Chapter Text
As a rule, Nefertari didn't care for children. They were small, noisy, dirty things, always running around and getting themselves and others into trouble. She knew from her childhood on Nar Shadda that they could be just as violent, vicious and cruel as adults, and she'd done her best to stay away from them after escaping the Academy on Korriban.
And yet. And yet.
Right now, she felt rage, hot and burning, like she had only felt before on a handful of occasions in her life. It had been growing inside her since that Hutt vermin had dared to threaten the Lord of Terror, but had been cowed by the display of Darth Cain's own fury and the need to prepare for the mission their lord had given them. Now, however, there was nothing to hold it back, and it blazed through her body. She didn't understand where it was coming from; or perhaps, she refused to admit it to herself.
Regardless, she wasn't shy about unleashing her wrath now, for she was Sith, and through passion, she gained strength.
Since Asajj had been attacked, they had discarded stealth. The enemy knew they were here : shock and awe were their tools now, and the Sith acolytes were exceedingly good at using them. Grudgingly, she had to acknowledge that the Jedi weren't bad at it either, and the less said about the Mandalorians' talent for mayhem, the better.
According to Malden's briefing, after learning that the Invincible had left Perlia and Darth Cain was on his way, Fulcher had withdrawn the mercenaries he'd used to seize control of Rattatak back to his ship. The Ironfound was fitted with several recreational decks, and the brutes had spent the last few days enjoying the free drink and food provided by their employers – until the Sith had arrived, at which point the alcohol and xenos-equivalents had stopped flowing and everyone had been ordered to be ready for action.
Which meant that the Hutt crime lord had hundreds, if not thousands of violent killers to throw at the boarding party. And Fulcher was throwing every single one of them at the boarders, probably terrified out of his mind of what Darth Cain would do to him the moment his hostages were safe.
That much, the boarders could have dealt with easily, but it turned out that the walls of the Ironfound had been trapped with explosives. Nefertari didn't know whether these traps had been added recently or were an old countermeasure against boarders, and she didn't care : what mattered was that, soon after they'd been detected, the ship's captain had activated them around the boarders.
Neither the Force users nor the Mandalorians were weak enough to get themselves killed by such petty tactics, but they had been separated, cut off from each other. Escaping the damaged sections of the ship had been a race that had seen them scattered around the sacrificed area – Nefertari could still feel their presence in the distance, if only because Skywalker shone with such power in the Force.
"Well, kriff," muttered Iskandar as he let loose a stream of lightning that fried a bunch of mercenaries inside their armor. "This might just be a tad more complicated than we planned for."
"It doesn't matter," Nefertari snarled. "We'll just have to kill them all."
"Your plan does have the advantage of simplicity," Iskandar admitted, and she could hear the savage grin in his voice as more lightning crackled along his arm.
From that point on, Iskandar ran at her side; or, to be more accurate, she danced around him as he advanced through the ship's corridors. Together, they broke everyone who dared stand against them. They didn't have a clear destination in mind, trusting instead to their instincts and command of the Force to guide them.
Despite the circumstances, Nefertari reflected as she cut an alien open from throat to groin, this was still one of the nicest dates her companion had ever taken her on.
Nux was alone. It wasn't something that had happened to him in a long time, and he found that he didn't like it. Without people around him, either to fight or talk with or just listen to, there was nothing to drown out the sound of his own screaming, gibbering voice in his head.
He hadn't made it out of the detonated corridors unscathed : half his torso armor had been ripped out, and the skin beneath was badly burned. The pain sent shivers across his body, but he ignored it with practiced ease, more concerned with the question of what he was supposed to do now.
He didn't know the route to the objective, so he ran randomly, following the noise of shouts and footsteps. The part of him that could remember the plan had decided that, since he was separated from the rest of the boarding team, he might as well provide a distraction for the others and draw as many of the enemy to him so that they could fulfil the mission. It would be a glorious death, he mused : alone and deep in enemy territory, facing the hordes of the foe to buy his comrades a shot at victory.
