Episode 7: The Rider
Ahsoka didn't know how she made it out of that dark winding passage. Either it was an incredible amount of luck that she hadn't encountered a single soul in her flight or the Force was (for once) making the path clear to her. Then, just as her bleeding, half-drowned body sagged from exhaustion she found herself literally falling into the seat of her "tactically acquired" BARC Speeder.
Master Obi-Wan had always said there is no such thing as luck against the Will of the Force. Anakin had a much more fluid stance on the subject, and Ahsoka...didn't know what to think on the matter, especially not at that moment.
Whatever the case, I won't look a gift taun-taun in the mouth. A smile-half-grimace crossed her face as she fumbled her rebellious leg over the speeder and settled into the seat. Huh, I bet this place smells the same as a taun-taun's mouth too, now that I think about it…
"Hey you! Stop!"
Ahsoka didn't bother turning to see who was yelling at her. She ignited the speeder, the power converter mercifully catching on the first try, bringing the engine roaring to life.
An angry red laser thwacked across the speeder's hull inches from her hand gripping the handlebars. Okay. Time to go!
Ahsoka threw her weight into the controls swinging the speeder towards the entrance and nearly blacking out from the pain that lanced from the oozing blaster hole in her flank in the process. Blinking rapidly to keep from passing out she aimed herself at the blurry blob of light just beyond the open gate teasing her at the edge of her swimming vision and laid into the throttle.
The BARC speeder bucked under the surge of power and shot forward as if launched from a cannon. A few straggling scavvers threw themselves out of the way of the maniac on a suicidal warpath through the market interior.
When Ahsoka zipped out of the open blast doors and hit the ramp leading down her stomach didn't get the memo and pushed up all the leftover water from Jordo's hospitable conversation into her throat.
Hacking Ahsoka contracted her ravaged abdominal muscles and lurched forward, forcing herself to puke up the remaining water bouncing off the underside of her esophagus.
Bleeding Crankfins! That's foul! She spat the taste of rotting liquid out of her mouth, once then twice, getting a sort of vehement satisfaction out of spitting at her enemy's doorstep, the speeder zipping through the ramshackle gates, the slaver guards manning the walls eating the slimy water kicked up in her wake.
A deep mournful alarm groaned from the old dreadnought-city just as she broke through the treeline. Ahsoka clenched the throttle, willing the repulsorlift engine to go faster, farther away from Jordo and his twisted little settlement.
The sun warmed her back, distracting her from her flayed mental defenses. The Force was blinding to her. After years of being closed off from the Force having her soul ravaged so suddenly and violently was simply overwhelming. Once upon a time, when she was a Jedi, she would have taken what supernatural sensory input the universe at large was sending her in stride.
Now though, it was like trying to smell color, simply too bizarre and painful to try and process.
Driving a speeder though an ominous killer swamp world filled with dead trees and angry slavers wasn't doing any good for her raw, exposed Force sensitivity. The stark, harrowing and desperate presences blended together into a sickening concoction of ugh as she sped through the wasteland.
The stench of wretched greens and decaying browns grew heavier, more putrid as she fled deeper into the swamp. Her vision swam for a moment, her senses overloaded and emotions at the mercy of the foul wind that spilled over there face in wet suffocating waves-
Deep breaths, girl. Deep, slow breaths. Ahsoka choked down a gasp, counting to three and let out a tiny lungful of air. The pressure mounting in her sinuses and montrals.
Then she noticed a note hovering over the northern part of the map, most likely punched in by the speeder's previous owner to amuse himself.
[The Lost Wastes] Abandon all hope ye who is dumb enough to enter here - again. (RIP Malik, you kriffing idiot)
A white marked eyebrow rose at the note.
A dangerous region even the slaver scum of the swamp avoid? Her lips thinned, her forehead creased, conflicted.
If she went there, to these "Lost Wastes" her chances of dodging Jordo increased exponentially… on the other hand, as did the chances of getting munched by whatever these "Lost" she heard about were. While the odds of finding a ship able to finally get her off this wretched mudball shrunk the further she went from whatever equated to civilization here.
