This is the proper officer mindset: no qualms about sending the men to their deaths in battle, yet as protective as a dragoness with her brood should anyone else dare to offer them harm.

Some unique combination of magnetic field and solar winds made Mgas Four a navigator's nightmare. If you didn't approach perfectly along the field lines and in the solar lee, the planet first fried your sensors and communications, then shields – if there were any – and then, likely as not, anything else that had so far kept the ship from turning into a rather expensive shooting star. If you did follow the right approach, however …. Well, then Mgas Four was the perfect spot to lie low for a while, or to conduct sensitive meetings undisturbed.

A bit too undisturbed, for young Captain Solo's tastes. He had left his Wookiee copilot – long story – to guard his newly acquired ship – longer story – and wandered into the nearby village in hopes of a bit of fun. So far, he had merely managed to locate exactly one dive that served alcoholic drinks, though, and that one specialized in the local brew, which did not even merit dirty jokes about watercraft. With a born spacer's indifference to the source of booze, as long as it was booze, Solo had swallowed the stuff, but after one glass he was ready to admit defeat and head home to the ship.

Which was, of course, the exact moment a commotion broke out at the opposite side of the settlement.

At first glance, it looked as if some hunters were returning with one of the fiercer examples of the local wildlife. A closer look, however, taken after pushing through the half anxious, half expectant crowd, soon disabused the young captain of the notion. The assumed hunters might be just that, but the twisting, gleaming, black thing they dragged along in a primitive net, was neither wildlife, nor native to the planet.

A TIE-pilot, life-support helmet still in place, if a little worse for wear.

Solo couldn't help but feel a spike of sympathy. He knew from personal experience how hot and suffocating the damned bucket was under atmospheric conditions – and then he realized that to keep the helmet on was, from a purely practical point of view, a stroke of genius: keeping the prisoner both uncomfortable and dehumanized by the simple expedient of not doing something. It just was the sort of genius the young captain didn't like very much.

From the sound of the mob, the poor bastard's problems wouldn't last much longer, though, and Solo started to push back through the milling masses. Public executions had never been his style of entertainment, and the times where the unseen face beneath the black visor might have been a friend's – or even his own – were still too fresh on his memories.

"They burned our homes," a shrill voice shouted over the general din, and the cheers turned into more than a dozen place and planet names, before the first voice cut in again, with, "now it's time to even the scales!"

The mob promptly erupted into chants of "Burn him, burn him, burn him!"

Captain Solo turned back, his belly filled with dread. Some of the names he could identify as former victims of orbital bombardment – though some of them had not seen action since the Clone Wars, if he remembered correctly – and Mgas Four might be just the place for refugees who never wanted to meet the Empire again.

Except to inflict some revenge.

Right enough, the black-armored man was dragged towards the edge of the settlement, where a few dozen stout posts, arranged in long rows, supported lines hung with something unidentifiable drying in wind and sun. He was tied up upright against one of those posts and firewood and kindling piled around his feet. The man had not put up much resistance so far, but now he started to fight against his bonds, his screams muffled by the airtight helmet.

The young captain closed his eyes, he couldn't watch this. A crescendo in the jeers jolted him back, a torch had been applied to the heap of brushwood and first little flames were tentatively licking around the half-buried legs. He couldn't … The suits were designed not to catch when a flame touched them, radiation-proof against pretty much anything short of laser-cannons and had internal temperature controls – but those were meant to keep up with the body's own heat generation, not an external heat source. Meaning that while mere firewood wouldn't damage the suit, it could very well roast the man inside it. He couldn't watch this.

The blaster fell into Solo's hand, heavy but right in a way he couldn't describe, and he pulled the trigger before his common sense caught up with the sudden impulse and talked him out of it. A bolt of plasma and the bound man slumped, singed plastoid masked in the wood smoke. The mob fell eerily silent.

"What have you done?" several voices hissed.

"I'm sure no friend of the Empire, pals, but no one gets burned alive on my watch."

Finger still on the trigger the young captain backed away, a reassuring wall at his back until something flickered in the corner of his eye and …

Darkness.

Oo oo oo oo oo oO

He came to sluggishly, with the curious sensation of standing upright. Tight ropes digging into his chest, thighs and ankles strengthened the odd impression, and then adrenaline jolted him awake as memories rushed in.

Had he …, had they …, was he about to provide the entertainment he had spoiled with his impulsive act?!

Titanic effort pried his eyelids open, though it didn't lift his head off his chest, for the time being. Enough to ascertain that he was indeed tied to a pole the way the dead pilot had been, but without any kindling at his feet.

Solo spared a moment to offer a prayer of thanks to any entity that might listen, then tried to focus his pounding head on something closer to home. Like the garbled noises around him. Teeth-grinding concentration dissolved them into several muffled voices, threatening all kinds of terrible retribution directed at the villagers.

