Author's Note:

Reply to Guest Review (Cad Bane lover) - Thank you for the lovely review! There are thirty-two chapters total, so we have only three more to go after this one. I love the idea of writing more Cad Bane stories after "SB" is finished, but I will probably take a short break to work on some other projects.

The incoming reviews have been simply stupendous. Thank you to everyone who is kind enough to leave one. Each one means more than you will ever know.

These next couple chapters include the sort of images that have been in my head for well over a whole year – the images that drove me to write "SB" in the first place. Yes, I am getting emotional. But enough of that.


"Space Bound"

Chapter Twenty-Nine: Retribution


"You don't have long
I am on to you
The time, it has come to destroy
Your supremacy"

-Muse, "Supremacy"


"Bane, you know this isn't just about the Lethan girl. It's about every one of my allies watching and waiting to see if a bounty hunter can take on the Corrino's and their allies..."


His eyes were open. But he couldn't see a thing.

Holy shit, he was blind.

The back of his head felt warm and wet. Had he been clubbed, shot, or had any of it really happened at all? What if he had imagined the shooting and the fire?

It didn't matter if Cad Bane would have admitted it to anyone or not. He was afraid.

"Are you awake?" someone asked from above.

He coughed up a thick chunk of blood.

"The name's Cad Bane."

"Is that so?" asked the Weequay standing above him. "I wouldn't go using that name around here, because the boss is waiting for somebody who goes by the same."

"No, Trev. That's Bane, all right. I'd know him anywhere," said another Weequay voice from behind him.

Well, I don't know you, Cad thought drowsily. So I must still be a celebrity.

"Is that so?" the first said again, still sounding skeptical. "Well, in that case, you're a wanted guest. Like I was saying, the boss is waiting for you inside."

"I can't fucking see..." But it was only a half-truth. He was beginning to see again, to some extent. All that was visible was a dark, blazing blur that swirled in front of him.

"Trev hit you with a luma grenade. You should be fine in about five more minutes," said the second. His voice sounded hollow, as desolate as the surrounding land.

When Cad closed his eyes, he saw Blythe looking up at him, bloody and sick with fever, and full of diseases. Whispering it, "Don't leave without me..."

I won't, Blythe. I won't leave without you.

He felt one of the Weequays grip him by the armpits and hoist him up. He could still smell the smoke, but not just smoke. It was something different, rising above and beyond. Some part of him knew he had smelled it before.

"Now, walk."

"I told you, I can't—"

"It's all right," said the second in a faint murmur that scarcely passed a whisper. You know this path. You've been here before."

Cad took a short and shuffled step forward. Beneath him he felt a hard, rocky ground. His sole brushed a pebble and he kicked it to the side, followed by the clink of the pebble hitting a large boulder.

Now he knew this place. He was on the plateau.

This was where he killed Orett Solarin.

Cad said, "Hey, I need a smoke."

He said it half to analyze what these guards were made of, and half because he would have actually started snapping necks to get one had he not been blinded.

The Weequay behind him, the first one who spoke, just laughed and jabbed the middle of Cad's back with the nose of the rifle.

"No, you don't. That's probably the last thing you need right now." The rifle nudged him again, rattling an older bruise.

Then Cad realized what that smell was. That dreaded, terrible, rotting stench that he, being no more than a simple bounty hunter, was supposed to walk past as if it wasn't there, but he had stopped, and it was still here as it always had been.

The smell of death.

Although his vision was returning, surroundings sharpening as if on a holoprojector, he no longer needed it to know where they were going. And all he could do was keep moving, as he prayed one solitary, silent prayer. A prayer that he would not find his little red girl among them. That in one way or another she was still alive.

A black image loomed in front of them at the top of the plateau, from within bringing that awful smell.

"Well? Go on. Get on with it. He wants to talk to you," whispered the second.

Garr Broxin couldn't be waiting inside.

A third time the rifle hit him. Guess he was right.

He wanted to retch from the smell even before he had stepped through the open doorway. He knew what he was doing. He was walking into a slaughterhouse. And this one was going to be worse; just by the smell of death coming from within, he could tell, all right.

