The heat of the endlessly bitter sky could even penetrate the armor that the Mandalorian wore, armor that was modified to handle the stress of space. Poddo knew this in the way the man struggled in his gait, as he stood in the torrent of a burning sun's glare that did little to the droid except make it wear a coolant-rig around its vital circuits to make sure it could stand an extra hundred degrees. Poddo stood on a barge littered with old, new, modified, and rigged, targeting droids. Against the side, the image of the Sith Lord continued to watch.
"You look tired, foreigner." It was Poddo's favorite way of calling the Mandalorian. It was the only way it knew to call him through its synthesized voice. "If this were Antilles, a vulture would have pecked through that armor of yours and ate your soft contents by now."
"More." The harsh whisper quietly remarked in stereo, quietly enough for no one else to hear. "He still has not reached his fullest."
The droid replied by pressing a button against a console next to it.
"I wonder how much that armor would sell for after I scoop your body out with a shovel, foreigner."
The Mandalorian's helmet looked up, catching the high and heavy white glare of the sun before recognizing where a number of droids were hiding. His right arm held the rapier's red blade on while his left cradled the blaster pistol that pointed in the air, uncertain.
Then the Mandalorian rolled away. Through the aimless wall of white light, he managed to catch a glimmer of orange blaster fire that left a tiny burn mark in a white sand that shifted the stain away. The blaster aimed and fired at the memory of its location, but there was no sign that it had made its remark.
"Pathetic."
Another shot came and orange light chased towards the coolant-wrapped neck of Poddo but ricocheted against the invisible shielding of the barge. The flashbang followed by the sandy shower of training droid parts left the saved droid quiet.
Against the hot wind, within the strained cooling system of the armor, the person inside, the Mandalorian, began to feel the effects of the training. Sweat began to trickle and flow and then streamed in salty streams down his face like memories and tears, and the first salt-tinged reminder was a name of a past that breathed through his lips.
Rhaeft was more than a name. In his eyes, it was a vision, a sensation, a total comfort. The earliest he could remember was a bright green glaze in the sky of Farg that wrapped over the half-smug confidence of that name staring back down on him. His hands were warm and wet from his own fresh scars and streaks of water from his own body.
"Wrong," was the first thing he always remembered hearing.
The blaster felt so heavy then, in those small young hands that were red, raw, and sensitive. An hour of heavy target practice would have done that to anyone's hands. An hour of target practice while avoiding a shot to the head would have killed weaker men. He had died before. When he first fought against his brother, he stared death in the eye twenty times in one day. Now, it only occurred twice. This was, after all, practice. Painful, searing, tiring, practice.
Every day was practice, and every day had meant to hurt.
If father had been alive then, perhaps this would have never happened. Perhaps that was what he always told himself during those cold nights when he slept outside. When he grew older, he knew that father would have only made him work harder, make them work harder.
Roncasyt was a father he never knew. Rhaeft never spoke of him except to remind him why he wanted to fight. Rhaeft knew of a time when they were a family of high honor, for Roncasyt was one of the greatest Mandalorians of his day. The Mandalorian armor he wore bore proud scars against Jedi and Sith, and even his belt held two lightsabers as trophies. The stories that were told about his battles were the reason why he would be viewed as one of the greatest of Mandalorians, and why he would be reviled.
It was not his brother that told him that, though, but one of the warrior caste that spat at the thought.
He was a great warrior but a terrible man, as many told him. After he had donned the honor that the armor represented, he lost his will as a warrior and no longer followed the warrior's code he once was part of, he spent his public presence always with the smell of one intoxication or another until even his prized trophies could not hang from his belt without being caked with the filth of his lifestyle. He paid no respect to the greater warriors, and during the wars against other planets, he always took slaves as his war prize; young female slaves. His harem was large, his number of children was larger which only made his dishonor that much more great. He was a warrior, and it was his only grace.
There was no sorrow when he was killed in a duel. That his opponent was one of his Corellian slaves made others cry laughter. The only one that seemed to think differently was the older boy of Roncasyt's only wife, Rhaeft. He was also the only one that knew his mother, but he never said anything about her, except that she died giving birth to Roncasyt's second son. No one had anything to say about her, but there were always words of honor spoken over Roncasyt's murderer, the warrior Thorme, but he never remembered what they said, but always remembered what Rhaeft said.
"Wrong."
When he grew used to the weight of the blaster, Rhaeft had already gained status as a warrior. Those few Mandalorians that he had met then told him it was an honor that he was trained by one who had the potential to become something greater. His deaths numbered ten times a day.