The data-chip that was the focal point of all of this death and suffering burned hot in her breast pocket, a scalding thing against her broken heart. That made the decision for her.
She began to turn, towards the closest settlement without an incriminating note from the previous owner next to it when on the edge of her hearing she heard the angry whine of approaching speeder bikes coming from the south.
Blast it! Flashes of movement from her left, whoops and hollers followed, with random cracks of blasters fired skyward. Some of those speeders look like they are coming from the other settlements, including the one she was just thinking of heading to!
Double blast it! She yanked the speeder around, towards the north, and the Lost Wastes and zipped away dodging rotting trees and foliage. A thwack of a red blaster bolt singed the port side stabilizer inches from her shoulder followed by a distant cackle. They're onto her!
She swerved around a laser cannon blast, the impact throwing rotten water in her face. Blast it all!
"Ya better give up pretty! Boss Jordo put a mighty hefty bounty on your pretty head. There's nowhere ta go now!" A scavver crooned from behind, "Iffin ya do I'll treat ya gentle-like!" he added with a cackle, letting off another shot from his speeder's nose-mounted laser cannon.
As if. She scoffed, throwing a one finger salute over her shoulder as the badly aimed cannon shot zipped past and vaporized a dead tree. She pulled her BARC higher, until she was skimming over a thick blanket of barbed undergrowth and into the canopy of hazardous reaching branches.
After a harrowing few moments of narrowly dodging scratching branches and stray laser-fire Ahsoka had to admit, these scavvers were not half-bad speeder-pilots. Still, even as frayed in the Force and in body as she was, they had nothing on her.
She led her pursuers into the tangled canopy and suddenly dove under a thick trunk, literally shaving rotted bark from the wood and an unfortunate scavver's head from his shoulders in the maneuver. The rider-less speeder smashed into the swamp with a thunderous explosion, the remaining scavvers snarling in surprise and anger.
"I'll have your head bitch!"
"Ask your friend where he put his!" Ahsoka sneered back, slightly out of breath from the effort. She cut a sharp turn, drifting several dozen yards and lining her speeder with a wildly spinning scavver thrown by her sudden maneuver.
The gungan scav' had a stupid googly-eyed look on his face as he stared down the barrel of four laser cannons. The first blast took the gungan through his chest, eviscerating the scav' in an implosion of blackened flesh and stark white bone, that dumbfounded expression frozen on his face as the slain rider and his vehicle went up in a ball of fire.
Ahsoka let off the trigger and wobbled in her seat, the scavver's death pounding into her skull like a hot nail, searing and vicious. She forced air into her shocked lungs and kicked the throttle, narrowly avoiding a wild spread of retaliating laserfire, the surviving scavvers howling in surprise and anger.
Ahsoka plastered herself over her speeder and kicked through the gears, blinking her sharp blue eyes against the biting humid wind as she raced through the foliage and around half-submerged trees a squadron of desperate fiends hot on her tail.
Old half-forgotten instincts called to her from her violently coerced reconnection with the Force, a faint static-filled voice hoarse from neglect and disuse, once again warning her of danger. A small voice she hadn't even known she had missed until it pushed her left arm almost without her violation, turning her out of the way of a laser bolt.
She flicked her speeder across the filthy deluge and mud banks, drifting near sideways to foul her pursuers' aim, hot plasma instead obliterating rotting wood or throwing slimy water.
One scav' had followed her too close, nose nearly up her exhaust port when the spray from Ahsoka's sudden drift washed over his vehicle, blinding him for a critical split second. A second of blindness that proved fatal when the speeder rammed into a log and exploded, the flaming wreckage plowing into the swamp's murky shallows with a roaring hiss.
Ahsoka was reminded of her late childhood spent fighting in the Clone Wars. The stench of cooked flesh, the scent of blaster-fried ozone, every adrenaline soaked second stretching into a damned eternity as she raced north, dancing just ahead of death.
In a twisted kind of way, it was like coming home.
Her holomap chirped. She spared it a brief glance. She had breached the edge of the Lost Wastes. Nothing noted this feared region's perimeter. Nothing stood out, just more of the same swamp.