A pale, rounding, human figure spun around, roughly fifteen feet away from the entrance. Cad immediately recognized the face of Garr Broxin as the one he studied and memorized mere days ago. It was a pink, oily face, with wide baby-blue eyes as full of life as the corpses surrounding him. He was standing in the center of what looked very much like the inside of a starship—no, it was a starship. It had been broken down and half-buried in the rocks.

Broxin's feminine lips trembled at the corners when he noticed his 'guest' had arrived.

There he was. It was him.

An old chant made Cad's knuckles tingle.

Kill Garr Broxin. Kill.

"As you requested, sir, we didn't shoot him," the second Weequay whispered.

"Don't give a damn about me, Broxin. Your little watchdogs half-blinded me," Cad couldn't resist saying, even though he decided his vision was for the most part back to normal by then.

"Well, that's too bad." Broxin was wiping his hand on a clean towel, and chewing furiously on a hard candy that cracked and snapped between his white picket fence teeth. His blue, bloodshot eyes glazed over that of the Duros' with a lazy perception, as if in a dream-like state.

Cad felt a blow to the back of his head, rattling the headache into a level of pain that made him shudder as he leaned forward on his knees. He bit down on a string of vulgarities until he tasted fresh blood in his mouth.

"Then you won't be able to see that coming, will you?" said the first Weequay.

"All right, Trev, let's go," the second sighed, and then the last thing Cad would hear him say. "Broxin said this would be our last order. So let's just go. Before the whole fucking planet burns up."

Broxin blinked, as if in disbelief, as the two Weequays backed up and turned away, never to return.

But Cad Bane just laughed, spitting up more blood onto the floor. Nausea tickled the back of his throat. He looked up, but the sickness did not cease. The smell was worse here—far worse than he remembered it being in the dump. It was—different. It was. Fresher. Layered on top was the stench of burning flesh and bone and dead ashes.

This place was bigger. It was much bigger. At least five times the size of the one he stumbled on before. Maybe even bigger.

But—children. None of them could possibly be over seven, maybe eight years of age. Rotting in the corners like scrap meat for the dogs. Lying in heaps like garbage. Dried blood of various colors spilled on the floor of the ship's main hold. Some small enough to be stacked into crates by the dozen.

He wasn't going to look. No. He could not look. He had already seen it. He had to keep his focus. Don't look at them.

All the pairs of empty eyes were there, staring, waiting for a final vengeance to put their tiny souls to rest. It was enough to know they were there. It was enough. Waiting for a retribution.

To the left, a gaping window looked out in the direction they came. It must have once been an entire wall of the starship, deliberately torn out for a pretty view. It was in front of this window that Garr Broxin stood, cleaning each of his fingernails with a nail file. The main hold of the broken down ship itself glistened with empty furniture.

In the corner, tucked behind Broxin like a minature purse, Cad noticed a small Twi'lek girl with pale turquoise skin, very much alive but so skinny it was sickening to see.

The only source of light streamed in through the lone window. Fire raged across the entire horizon. The last of Broxin's black buildings were burning down.

Broxin was the first to speak up.

"My friends, the Corrino's, and then their friends, the Dio's...you, do you know where they are right now?"

Slowly, Cad Bane got back on his feet and walked forward. In front of Broxin was a game table, complete with a deck of standard playing cards. He tried not to think about why Broxin would keep a game table here, of all places. Not just the main hold of a crashed starship but the worst kind of cemetary.

"Search me," he said. "Dead. Scattered. As if you would care about 'dem, anyway. You never did, did you."

Broxin leaned forward, snapping his fingers at the green Twi'lek girl behind him. "Come closer. It's all right. I didn't ask for your attention just to shoot you or anything. Come closer. You came for me. Didn't you? To end our little game."

"You didn't need to put the bounty on my head."

"Anything to save my skin. If that's what it took, I could spare the expenses."

Cad glazed one hand over his chest, making it look as if he were brushing away some dirt. He was pleased to find the third hidden blaster still remained. Turns out whichever Weequay who searched him had been in a hurry or was just too damn lazy. Perhaps the backup could be of some use to him one more time.

"But it's not just me, or is it?" Broxin asked, as he snatched a bottle of Corellian whiskey from the game table, popped off the cork, and took a thirsty swig. His Adam's apple bobbed up and down as one amber drop trickled down his chin to his neck and collarbone.

