Chapter Eighteen
Before Hyperion had even known what happened, explosives with powerful enough shockwaves to throw him off his feet and knock him cold had thrown him like a rag doll. When he awoke, his ax was still by his side but his shield was fried and useless even if it hadn't broken into seven pieces. Granted, he was blessed with a spare in the ship itself but that had been irrelevant: what was relevant was that Menelaus was gone. His blaster and other weapons were left behind where he had likely put up a valiant struggle before being captured.
That noted, the most puzzling thing of all weren't the scars of the explosives in the form of the patches of soot and ash. It wasn't the presence of dead bodies from among Clyde Rev's mercenaries or even the body of the Jedi Hyperion had killed. Instead, it was the apparition he knew didn't belong amidst the carnage, didn't even belong in the land of the living. It was about six feet and five inches tall, with elaborate ancient armor as could be indicated by the gauntlets. The face was covered by a helmet whose visor was open for the eyes to be perceivable but there was a peg in the middle of an otherwise perfect T-shaped visor.
Protecting his jaw bone were two blade like flaps which extended from his helmet and a purple hood atop the helmet to hide the details along with a draping cloak. The thick cape covered his back from shoulders to ankle, making him look even more imposing. At his belt was what looked like a broadsword but Hyperion recognized enough of the other details to know the scabbard was a dummy, hiding a lightsaber whose hilt looked like a sword's. The eyes were the only thing that weren't as purple as Hyperion had remembered the cloak being. But even they had the characteristic Sith orange-yellow combination that confirmed the transparent specter's identity.
At once, memories of Hyperion holding his first lightsaber as a child came flooding back. Memories of the moments when he'd been up against fully automated combat droids intent on killing him with the poison-tipped training blades they possessed. Even the moments where this specter's corporeal form had reprimanded him for exhibiting compassion and remorse, calling him weak for possessing such characteristics. "Grandpa Crassus," Hyperion whispered with a growl. The acknowledgement caused more memories, this time of the deeds he'd done on missions for his grandfather's ambitions and even his initiation in the form of helping Crassus killed Hyperion's own father and mother.
He still remembered Crassus' dark red blade cutting his father into three pieces with no more than two strikes and gutting his mother like a prized fish. All before retrieving Hyperion, supposedly leaving Dantius to die, and torturing Hyperion into submission when he was nine. "I was your King before your cousin was born," Crassus had once said, "now I am your master, your guide in the doctrine of the Dark Side!" Now all Hyperion could do was look on the man who'd conceived, then killed, Hyperion's father with little more than disgust.
"Get out of my head, old man," Hyperion added after a brief moment. The specter disappeared but Hyperion knew he'd be back, the old man always was when Hyperion was battling his past between accepting Menelaus and beginning this journey. Lightning flashed and thunder rolled across the sky as Hyperion limped back to the ship even as that seemed to be the worst of his injuries, thanks to the shield. Before he really marched, however, he found a recorder that he assumed was a message from Clyde since it was addressed to him. He recovered it with the Force and activated it in order that he may see what it was Clyde had to offer.
"Hello Hyperion, almost didn't recognize you with that beard you grew. Anyway, your boy is alive and well but that's not the point. Here's the deal: upon opening this recording, you have three standard month to reach Bandomeer and see my new floating estate. Once you arrive, the challenge is simple: beat all my best guns and reach me at the ship chambers then you and your son get to go to Dathomir scot free. Fail and you both not only die but you also help me test out the interspecies compatibility of a wonderful creation I've got. By the way, I'll know when you've opened this: this recorder is traced to my comlink so that it can alert me when you've seen this transmission... remember, three months and then I find out what make your kid so special unless I 'accidentally' kill him first," Clyde said.
It was him alright and the kind of thing that he would propose if he was looking to get revenge on Hyperion for costing him his last floating fortress. But when he arrived to his ship, destroying Clyde's recorded transmission before continuing on his journey to the ship. However, just as he was arriving to the ship in preparation for what was to come, he saw the last person he wanted to see waiting for him. "Inoy?" asked Hyperion. The Nautolan nodded, revealing himself by stepping from the shadows that had previously hid him from Hyperion's sight.
