hooked to the ceiling or taking a seat. Once the pilot entered the hangar, the ramp lowered as the vessel hovered a few meters off the ground. Walking past the blood red guiding lights to the angled flat surface, he'd get a view of around a dozen rebels set up behind a barricade leading to the exit of the hangar.
With his cape fluttering under the propulsion fueled wind of the ship, he made a mute sound of lethal intent through the ignition of his lightsaber. Kept at an angle at his side, aimed towards the motley crew of bandits.
Without a word, the haunting automatic breathing cyborg dropped from the ramp and left the retreating Lambda Shuttle in a stoic stride. Stomping slowly forward, they tensed and raised weapons, hesitating at the sight of him. They didn't look surprised at his coming, though, which concluded that they were either expecting him or planning this as part of their contingency. With stolen E-11 blasters, a Concussion Rifle and Service Pistols, they were prepared for a fight but nothing like this.
"I do not have the patience to deal with you," Vader intoned while he walked, his voice sharp and deep, cutting through their countenance like a Vibroblade to flesh. "Tell me your agenda and who your leader is. I'll promise a dignified death if you comply. This is your only chance."
The light padded to medium plated armored men looked between each other, nervously weighing their options. It was only his closing proximity and his robotic breathing, complemented by the red luminous glow coming from his blade that kept them from ultimately surrendering. Realizing their objective, they steadied their weapons and pulled the trigger.
In a cascade of red bolts, arcs of crimson outlined white blurred in perfect gliding motions. Deflection sent shots awry or ricochet haphazardly away from the incoming Sith. A handful of the twelve were hit, both fatally and superficially, by well-aimed reflected blasts from their own weapons. Within a handful of steps he'd be within range of the barricade, making many of the gunners back up with trepidation at their shots doing virtually nothing.
When the Concussion Rifle released its shockwave of pulsing light, the Sith Lord raised his left hand and dispersed it with little effort. Left with only his cape to flutter behind him, like an irrelevant gust of wind, he closed his outstretched hand into a fist. The result crushed barrel of the rifle before it could fire again, causing it to overheat and explode. Through a messy fragmentation of flesh and blood, the others were sent sprawling to and fro.
A toss of his weapon sent it to cut down those who fell, guided by an unseen hand, rotating it to cut them down in record speed. It even deflected three retreating survivors, returning back to his grip as he slowly moved towards them as they were opening the door. Pointing his finger, the door sealed in front of them and curling it in a come hither motion made them fly back towards him. In a crouching rise, he used a single arm to bifurcate the two from the waist, sending them gargling and screaming at being killed instantly. The last of the rebels attempted to open the door once more, only to feel the painful sting of a saber thrusting through his back out of his chest. In a quick outward stroke, he was left with a cauterized wound where his heart and lung used to be, ending his life instantly.
Without a regard to those he killed, he moved forward, single minded in his purpose. Find the Jedi, interrogate him and hopefully learn more about the others who are certainly in hiding. He knew there shouldn't be many left after the purge's yield of many dead bodies, some of them killed by his hand, others publicly executed or the rest being unceremoniously by the Empire wherever they were found.
"I see that you're quite the capable man, Darth Vader," A voice sounded from Vader's left, making the Dark Lord raise his blade as he turned his head. Before his red-filtered gaze he saw the hooded silhouette the camera made out from the facility that caught him and his band stealing a ship with imperial weapons loaded. Brown over beige, the typical color format of the old Order, but his face was almost completely shrouded in darkness, making it difficult to tell who it was apart from a vaguely male voice; light and tranquil.
"Jedi," Vader intoned, his brow furrowing unseen as he turned to fully tower over the shorter Force User. "I can feel your strength. You're strong and quite crafty to have devised such a plan to bring me here. How did you evade the Order so?"