Yes, the Rattataki thought. It would be a worthy death.
He rounded a corner, found a squad of mercenaries gawking at him, and cut them to pieces, ignoring their blasters shooting at him. Resuming his course, he slammed into another corner (whoops, looked like his reflexes weren't back to full capacity yet), using the impact to redirect his momentum without slowing down, ignoring the bruises that spread across his right side as he did so.
A man in armor stood across the corridor, his panic blazing into the Force despite him being as gifted as a particularly dim rock in that regard.
"Stop right there, or I'll shoot !" the mercenary screamed.
Nux paused. The man was holding a blaster to the side of a terrified child with chalk-white skin, with traditional Rattataki markings on his face. Tears ran down the child's face, and snot from his nose – and one of his eyes was swelled shut from where someone had struck him.
Memories that the acolyte had spent years trying to suppress bubbled to the surface of his mind at the sight, and he growled, the joy of battle fading somewhat. He snapped his fingers, and the mercenary's hand broke in five different places. The blaster slipped from suddenly nerveless fingers, and before he could react with anything more than a pained yelp, Nux had crossed the distance between them with a burst of the Force to quicken his motion. He punched the mercenary away from the child with enough strength that he didn't get back up after hitting the wall.
Strange. Usually, he was much poorer at such fine telekinetic manipulations : he'd fully expected to tear the man's arm off. This time, however, precision had come naturally.
He could hear more footsteps getting closer, and felt the minds to which they belonged. Mind reading had never been Nux's strong suit, but he could pick up enough to guess at their intent. The Hutt in charge, whatever his name was, knew about the boarders, and had sent them to start killing the hostages until they surrendered.
Which might have worked if the boarders had all been Jedi (and even then it would only have bought time until they escaped and brought the whole ship down), but with Nefertari on board ? All it would achieve was get the mercenaries killed in an even more painful fashion … and the children hurt until they realized it wasn't working. Well, unless Iskandar or Chieftress Sulla managed to restrain the Twi'lek – Iskandar because he could think in the long run, and Sulla because she belonged to a branch of Mandalorians with a weak spot for children.
All of that, however, was irrelevant to Nux : mere background noise in his never-silent skull.
"Get back inside," he told the child, who looked so painfully, achingly familiar. Only once he had finished speaking did Nux realize he'd slipped into Rattataki without realizing.
"What are you going to do ?" the child replied in the same tongue.
Nux smiled, and that was answer enough for the child, who vanished inside the room. Nux slammed it shut with the Force before destroying the control panel with his lightsaber. It wouldn't stop even the worst slicer in the galaxy for long, but it would have to do.
Seconds later, half a dozen mercenaries turned the corridor and saw Nux standing between them and the room with the children they'd been sent to secure, lightsaber at the ready. They stopped, and Nux's smile widened as he felt their fear. After so long spent near Darth Cain, it was a feeling he was deeply familiar with.
He wondered what they had been hearing over the comms while running here – the screams of their associates as they faced Nux's comrades, the howling of Force lightning and flamethrowers, the cackling of Sith acolytes unrestrained.
"Well ?" the Rattataki asked, arms held wide tauntingly. "Are you going to do anything, or just stand here until my friends arrive ? I'm fine with that if you are. I think we're supposed to accept surrenders now, too, so you still have a chance of living past this day."
Instead of accepting his generous offer, one of the mercenaries barked an order in a language Nux didn't speak, and they all opened fire. Nux laughed as he parried some of the shots with his lightsaber and took the rest head-on, trusting in his armor and natural resilience as he charged. He smashed into their frontline, and his blade cut the first one in two. The others fell back from him, but didn't stop shooting, even at the risk of hitting their own allies.
Their ruthlessness was commendable, but futile. Within moments, they were all dead. But Nux could hear more footsteps approaching – many, many more.