Yet a chill still slithered up her spine, her striped leeku jumping in distress as an unnatural sense of terror crawled over her skin.
She recognized a front control prong of a Z-18 civilian speeder protruding above the water from its resting place in the mire. A jolt of unease followed her as she zipped passed the wreckage.
Speeders don't just crash in the center of empty clearings by themselves.
"I dunna like this!" Ahsoka heard a scav' exclaim from behind her. "These are the Lost Wastes!"
"Sssshut it!" a reptilian hiss responded. "Jordo isss paying big for hisss prey. A few "Losssst" Won't get in the way of our payday!"
"I-it ain't the Lost I'm fuckin' worried about!"
The Force tugged Ahsoka to the left, deeper into a thickening copse of decaying trees. She blocked out the whining scavver and threw herself deeper into the swamp forest the slavers behind her barked in surprise and turned to give chase. It wasn't until she had darted through the copse that she noticed the canopy thickening overhead, casting her in rapidly darkening shadow. She noticed more moss and tangled plant-life the farther into the darkening northern swamp she fled, adding to the potential danger of getting her speeder snagged and wrecked.
She didn't know how far into the Lost Wastes she had fled but Ahsoka knew that even with her inflamed connection in the Force her luck would have had to run out eventually. A lone laser drilled into her left repulser, pulling belching flame from the speeder's housing and whoops of triumph from the pirates.
Skrag! The BARC lurched from the impact and began to drag down against the wind, dipping mournfully to the side in painful slow motion towards the murky broken surface of the mire. Instead of terror all Ahsoka really felt was irritation as she helplessly watched the front of her speeder slice oddly into the swamp's surface.
"Well, Fu-" the speeder stabbed into the muck, slamming her forward over the controls then she saw horrible, exploding white. Her tentative connection to the Force snapping like gossamer.
Her breath was driven from her lungs with the force of a sledgehammer, sparking an inferno of agony that rippled from the hole in her side. speeder jack-knifed and her world tilted, peeling her from the dashboard and slapped her into her back in her seat as her speeder violently spun end over end like an errand stick flung by a hurricane and she were some very unfortunate stick-bug clinging on just along for the ride.
A ride that ended very abruptly against a rotted tree. Her speeder's nose crumpled from the impact and catapulted over her, the engine whining pitifully as it passed overhead and smashed into the mud with a final sputtering cough.
By some miracle Ahsoka was thrown free of the worst of it and was sent skipping across the murky water in a spinning, disoriented tangle of limbs and sloshing water. She clawed at the mud and roots to slow her momentum, finally coming to a stop half-laying-half-floating in a thicket of weeds reaching stubbornly out of the mire, her breath stuttered and ragged from pain.
She gagged and coughed, dribblets of red mixed with the water below her chin. Well that can't be healthy. The burning itch from her jostled ribs agreed.
The growls of four speeders circling around her rattled around in her montrals, drowning out her labored breathing. She knew she should be more concerned with the pirates cackling as they dismounted. She noted she should be feeling some sense of dread or defeat by now. Really, all she felt was tired.
She glared up as five of the scavs slogged through the mud towards her while two others waited on their bikes, keeping a lookout. The closest scav, a human covered in scars, had an ugly sneer on his mug. Ahsoka saw the kick coming but couldn't do anything about the boot that crashed into her injured side, a scream of pain tearing from her lips as she slipped into the muddy water.
"Jordo wantssss you back, meat." A Trandoshan scav hissed. Red scaly claws lovingly caressing a large skinning knife. The curved blade glittered in the sparse sunlight peeking through the tangled swamp forest canopy. "But he never ssssaid in what condition."
The other scavs chuckled darkly at the way the Togruta woman's crystal blue eyes widened in terror.
If they hadn't been so busy looming over her and gloating perhaps they would have noticed their victim wasn't looking at them, but rather behind them, at the two empty speeder bikes suddenly missing their riders, disturbed water curling under the gently rocking vehicles the only evidence there had been anyone there at all.
