Episode 2
Where Death Trembles
The nocturnal swamps of the wastes are often filled with a constant rattle, and call of creatures that dwell in the murky, poisonous waters, so guttural demonic radio static scratching the air stands out like a sore thumb-
-or perhaps more like a crashed imperial starship sticking up from the mire.
The only source of light were the red interior emergency lights that spilled down the lowered ramp, illuminating the outlines of two figures clad in obsidian black armor that roamed the crash site. The troopers' visors burned an eerie crimson in the darkness, a side effect from their helmet's integrated thermal vision. On the outskirts of the clearing the wreckage of several scavenged speeder bikes fizzled and popped from where they laid half-submerged in the mud, the corpses of their riders splayed out around their vehicles, limbs crooked and bodies arched in rictus.
A noise that sounded like the hiss-thwack of a distant AT-ST rippled from the depths of the shadowed swamp and both imperial troopers spun around in perfect sync, their E-11D blaster carbines shouldered and trained in separate sectors of fire.
Another hiss-thwack, another step from a war machine that wasn't supposed to be here on a swamp planet with no imperial presence.
One of the troopers turned to the other, deep demonic radio static growling out in a garbled mess from his helmet. The other responded with scrambled hellish hiss and advanced towards the mechanical foot-steps and vanished from sight, black armor melting into the night.
Suddenly the footsteps stopped and the growls, croaks, and calls of the swamps fell silent all at once. The quiet that followed was suffocating and tense, not a creature or shadow so much as twitched. Even the Imperial Death Trooper stood frozen in place, the dim red light from the downed ship cast eerie shapes across his obsidian armor as he waited for hell to break loose.
It never did.
The second Death Trooper returned, visor glowing an angry crimson. The first relaxed his shoulders and spoke, scrambled radio chatter scraping the air. the returning trooper didn't answer and stumbled forward, limbs swaying unnaturally by his sides.
The first Death Trooper raised his carbine and barked some garbled order. He never got the chance to fire when the limp Death Trooper flew across the clearing and slammed into the remaining Trooper, his blaster carbine firing uselessly into the mud.
The Death Trooper shoved the corpse off of him and sloshed up from the mud to his feet, blindly firing a spread of lasers into the dark. The trooper's breathing came up fast and labored, thermal visor sweeping back and forth but all he saw was the cold, dark outlines of trees and foliage.
Then he heard it, a harsh mechanical rasping not unlike the Death Trooper's own scrambled vocabulator. The Death Trooper whirled around and found a towering shadow looming in the crimson light pooling from the crashed Imperial ship.
"You are a long way from home, Imperial." The Rider spoke softly, yet his gravelly artificial voice boomed unnaturally loud with an unnerving presence laced with cold, detached contempt. "What brought you all the way out here I wonder?" The cloaked creature chuckled, and the sound sent shivers down the Death Trooper's spine. "Perhaps your Emperor is not as in control as he pretends to be…"
The words barely left the Rider's mouth when the trooper discharged his rifle, but instead of striking its target the crimson bolt froze in mid-air hissing and sputtering scant inches from the Rider's exposed back. The Death Trooper too went rigid, shimmering pulses of Force energy so potent they distorted the air around them.
"Hey! What's going on out there?" An imperial pilot clambered out of the ship's interior, an E-11 blaster in hand. The black clad pilot jerked to a stop just inches away from the cloaked Rider and raised his blaster. "Wha-?!"
The Rider stepped aside and released the frozen blaster bolt still bucking in mid-air. The bolt carved a hole through the Pilot's right eye socket and blasted a fist sized cavity out the back of the pilot's head.
The Rider regarded the new corpse as it slumped onto the boarding ramp with mild irritation then he turned to the last Death Trooper. A mangled Mechno-hand slid from beneath the ragged and filthy patchwork cloak and the helpless Death Trooper lurched through the air towards the shrouded monster.
Exposed mechanical fingers clamped down around the Death Trooper's faceplate and squeezed. The plastoid alloy buckled beneath the Rider's unnatural strength and the trooper's garbled screech of agony unscrambled into a normal human scream as the helmet's visor cracked and the helmet's vocabulator fizzled out. The Rider relaxed his crushing grip before crushing the trooper's skull then he lifted the helpless imperial until they were face-to-face, the trooper's legs dangling several inches off the ground.
"You will tell me why you have intruded into my home." The Rider growled.
"I will tell you nothing. Waster Scum!" The Death Trooper spat.
"Who said I wanted you to speak?" The Rider asked. "When I can rip it from your skull instead?"
An overwhelming Force presence unlike anything the Death Trooper had ever felt bore down onto his mind, Even the Sith inquisitors' presence paled in comparison, laughably so as his mental resistances cracked like an eggshell and all conscious thought was shattered into uncomprehending agony as the Rider ripped his mind apart.