Cad felt his stomach give a lurch. The smell, mingled with that of the smoke, was suffocating. If it had been bad last time, it was twice as worse now.

How, he wondered, could Broxin stand the fucking smell? Couldn't he see any of it around him? Didn't he know?

But Garr Broxin just took another swig and talked on, drumming his fingers on the game table. The little green Twi'lek dragged two metal stools towards them.

"It's also—I-I mean..." Broxin stammered, as if talking to himself, "the Lethan girl you swindled off that money-hungry Orett. That was a mistake. For both of us. And don't get me wrong, I-I understand you. I understand—" he tapped his left temple, smiling, like a shy schoolboy. "I understand your kind. How you work. I meet them all the time, they, they're tired and need somebody to fuck with who won't bite back. They don't have control over their superiors so they make themselves a superior to an object of pleasure and reverse dominance. It makes all this seem quite normal. When you realize everyone just, well, wants to be someone else's superior, well, everything makes sense. So, I understand."

"Oh, you don't understand me."

"And what if I didn't? Your little Lethan piece of pretty-faced Bantha-shit wouldn't be here, now, would she? Would she?"

What Cad heard next sent a shiver down his spine, a shiver he had not felt in decades, and the same fire that raged across the Ryloth horizon raged in the deepest chasm of what he had for so long tried to bury.

He heard Blythe screaming his name.

It was the cry of one who was hollow, driven out of reality and down into madness with the most broken form of agony and helplessness. It was his little red girl being dragged to the platform by tall, dark strangers. She was trapped below on some underground level of the starship. But the worst part was not how innocent and desperate the cry sounded. It was how Blythe said his name. Drawn out, slowly, until the voice had no ounce of breath left to add one ending consonant. A knife pulled through one's chest.

Bane Cad...help me, Bane Cad.

He swallowed. He had to stay calm. Stay in control. He couldn't explode. Not now. Stay calm.

Calm...

"This is what you don't understand about me," he said slowly. "If someone comes after me not for a hiring but to rectify some taste for money like you, I'm my own employer. It's not so difficult. I reach for his heart and I rip it out through his fucking teeth; that's what I can do. You know I would've come regardless of any so-called bait."

It was Broxin's turn to laugh, a sound that bounced off the walls and the bodies. How could he act as if that smell wasn't even there?

As the Twi'lek girl backed away, eyes cast to the floor—looking ready to vomit as well—Broxin pointed down at the game table and the two stools on either end.

"Don't feel bad, Cad Bane. You're not happy that I took her away, and that's not so bad. That's all right. It's not us. It's just that I got in your way, and you got in mine, and that's all there is to it." He waved the bottle between them. Cad took another step closer, nearly gagging from the stench that just seemed to get worse and worse and worse, as Broxin continued. "It's nothing personal. I mean, I'm sure in another reality, you and I would have gotten along real well, like how Orett and I would get along. That could have been us, you see. You see, it's just business. All of it is. It's all just part of the business. You would know that, after all, you're the one who would do anything as long as you were paid good money for it, right?

"Well then, I'm not really that different from you, in the end of it all, I mean. All just for the money. All just a game. Life, all, basically, one big game. Some are the players, some are the pieces—" again, he glanced around, which sent a cold chill up Cad's back—"And some are pieces who think they are the players."

"Just part of one big act," Cad finished. The Corrino's had hunted him for the act. Sing played with him for the act. Blythe's innocence, stolen, for someone else's act.

"The little whore-shit of yours isn't going anywhere. We can wait." Broxin pulled back one of the stools and plopped down, whiskey bottle in hand. "Why don't we have ourselves a nice round of an old, friendly game. How does Sabaac sound?"

"I came here to kill you and you want to sit down and fucking play cards?"

Broxin grinned ear-to-ear. It was a smile Cad Bane knew all too well.

It was the smile of a man who knew he was going to die soon anyway. No matter what he did to prevent it. A man with no empire, whose last followers just ran out the door after their last order, and the only reason he was still breathing was because his whiskey bottle was not quite empty yet.

It didn't matter if Broxin had led his own killer into a trap that was deadly for both of them. It was still a game to him. It was all just a game.