"Where's the boy? Something tells me you wouldn't abandon him in the ship and he's not with you now," Inoy asked. Hyperion shook his head no and explained what had happened with Clyde capturing Menelaus and issuing his challenge. When Hyperion finished, it was clear that Inoy was clearly conflicted: on the one hand, he was bound by duty to take in Hyperion. But on the other, his code forbade allowing an innocent to be left in the hands of criminals like Clyde Rev.
"I will let you go on a single condition: when you go to Bandomeer, see what you can do about releasing every last dirty detail on Clyde's enterprises to open transmissions. Republic officials will work on finding the transmissions and bringing him into court, you just need to worry about the details and don't kill him, if avoidable. If I'm going to let you go to Bandomeer, I have to make it a worthwhile ordeal or I should be considered a traitor to all I stand for. Do you understand what I'm asking of you?" Inoy told him. Hyperion nodded and Inoy could sense it was true: for all his youthful faults, Hyperion had always been a man of his word unless given cause to believe he should break a promise.
"I also have one more favor, if I should successfully retrieve my boy. When I have him, I'll tell you what it is but for now... Know that if you're willing to do it, I'm willing to consider any debts you feel you have to me repaid. You promised you owed me your life, so please humor me if I succeed," Hyperion said. Inoy looked galvanized though whether it was because Hyperion remembered that vow or that he had a chance to honor it was uncertain.
"If I said yes, how would you intend to retrieve him?" Inoy inquired.
"By returning to the ship and reclaiming a past I once swore would remain buried forever and heading to Bandomeer," Hyperion said, his eyes already beginning to turn glassy with each word. He heaved a heavy sigh and gave Inoy a look that said he knew what Hyperion meant. The Nautolan recognized at once what he was talking about and nodded though gravely.
"I'm taking a terrible risk in letting you go to rescue Menelaus. May the Force be with us both," Inoy said. He made to leave but Hyperion bade him wait and asked a question of his own about the young Knight's conduct.
"Why are you doing this?" Hyperion asked.
"Because I sense in your aura, see in your eyes, that it doesn't matter what species Menelaus was. You raised him, at his mother's request, therefore he isn't your ward. He is your son and your son needs his father, just please don't lose your head to that past you're digging up," Inoy replied, begging Hyperion to keep being the man he was now.
"You... you were right about me when you said I wasn't a cold-blooded murderer, doomed to the darkness. Thank you, in case we never cross paths again," Hyperion whispered grimly. Inoy nodded and informed him he would follow closely in his ship but couldn't act until Hyperion had liberated his son and intercepted any transmissions coming from Clyde's ship. With that, the Nautolan and the older Human parted ways with Hyperion headed to his ship while Inoy would tag along in his own cruiser.
Opening the ramp, Hyperion climbed it cautiously as though there was some feral beast that had taken it over in his absence. When you told him that you would be reclaiming a past you promised would remain buried. Did you mean the contents of that black-striped box? asked the specter. Hyperion snarled at the specter's insolence in asking him the question about what he was about to do. Still, he admitted that this was exactly what he was talking about when he had said that.
"But you will present too much interference for me, if I wore the Ring while performing this task. So for the foreseeable future, you will be silent. Understand?" Hyperion replied to her. The spirit grumbled something unintelligible before otherwise submitting to his will, the Ring being left at a shelf next to the door of the supply room.
For his son, Hyperion was about to do what he had to because despite his words to Inoy, he wasn't a good man. But Menelaus was and that deserved protecting, saving, no matter what it cost Hyperion to do it. Even if he lost the humanity he hoped would be reclaimed in raising Menelaus, he would not let Clyde turn the boy into a worse wretch than either of them. He edged slowly to the box, which represented all he once was, unshed the belt which held his pistol and a couple grenades in addition to the shoulder strap that held his ax.
Completing his bareness, he also removed the armor that had come with his right mechanical arm until it was like almost any other. Then he punched in the combination to the locks that kept the box locked. He watched the steam hiss out of the lid then watched it slide off, revealing contents that he hoped never to look upon as tears finally escaped him.