"I alwayssss wanted to try sssskinning a Togruta." The Trandoshan rasped with a toothy grin on his lips, knife dancing about his claws as he stooped closer. "Your orange pelt will look beautiful hanging from my wall."
" YoUr REd SCaLes WoULd loOk bEtTeR on mY wAll iNstEaD."
The guttural demonic hiss whispered from the depths of the empty swamp, a dread silence following in its wake, a thick, suffocating quiet that choked and taunted. A horrible sucking mechanical breath rattled the air.
Ahsoka felt the Force tremble.
No. It- it's not possible. She lay frozen, paralyzed as the Nightmare -Her Nightmare- let out another scraping exhale, as if it had slipped from the darkest recesses of her worst dreams.
Oh God.
"W-Who'ssss there!" The Trandoshan snarled, knife clenched tight in his claws, a blaster held aloft in the other.
"I told ya we shouldn't have followed her here!" Another cried, trembling hands clutching desperately on a dirty little holdout pistol, the unnatural metallic inhale chasing the scavver's panicked screech. "I-I-I f-fuckin' told ya!"
Another human threw up his hands and snarled like a rabid animal. "Screw this! Grab the girl and let's get-" He took a single step towards her, boot sloshing through the water, but when he stepped into the mud his boot fell through the swamp floor.
Fear that was not her own slammed into Ahsoka like a blaster shot. She flinched, blinked, and the man was just… gone. Only swirling muddy water where the scavver once stood.
By the Huntress.
"KRIFFING HELL!" The nervous wreck of a scavver screeched. His thin little legs shaking like a leaf, feet frozen in place in fear of the swamp swallowing him whole.
Ahsoka flattened herself among the underbrush and quagmire and held still herself, fingers curled around roots in a futile attempt to anchor herself in case the swamp decided to swallow her too.
Haunting, unnatural, taunting laughter slipped from the swimming shadows. The sound like rusted nails across naked flesh; Horrid, deep, and bleeding.
"It's him." The shaking scav' rasped out in horrible recognition. "Oh stars, He's real. He's skragging REAL!"
The scav's head darted back and forth, the hands grasping his pistol twitchy and shaking.
The invisible horror cackled louder. Deeper. "It wOuLd seEm JoRdo hAs ForGOtten mY lAsT meSsaGe alReaDy." The Force clenched around Ahsoka, flinching back from that terrible, distorted, mechanical voice.
A whisper of air brushed over Ahsoka's lekku, alarm bells ringing wildly as the Force stirred.
There, suddenly, Nightmare loomed before her, a horrible creature of twisted flesh and metal. Its face shrouded in a marred steel skull, two tubes coiling from a panel on its chest, a ragged gray cowl adorning its broad shoulders as it towered behind the Trandoshan and spat, "What a pity."
The Trandoshan spun, knife flashing and teeth peeled back in a snarl. Gnarled steel claws flashed from beneath the Nightmare's cloak, backhanding the Trandoshan, sending 300 pounds of squealing lizard crashing into a parked speeder with a pitiful keen of pain.
"Perhaps you will better serve as a warning to your masters." The Nightmare's voice was like a terrible crack of lightning hunted by a trembling roll of thunder. "When I stake what's left of your corpses on display."
One of the remaining scavvers screamed like a little girl and fired his holdout pistol, an angry crimson bolt lancing out towards the creature, where it casually swatted the bolt out of the air.
It swatted. The fucking laser bolt. Out of the air.
Shocked silence followed, the spot of water where the bolt impacted sizzled out in a little puff of steam and ozone. The scav' who shot stared in horror, holdout pistol shaking uselessly in his fingers.
The Nightmare loomed. It's shadow stretching unnaturally higher in the gloom, mechanical breathing breaking its terrible cadence for one infinite moment until it whispered in a rumbling sneer.
"My turn."
The Nightmare advanced. Inhumanly long legs striding silently (impossibly) across the water. The Force humming like a fission reactor around it. She felt no Light in the creature's presence, no sliver of vibrant good, or glint of compassion.
There was no Dark either. It's presence invisible as air, yet as powerfully felt as a shockwave, an eldritch giant's pulsing heartbeat pounding across the dread swampy deluge.