His smile widened even more, stretching his cheek painfully. Let them come.
Nux fought and fought and fought, drawing on his pain, clawing power from the Force in order to keep fighting well past the point his body should have broken down from the strain he was putting it through, muscles tearing and bones breaking. He kept killing the Cartel thugs, cutting them down with his lightsaber and ignoring the pain from the blaster bolts smashing into his body.
But it wasn't enough. Dismembered bodies piled up at his feet, and the screams of the dying echoed across the metal corridor, yet still more came, a seemingly endless tide driven by fear of the Hutts' punishment for disobeying their orders, which surpassed that of being killed by the acolyte.
Whoever was in charge must have told them he was getting weaker, that they would succeed somehow where their predecessors had failed. And they were right, for eventually, Nux felt his strength running out. He was taking more and more hits, and he wasn't able to shrug them off as easily as before. His every breath was coming up short, and every beat of his heart send needles of white-hot agony through his chest.
Death was coming for him, he knew, the death he had sought for so long. This would be a good death, he thought. He would die standing, fighting to the last to protect the innocent, just like he'd dreamt he would since joining Darth Cain, the one Sith Lord in the entire Empire who would not make Nux fight dishonorable wars.
Except, the thought rose unbidden, the children were still there, hiding behind the closed door. When Nux fell, there would be no one left to protect them. They would be taken again, denied the salvation they thought had come for them. They would be used as hostages against the rest of the boarding team, and whatever glimmer of hope Nux's arrival had brought them would be snatched away.
And Nux found that he couldn't bear that idea. It filled him with horror, with a deep, deep torment that went beyond the agony of his wounded flesh. He couldn't fall here. He couldn't.
But he was too exhausted, too weak. His thoughts were sluggish, his fury was spent. He couldn't draw anymore strength from the Force. His pain, his wrath, the howling madness that ceaselessly haunted him – they weren't enough.
So he did something he'd never done before, something he'd never even considered until now. He cast aside his pride, his dignity, everything he'd been taught on the Academy and after, and he begged. He begged, just as he'd begged to be left alone when the Sith recruiters had come for him. He begged, just as he'd begged the instructors at the Academy to let him out when they had thrown him in a pit with a dozen slaves hopped up on stimulants and one single rusted knife and told him to kill or be killed.
Please, he silently implored the Force. Please, give me the strength to protect them.
And, unlike all the tormentors who had made Nux who he was, the Force answered his plea.
The Light poured into Nux in a seemingly endless flow. It healed and strengthened him, filled in the cracks that ran through his damaged mind, silenced the terrified babbling that had echoed in the depths of his soul for so, so long with a gentle embrace. The gruesome tapestry of scars that covered his body glowed with a bright, gentle radiance. The closest hired killers of the Hutts were sent hurling through the air by invisible hands, and Nux laughed again – but no one could have mistaken it for the crazed laughter he'd given before.
For the first time since he'd been dragged to Korriban in chains, in an age now considered myth by most of the galaxy, the sound was genuine, free from the maddened horror that had plagued him for so long.
Amidst the joy that filled him, Nux wondered. Was this how it felt for the Jedi all the time ? Was this how joining with the Force felt to those who rejected the power of the Dark Side ?
Why had nobody ever told him ?
It took twenty-three minutes before the rest of the rescue party rejoined him, slicing and blasting their way through the horde. The four Jedi who were part of the operation struck the tide of mercenaries from the other side. Caught between Nux and the other Force users, the mercenaries finally broke and ran, and Nux looked up from his latest kill to see Kenobi, Plo Koon, Vail and Skywalker staring at him in various degrees of awe and wonder.
"What took you so long ?" he asked them, breathless, and for several seconds, they could only stand there, stunned. Then, finally, the exhaustion of what he'd done caught up with him, and the Rattataki fell to the gore-covered ground, unconscious but alive.