"Order 66? Unfortunately, I was not left completely unscathed. But...thanks to that incident, my true talents emerged in the heat of urgency and desperation. Since then I've mastered my skills, meditated and bid my time as I gathered allies along with concocting this plan to lure one of you out," He tilted his cowl covered head to the side, nodding while gesturing with hand concealed sleeves. "It figures, of the two, the apprentice is the one who is sent; like a dog to the leash of his Master, and the Dark Side he's chained to."
"I came of my own choosing, Jedi," The Sith hissed through his helmet, angling his lightsaber up towards him, ensuring that it would be mere inches from the darkened space the folds of cloth obscured. However, much to his own concealed surprise, the darkness didn't part and his identity was still kept obstructed. Regardless, he glared at the disciple of the Light and continued to speak back. "The Dark Side freed me of the chains the Light had shackled me. I am no longer bound by your rules of sacrifice and self destruction. I am the one who masters my own destiny, instead defined by idiotic prophecies."
"So, you were a Jedi then?" The Jedi inquired with another tilt of his head, seeming unafraid by the blade pressed so close to his darkened visage. "It is as I felt. Between the message sent from from the Jedi Temple and the rumors of Yoda's attempt to kill the Emperor, there was only one prominent figure from the Clone Wars that was never publicly declared deceased like many other of the usurpers part of the alleged coup. Thanks to that, I have spread my likeness in a way that only someone like you could truly understand."
Grasping the hem of his hood, what was revealed underneath made the Sith Lord pause. It was as if a day hadn't passed since he saw that face. Hints of grey flecked over a brown beard, complemented by his smooth swept hair. Blue eyes stared with understanding at his black visor where reddening eyes glared heatedly back.
The aches around the prosthetics suddenly became more pronounced and the itching of grafted skin along with the painful memory of that day.
The day Anakin Skywalker died.
"I see you for what you really are, Darth," The Jedi spoke, almost smiling if not for a sadness lingering in the effigy of his old master's eyes. "A broken, angry man who hasn't forgotten the pain of your fall."
He didn't speak. There was nothing to say to this charlatan who imposed Obi-Wan's likeness, voice and visible expression down to the minute detail. This was nothing but trickery and it came from the Light.
One he snuffed out with a wordless thrust straight between the impostor's eyes.
"I knew you'd react that way. It is so like you, the brash and brazen General Skywalker," The Jedi's voice echoed even as the face burned away, soon becoming nothing but a disappearing ripple in the air. Much like the instance of the bombing transports, its true nature wasn't revealed until struck and thus was nothing more than a phantom; its true origins remain a mystery as the voice spoke from all around and also nowhere. "I wondered if you were missing or among those slain. Even a few had turned, becoming the Emperor's servants and enslaved to the Dark Side. But it seems much deeper with you. Anger, grief and a cold detachment from your humanity. What drove you to become this way?"
"The failure of the Jedi," Vader answered, his voice riddled with rage and contempt for the deceiver as he continued to walk down a corridor of the station. "And Skywalker's weakness."
"Your only weakness is you failing the Order when it needed you the most. You were the best and the most promising. Where did the Jedi go wrong? Where did they fail to drive you to madness?" He echoed back.
Vader remained silent. He did not wish to reveal such private information to a dead man. There was no point. This was a sycophant to the Order and had no identity beyond his loyalty to it and the decrepit Republic. Both of them were doomed to die, it was just a matter of when and by whom would bring its crumbling heap to the abyss.
He was nothing more than one resilient brick of the demolished temple, needing to be crushed underfoot.
"You know I don't intend to let you leave this place," The Jedi stated with confidence, still concealed from the Dark Lord's senses.
"If you have so much confidence, why don't you face me yourself, Jedi?" Vader inquired dryly, his annoyance growing with each turn and twist around the station. Every once in awhile he came across a few rebels, aiming to best him with a few placed surprise shots. A wave of his hand and a slash of his blade ended their pitiful attempts as he continued to wander around, looking hard for the Jedi's origin.
