A/N: Untraveled here!
So confession time. I know I got a few projects I'm supposed to be working on but this is one that has stuck with me for a while. It's a bit of a guilty pleasure for me since I COULD be getting my other works done… but you know what? Fuck it.
This is an AU of an AU of an idea that I can't seem to find bloody ANYWHERE on the internet or other dark dusty corners of humanity's imagination, so I decided to write one myself.
Just bare with me for a second and let this image sink in:
Grey Jedi Wasteland Darth Vader.
There. I said it. It's out there. Sounds cool right? Well if you're still on the fence then perhaps you should dive a little deeper and see for yourself.
(Pay attention to the smaller details in the story and you may just find where this AU of an AU came from.)
What Could Have Been
The swamp wastes were a harsh, poisonous place, crashed warships of a bygone galactic war turned what was once a luscious if filthy haven of odd fauna, flora, and any other swamp thing that drudges in between into a murky hellscape where only the desperate and foolish tread.
One such fool dared. A hunched figure atop an aged bipedal walker cowled in a muddied patchwork cloak ripped from a dozen canvas scraps and sewn back together. The thwack-hiss of the walker's pumping legs rippled off of dying twisted trees and echoing through the desolate landscape with a lonely rhythm. A deep mechanical rasp added to the chorus, a harsh rattling breathing from the walker's cloaked rider. Twin tubes swayed from beneath the rider's tattered cloak where they curled from a repurposed respirator hanging from the rider's chest to his hidden face.
Dappled sunlight filtered sparingly through the thinning canopy of dying trees, turning the rider's world into a maze of light and dark. A patch of sunlight rolled over the rider's mechanical mount- a Fallen Republic AT-RT scout walker- illuminating the faded red GAR insignia emblazoned on the scratched durasteel armor plate right above where its nose turret hung.
A collection of packs and small crates were strapped together and tied to the walker's under-carriage between its legs. The AT-RT was clearly not designed to carry cargo but its rider made due by keeping the weight at its center of gravity, though it did sway a bit more than was probably comfortable.
The odd vehicle and its odder rider stalked across the toxic quagmire, at times passing carcasses of massive Fallen Republic Venator Star Destroyers or CIS Dreadnoughts protruding from the murky depths of the devestated landscape. Massive miles-wide swaths of savaged moors and slagged forests still scarred the planet, the aftermath of the Seperatist orbital bombardment half a decade earlier that rendered much of the world near uninhabitable.
Despite the foul waters, deadly terrain, and hostile creatures turned feral from their ruined ecosystem faint pin-points of life and civilization still stubbornly dotted the land. Tiny lights flickered in the corpses of CIS Providence Dreadnoughts, small clusters of hovels built onto the flat arrow shaped hulls of half-sunken Acclimator frigates, and entire ramshakle communities emerged defiantly from the sprawling bodies of Venator Star Destroyers.
The rider passed them all, though he did wave back to gang of children tumbling about the outskirts of a marketplace nearly spilling from the open hangar of a Venator half-swallowed by the swamp. Lights inside the cramped chaotic market sputtered to life as the sun dipped beyond the horizon. The rider's respirator sucked in a deep rasping breath and exhaled a static throaty sigh as he took a moment to soak in the bleeding orange and pinks of a summer sunset.
A shudder rushed through the rider, causing the walker to stutter to a stop, its rider's shoulders seized and he ducked his hooded head in reflex. Half a second after a faint far off alarm echoed eerily from the Venator and all lights in the marketplace went dark, the hangar doors ground closed, cutting off the echoing alarm.
Two, three rasping breaths later an incredible clap of thunder rippled through the air and against the waning sunset a small, clumsy starfreighter tore out of hyperspace splitting apart a cloud on its violent entry. The old clumsy vessel's plating instantly caught alight from the air friction as it tumbled out of the sky trailing behind a distressingly large plume of smoke from its portside engines.