Cad found himself sitting down in the chair, closer to collasping.

Of course. This was how it all began. It was a simple game of Sabaac. When he played against Gasta Corrino in the Hawke Noth Cantina, he used his winnings to purchase one night with the Lethan girl who had caught his eye during her dance. And because of that, the Corrino's had come, and he killed Orett Solarin, and he found the little red girl.

"One more game?" Cad asked.

"One more game."

One final game to end all the games, to enter and exit the same way.

But this time, Broxin wasn't going to be the player.

The cards were dealt. Broxin's feminine lips puckered as he slid the file across his left thumbnail, drawing a slice of blood along the side of his finger.

Cad Bane felt, again, for that hidden third blaster with the utmost care.


A crackled chuckle rippled from Broxin's throat as he held up his half-empty whiskey bottle.

"Just a good old game of Sabaac, right? No harm in that." Broxin yanked out the cards, shuffled them, all the while smoking a cigarette.

"Just a good old game, huh?" Cad echoed, picking up his cards. "Is that all it was?"

"Define it," said Broxin.

"How about," said Cad, picking up his hand, "the way you've seemed to handle every one of your little pals since I did you the favor of picking off Solarin. Yeah, we both know it was a favor. It was never about who you can trust. It's whose pocket you can slip your hand into the quickest while they're distracted by all your candy. How about it?"

"What's your bet, bounty hunter?"

"A thousand credits says you never wanted to team up with the Corrino's in the first place."

Broxin's right eye seemed to waver a hair too long over the very spot Cad's third blaster was hidden. He held up his five Sabaac cards, cigarette smoke floating around the edges. The beautiful aroma melted on Cad's tongue and almost made him forget his growing nausea.

"Two-thousand I bet you'd love to know where the Lethan is keeping up and, just for the record, I have to say, I d-don't think she fits in as well out here as she used to."

Stay calm. For Blythe's sake. You fucking stay calm.

Not too far away, a black building crumbled to the ground in pieces, collapsing in on itself like a house of cards, for all those strong and weak, big and small, fall apart.

The main hold was silent, and as black as the coffin it was.

Even then, Garr Broxin helped himself to more whiskey. Even when dozens and perhaps hundreds of those eyes were staring at him, begging for his blood, he saw or heard none of it. Meanwhile, Cad choked down a wave of vomit.

"One thing at a time, Cad Bane, one thing at a time. Now, have at it. Let's finish the game."

Finish the game. Finish every single one of his fucking games once and for all.

Cad slapped the tabletop with an open palm.

"Ten thousand," he said.

"Goddammit," he giggled, "do you even have that much on you?"

"I intend to win."

Hold on, Blythe. I'm coming. Please. Hold on. You're going to be okay.

No. He couldn't let himself start thinking about what had been done to her.

"You, you, you plan to bet all of this? Fine...fifteen thousand."

Cad inched one finger toward the front of his coat, resting his forearm on the armrest to avoid as much suspicion as he could. He tasted a growing mixture of hot blood in his mouth. And yet still, he focused. He had to focus. He had no choice but to focus.

This is what he was born for. To kill. Kill Garr Broxin. There was nothing else.

"A mutual return, Broxin. You wanted the Corrino's out. You lose your best alliance. Where in the hell did you plan to scrape that hundred-thousand creds up when I landed dead on your doorstep?"

Broxin bristled. The slightest bit of sanity seemed to return to those eyes of a madman. Then, after leaning forward, he said,

"Twenty."

"Forty." There, he had already passed how much he purchased Blythe for in Happyface.

"Sixty-thousand. And I knowyou haven't got that much," Broxin said.

Cad cocked his head to the side. He leaned forward as well.

"Maybe not in cold cash," he answered.

"And wh-what other form would it be, really? Because, trust me, if anyone besides me could spend all night playing around with stuff that doesn't move or make noises, I wouldn't need to ask for any f-fucking agreements or other. But my good friend Orett, he said I have something that makes me—special? One of a kind? Something about how he had never met someone like me. What do you think? Am I special?"

How he wished Garr Broxin were special, one of a kind.

But even the most naive Jedi could figure out that he wasn't. There always had been, was, and always would be countless men who were just like him.