He was smiling, and among the four other Lightsiders, only Knight Vail knew that this was the first time Nux had slept peacefully in years, and that one more of the Sith Empire's monuments of suffering had been undone.
Beyond the circle of chemical fire, Trooper Erhlsen watched as the Lord of Terror fought, enraptured.
Like everyone else in the Legion, Erhlsen knew that the Sith Lord to whom he owed allegiance was among the most powerful warriors in the Empire. But Erhlsen was one of the later recruits, having joined only after the legend of Darth Cain had been cemented across the galaxy (which, while it meant he'd to work twice as hard to prove his worth to the veterans, at least mean he'd never had to fight under Darth Erebus, and that was a bargain he was more than happy to make).
He knew his lord was among the mightiest warriors of the Empire, and certainly the one who most deserved the loyalty of the men and women under his command. But until today, he'd never seen him fight with his own eyes; at least not a real fight, rather than the crushing defeats Darth Cain inflicted upon most who dared stand in his way. Now, with the dead having been pushed back and Commander Broklaw having ordered the formation of a defensive perimeter around the circle, Erhlsen had the opportunity to watch his lord at work.
It was like a dance. Darth Cain and his combat droid moved as one, covering each other's blind spots perfectly. JURG-N had dismissed the ranged weapons it was most well-known for in favor of a pair of crackling blades emerging from its wrists.
Like every Imperial citizen, Erhlsen had been taught that droids were slaves, created to serve the will of their masters until they were of no more use. And like every Imperial citizen, Erhlsen had been taught that the same was true of the organic slaves the Empire kept in such vast quantities.
Until Darth Cain's speech at the secession ceremony, Erhlsen had never questioned it. It was only when the Lord of Terror had explained the failings of the Empire plainly that he had realized how the nation of his birth had crippled itself with its practices.
And, until now, Erhlsen still hadn't questioned the use of droids as servants. It wasn't the same thing as organics, after all : droids were made to serve. But, looking at JURG-N fighting alongside Darth Cain, the two of them more in sync than Erhlsen had ever achieved yet with his squadmates, it was hard not to think that maybe the difference was more arbitrary than he'd like.
The enemies of the Sith Lord and killer droid were far more skilled than the mercenaries the Legion had fought on Savareen. Their wargear appeared primitive, but their blades were able to withstand the touch of Darth Cain's lightsaber, and the speed at which they moved betrayed their Force sensitivity even to those like Erhlsen who lacked the gift.
But their martial skill fell short of that which Erhlsen had seen displayed by the acolytes of the Lord of Terror. They moved with a discipline and ease that spoke of long years of training, yes, but it was obvious even to the trooper's eyes that whoever had trained them simply hadn't been good enough. Numbers were the only advantage they had, and while that might have been sufficient against most Force users, Darth Cain was far too powerful to fall to something so mundane.
"Eyes on the enemy, Erhlsen !" barked his sergeant, and the trooper nearly jumped before moving his blaster back toward the horde of shambling dead which were approaching.
He opened fire, but behind him, he could still hear the sound of battle, growing quieter and quieter, until they stopped completely.
He really, really wanted to turn back and look, but he had a feeling that if he did so before the last of the dead were back to being inanimate and the last of the enemy droids were reduced to scrap, his sergeant would make him wish he was dead.
I took a deep, shuddering breath as the last of the assassins fell and the circle of chemical fire JURG-N had created in a vain attempt to keep my assailants at bay guttered out, and then died out entirely.
JURG-N and I had fought back to back, as we had before on innumerable occasions. We'd both taken a few blows : my aide would need to spend some time in the repair shop getting his chassis seen to, and my own body armor was also going to need some repairs.
But we'd won. Every last one of my would-be killers were dead. They had fought to the bitter end, instead of fleeing once it had become clear they couldn't hope to succeed, which troubled me greatly. Hired killers were one thing, but in my experience, fanatics were much worse to deal with. I'd tried to take one alive to interrogate her, and she'd thrown herself on her own blade.