"Even if I let you find me, your body is a husk of its prime and you cannot tell if I have been bested by your hand. Your Dark Side is clouded by your anger and frustration, while my control is collected and focused. Purity of the Light cannot be defeated by such raw malicious intent," He answered assuredly.
The Sith didn't answer him. Instead, he reached a vaulted ceiling and a number of elevators, necessary to reach the many docking bays within Carrick Station. If he knew the layout of stations such as this, the control room shouldn't be too far from here. But, given the few encounters of scattered rebels in the station, it was unlikely that the Jedi would stay in one place too long and the control room was a vulnerable, obvious place to be.
With his lightsaber hooked onto his belt, the Dark Lord raised one hand, aimed to the ceiling. He focused on the passive pain of his body, catalyzing his own scarred and mutilated flesh as a conduit of hatred, anguish and frustration. Focusing it into a piercing edge, he tore into the distorted fabric that had laid over every crevice of the station's infrastructure. The whole of it shuddered, groaned and quaked as its orbit even jolted slightly from his grip on its every facet.
It was then, that he could sense the Jedi. He wasn't far, down the hall and through a turbo-lift that was located by the station's power room. Tactfully cut off from the rest of the station and, if the lift was sabotaged, it'd be impossible to use ordinary means to escape such a place.
"It was unwise to anger me, Jedi," Vader growled, clenching his upraised hand into a fist and bringing it down towards the floor; immediately eradicating it in a blast of light and rupturing space. "Now I'll ensure your demise is one of pure suffering and horror!"
The action was impulsive but pragmatic. Taking the straightest path, the Sith Lord tore through floor after floor of dura-steel reinforced plating. Like a black, electrified blur, the cyborg menace rammed through many stories of the station's superstructure to reach what was possibly the bottom level accessible by occupants. Erupting from a larger ceiling, he'd land in front of the Jedi with a quaking crash, knelt and gloved fists balled at his sides.
"That was...unexpected," The Jedi reacted with a slight bit of awe and dumbfound. He was resting in a upright kneeling stance, a common meditative resting position for those of the Order. Rising upward, one could see little has changed about his appearance, with even his face concealed by the hood that obscured Vader's vision. "I see you saw through my plan to trap you here. Taking the path of least resistance is reckless, but pragmatic. I'd commend you for your unorthodox idea, but it changes little in how I intend to kill you."
"Your feelings do not lie, Jedi. I sense much fear within you," The Sith sneered through his mask, raised up to his towering height. Grasping his weapon of choice, he held it inactive at his right hip, walking forward with a powerful stride that was as blunt as his entrance. "I'll look forward to seeing your face, stricken with even greater fear."
Raising his hands up to clasp together, a rippling wave of light and air swathed over the Light Sider, erasing his existence visibly and through the Force. Realizing this was the same technique he used to obscure his senses before, he focused his wide net of the Force to his proximity. Much to his surprise, he found that he still couldn't sense him but instead revealed that the room was occupied by the remaining rebels.
Having been hidden completely, they now unleashed a barrage of blaster bolts from all directions aimed towards his body.
With only an instant to react, The Dark Lord used the ceiling and flooring plates he had stood upon to spin wildly and orbit around him. The resulting pieces of debris deflected incoming attacks and barred the soldiers from hitting him. Assessing their numbers, he swung his arm around and brutally cut them down in a buzz sawing fashion, painting the room with their innards and blood.
It was then, that he felt a painful slash strike his abdominal region. The Jedi was revealed for a moment but quickly disappeared as he lashed out at him. With blaring alarms echoing his helmet, the HUD informed him that his respirator was starting to fail. If repairs weren't made, he'd suffocate inside his suit within a matter of two minutes with no circulating air.
Another instantaneous bite of pain was felt across the back of his shoulder, forcing him to block the instrument failure. Even as he focused, the Jedi vanished as quickly as he attacked. He'd do this again and again, the Dark Lord too slow or encumbered by his own suit to react in the way he wished. He always sensed him one second too late and by the time he counterattacked he leaped away to strike once more.