"Wrong."
As he grew used to carrying the blaster with one hand, Rhaeft counseled him through holoprojectors, for he was going through his own trials at the time to be worthy of donning the armor that would make him a real member of status. He no longer fought with Rhaeft then, but he never fought alone in the swamps of Farg where the blaster always was hot like the weather as he shot at the flies. In every seventh day, Rhaeft came down to give him rations flavored with staleness and practice his live blaster against the same weakened weapon that his brother always struck him with when he was smaller. The deaths numbered five times.
"Wrong."
His aim was good enough to strike out flies from a distance without a thought when his brother had earned the armor. Along the fens, the rations found more use as bait. His greatest trophy at the time was the head of a slickcoil, a tasty serpent twice his size with knife-sized fangs, a skin that absorbed blaster fire, and a taste for stale rations. He ate well the night he taunted the thing with blaster fire and crushed its skull with a large whip of bogwood. He carried the knife carved from its teeth to show his pride.
Then Rhaeft came down, but it was not Rhaeft that he saw but the Mandalorian armor that was Thorme's. When he pulled the helmet off, he could still see a few bleeding pocks against his face as he grinned towards his brother. Proud war wounds.
"Nice, isn't it?"
He could not think of anything to say at the time. Isolation had stolen the need for speech, and before this his brother had not spoken to him with but little words and now Rhaeft filled in the quiet that normally was drawn in their speeches. Back then he did not know that he was the only Mandalorian on that planet, that no one else would come to such a world except for a brother who had planned to use it as a refuge should his plans have failed. He never knew that was the original plan, but it did not matter since he knew it was a trade between the two of them. While he learned to survive at an early age, his brother survived against the onslaught of a tainted legacy and words that had now been defeated by status.
Those warriors that he spoke to spoke to him and of his past with reverence. They were part of Rhaeft's clan, however, so it was not unexpected. He knew nothing of the Mandalorian War then, for his brother never told him about the conflicts between factions, nor about how his clan was once whole when that same Corellion that murdered his parent was killed in Rhaeft's duel. He did not know enough about the warriors around him, but looking back he would remember that they reminded him of people that he would later look back upon and consider to be opportunists, would-be members of the warrior class that more likely gained their fame through chance than through actual skill. When he was older, he would have slit any of their throats without a thought for their ill-gotten gains, the crudely-gained armor that was meant to express their true talent. Rhaeft neglected to notice such a problem.
"Wrong."
In the heat of a training room that did not reek of swamp heat, floating bugs, or roots that surrounded his footing, he finally beat Rhaeft in a practice fight by catching him with distance and accuracy of a blaster pistol and quick legs that were still adjusting to an unrocky surface. He was ready for his rite of manhood.
"Wrong, foreigner."
Poddo's electronic digit started another set of druids. Before they came from above in tiny cloud patches of four, but now they made shadows in the air that sheared away the sun glare of the desert. The Mandalorian looked up again, and his legs forced back to avoid a head-shot, then twisted and leaped forward to escape a trio of blaster sears. Another shot aimed towards the back of his head. The blast met the fan-form of his back-swung lightrapier. Another sprinkle of electronics tinkled down the air and mixed with the pure sand. The heat inside the suit squeezed hot drops of artery-fast sweat through his salt-crusted face and brought another taste of manhood that fed his lips.
"As expected of my brother," his brother had said, confidently.
He wanted to say something then, but his lungs then were too heavy with air, too busy attempting to find control as his hands clenched shade-cloaked sand; the first shade he ever found in a month, the only shade he could find and it was from the heating frame of Rhaeft's shuttle. Everything within his body suffered with the dead weight of a sore body that made his green-toned arms feel sicklier, but victory made every pushed and pulled breath a glorious one. He looked up instead, but felt his own chest begin to ache, so knelt forward instead, and smiled hard pants into the dirt.
He heard a small metal tang touch the ground as he tried to bring himself back to normal. It was a ration, a precious ration that he would have once fed to coilworms when he had a chance to get food in the endless wet heat of Farg's green sky. Hodras, a planet of desert and little else outside of kilometer-long sandlions that swam below the hot sands. It did not matter though, when he thought of the shuttle that would let him go to a place where no one ever thought of rations as precious commodities. His brother did not say anything afterwards but continued to stare. The month of survival in the cloudless world offered him no mercy save in those few sandlions he managed to kill with a knife-clad hand; the hunter become hunted. Sandlions had a juicy red flesh.