Though he couldn't see through the sun's dying rays the rider heard the reluctant cranking of one of the downed Venator's dual turbolaser turrets spinning around skyward to meet the threat. Another explosion of displaced air heralded a second ship dropping out of hyperspace in atmo, this time accompanied by the shrill howl of Imperial ion engines. A sleek black blade swept from behind the starfreighter with all the grace of a hawk bearing down on its plump and helpless prey, firing hot green lasers into the freighter's hull.
A pulse of brilliant blue light lit up the evening night and the sound of the Fallen Venator's main turret shook the ground and tore off the would-be hawk's black wing, sending the starcraft spiraling to the swamp below, its engines letting out a mournful screech. The turret turned to the starfreighter but it seemed the doomed craft didn't need any help as its damaged engines detonated, tearing the freighter apart, eviscerating its cabin and cargo bay across the swamp below.
The Rider watched in complete silence, holding still as a statue with the sound of the Venator's discharge still ringing in his ears and echoing across the murky battleship graveyard. He only moved when the venator opened its hangar again and a small squad of salvaged speeder-bikes zipped out of the ship's hull to investigate the crash sites.
The rider wheeled his AT-RT around to continue his trek through the swamps into the night but something stopped him, an odd almost nostalgic feeling, a prodding from the Force urging him on, tugging softly on the hem of his cloak away from his destination- right towards the crashed freighter.
The rider scoffed. Whatever it was must have a connection to his past for the nostalgia to reverberate so strongly in the Force, and whatever it was could stay in the past. Everyone that he had loved in the past was long dead so he knew whatever was on that freighter someone else could have, he had more important matters waiting for him. So the rider shrugged off the nostalgia and continued his march home… for about three steps.
He let out a deep raspy groan of annoyance when the Force just prodded him harder, but there was no nostalgia tinting this disturbance in the Force. It was a dark, twisted ugly thing with a warped kind of agony and hate he had only seen in himself, and this time it came from the downed imperial ship.
the rider growled, a deep primal sound that sputtered and hissed through his vocabulator. The air trembled at his foul turn of mood, the planet itself flinching away from the creature's Force presence. The rider rode his anger and irritation and channeled it, wreathing it away into his Force presence. Then with no small amount of reluctance the rider aimed towards the black imperial crash site and gunned the throttle, his mount's sprinting limbs tearing up mud and loam in its wake.
He had a bad feeling that it was going to be a long night.
Ahsoka was having a very bad day.
She had just dragged her exhausted behind into her tiny hovel on Corellia after a disastrous rebel mission spying on an imperial slave market when Senator Organa pinged her on her emergency channel. The former Jedi- turned rebel agent knew that her work was important, vital even, but what she wouldn't do for just a single good night's rest, even with the nightmares that plagued her in her dreams.
Still against her better judgement she crawled out of bed and picked up the call and managed to snatch a quick power-nap on the monorail to meet the team she would be working with it break into the Imperial water-docks in Coronet City. the Coronet water-docks housed a number of Victory-I Star Destroyers from the local garrison that were currently undergoing renovations and refits.
It was supposed to be a quick get in swipe a few wayward Imperial blueprints onto a holodisk and get out. Ahsoka knew she wasn't at the top of her game, she was bone-weary and drained, physically, emotionally, and mentally. She shouldn't have accepted the mission, no matter how simple it seemed, even if she were the closest "Heavy" asset the rebels had. She should have told Bail no.
They got in just fine and managed to steal the blueprints easily enough, but somewhere between exiting the data center and making their escape something tipped off the Imp Stormtrooper guards but had she been more awake she would have noticed the danger sooner. The bucketheads ambushed them as soon as they stepped out into the open, E-11's cutting down two of the rebels before Ahsoka and the others had a chance to run. Their splicer took a bolt to the back of the head as the survivors slipped away into the sewer systems running below much of the city and bright red blood seeped between the hand Ahsoka pressed against the hole in her side.