As carefully as was possible, Cad inched back the edge of his coat just enough to brush the barrel of the blaster. And his index finger, slowly, made its way down to the trigger, taking every millimeter with extreme caution. As a distraction, he drummed his other hand along the table, picking at the edges of his cards in a fluid motion.

"Money comes in all shapes and sizes," said Cad.

"Oh, don't we wish. No, money is just money. That simple."

"So prove it and have me lose the game. Seventy."

"Seventy-five thousand." Broxin leaned forward, stiffening his back, as if expecting a sudden blow or a loud explosion.

The roaring fire was not just scattered throughout the clearing, but was at its first stages of coming closer to the broken down starship. It would only be a matter of time, then, before this place—which had been Broxin's personal favorite one all along, as Cad now realized—would also be aflame. Only a matter of time.

There was another cry.

This time, Blythe could not even say his name. She didn't have it in her.

At last, Cad's finger curled over the trigger. He dragged one foot back. He slammed his hand of cards on the table, almost making Broxin jump. Then he brushed the rim of his hat.

"You know, you won't beat me." Oddly, Broxin said it more as if he were talking to himself.

"Eighty-five thousand. I win, the Lethan girl goes with me and you're dead," said Cad, still caressing the rim.

"What?"

The Twi'lek girl's eyes widened at that.

"You heard me."

"All right. I win, and—and she stays and you're dead. So what's your final bet?"

"For old times' sake, five-hundred thousand. And just out of curiousity, you never did have that half a million you'd promised the fella who delivered my corpse, did you?" The headache burned with white-hot, incredible pain. As if along with the flames drawing nearer, it too worsened. His fingers slowly wrapped around the handle of the blaster.

And Broxin, too, forgot how to laugh, and stared at his cards as if mentally dissecting them. The fire less than a quarter of a mile away made the side of his face glow an eerie orange.

"I'd say we're done betting," Broxin finally said.

Cad stopped breathing. He braced one foot, ready to kick back the chair, the same trick he had pulled on Gasta Corrino months and months ago. His blood pulse aligned with the pounding of the headache for the first time. The desire for ultimate, final vengeance ignited the rage. He was on fire.

The game was over.

"Call."

"Call," said Broxin. "Negative seventeen."

"Well, well. Negative twenty-three."

"Are you bluffing?"

"I might be."

The green Twi'lek girl backed away from the table. Outside, a wave of fire billowed with a giant exhaust of thick, black, bloody smoke, almost reaching the wall of the main hold.

Broxin jumped. He dug into his coat pocket to grab something, but he was a quarter of a second too late.

Cad kicked the chair back from the table, scraping its feet against the floor. Like a retracting bullwhip, he yanked out the blaster. His cards fluttered to the floor on either side of him.

"Oh, boy," Broxin mumbled, frozen, staring into the barrel.

Suddenly, the entire building shook. Blood dripped from the ceiling. The chains shook. And then, from the entrance door, there was a loud sound like that of an explosion.

It was an explosion. The fire was so close it had detonated a wing of the starship.

Before Cad could regain his focus and balance, Broxin reached for his coat again. The object from Broxin's pocket appeared, ignited with a sharp hiss Cad had now heard one too many times. A white light flashed in a swinging motion. A stinging sensation erupted across the middle of Cad's left eye.

Immediately, it tripled in horrible pain.

The glow from nothing else but a lightsaber illuminated Broxin's face.

Cad kicked back again. He fired.

Garr Broxin screamed.

Agony burned in Cad's eye. For an instant, he couldn't see anything. He couldn't see anything at all. As Garr Broxin clutched at his wounded side, gnashing his teeth, Cad planted his foot on the leg of the table to kick it towards Broxin. Another detonation shook the building, and Cad's feet dropped to the floor.

Broxin pounced like a rabid animal.

Goddamn Jedi weapons.

In an instant, Cad felt the ignited blade slash at him, humming and whirring and dancing less than an inch from his face. It slashed again. He ducked back, straightening out his leg in a blind side kick. A painful shout followed, and Broxin staggered back from the blow.

He had once promised an unconscious Blythe that no one, especially a certain human, would ever touch her again. Maybe this once he would finally keep such a promise.

