Chapter 7 - I'm not afraid to die. I've been dying a little bit each day since you came back into my life. (Padmé Amidala)
Luke's smile was thin and painful, like a papercut.
"Why I want this particular slave is my issue." He said, and wanted nothing more than strike the disgusting excuse of a creature down where it stood. If the slaver had known that, he would not be smiling so eagerly at the purse in Luke's hand.
"Oh, but this one has a reputation." The slaver argued. "I have slaves that far better understand their role. This one always needed…special care."
Unseen by the slaver, the hand at Luke's side closed into a tight fist.
"That I believe is my problem." He said fighting to keep balanced through the force, mentally pushing away the coldness that drew closer from all sides. "As I was told, he can no longer fight in the arena. He is of no further value to you."
"Value can be found in many different areas." The man countered. "I have many different customers." The slaver added and leaned back on his heels with a lazy smile playing on his lips, like he was enjoying Luke's discomfort. "But I must say that you do not look like my usual clientele." His eyes slid up and down Luke's frame, the same way a trader would judge the value of a piece of livestock.
It made Luke's skin crawl.
"So should I take this as your way of saying that you are not intending to sell?" Luke asked, and the force felt colder around him.
"I did not say that, I-"
"So get on with it!" He snapped and felt the force tremble with his anger. "You are wasting my time." Some of the intense emotion must have carried, even to the pitiless creature in front of him, because for a moment there was a glimpse of fear in those eyes before the expression became blank and guarded.
"This way..." The slaver gestured to the darkened passage behind them, to where the scream had come from earlier.
Luke marched past sending tendrils of the force in front of him into the dark and satisfied to find no ambush waiting there. He would rather do without having to use the force for more than subtle manipulation. It always resulted in unwanted attention these days.
Someone always noticed.
He tensed beneath the hood of the thick robe, when they got further into the passage. The stench of decay was only overshadowed by the sense of despair radiating through the force.
"If you are in need of something more than a bodyguard, we have a wider selection that covers almost any taste." The slaver commented in the same moment that the anguish from the cells around them became too hard for Luke to bear and he slammed his connection to the force shut.
The doors to each little cell had a small opening that Luke did everything in his power not to look at. This whole place stank of fear, and through one of the doors he just passed, he heard someone crying.
A young someone
"You have really let this place go." Luke commented with barely contained fury. He remembered all too clearly a time when he was the one looking out between those bars. He gritted his teeth and forced his eyes ahead.
He could not stand to look back into those few brave eyes looking back at him through the dark. It had been a living nightmare here before, but now the place appeared even more sinister in its dilapidated state. He had not thought it possible for this place to get any worse.
"You have been here before?" Surprise lit up in the force from him, and Luke sensed the man becoming pensive, likely trying to remember if he had seen Luke before. "…For the market?" He asked and the same time sounded unconvinced of that possibility.
"No, I was not here for the market." Luke replied and stepped over a thick chain abandoned in the middle of the passage. The chain stretched into an open cell. Luke's eyes were drawn to the blackness in there as he continued.
Luke felt a small tug as his cloak dragged over the chain. It dragged for a moment after him, under his cloak clicking metallically against the stone floor until he took another step and the chain slid free of the cloth and lay still and abandoned behind them.
"The arena then?" The man questioned. "I remember. It was quite the sight in its glory days. Grakkus always bragged that there was not a single thing in the galaxy that had not died in his arena." He eyes looked wistful for a moment, and a real smile played at his lips. "…He died the very same place, so I suppose that is true." He added and the smile became wider
"Sound like a charming guy." Luke said and meant not a word of it. In response the man made a snort.
"Trust me." The slaver looked down at him with the smile still playing on his lips, but a haunted feeling came from him through the force. It felt like sorrow. "No one will be missing him." He turned back, eyes locked into the dark, and the force around him darkened further.
"And that makes you in charge now?" Luke asked, feeling the conflict under the man's cold expression. It was impossible to actually see the emotional turmoil in the slaver that was beaconed from him through the force. Luke could not help to be slightly impressed to see a slaver have his emotions so tightly under control.
It was more than he could do himself these days.
"Well… in a way." The slaver answered with a crooked smile, and through the force, Luke felt the blackness of sorrow replaced by a blank grey. "After Grakkus, there has been a shift in priorities. After all slaves are worth so much more in trade, than they ever were in the death battles."
For a moment Luke thought he would say something more, but in the end the slaver just shook his head to himself and turned around.