"Your frail body cannot react in time, Sith," The Jedi intoned, his voice seeming to echo again even as he continued his harry of attacks that nick and cut at his armored frame little by little. "Unlike you, I've trained myself and refined my technique. I'm at my prime, years after yours was left to the wayside in exchange of cybernetics and wounds that'll never heal. I may be no Obi-Wan like you hoped, but I am certainly enough to kill the likes of a broken general!"
"You," Vader snarled, his sparking frame clenched and pulled inward, just before waving his arms out to unleash a shockwave that indented the ground and cracked the interior of their surroundings. "Talk too much!"
In his bid to offset the Jedi's assault, he heard him grunt with surprise and thud against the floor where it met the wall. Turning to see the seemingly faceless man, he threw his lightsaber like a lance, accelerating its speed in an arc of scarlet. Seeing him narrowly lurch his head to the right to avoid instant impalement through the skull frustrated him. As he began to raise his deactivated lightsaber in one hand and his empty palm to clasp once more, the Sith stopped him through maneuvering the wall mounted blade to cut him across the jaw.
Or at least, he assumed so, cause he stubbornly didn't reveal his visage to the Dark Lord. Even as he hissed and tumbled away to get his footing back did his face not be revealed to him. Furrowing his brow, he called his weapon back to his grip and walked towards him stoically, despite his body's pain and his prosthetics' damage.
"You're hiding something from me," Vader observed, intrigue mixing into the passive rage he felt at being injured and outmaneuvered by someone he didn't know. "Is it because you're ashamed of your appearance? No, your fear is connected. Fear of being revealed; that I might know you."
"On the contrary," The Jedi replied, still calm, infuriating the Dark Lord while readying his stance with a forward crouch and the lightsaber arched behind him. "My identity is none of your concern. My only fear is that I won't have the satisfaction of watching one of the Sith be deprived of its prized pupil."
Without moving, the Jedi formed exact replicas of himself that shimmered out of his will through the Force. They mimicked his stance, then changed at random, forming various expressions through body language to further confuse the Sith. It was only the fact that the Dark Lord had one distinct advantage over the doppelgangers.
One he'd exploit when they attacked.
Moving all at once, the various copies rushed at intense speeds, launching themselves at various sides. One teal blade struck the Dark Lord, but passed through him harmlessly, as did several others. It was only the sight of the helmeted foe raising his blood red saber to deflect the only lethal one that made the effigies and the Jedi look in shock. Pushing back against the Jedi's weapon, he waved his arm and sent the copies back into oblivion in a flash of light and ghostly smoke.
Backing away, the Jedi clasped his hands, forcing his own person to disappear.
Vader couldn't suppress a decadent grin to form unseen behind the mask. Closing his eyes, he defused his lightsaber and tapped into the Force that was filled to the brim within the station. So many voices of those that once lived, working together to fight the Sith Empire over a thousand years prior this encounter. Every imprint, every memory left behind was a tangible network that gave both the Light and Dark pull within this very hub.
And through it, he was able to detect the Jedi's presence jumping up to slash towards his back.
Turning on his heel, the Dark Lord grasped the hand that became visible when his gloved cybernetic grip touched the man's flesh and blood. The silhouette of his own face withered, revealing a scarred man of young age but calloused by time. The left side of his visage was marred in dark crimson scorched burns -with one additonal fresh wound cauterized by the Sith's lightsaber- making his left eye permanently blind while his ear was barely a stub. Dark hair was crew cut and his beard clean shaven, but other than that the fear in his one visible green eye looked back at the Sith with surprise at being caught so quickly.