Rhaeft started to walk away, out of his sight. When he looked up, Rhaeft tossed a lightsaber to him. It was the lightsaber he always carried, his other half of the pair of Roncasyt's legacy, the memento he could no longer wear during initiation. The sand already began to feel even cooler against his baked skin , relieved from searing heat and with a returned legacy. The blade was the first new thing he clenched in a long time, wonderfully comfortable in his hand unlike the sore rawness of a jading bone knife handle or the sloppy grip of a messy sandlion jaw.
He remembered opening the ration then, and wolfing down what little moisture was in those tin-lined canisters. The sky felt cooler, the lightsaber went to the worn rim of his belt.
And then he heard the sound that inflated and ruptured the quiet within the air.
For once in the longest time, it rained on that planet. It rained of shrapnel.
A recoiling thud of an invasive blaster knocked his arm, interrupted the flow of the Mandalorian, perhaps even killing him should there have not been that armor. His body crouched into a tumble and his arms crossed, sheathing his weapon with his elbow before pulling the trigger, twice, then a third time to force the sky to shower his body with a bounty of molten metal and wiring.
He did not remember how long the rain lasted, only of what he first saw when his eyes opened again and his ears returned from the noise of countless thundering explosions. Something sharp touched his stomach, and he knew that it was not a piece of the ship's hull only because it came twice. The figure stepped away, clad in the armor of his brother.
But his brother's body lay unclad in the sand, his lightsaber on his body and snapped into two. Something touched his belt, felt there, and then a revolting snicker of electronics flared nearby. His father's other legacy lay on the sand by his eyes, within a finger's touch of his sore hand, twitching but not moving enough, not enough to hold its comfort. The figure then stepped away, but not before looking back for a moment, motioning black hair back to stare a naked black eye straight back into his soul; the man looked like Rhaeft, Rhaeft as a Corellian.
As he stepped away, the not-Rhaeft stepped away in his brother's armor, in his father's legacy, not hearing the call to stop, but instead continued as though he heard nothing. The man continued to step away, out of his sight, until only the sound of metal hummed, and clashed, and then faded at the eruption of heat and noise. And then silence rested within the dry heat and the greasy smell of dying. Eyesight grew poor the more he stared at his brother, the more he stared at its wavering smell and the lake that built between his vision of the dead. There was a breeze somewhere and something blanketed his body with warmth. He was tired.
"Wake up."
Somewhere, there was darkness, but it was not a numb sensation that was death. The voice was foreign, but so was this wet metal scent, so was the chill. His eyes were open, or maybe they were not. He could not remember, but it was enough for that voice.
"Hmph. So you can move after all."
He could move. His hand felt a cold metal floor and then stood up in the metal world. A harsh remark touched his ankle. His fingers felt a plastic orifice there that must have been a scab. There were more than one.
Then light flickered up from a lone long beam of bulb over his head, flashing and flickering in the dead dark steel of a cell. There was a door, and it was shut locked.
"But of course you would. The droids never lie, and I can feel that seething." The voice streamed from a grate, a metal-inflected voice. "That... anger."
The door then slid open. A pair of cold tear-shaped droids stood at attention behind that door, but they did not pay attention to him, did not want to, or perhaps were commanded to. The cell led to a hall that was lit with the same simple lighting.
"You will go right."
He did not have a choice. The droids stood ready, and he could see their chaingun blasters mounted in their arms, but they did not pay attention. He continued to walk. The droids turned with clockwork synchronicity and began to follow him four steps behind as he continued through the chamber. A gaping doorway rested to his right.
"Go through that doorway."
He was in a large chamber, lit with a single bring light that shimmered from above over two more droids that guarded a table. A lightsaber was there, and it did not take long before he realized that it was his, or maybe not. It was a combination of parts, a piecemail collection of two parts; of the two broken lightsabers, now made into one total form and maybe more.
"You are not the most promising of candidates, but I need a pupil. I can detect the emotions you carry. Even though you hide them, I can see there is determination laced with that anger, Mandalorian. Can your kind actually be trained is what I would like to know."
He said nothing in retaliation.
"Good. You understand who is your superior. Answer me: what drives your anger?"
Somewhere above, Rhaeft's body rot into bones. Somewhere that man, that dark-skinned Corellion still wandered with his brother's armor, that stolen legacy. The voice laughed, then ceased with incisive strength.
"Answer me."
"Revenge."
"It may do well for us to work together after all."