"It is this way." He threw over his shoulder and went inside a passage to the right. "But seriously though." He continued. "I imagine you have heard about the slave from his time before the arena. As I was told, it took Boba Fett himself to trap him."
The lighting in the pathway dimmed as they turned another corner, and their steps echoed loudly against the cold stone walls of the corridor.
"But his time here has changed him." He said with as much emotion as if he was talking about the weather. "The injuries he has sustained here have almost crippled him, and he reacted very poorly to prolonged isolation. I have another slave that-"
"I understand, but it changes nothing." Luke broke him off. "The Wookie." He added firmly and resisted the urge to pull his cloak tighter around him. He had been colder than this, even before all this happened. The daytime on Tatooine had always been extremely warm and the nights were equally cold, but this was a different kind of cold.
Dampness drew into his lungs with each breath and with it the coldness. He didn't know how anyone could endure this for long.
"Have it your way." The answer was an overbearing scoff. "But I warn you, it's a waste of credits."
"I'll be the judge of that." Luke replied. His feet almost sped up on their own accord when they turned another corner, because ahead of them, he felt a very familiar presence.
It was all he could do not to break into a run.
They stopped at a door, made of some blackened material that looked both unbreakable and imposing at the same time. The key was shoved into the lock it took only seconds to twist the key and open the door, but it felt like an age had passed when it finally swung open.
Luke didn't know what he had expected what was on the other side when that door opened.
But not this.
Never this.
In a split-second he was kneeling by Chewbacca, all pretences of posing as an indifferent slave buyer were gone as he reached for his friend. The hand that stretched forward trembled.
Luke hesitated, the hand paused between them, before it almost by its own accord lowered to Chewbacca's shoulder. The Wookie had always been twice his height just as he was now, but he seemed diminished and though the force there was… a hollow.
Chewbacca was breathing, but he wasn't moving.
Luke's hand connected gently on the broad shoulder. The strands of hair in the fur were sticking together, it felt rough on his fingers where it used to be almost soft, and beneath the fur, Chewbacca's shoulder felt even colder than the room.
"Chewie?" Luke asked, and his voice broke. His heart felt like it had stopped, when Chewbacca finally started to move for the first time since Luke entered the room. He lifted his head in short little movements that looked almost mechanical, and when Chewbacca revealed his face Luke felt sick to the core.
His friends face was disfigured. There were so many scars and the fur hand been burned off in patches, as if he had walked through fire. The smell of ash still clung to him, even if it was faint.
Worst of all were the unblinking eyes staring blindly at nothing. Chewbacca´s eyes were fixed somewhere over Luke's shoulder on the blank wall behind him.
"Chewbacca it is me. It's Luke." He tried again, softer this time, in a whisper. "Please look at me."
Chewbacca kept his eyes fixed on the wall.
He did not move again
"I know for a fact you are lying, little Jedi or whatever you are." Grievous said, and the blue lightsaber in the general's grip hummed ominously close to Luke's neck. The yellow bloodshot eyes looking down on him did so with surprising intelligence for something built like a destroyer. "It is true that Dooku took another apprentice after Ventress but-."
A nasty dry cough cut the sentence off. It racked the entire body and when Grievous once again could breathe, it sounded dry and painful. The free hand clutched over the heart for a few more moments before the breathing evened out again.
"I know that because Iam his apprentice." There was a small pause and the eyes over him narrowed into slits. "Which leaves the question of, how you got here, and who you are working for?"
"Why do you think that I work for anyone?" Luke asked, pressing further back against the floor to escape the blade that pulled just a little closer. Above, Grievous did not dignify the question with an answer.
"Is it Maul?" He asked instead, crooking his head just a fraction to the side. "I have suspected for a long time that he is still around somewhere!" There was special venom in those words, and through the force there was only one emotion. Hate. "No…" He added finally after a long pause. "He does not have the skill for this"
"I do not work for anyone." Luke insisted. Grievous only stared back down at him with a blank expression. Then the general moved. A sharp sting crawled into his shoulder in a flash and made him snap a hissing breath in.
The saber had stopped just short of connecting to his shoulder, but only just, and from that close proximity the pain was extreme.
"So you carved that on you own arm?" The General asked with a nod to the carvings. "They do not look like they were made for decoration." The blade descended again and agony exploded in Luke's shoulder. The air smelled like burned flesh in an instant.
It was only by sheer force of will that he did not scream.