"Your echo in the Force is so distinct that, even muted, it leaves a whisper I cannot ignore," Vader intoned, throwing the Jedi against the ground and punting him against the chest with a ruthless kick. The force of which carried him across the room, only for him to be caught by Vader's intangible grip and hurdled into the ceiling, making him cry out and spit wads of blood from the impact even as he was being burrowed into the metal surface. "I remember you, Arius Nef. You were a Padawan whose master was slain during the Battle of Geonosis. As I recall, you were one of the only ones who never received further training as you were deployed as a spy for the Republic. It's no wonder I never heard of your exploits; or that you even escaped death by the Clones in your charge."
"Not for lack of trying," The Jedi spat, grunting as his hands clenched and his eyes wedged shut. The metal buckled and the energy pushing him swirled around, slowly undone through precise control. With a brief inhale, he exhaled calmly as a blast of concussive air shook the room. Lowering down gently from the ceiling, his gaze focused on Vader with his weapon reignited in his grip. "It was instinct to avoid being further killed that I could completely vanish from their senses. I was too traumatized by assassination attempt that I didn't even have time to strike back, and I fled. After years of dealing with the pain, the betrayal, I realized it was as the Force willed it. With the Sith exposed and the monstrous Empire pulling back the pretenses of 'good' it proclaimed it to be for the galaxy, now I can be free to act in taking down you despots for the greater good of all."
"Such noble ideology is what led the Order to their demise, Arius," Vader gutturally claimed, his saber born again in a hissing ignition and it's blood hue raised upward with preparation. "Accept your fate. You're going to join your lost cause in the ashes."
Once he landed upon the floor did the Jedi become a speeding wraith. Blurring with intense velocity, the Light User struck at Vader's left side. It was this time that, despite his initiative, the Sith Lord's reflexes enabled him to parry the attack effortlessly. Growling the Jedi sprinted away, returning to attack his front from below only to receive a well timed metal foot to the chin followed by a hand grasping his rising neck.
"Your moves are now predictable, Jedi," Darth Vader intoned, raising his blade to decapitate him in one swing. A sudden kick delivered to the Dark Lord's left temple made him narrowly miss, enabling the Jedi to free himself with a follow-up thrust of his opposing leg to his upper chest. Stepping back a step, the Sith didn't hesitate to exert a powerful shockwave of the Force into the Jedi to send him reeling backwards to hit the power room's far wall. "Impressive. Your ability to delay the inevitable, that is."
"You're one to talk!" Arius shouted back, wrenching him from the wall and summoning a wellspring of energy that pulled at pieces of reinforced plating to parts of the floor upward. Hurtling it forth with both hands, he reignited his lightsaber to charge with it towards his sworn enemy. Seeing Vader nonchalantly deflect it with his blade only encouraged him to slide on his knees below a swipe from the black clothed enemy and land another shallow cut to his left hip. "Your suit is taking damage, and I'm pretty sure that glowing box on your chest I gouged is gotta be bad for your health."
Turning around, he was surprised to see the Emperor's Right Hand looming over his blade swinging with great prejudice with both hands. Barely able to parry it, he was brought to his haunches and saw the blood halo of deadly light inch closer towards him. Even the sight of sparks and orange glows of smoldering burns on the black coffin did nothing to perturb his nemesis.
"The Dark Side is said to possess many powers you Jedi condemn as unnatural," Vader intoned, forcing his enemy's weapon closer to his neck through the force of his own. "Even if you were to destroy this body, I would still find a way to make your death painful and eternal."
With his back against the floor, Arius Nef only had two options. Surrender to the Force and ergo accept his fate to die by the monster's hands. Or...
Closing his eyes, he recalled the fleeting memories of his enemy. Dwindling thoughts still ebbed, like stained blood left uncleaned from older wounds. There, in the light of the red saber that aimed to cut him apart, he saw a fire of orange, red and gold. A hallowed gathering around a funeral pyre of a respected member of the Order, perhaps its most outspoken member.
In that instant, he disguised himself in that appearance, and got the desired effect.