Much of the chase was a blur of dark shit stained pipes, confused shouting, and screams but somehow (more due to luck then design Ahsoka admits) they came up from the sewers onto a secluded wing of the Coronet Spaceport and hotwired the nearest longer ranged vessel they saw, some old Star freighter hailing from way before Ahsoka's time. She bet her Master (Former- she had to remind herself- Former Master) could have easily identified it.
They managed to clear Space control just fine and made it just outside the Corellian system without incident leaving them thinking they were in the clear long enough to plot their next move. Ahsoka was too tired to have an intelligent conversation and stalked off in search of a medi-pack. The young Togruta woman had just finished dressing the blaster wound in her side and found herself a cozy little nook between two crates to curl up in when she was jolted awake by laser fire smashing into the Freighter's hull.
"Blast! They found us!" she heard the navigator curse from the scanner of their recently "liberated" cargo freighter.
"How?!" She heard another crewmember cry. "I thought we made a clean getaway!"
The iconic and all-too-familiar screech of TIE ion engines slagged that assumption into space junk. Shrieking barks of cannon fire were quickly followed by the cargo ship lurching starboard, throwing some of the unprepared crew into walls and consoles. Alarms wailed as the ship's computer spat out damage reports as more TIE laser fire slammed into the vessel broadside.
Ahsoka scrambled out of her hidey-hole and threw herself into the pilot's chair, sucking in an agonized gasp of pain when her bouncing around agitated her wound. Blinking away silent tears of pain and opting to ignore the shrilling ringing in her montrals Ahsoka turned her focus on flying and trying not to get spaced by a laser bolt through the viewport.
"Piecemeal! Get on that kriffing turret and get them off us!" Ahsoka snarled over the blaring alarms, her frowning lips peeled back to reveal sharp predatory canines in an odd mix of a savage smile and a pained grimace.
"You got it Commander!" The former clone trooper was one of the few that knew the stoic rebel agent before she assumed her role in the Rebel Alliance and disliked her codename on principle, citing that its edgy enough to cut through even General Skywalker's ego.
"We ain't in the army no more you smartass!" Ahsoka retorted, uncomfortable with a reminder of her old rank and the Master and friend she had lost. The ex-soldier laughed and clomped away on his prosthetic leg to man the turret as Ahsoka added, "And for the love of Palpatine's saggy backside someone shut off that blasted alarm!"
She didn't see who it was but the flashing red lights did wink out a few seconds later and the alarms squawled into blessed silence, though that was immediately broken by the defense turret's thunderous retort to the TIE's assault.
"Fulcrum, we got a problem." The blue skinned chagrian female manning the scanner reported.
"We have enough problems," Ahsoka quipped back, channeling a little of her former Master. "Whatever it is can pick a number and get in line."
"Well this one just hopped to the front. Those TIE's came from a Carrack corvette, and it's gaining fast!"
Ahsoka went to reply but choked and threw the freighter hard to port pulling the unwieldy ship nearly vertical, yanking several crewmembers out of their chairs until inertia caught up with them. A wing of suicidal TIE's screamed by, Ahsoka's violent maneuver dodging a flurry of laser bolts they would have otherwise eaten straight through the pilot's viewport. Piecemeal's replying laser fire thumped through the cabin in short accurate bursts. Ashoka glanced at the tiny scanner on her pilot's console and saw two of the four TIE contacts wink out with no small amount of satisfaction.
"Where are we on that Hyperdrive?"
"We're not going anywhere fast! This Navi-computer is bloody ancient!" Came the heated reply from their Toydarian engineer. "The processor is an IVN-341. The company that made them went outta business fifty years ago, like why-"
"I don't care about the stupid processer, just get us outta here!"
"Inputting coordinates and mapping a course takes time! There ain't nuthin' I ca- Wait, there's an old set of coordinates saved in these memory banks." Force save her sanity, because there is no telling what'll happen to the chubby floating grub-face when Ahsoka gets her hands on him.
"Well?! Load the blasted coordinates and get us out of here!"