"Skywalker called you Vader, but that is not your name is it?" Grievous asked horrifyingly calm and he kept up the pressure. A numb pain registered in his other shoulder when the claws of Grievous' hand dug through the skin. "I know what people look like when they lie." His voice sounded strained from the coughing, but his hands were steady when he pushed the blade down.
"St- stop!" The words were ripped out between Luke's clenched teeth as he tried to twist away from the burning blade. He couldn't tell! He couldn't. If he told anyone who he was, he would break the bargain and then all of this would have been for nothing!
The pain increased.
Though the agony the force called to him and Luke grasped for it like a drowning man. Lightning
jumped from his fingers in an uncontrolled storm what flung outward in all directions. If Grievous had not been this close Luke would have hit nothing.
Lightning exploded outward and died in an instant, but the force of it sent Grievous airborne. From the odd angle on the floor he did not see the moment when Grievous hit the wall, but he heard the impact.
Blackness fell all around him.
"I am not telling you anything!" He yelled between clenched teeth. He pushed back against the floor with shaking hands, stumbled to his feet and threw himself backwards so fast he only discovered that he couldn't get any further when the cold metal wall hit his back.
He narrowed his eyes through the dark. He could feel Grievous through the force, but he could see nothing through the blackness. He gasped, at sudden pain and grasped for the shoulder. A relieved breath escaped him. The wound was painful, but it was superficial. He could still fight.
He straightened and heard a crushing sound under his boot. Glass covered the floor, the same transparent glass that had covered all the lamps in the celling.
"Bold statement." Grievous voice rumbled from the dark. Luke heard a loud noise followed by the heavy stomps of robotic feet. "But I know someone who is very good at asking questions." He coughed heavily. "He is even better at getting them answered."
The lightsaber in his hand activated as if to emphasize the threat in those words. The red blade gave off a most sinister light in the hall where all other lights had gone out. Somehow it made the shadows seem darker.
"You have no reason to do this. You are not the one I am after." Luke lifted his empty hands, and felt the force gather around him. In seconds, an unseen a shield was woven tightly in front of him, between the armed droid general and himself.
It was an explosive display of force power. Anyone with even a flicker of force sensitivity would have felt it, but Grievous did not even blink.
'A pretender then.' Luke mused and eyed the fallen Sith's lightsaber in the right hand of that mountain of a droid. The way he wielded it was with a familiarity that Luke could not help but to envy. 'A pretender who knows lightsaber combat.' He pulled the force tighter around him.
"We will see" The red blade lowered down into battle position "I think Sidious would like to ask you personally." Grievous' claws of his left hand dug into the opening of the side chamber that he had been thrown into in the blast. It left deep scars in the metal when they withdrew with a metallic sharp noise.
The lighting was poor, but the room behind his enemy was very small, just big enough to stand up in. Grievous moved another step closer and as a consequence revealed more of the room from behind his bulk. Luke's eyes widen in surprise when he recognized the design.
It was an escape pod.
Grievous took another step into the hall, closing the distance. His shoulder moved up slightly, and the grip on the saber changed. He was moving into battle position. Just when Luke thought he was going to strike, the general suddenly snapped his head to the right.
A sense of danger screamed at Luke through the force, and then everything moved. The hall bolted past him as he was thrown violently to the side. When he hit the ground it is shaking and twisting under him like a wounded beast.
A siren howled through the ship out of nothing. Then the ship started to tilt. The metal floor slid away under him as he the floor tilted too much for him to hold on.
He grabbed for an edge, anything to hold on to as he descended into the dark. He threw a look over his shoulder. There was nothing but darkness beneath. It was a great black pit. He didn't know how long the hallway was. If the drop was too long it would kill him.
He clawed at the ground, kicked out with his feet, but it did not eve slow his fall. With his heart raising a sudden idea came to him. Before the ground turned completely, he raised his robotic arm and slammed it clean through the upper layer and held on, and not a moment too soon.
The ground disappeared under him, and his feet dangled over drop. The hallway was not to each side anymore, but above and below him.
He hung on, dangling over the emptiness beneath. He gasped, looking up for the enemy that had not passed him when the ship went upside down. As above so below. There was nothing but darkness looking back at him.
He clenched his grip on when his eyes suddenly locked on something right outside a window in the side of the ships wall. A part of the ship floated past at break neck speed.
A big part.
It looked like half the ship had just broken off!
"Time to abandon ship." Grievous voice sounded from just above him. Luke stretched his head back upwards and turns just in time to see a door slam shut. A second later through the window Luke saw the escape pod speed off into open space.