The scavver screeched and fired again, and again, the first shot going wide and narrowly missing Ahsoka's head, the impact splashing foul water over her eyes and montral. The Nightmare deflected the second with a flick of it's hand -a gloved flesh hand- instead of steel fingers, the bolt detonated harmlessly against a rotted tree trunk.
The Nightmare's silent march was unyielding, unwavering. The second scavver hefted his rifle and added his volley into the assault. The creature flicked a claw, the Force swelling around it, deflecting a bolt and blasting the rifle from the scavver's hand and sending the hapless goon splashing into the water.
Another pulse from the Force and the first scav's foot was yanked from under him, the man going down with a cry as he was dragged towards the Nightmare. His scream of terror was cut short when the Nightmare's boot caved in the scav's head, a gout of water thrown into the air from the impact. The body thrashed and twitched once, twice, then lay limp in the shallows.
Ahsoka heard a snarl on her left and the rending of metal as something pulled itself from the bent wreck of a speeder. The red Trandoshan yanked its arm free and threw itself at the Nightmare with a rattling howl.
The Nightmare saw the lizard coming, and instead of flinging it away it stood to meet the Trandoshan, coiled body hidden by its patchwork cloak. The charging scavver reached the cowled creature, when the Nightmare blurred.
The trandoshan struck with its claws and only met ragged fabric as a steel fist crunched into its flank, a flying elbow slicing across the lizard's jaw in the same breath. The scav choked out a clipped cry of pain and swiped, trying to gain breathing room.
Mechanical fingers closed over the vulnerable wrist and a flying knee flashed from beneath the Nightmare's cloak and pulverized the Lizard's snout. Ahsoka could almost feel the bone crunch and snap as the trandoshan gurgled and keened out a bloody cry of agony.
The cloaked horror stomped the back of the trandoshan's calves, driving it to its knees with a splash, viscous globs of blood and bits of scale dribbling down its front. With the air of an executioner the Nightmare raised an armored elbow and struck, once, twice, thrice! The trandoshan's thick skull caving with a wet crack. The mutilated corpse sagged, what remained of its head dropping against its chest as a final death rattle escaped its lungs.
Then all was quiet. The sound of displaced water lapped at Ahsoka's cheeks as the Nightmare's horror mechanical breathing echoed through the deathly silent swamp. The creature loomed over its victim, still as a statue, crimson dripping from its steel claws.
She needed to move. Ahsoka didn't know how she could get away from this… thing that had somehow clawed its way from her dreamscape and she didn't want to know. But she never got the chance when the Nightmare jerked into motion, cloak flaring in its wake- as it walked straight for her, cold soulless black staring at her from its twisted metal skull.
"You." The Nightmare hissed, a terrible tremor wracking down Ahsoka's spine. Barely controlled fury growing behind each uttered word. "You led them to my lands. Endangered my home. Brought them to my doorstep. Slavers. Scavvers." White hot anger rolled off of the cowled creature as it spat with such venom the Force recoiled in shock. "ThE EMpIRE."
Ahsoka was choking, drowning in the unbearable searing hot waves of emotion searing her lungs and lighting her fight-or-flight instincts ablaze.
A growl of a revving speeder engine halted the Nightmare's advance, its skull whipping around as the last scavver and dragged himself from the water and took off.
The Nigthmare flicked its finger towards the north, deeper into the swamp. Ahsoka felt the Force echo off of something deep in the mire. The sharp report of blaster cannon answered, iridescent blue lancing from the woods and vaporized the top-half of the speeder, and the scavver who was riding it. The remnants plowed into the murky shallows and exploded.
The Nightmare turned back to the last remaining soul in the clearing, firelight from the wreckage playing off of the dull durasteel skull, wreathing it in dancing shadow.
A single word twisted against Ahsoka lips, slipping from her mouth unbidden as she stared down the creature that had haunted her Nightmares.
"Monster."
"Find her! I won't that wretched bitch on her knees at my feet within the next cycle or i'll have your fucking heads!" Jordo screeched from beneath the bloody bandages swathed around his ruined face.