The center of the room erupted with a third figure; a shimmering blue image of a figure robed in black with a blue iris staring back towards him through the false shadow of the image.
"I am Darth Gelna, once Sith and founder of the Trade Federation." There was a sort of hidden rage he could hear within the hollow voice. "Grab that weapon before you."
He held the alien weapon and felt its familiar grip. Part of it limped in his hand.
The droids turned to face him, then reached their arms upward towards him. His legs took a quick stride and activated the wagging lightsaber. A red spike of energy flashed and portruded, much shorter than any lightsaber. Chain blaster fire rained towards him, but his legs gave way and he tumbled to the side, avoiding all but a wandering beam that caught his dented shoulder. His legs sprinted forward, his hand taking a quick change of grip to hold the shortened blade with one hand and charged forward and pounced on the metal figure stabbing it with the short edge before turning to face the other fully armed opponent. The weapon left his hand with a wide-arced swing, and the weapon flung forward into the steel neck of the droid. He tried to pull off the arm's blaster, but it was mounted, so reached for the blade and sleekly pulled the weapon out of the fresh metal gape. There was nothing else that could be seen, but he was still in the light.
"Promising."
He ran out of the light and hoped to adjust his eyes. Slowly. The figure did not move, but laughter echoed in smug snickering.
"You will be my apprentice."
The figure turned to face him, he remembered spreading his legs. There was still nothing that could be seen around him yet.
"Accept."
"What if I don't?" Was what he remembered asking.
"You cannot." was what muttered out of that figure. "We both have something that each would use. I will teach you so you will take my revenge. When I am done, you will be a Sith with enough power to have that revenge you desire so much. Choose and you will have power. Refuse, and you will be starved in darkness until your soul breaks. Accept."
There were no doorways, no droids; only the sole light from above and the shimmering blue figure, the Sith that continued to watch him with that glowing monochrome eye.
The weapon he would become familiar with in the years to come was turned off. He accepted, and the room filled with amplified chuckles.
"As my apprentice, the first you must do is disavow your name and your traditions. Traditions were what make the Jedi weak, and made the Sith even weaker, and you are already too weak."
He bowed and accepted. Traditionally, new Sith lost their names to gain new titles. He was offered no name. It did not matter, though; he had no other name worth mentioning, no one to remember him by except for the man that now rot in the shade of a metal corpse.
Darth Gelna was a believer of a new era of the Sith, one that did not follow the rigors of traditions that were steeped in etiquette. No one needed traditions when it interfered with the power of the Dark Side and the emotions that controlled them. Lightsabers were likewise a sign of a dying culture. A culture that traitors like Darth Sidius believed in.
She loathed the man named Darth Sidius, a man he never knew until he would hear that name spoken every day to him as though words would burn his image into his head; the one that killed her before she could prove her power in bringing the New Age. Instead, he became the Sith master and, worse, stole her legacy: the Trade Federation; the supplier of droids that she herself planned to use to gain control of a Jedi-crippled Republic. The apprentice that stole her position to become master of a new age of Sith lords.
The lightrapier was one of the many examples of her own inventions. A concentrated lightsaber with a neck that wagged in order to deflect blasters more easily as a shield. The weapon's blade was shorter but could cleave surprisingly easily and, with the right pressure, could break a lightsaber's flow. It was a combination of what made the old useful, but provided in a way that made it more effective in an age where no one used lightsabers except for fools like Palpatine. Only what was new or could be made new would be kept. This was why he would return to the surface to search the sinking remnants of a ship, and unearth a scorch-dented chest that contained a new suit of armor that was like his own; his lost tradition, or what was left that could be used; his clone set of armor to the thief that killed his brother. He was still weak, but things would change in the years to come, and he knew that when the time was right he would find that man, the one that killed his brother, his clan, his Mandalorian nation: Jango Fett. When he did, he would strike against him as Sith, and, in that fool's dying breath, remove his own helmet and make him remember just who it was he faced before taking the red hot blade of his lightrapier, aim it against his neck and-
-and then the red-hot blade flung in the air and cleaved another ball into two pieces. The blaster aimed, fired twice, ricocheted, and destroyed two more of the targeting machines with reflected fire. The Mandalorian opened his hand and pulled the airborne weapon back into his hand.
The sky was still clear, empty. He could hear Poddo's electronic accent say to Gelna's image.
"There is nothing left for the Foreigner to practice with, my lord."
There was nothing else, not even sweat or memories; only a Mandalorian suit of armor, and a Sith lightsaber, and nothing.