I closed my eyes and tried to chase after the presence which had bound them together, but it had vanished when the last of them had fallen. I shook my head in frustration, then called Broklaw.
"Commander," I barked over the comms network. "I've dealt with our foe's attempt at killing me. Report."
"The remaining undead are collapsing across the field, my lord," Broklaw reported with calm professionalism, as if facing a horde of reanimated corpses was an everyday occurrence – although, Force help me, compared to some of the battles we'd been through together, it might as well be. "As for the droids, frankly, they are antiques. We're crushing them with minimal casualties."
"Excellent. Destroy them all, Commander," I ordered. "We need to make sure the Cartels learn their lesson."
"As you wish, my lord," he replied with obvious relish.
A few moments later, it was done. I was checking with Broklaw that the injured were being taken care of (which they were, of course : the medical corps of the Imperial Army units under my command had been among the best of the Empire, since I never knew when I might need their services myself) when JURG-N spoke up :
"Sir, Commodore Kasteen is hailing us. The Hutt fleet is leaving orbit as we speak, and apparently the Hutt wants to talk to you."
"The extraction of the hostages was a success ?" I asked.
"Yes, sir. I have been told that there were some complications, but they are all safe and sound aboard the Invincible, as are Knight Vail and the rest of the rescue team."
I carefully didn't let my relief show in my posture. I'd known that Amberley would be alright; she had survived far worse than a Hutt ship and come out victorious. But I couldn't help the nagging worry which had troubled me since leaving the flagship.
JURG-N, of course, was aware of this even if no one else was, which was why he'd made sure to mention her name in his report.
"Good," I said. "Let's see what the slug wants to talk about now. Put him through, JURG-N."
The holocomm in my aide's hand lit up, projecting an almost comically small image of Fulcher before my eyes. I was no great expert at reading Hutt expressions, but I could tell he was furious.
"Hello, Fulcher," I said. "Having some issues with your little scheme, are you ?"
"Do you think you have won, Cain ?" he started spitting without preamble. "This isn't over ! The Cartels will crush your pathetic crusade ! We will –"
Fulcher abruptly stopped talking. The projected image stopped moving completely, mouth frozen mid-invective, eyes wide and filling with fear. Ice crystals formed on the ground around us, making the air painfully dry as all moisture was suddenly sucked out of it.
I knew exactly what Fulcher was feeling, for I had felt the same, only a thousand times worse, when the Emperor had forced me to put the Phobis Device on my own head. As always, part of me recoiled from the notion of inflicting such a fate on anyone else, even a Hutt slaver.
But he had taken children, and I had to teach the Cartels a lesson they would remember so that they never tried that trick again – especially since it had appeared to work in forcing me to act as Fulcher wished, even if it had been turned on him in the end. And so I held him in place with my glare and the power of the Force, feeling very, very cold and alone as I did so.
"I told you to run, Fulcher," I said, ignoring the choking sounds being transmitted through the link. "You should have listened."
On the bridge of the Ironfound, the crew watched in horror as their captain died. After the boarders had left with the hostages and the battle on the ground had been lost, Fulcher had given the order for the fleet to run, knowing it could not defeat the Invincible and its allies. But even as the engines fired up and the ship prepared to jump into hyperspace, the Hutt hadn't been able to resist throwing one last curse at the Lord of Terror, to make one last attempt to salvage his wounded pride before needing to explain his failure to Marlo in person.
It was a mistake he would not have to regret for long.
The temperature on the bridge had plummeted, causing frost to form on every metallic surface and the breath of every sentient to fog. Dark spots were spreading across Fulcher's skin as internal bleeding ravaged his flesh, and blood poured from his mouth, nose, ears and eyes, freezing into icicles as it did so.