"Anakin, stop!" He called out, now with a strong nose, broad jaw and aging grey hair mixed with some fleeting brown. With similar robes yet a bigger stature, the dead Jedi Master Quigon-Jinn was recreated for a moment of shock and hesitation from the once proud Jedi Knight and General that was destroyed by the Dark Side. In making the Sith hesitate, he lifted himself up and pushed back his enemy.
And unleashed a powerful wave of the Force that shattered a good half of the masked man's helmet and tore visible chunks of his armor to reveal fresh bleeding wounds. Skidding back to thud against the wall, he heaved with exertion, his trickery of the Force wearing off and his own exhaustion made known from pushing himself to the brink to gain a useful edge.
Hearing Vader wheeze and stumble was all the more relieving. Raising his lightsaber, he approached carefully, not truly letting his guard down till he breathed no more.
Then, he heard a raspy, chilling laugh. It wasn't like anything he felt before. At first the sensation of the Sith Lord's aura was that of a furnace of contempt mingled with fire of a blazing cauldron of agony and pain. Now, it was ebbed by a blistering chill that humanity was no longer present at this point in time.
There was only Vader and the Dark Side.
"You made a mistake, Jedi," Vader warned, half of his mouth visible along with his pale skin and red-gold eye glaring at him with a dilated pupil. A hint of a twisted grin mixed with a snarl could be witnessed. The whole of the station began to quake thrice more violently than before, causing the room to shatter and web out in crippling vibrations as a maelstrom of killing intent was made palpably known.
Raising his left arm towards the power generator for Carrick Station, a sudden surge of chaotic energy was siphoned from its seemingly eon old wells. Along with every nook and cranny of the decrepit station, the Force boiled over and swirled around with the power source that had kept the infrastructure capable for over a thousand years if not more. While his suit sparked and jolted violently, his arm seemed to take an incandescent quality that looked less synthetic and almost pure transparent energy.
Vader snarled, his arm reared back before thrusting it towards the stunned Jedi. "Join the Order as ash, Jedi!"
It was like a finger of the brightest star from the darkest depths of space reached out to smite Arius Nef. Overwhelmed by the light that seared the skin off bone and reduced his frame into ash, his passing wasn't painless and could be felt even as he joined the Force. Screaming in a wail heard by many within the living Force; Jedi, Sith and everything between could feel the eradication of his spirit and body from the enraged Dark Lord.
The station fared no better, with a massive hole torn through wall after floor, lancing out from the construct towards the surface of the planet it precariously orbited. Down passed the atmosphere it plummeted to its surface and miles of sediment till a splintering of the world's crust was made. A cataclysmic explosion followed in a plume of blue and white, spreading out in an apocalypse of fragmented debris carried by a hurricane gale that wiped away natural vegitation, local wildlife and any inhabitants unaware of the threat till it was too late. All that was left behind was a molten crater of bubbling magma and a hemisphere that'd soon become uninhabitable by the Sith's attack upon its surface unintentionally.
Because of such ruthless power being unleashed, the cyborg Dark Side user's body sparked and convulsed wildly. Any precious time he had left of the respirator keeping him from the deadly reliance of his malformed lungs from years ago, was now run out. He stumbled, falling to a knee with one hand clutching at his damaged breastplate and another palming the floor as he gasped for air.
The strain his handicapped frame was underestimated, his vision seeing spots and darkness creep towards its center. Reaching towards his helmet's comm, he felt the fire of his veins still burn hotly even as his breath became faint. His trembling synthetic hand lowered, his left arm lying useless in a state of unuse from the red-hot fusion of energy and the Force's tangible grip over it. Then, through his sheer will and ripe connection to the Dark Side, it raised up along with his damaged bulk.
His exposed eye glowed a vibrant yellow, veins of red stretching across his sclera and skin stretched to express a near livid state of stubbornness. Blood leaked from the connections of what should be useless prosthetics, the damage undone through tailored knowledge of his own body's machinery and his current connection to the Force. Fragments of his surroundings were broken down, molded and attached to his exposed circuitry, armored plating and even his intricate respirator console on his abdominal part of his torso's armor.