Chapter Nineteen
At once, memories of Hyperion's past life bubbled forth more volcanically than they had ever threatened to before. Visions of him slicing the Hutt Aeneas into four pieces, flashes of times he gutted humanoids or carved pieces of their spines out with his blade. But what came back to haunt him most potently were visions of the time he had raped Dantius' first girlfriend Patricia or attempted to painfully end his second girlfriend Ashlynn's life. Flashes of both the rape and the attempted murder flashed before him, almost in sequence.
Sometimes, it seemed as if he were exchanging lightsaber blows with Patricia and thrusting his manhood into Ashlynn rather than the true accounting of events. Other memories came and went to keep him from fixating on those two most damning of sins until the one that brought him to Ando Prime also surfaced. Now, the three greatest sins of his life (whether the one he performed on Dantius or with intent to afflict him with dark emotions) were playing in his head over and over. Even as he surmounted the migraine they gave him and began placing the armor on himself once more.
However, the worst part about this ordeal wasn't how he could hear the agonized screams of his brother as he tortured him. It wasn't how he could hear the panicking breathing of Ashlynn as he readied his blade. Nor was it even the screaming of Patricia as he repeatedly slapped and squeezed both hands on her buttocks and bit her shoulder until it drew blood. Even his duel with Jakar Forseti and the miserable defeat that followed wasn't enough to make him shake though shake he did. It was the fact that even after all this time, even with the remorse he expressed for what he had done, it still felt right to put the armor on.
Even amidst the sound of him smacking Patricia's buttocks repeatedly, clashing blades with Ashlynn, and burning his brother's flesh, it felt even better to strap his new weapons to his old armor. Then came the weapon behind much of what he had wrought, the lightsaber he had wielded since he was Menelaus' age, forging it after he had wrought the crystal from his hate of his grandfather. Hyperion was on the verge of losing himself to the bloodlust of his past, the rage that had fueled so much of what he had done with the last two and a half decades of his life. "Look at you, groveling in fear from when you had the strength to take what was yours by right of force. Your exile on Ando Prime has made you weaker than the other maggots that you wronged," he heard Crassus voice, the transparent vestige of the dead man returning.
Hyperion didn't add anything to what his grandfather was saying about him even as he finished unclipping his arsenal back together. He included his shurikens into one side of his mechanical arm along with his wrist-mounted blade on the dorsal side. His spear was also clipped to the opposite side of his ax so that he could have it ready for throwing. The whip was added to a clip that allowed it to be held on his thigh even as he continued to hear out what his grandfather had to say to him.
"There is nowhere in all the cosmos that you can hide from what you are, grandson. Put as much distance between yourself and the truth as you may wish, my boy. It changes nothing about who you really are," Crassus told him. It was a spiteful spirit that spoke to Hyperion, a conjuring of his own self-degradation and doubts about who he had tried to become in the years since arriving to Ando Prime and raising Menelaus. He finished putting on the right arm armor which complemented his old suit of armor even better than he expected.
"Pretend to be all that you could never be when you were a warrior. Teacher, lover, father..." Crassus added, causing Hyperion to briefly look over at the specter before it kept prattling on. "But there is one inalienable truth that you can never escape. You cannot change from what I trained you to be and what I had groomed you to become. As far as all the will of the Force will ever be concerned, you shall always be now and forevermore..." Crassus continued.
At those words, the memories of his first ignition coincided with the end of the memories of his three greatest sins. In simultaneity to the present moment, he saw himself igniting the lightsaber he had forged to serve the will of his Sith heritage. "A monster," Crassus finished as Hyperion's blade hissed to life for the first time in eleven years. If putting on his old armor had felt like putting on an old glove, his lightsaber's ignition had felt like a return to the glory he had once known in battle.
"I know what I am, I know what my son is, and I know that you are dead. And you were killed by a better man than either of us. Now if you don't mind, I have a child to save from an old enemy," Hyperion said, keeping his blade ignited and pointed it to the ground as he marched forth. He closed the distance on the specter of his grandfather, who had been killed by a failed essence transfer ceremony where he had tried to take over the body of Hyperion's cousin. Inoy, if you can hear this, I have an idea: return to my ship at once Hyperion said telepathically.