Huh? That didn't make much sense, as far as the young captain remembered. Another burst of adrenaline and willpower finally allowed him to lift his head, to find four other TIE-pilots keeping him – and their dead comrade – company at the poles, with firewood getting stacked around their feet. A fifth black-armored figure was lying spread-eagled on the ground between them, a couple of villagers crouching over it and …

Solo swallowed bile. The man was getting staked out, literally, with metal spikes being driven through his legs and forearms.

Squadron leader, the young captain knew without a doubt, both for getting singled out for an even nastier death and for the other pilots' fierce, if futile, protectiveness. Kindling was piled up on the leader's hands and feet, careful not to reach past mid-forearm or -calf, the better to ensure that the man would be dying by inches. With the kindling alight, the villagers stepped away, satisfied with their grisly work – and Solo found his own voice adding damnation to the half-strangled chorus.

"If you don't shoot him this very moment, you're all deader than dead." He drew a deep breath and promptly choked on the smoke rising from various fires.

"Oh, no," disconcerting satisfaction tinted that voice, the same, the young captain assumed, that had started the shouts for fiery retribution in the first place. "When he wakes, it'll be too late, he must focus to act, and the burns will keep him too occupied for that."

Somehow, Solo didn't think it would be so easy to escape the wrath of one Dark Lord of the Sith. Though, he had to admit, he had never expected to see said Sithlord in such a precarious situation. Mgas Four's nightmarish magnetosphere must have outdone itself to take the Dark Lord out for the count for so long.

The thought had barely crossed the young captain's mind when the sticks atop the nearest hand twitched slightly, in a way that settling embers couldn't fully account for.

Uh-oh.

For a moment nothing else happened, but just when he thought that his eyes had been playing tricks on him after all, every single piece of burning wood within sight coalesced into a glowing mass above the Sithlord. The jeering mob fell silent.

And the mass turned into red-hot shrapnel.

Captain Solo closed his eyes. Burning splinters sliced past him without touching him, but given the screams behind him, he wished they hadn't missed. Something substantially heavier swished past him, something hissed like a forcefield coming to life and the screams quickly receded.

Not all of them, though. The weak, gasping, out-of-the-fight-and-slowly-dying-in-agony ones did not.

Solo swallowed bile, again.

Oo oo oo oo oo oO

Heavy steps approaching caused the young captain to open his eyes again. A blood-red blade came into his range of vision, and he braced for the killing blow, hoping against hope that it would actually be that and not a slice that left him maimed and screaming like the rest of them.

It wasn't either.

Instead a gloved – still slightly smoking – fist pushed his chin up and a raspy growl demanded to know, "Why are you here?"

Lying, the young captain knew instinctively, would be a very bad idea. The truth, on the other hand, was probably fatal. But he wasn't about to start groveling, now.

"I shot the pilot they were about to burn first."

"Why?"

"No one gets burned alive on my watch."

"A man of principles, among this scum." Solo wasn't sure if that was a compliment or sarcasm, but the sizzling blade coming down precluded any further line of thought in that direction.

The ropes securing the young captain against the pole fell away, ends smoking.

"Uh, thanks, ..." He didn't get any further before the crimson saber gestured him aside.

Solo found himself herded towards the nearest of the bound pilots, hanging slackly in the ropes that held him up. A quick glance around ascertained that the rest of the squad was in no better shape.

Sithspit! What had happened to them while he wasn't looking?

"They are not in pain, at the moment," the raspy growl cut across his thoughts – or maybe answered them, the young captain didn't want to think too hard about it . "Hold them, so they will not fall while I cut them loose."

Four bodies carefully lowered to the ground later, the sizzling blade was finally extinguished and Solo almost slumped to the ground in relief, too.

Instead, he gestured at the injured men. "Ah, I'll see if I find some med…" he started, before he was cut off once more.

"That won't be necessary." The black, towering figure seemed to consider the young captain for a moment, making Solo wonder if he had just outlived his usefulness.

"Your intervention was appreciated," the raspy growl went on, however. "You are free to leave."

The black helmet dipped for the tiniest nod and the young captain found himself bowing back.

"Yessir!" Solo didn't need to be told twice. He sketched a salute, whirled and departed, not – quite – at a run.

Before he dove into the alleyway that would lead him back to his ship by the shortest route available, Captain Solo ventured a last look back. Lord Vader was still standing as he had left him, motionless but vigilant, amid his unconscious pilots.

The sight was disturbingly reminiscent both of a dark idol, surrounded by slain sacrifices – and some alien predator protecting its cubs.

A/N: I wrote the last sentence first, and then I had to come up with a matching storyline. Does it work?