Despite the crudeness of his repair, the armor's most major functions were restored and he could breathe easier. Looking around at the shaking environment, it wasn't too soon. The destruction he wrought to the station was so extensive he wondered if its orbit was sent off kilter. Closing his eyes, he tapped into the dying infrastructure, and decided to make use of its weakening structural integrity to make it into something more dramatic if not useful.
"Lord Vader? Lord Vader come in!" One of the communication officers cried through the console.
"It's no good! We lost contact with him several minutes ago and it's been impossible to reach him, especially if he suffered damage!" Another officer exclaimed.
"W-What do we do?"
"Wait," The Captain gestured to them, his eyes fixated on Carrick Station with widened awe. "Is the station...moving?"
Sure enough, despite the aging satellite's enormous hole and rigors it faced, it departed the grip of the planet's gravity hold it had on it. Furthermore, its metallic decks began to peel away, torn asudner with brute efficiency and forming a funnel over the hole that was now facing the Devastator's docking bay. Not until the whole of the station had formed a passageway for the Sith Lord did they hear confirming alarms from the pilots, engineers and troopers did the Captain rush out with a handful of his own personal troopers to see the commotion.
By the time he arrived, he witnessed the Dark Lord gesturing the metal funnel, sending it back to the planet in a fiery entry through its atmosphere.
"My Lord, are you alright?" The Captain asked, suddenly shivering at the exposed eye that looked at him with an intense glare.
"I have thrived off this encounter, Captain," A hint of a twisted smile shown through his pale flesh stretched across his exposed cheek and under his glowing golden eye. "This has been a new experience for me, one that I will keep in mind for future encounters for the slaves of the Light."
"You think there are others like this Jedi?" The Captain inquired, suppressing a shuder of the coldness of his superior's passing him by with little other regard for his surroundings.
"When I tapped into the Force on Carrick Station, I felt Arius Nef's pain expand outward. It touched and affected those connected to both spectrums of the source. I will hunt them down, one by one, until they're all exterminated by my hand," He declared, his menacing grin still unseen but felt by his last chosen words, punctuated by his right hand raised up and clenching audibly. "And my growing power in the Dark Side snuffs them completely from the galaxy!"
A/N: Whoo boy, I did not think I'd end up finishing this before the new SW Film coming this December. Seriously, it was a spur of the moment inspiration that made me finish this a lot sooner than later.
But yeah, this was a story I started I think earlier last year, just based on a few paragraphs that I wrote inspired off Rogue One's scene of Vader inside the bacta tank within his own castle on Mustafar. The premise is simple and easy to understand. He hears the possibility of Obi-Wan being responsible for a raid, but past experience tells him to be skeptical but wants to check it out. Things go awry, a fight ensues and he triumphs in an awesome if not over the top way.
In a way, I think I like to stylize things in a much more grandiose fashion than most films would in terms of visualizing The Force at work. I've been a fan of this franchise since childhood, and it probably shows in the way I envision how both the Jedi, Arius Nef (an anagram of Nefarious if you hadn't noticed yet, ha!) using their respective skills and abilities. I think the combination of the old Young Jedi Knights stories of the old novel continuation of the story Post-Return of the Jedi and The Clone Wars mini-series gave me inspiration and insight on how to perfectly encapsulate both opponents in this particular battle.
Of course, since this is a story written by a fan, I may have exaggerated or empathized things a bit more or taken them to extremes but that only shows my love and adoration for Vader and the rest of the Star Wars mythos. If you guys enjoyed my ramble and this little one shot, let me know in the Review section below. If you want to have simple talk about Star Wars and the like, send me a PM. Or if you're curious if I have other Star Wars stories I may end up writing in the future, also let me know via PM and/or Review.
Until next time, I'll see you avid fans of my works later in future updates of my current ongoing stories; may the Force be with you all!