The squad of guards that had allowed the prisoner escape through an open gate scrambled from his office chamber. His anger fizzled out as Jordo stifled a groan of agony. That bout of yelling had reopened his slashed face, fresh crimson pooling against the bandages.
A knock on his door sorely tempted Jordo just to put a few blastershot through the other side just to shut up whoever had dared bother him while he was in the middle of wallowing in his fury. Still, best not to slaughter his underlings too often. Finding replacements was always such a pain.
"Yes?"
"Boss," The guard sounded scared. Nervous. Somehow Jordo felt was wasn't directed towards him either. "We got… a few people here to see you."
"For your sake this better be good my friend."
"Y-yes Boss!" There's the proper tone of fear he was looking for. "T-they look Imperial!"
That got Jordo's attention. He stood up, fighting back the wave of pain moving caused his face. "Well why didn't you lead with that? I'll be right out."
He stopped halfway to the door and added, "Oh, and have someone bring out our guest from last night?"
"On it Boss!"
Jordo tapped his blaster in his hostler. He felt unbalanced, only being able to see out of one eye but it would have to do. He wasn't planning on shooting anyone, least of all the people that have the best chance of being his ticket off this skugghole of a planet. You couldn't be too careful though.
He opened the door and followed the guard out into the main marketplace, where a group of people clad in similarly brutalistic black armor stood. Four of them loomed over the nervous crowd offering the strangers a wide berth. Jordo noted and promptly dismissed them.
It was the one standing in the center, and slightly forward of the group that set off alarm bells. She was female, judging from the curve of her hips and dip in her waist. A pretty green neck sparsely spattered with black freckles stretched up from her chestplate and under the black helmet. She did not loom either, feinting a relaxed calm.
She was dangerous- and the one in charge.
"I am Boss Jordo. Leader of this fine establishment. You've come at a rather-" He touched the bloody bandages over his face and scowled. "-opportune time."
"Oh?" The green skinned woman's voice was soft, with an almost motherly tilt to it. Completely at odds with her intimidating appearance.
"You are Imperials." Jordo assessed bluntly. He knew this woman's kind. Gentle and calming with a brutal and calculated malice. He should know, after all that's the same part he plays as well.
The woman didn't move, though Jordo noted the tension in her shoulders. Before anything rash happened he put his hands out imploringly.
"I am not here to hinder, or inconvenience you madam. On the contrary, I believe we can do much to help each other."
The woman tilted her head playfully, a breathy laugh leaving her helm. "You certainly seem well informed, darling. I wonder, why that is?"
The sound of a scuffle behind him alerted Jordo to the arrival of his bargaining chip. "Perhaps this will explain my situation." He said as the prisoner was thrown to the ground next to him.
A bloodied Piecemeal landed on his knees with a loud thud. The stoic one-legged clone scowled up at him, dried blood trailed down his weathered face. Jordo watched for any reaction from the armored woman but he didn't get so much as a twitch. That non-reaction telling him more than any sort of casual dismissal could.
Jordo smiled. "Consider this a gift, and a sign of my cooperation."
"I believe we are looking for the same thing- or rather- someone." He continued.
When the woman didn't respond he continued, "I will help you hunt down the Jedi." A startled muttering rose up from the crowd.
The woman thought for a moment, then relaxed her shoulders and crossed her arms. "What is the catch, Mr. Jordo?"
The slaver boss bared his teeth in a feral grin. "Make. Her. Suffer."
Though he couldn't see through the black visor, he could feel the woman match his grin with one of her own.
A/N: Hello! Untraveled Here!
Shout out to my amazing beta/editor WingsTakeMeAway! This fic wouldn't have gotten this far without you!
And now… Surprise! Piecemeal is still wholemeal! (Kinda. Poor guy only has one leg to stand on.)
And Ahsoka has finally met the dreaded Rider (A.K.A Angery SCP Darth Vader.). It only took 11 months and 7 episodes to make it happen! (I am so sorry. ugh.)
And now I've left You wonderful readers on yet another cliffhanger.
You are all welcome~!
Until next time!