As soon as he disembarked from the boarding ramp, he began a very short wait for his old ally. "Well Hyperion, what do you have for me?" asked the younger Nautolan.
"Do you have a spare comlink I can use to directly transmit Clyde's information to your T7 or something similar?" he asked.
"Now that you mention it, I do. Here," Inoy replied, offering him a spare device.
"I'll transmit the information as soon as I get near the information center, be it through the antennae of the ship or something similar. Once that's done, have your T7 sift through the information and decipher only the dirt or any file of suspicious encoding. The rest can be stored on your ship's hard drive until you return to Dantooine with all of it in tow," Hyperion told him. Inoy nodded and made sure that his T7 knew of it within moments of the idea being passed onto the Nautolan by Hyperion.
"Then these schematics will aid you in destroying selective parts of the ship. You'll want to knock out the main power generator first then destroy the sensor array so that I can get within range undetected. The ship will have an emergency supply of power but it can only keep the information drives and basic communications alive, making it impossible for Clyde to detect transmissions without going into the communications array itself. When the fighting starts, he won't want to since one of the things powered down when you destroy the main generator are the ray shield gates that keep all seven wings of prisoners he's collected in their cells," Inoy said, asking for a comlink that Hyperion would use for storing the data until he boarded his ship. Then after a moment, he added, "Remember, I can't help you until at least after you've defeated Clyde Rev or sooner: otherwise I should be branded a traitor to the Republic, no matter my conscience."
Hyperion only nodded and promised Inoy one thing, "Clyde is lucky you need him alive, if it's possible. I make no promises that I'll spare him... he has enraged a father and threatened that father's child for the last time."
"I can sense the darkness of your old life returning when you say that, Hyperion. Though now you wield it for nobler purposes, be careful that it doesn't consume you once more," Inoy begged. Hyperion nodded, thanking Inoy for all his help, then returned to the ship to download the schematics that he had somehow managed to acquisition from Clyde Rev. Reading through them, Hyperion noticed that each wing of prison cells had about five floors and each cell could comfortably hold four prisoners with the best part being that was how many each was holding. That meant nearly three thousand people of different species to be used as blaster fodder while Hyperion made his way to the chambers where Clyde was likely going to be holding Menelaus.
Also consistent with what Inoy said was the fact that knocking out the power generator would free those prisoners and prevent Clyde from remotely intercepting Hyperion's comm to Inoy. So now he knew what he was going to do: he would first knock out the power generator, using the ship itself if he had to then use thermal detonators to knock out his sensor array. He noticed the emergency power would also go to helping the life support systems remain active too which was good. Apart from keeping his son alive until he could reach him, it meant Clyde would have air to breathe while he watched everything he cared about come apart.
Punching in the coordinates for Bandomeer, Hyperion set the ship to jump to lightspeed the minute he pulled down the lever above his head. There is Sith in you, after all, Hyperion. Use it to become a man of power, you are better than this said the specter. Hyperion snarled as they ascended Denon's semi-polluted atmosphere, climbing ever higher until all Hyperion could see was the void of space.
"No, I'm not a better man like you think I am. But my son is, specter," Hyperion replied during the time it took to reach the void of space.
So you'll obey the terms of that Jedi and spare Clyde for trial in the Republic? Maybe an execution that could be delayed with the right bribery? What kind of warrior are you? the specter demanded.
"One who will try to spare Clyde but didn't make any promises to do that. Otherwise, I'm killing every single kriffin' person I see in that ship until I get my son back. The Hyperion Algethii of eleven years ago has returned to slay a monster he created, spirit," Hyperion told the specter. If the specter could shudder, it did so within the ring, probably out of excitement as to what it was hearing from Hyperion's mouth. Then they plunged into the blue void of hyperspace to pursue Clyde to Bandomeer and retrieve the little Zabrak boy that Hyperion had called his son for eleven years. And on that very same second, the spirit of Crassus and the voices of the past that had threatened to break his resolve on every day he spent in Ando Prime went forevermore silent as the graveyards to which he sent countless hundreds of people in his rambunctious youth.