Someone shouted to cut the link, and someone else obeyed immediately, punching the buttons with enough strength to make sparks fly from the console. But the image of Darth Cain remained, formed of ice and shadow, watching in silent, merciless fury as Fulcher the Hutt's organs failed one after the other from the strain of absolute terror and whatever else the Lord of Terror was subjecting him to through his dark sorcery.
It took Fulcher a long time to die. Hutts were legendarily hardy creatures, and this translated to more than a longer than average lifespan. A few crew, more loyal or greedy than the rest, tried to approach him to deliver what aid they could, only to recoil and flee as they drew near, unable to withstand even a fraction of the supernatural horror that was being inflicted upon Fulcher.
Only when the Ironfound's pilot slammed the hyperdrive's activation lever and the ship vanished into hyperspace did the ghastly specter of the Lord of Terror vanish, but by then it was too late. Despite the best efforts of the Ironfound's medics (who knew all too well the fate that awaited them if they returned to the Cartels' territory with their leader dead), there was nothing they could do to coax Fulcher's biology back into a working state.
By the time the Ironfound emerged from hyperspace, everyone aboard had heard what had happened, the story growing more terrible with each retelling. There was no attempt to keep the truth quiet, futile as it would have been, and every crew member with a personal holocomm began to spread the tale of how Darth Cain had slain Fulcher the Hutt aboard his ship from the planet's surface at once.
Within five minutes, the first headline appeared on the Holonews. Within ten, the first report on the battle of Rattatak had been broadcast.
In her chambers aboard the ship of the Hutt fleet that had been assigned to serve as her Sisterhood's transport, Mother Talzin took a deep, shuddering breath, and tried to calm down her ancient, racing heart, lest her grief drown her.
Her sisters were dead, their corpses laying broken on Rattatak, never to be reclaimed and properly laid to rest on Dathomir. A full score of Nightsisters, slain by the Sith Lord and his pet assassin droid. The Sisterhood hadn't suffered such losses since the last war between covens, and never at the hands of a single Force user.
She had underestimated Darth Cain's power, despite everything. She'd never thought the army of droids and walking dead would be enough to defeat the Sith army, no matter what Fulcher had believed, but she'd thought they would provide a good enough distraction – and they had. But her sisters hadn't been strong enough to defeat the Lord of Terror, even working together, even with her serving as the bridge between their minds to allow them to fight better than they ever had.
And yet, the death of her sisters wasn't the only insult Darth Cain had inflicted upon her this day. She had felt the presence of another of her people aboard the Ironfound. Not a trained Nightsister, but one born of their blood all the same – yet when Talzin had reached out to her, she had rejected the communion. It was all Talzin could do to warn Fulcher that his flagship had been boarded. Not that that had done much of a difference in the end, though a small part of her was relieved the girl, whoever she was, had managed to escape alive.
She didn't know where Cain had found her, but the fact he'd already bound one of her people into his service was proof, if proof were needed, of the threat the Lord of Terror represented. Now that he knew of their existence, he would not stop until the Nightsisters were all dead or enslaved to his will.
Which meant that she needed Marlo's support more than ever. The Hutt crime lord would be displeased by the Nightsisters' failure to kill Darth Cain, even more so than Fulcher's death. Even this far from the flagship, Talzin had felt the Hutt's demise. She had felt very relieved that it hadn't been her who had drawn the Lord of Terror's attention.
She would have to convince Marlo that he needed the Nightsisters' help, that without their presence, things would have gone even worse for his task force. She didn't worry about Marlo abandoning the fight by surrendering to Cain : the terms of surrender the Sith Lord had offered were utterly unacceptable to the Hutts, something Cain must have known and done deliberately in order to make his rampage seem acceptable to the naive Republic. But maintaining their alliance would take work, and she would also need to send to Dathomir for more of her sisters to join her.
Perhaps the other covens might be convinced to assist them as well, she reflected. Surely, even their past differences paled compared to the threat of a Sith Lord bent on turning the Outer Rim into his personal fiefdom ?