Vision returned to his right eye just in time for him to see a lightsaber beam coming right for him, just like on Nal Hutta. But this time he was ready. Before it could reach him, Cad snatched Broxin's wrist. Broxin's forehead bent the brim of his hat as he leaned foward with all he had to bring the lightsaber to Cad's neck.

Cad pushed with all his might, but soon he felt his back scrape against the table. He was bending back. The blade was closer. Broxin shouted in effort. Both their arms trembled and vibrated, eyes locked in on each other, until he was certain all Broxin would be able to see was deep, blood red. Cad could see every drop of sweat forming on the human face, every bloodshot line crisscrossing in the whites of his eyes. Human saliva sprayed his injured eye and the gaping vertical line the lightsaber had formed in its middle. Something in Cad's arm snapped, and the blade slipped down.

He choked as pain pierced his neck and collarbone. He bit down on his tongue, refusing to cry out. He hadn't remembered a lightsaber burn fucking hurt this much, dammit. If the lightsaber dug any deeper, he'd be in real trouble. Broxin was looking right into his eyes. Almost pinned down to the table, he began to thrash to find an opening or a gap in Broxin's hold. His left eye felt like it had swollen ten times over. Its vision was nothing but blinding white. The blaster was still in his hand, but he couldn't budge that arm. Desperate, he struggled to move one of his legs.

"Just, hold still..." Broxin was hissing, and Cad almost vomited at the smell of whiskey on his breath, at how close their faces were. "Hold still and you won't die...like the rest..."

Still choking, Cad dragged one leg back and shot his knee up as fast as he could. He pulled back and did it again. Broxin whimpered through his teeth. Finally, his grip began to loosen a bit.

Cad kicked him a third time, then snapped his elbow across Broxin's face. The metal of the gauntlet shattered his nose and red blood sprayed the floor, and his grip on the human's wrist tightened as he slowly turned Broxin over. Cad Bane rose to his full height, twisting his opponent's arm backwards. In a flash, a snapping sound came from Broxin's wrist. With a shriek, he collapsed on top of the table. The last of the Sabaac cards were scattered in all directions.

But the Duros bounty hunter couldn't take it.

All at once, Cad felt something rattle his right leg. He backed up, glancing down. It only took him a split second to realize Broxin had delivered the million-credit kick.

He watched his kneecap shift ninety degrees to the side.

Holy shit.

Broxin jumped up off the table, gnashing his teeth as his broken wrist dangled at his side. In his right hand he was wielding a new lightsaber drawn from his coat pocket.

But Cad could not stop. No pain or loss of blood or broken bones could stop him now. His mind raced.

Barely able to stand because of his knee, Cad raised his blaster, as pus oozed from his left eye and blood trickled down his neck. He rose, aimed, and fired. The blast sailed above Broxin's head.

"Why'd you fucking miss me!"

Broxin stopped midair from waving the lightsaber.

A thick, rusty, bloody chain above his head, struck at the top by the blast, disconnected from its hook, and it tumbled ten feet down, whistling in the air. Cad finally managed a small smile of approval, as the chain collapsed upon Broxin's pink, oily, unscarred head and shoulders, and he screamed like a little child. The heavy weight dragged him down and the lightsaber seemed to leap out of his opened hand. The sweet aroma of warm, fresh, human blood was only beginning to drown out the smell of death. Yes. Yes. Wretches and kings, here we are.

We have come for you.

Cad struck the blinded Broxin across the face, twice. Whimpering from the pain exploding in his dislocated knee, Cad raised a sharp kick to Broxin's solar plexus. The impact sent the human tumbling across the table. The thick chain coiled over his shoulders and around his neck, its sharp edges drawing blood, pulling him along with gravity to the filthy, decaying floor. Crying like the infants around him who could no longer cry, Broxin landed in a tangled, bloody heap.

And the Duros bounty hunter, almost falling over, rose up on his uninjured leg. He held out his blaster parallel to his outstretched arm.

Another explosion sounded. Another black building, one that was even closer, toppled down to nothing.

Cad Bane cocked the weapon, glaring down into the eyes of Garr Broxin.

"Now. Let's talk," he said, "about that game."


"I can feel it coming in the air tonight
I've been waiting for this moment for all my life..."

-Phil Collins, "In the Air Tonight"