Then it was followed by all the others.
He hung on a moment completely frozen, startled into shock and saw the little red lights of the escape pods disappear out of view. Grievous had activated all the escapes pods, he realizes with horror. There was no way off now.
As a macabre answer to his panicked thought, the ship rocked violently. 'This is it,' Luke thought. He could see just enough out the window that with the ships current path it was going to hit the atmosphere with its side. The impact would rip the ship apart.
He knew what ships looked like just before they crashed.
The ship twisted under him once more, and then somehow, impossibly, the ship started to turn back on the right course. Slowly ever so slowly, the hall evened out, and Luke fund himself flat on his stomach gasping for breath.
His heart beat frantically halfway up his throat. His hands push back against the floor and he is back on his feet in an instant, and he cannot understand how it happened until the ship moved again. It moved slowly changing course in a move that was to smooth for a thing that enormous and that broken.
Someone was still trying to land this thing.
The halls were abandoned on his path back up to the very front of the ship. The only things that disturb his furious run were the toppled furniture and the parts of destroyed droids that lay abandoned everywhere.
The lightsaber Grievous had dropped was clutched tightly in his own hand regardless.
The halls sped past him as he ran. The Force pushed at his back, and made his steps longer and faster. The pace was way beyond anyone not aided by the force or technology. It was a foolish move to make on a ship that might have enemies around every corner, but he did not have the luxury to be careful.
The distance was long though, and when he finally reached the cockpit the ship was just about to enter the atmosphere.
"Open all hatched extend all flaps." His father's voice sounded from the far front of the cockpit. Luke took another step into the room and the signatures he had been following here now came into view.
Anakin cursed at no one and moved his hands to the steering controls. Anakin fingers were everywhere on the control panel, no doubt doing what he could to keep the ship on course.
He was likely the only reason why they were not dead yet.
Obi-wan stood just behind him, supporting himself against a control panel that was throwing yellow sparks into the room. At the back, closest to the door stood Sidious with his back turned, alone.
This time Luke did not feel any regret, when the red lightsaber came to life in his hands. Luke felt a flicker of disgust when he saw the colour of the lightsaber Grievous had dropped. Worse was another feeling, a pull at his arms where the scars were.
Was it just phantom pain again? Or was it the sign that time was running out?
At the sound of his blade all of the three in the room turned to him. He tightens his grip on the saber and focuses on Obi-wan. Anakin would be out of commission when he had to pilot the-
He throws his saber up in a guard just in time to stop the blue lightsaber from biting into his neck. The eyes that stares back at him through the blue glow is not Obi-wan, but Anakin. He gasped at the same time Obi-wan shouted Anakin's name and the ground started to shake.
No one was controlling he ship.
"Out of my way!" Luke roared. The lightsaber clashed with another, once again blocked from its target. It was infuriating. A sidestep was once again caught, and frustration got the better of him. He threw his body weight forward trying to break the block with sheer force.
He might as well have tried to move a mountain.
Anakin was not giving any ground.
"Anakin I need you here!" Obi-wan shouted from the controls, Luke didn't have to look to know how fast the ship was spinning out of control. He could feel the immense pressure pushing him to the side, the howling sirens drowning out almost all other noises and the ship moved like a stormy sea under him.
Out of the corner of his eyes, he saw Obi-Wan frantically trying to work the controls, somehow managing to pull the ship back up from its spin, but not completely. They were nearing the atmosphere at a wrong angle. Without Anakin at the controls, Obi-wan could not keep the ship on the right course on his own.
Luke narrowed his eyes at it, but he could not afford to pull back now.
He had not come this far to fail when he was this close! He reached forward and saw the shock in Anakin's eyes when Luke's free hand closed around Anakin's wrist and pulled. Anakin moved with it. Forced out of balance he just barely threw himself back in between Luke and the monster that would destroy everything.
It was sickening, that desperate attempt to protect something so ugly.
"Listen to me!" Anakin suddenly yelled blocking another furious attack. "If I do not take control of this ship right now, we all die!"
The red lightsaber remained lifted but Luke hesitated. Then, behind Anakin, he caught sight of Sidious staring back at him over Anakin's shoulder. That calculating look was all it took for Luke to steel himself. So many horrors had happened because of that Sith. He needed to die.
Luke lowered the blade back into attack position and called to the force.
"I am not afraid to die." He said and purple lightning flickered into life in his hand.
To be continued