"B-but these coordinates are unmarked! I ain't got a clue where these'll spit us out at-"
"JUST FUCKING DO IT!"
"Alright, alright. Geez, ya don't hafta bite my face off about it."
Any further conversation (if yelling at a clueless toydarian counts as conversation) was cut off when the starfreighter lurched from another nasty impact that sent sparks cascading across the cabin's console controls. Damage reports filtered in onto the pilot HUD. they lost portside auxiliary engines 4-6 along with a few of the power converters.
"What was that?! I didn't see anything on the scanners!" the Sagrian woman on the Scanner cried.
Ahsoka bit back her snippy retort and focused on the empty black void outside. It was the only reason why she noticed a few of the stars flicker in and out. That was odd, it's almost as if something passed in front of the tiny twinkling lights, but the only blips on scanners were the TIE's and the Carrack behind them.
She saw it again, a few stars blinking out with the black spot void of stars growing larger-
"Ship in front of us!" Ahsoka cried just as the sleek black stealth ship lit up the black with green laser fire. Ahsoka pitched the Freighter to the left and managed to only take a few of the mystery assailant's lasers to the starboard bow sinking the Freighter's shields into the red zone. Piecemeal's reflexes were as sharp as ever, even without a scanner signature and with only a black outline against a night sky the clone managed to land a few shots on the ship. The crimson plasma splashed harmlessly against the black ship's shields lighting up some of its outlines and when Ashoka saw exactly what was attacking us her blood ran cold.
"Hit the hyperdrive now!" she cried, hysteria clawing its way into her voice as the Sith Inquisitor bore down on them..
"-But the coordinates-"
"NOW GODDAMMIT NOW!"
The toydarian finally finally got the hint and slapped the coordinates in and punched the hyperdrive sequence. Ahsoka felt her heart leap into her throat when nothing happened, then with a cough and a sputter the freighter lurched into hyperspace leaving the Site Interceptor firing into empty space. Ahsoka nearly sobbed in relief, the blue skinned Sagrian Woman behind her actually did. Ahsoka had an image to uphold though, so she swallowed thickly and turned back to the Toydarian engineer.
"Any idea where those coordinates might throw us out?"
"I would be able ta tell ya if you had just let me-" The Toydarian glanced up and saw Fulcrum's angry expression and cut himself off. "I meant so say, I dunno. Lookin' at the numbers they seem to take into account for planetary spin and gravitational pull, so a low orbital drop point?"
"Well an old freighter like this hidden away in the back end of an imperial hangar wouldn't seem to be used in any official capacity. So a smuggling vessel maybe?"
A chirp from her HUD pulled Ahsoka's attention. She flipped on the scanner's notification. "Fuck."
The Sith Inquisitor karking followed them.
"Those Imps are still on our tails! Get ready!" Ahsoka snapped. The poor Sagrian woman let out a weary whimper that Ahsoka full-heartedly related with.
"We're dropping out of hyperspace in ten seconds!" The engineer reported.
Those ten seconds passed way too quickly and they dropped out of hyperspace-
-already inside atmo and going entirely too fast towards the rapidly growing swamp in the viewport.
"Kriffing hell!" Ahsoka yanked back as far as the controls would go and for a moment she thought they could possibly make it out alive. Then the Sith Intercepter's cannons tore apart their already damaged engines.
Another blast ripped through the air behind them and the Sith Interceptor vanished from behind them, its wing blown off and the ship careening towards the ground, but it was too late.
The Alarms managed to squawk a single time for the computer died and the engines exploded and the hull split. The roar of escaping air drowned out Ahsoka's screams as the cabin was ripped apart. She clung to her seat and watched helplessly as the Sagrian woman was sucked out of her seat into the sky and the toydarian engineer was shorn in half by flaming shrapnel.
The spinning swamp below rose up to meet the crumbling cabin and the former jedi's inaudible wail was cut off with a sudden and violent crunch.
Ahsoka knew she shouldn't have gotten out of bed that day.
