The heraldry was unfamiliar to the Jedi.
No, seriously, who in their right mind would decorate a warship with golden statues?!
Even the Neimoidians, prone to kitsch, hadn’t sunk to such madness.
“Iron or not, its guns are in perfect order,” Malicos noted grimly.
Right.
The sides of this monster were literally studded with guns of various calibers.
In other words, to fire a broadside from all its guns, this “iron” would have to turn sideways.
Republic fleet commanders sometimes practiced this maneuver, but it was considered a rather risky step, used specifically depending on the situation.
Turning yourself into a big, convenient target for turbolasers was not the best idea.
This “Star Destroyer” must have possessed an impressive shield and strong armor, significantly superior in durability to the Venator’s hull, if it could afford to conduct such a fighting style.
The other option was too insane to be true, but Malicos simply couldn’t explain the bow construction of the giant ship any other way.
A massive armored cap with… uh… a ram welded to its lower part?!
Nah, that was too much.
“No pirates in sight, sir.” The clone relayed the radar report.
“If they had abandoned everything upon our entry into the system, we would have noticed at least some traces of their presence,” Sheldon voiced his observation.
Right.
The ship stood completely untouched, and the Jedi strongly disliked this.
Instincts, firmly ingrained during the war, were sounding the alarm.
To be safe, Malicos should order this leaky tub to be shot with turbolasers.
That would be more reliable, but with such thoughts, a court-martial wasn’t far off.
The order, damn it, was to “secure and, if possible, study.” “Sheldon, order your men to be ready,” Taron commanded in a serious tone.
“Have them ready to fire at the slightest sign of movement.
I don’t need surprises.
Or corpses, for that matter.” “Yes, General, sir!” The clone saluted before putting on his helmet.
The General currently had at his disposal a regiment of soldiers under Commander Sheldon, with an attached company of ARC Commandos.
The allocation of a whole hundred of the best of the best soldiers was the last bone thrown to the disgraced General, in the hope that he would finally go away and stop being an eyesore to the top brass.
Now the Jedi could only rely on the Force and hope that the available forces would be enough… Among the Stars.
The Horror Locked in the Impenetrable Corridors Jakku ran.
He ran as fast as his legs could carry him, faster than he ever had before.
Salty sweat stung his eyes, making the already poor visibility in these confusing corridors utterly unbearable.
He had dropped his DC-15S a few minutes ago, or was it a few hours?
Trapped in this metal tomb, he had completely lost all sense of time.
Clone CS-6534, better known as Jakku, was proud to be part of the ARC Commandos.
It was a pleasant feeling to know that among the billions of brothers who shared your face, the same starting conditions, the same basic training… it was you, and no one else, who was one of the best!
Some might call it excessive boasting, but CS-6534 thought otherwise.
What was wrong with taking pride in your achievements?
Especially since his place among the Commandos, as well as the rank of Sergeant, had been earned through blood and sweat.
Jakku was lucky to survive several meat grinders and to have proven himself excellently in battle against the tin cans.
Clones were bred to be ideal soldiers, knowing no fear and ready to give their lives for the Republic, which they didn’t even really know.
At least, that was the result promised by the bio-engineers from Kamino.
Being part of the ARC, Jakku always considered the best traits of his brothers to be squared, at the very least, in his own case.
True, fear was unknown to him.
In war, in bloody battles with the tin cans and Separatist militia, it was hard, sometimes very hard, but clone soldier code number 6534 did not feel fear… So why was he now abandoning the remnants of his squad to be torn apart by this steel-clad monster and running for his life?!
He was gasping for air.
His hands itched to take off his damned helmet and let the stale air here into his lungs, but given the state of the hull of the aliens’ “Star Destroyer,” that wasn’t the best idea.
Jakku wanted to howl with pain and rage, wanted to tear his hair out in clumps.
He had become a traitor.
A traitor and a pathetic coward who had abandoned his brothers to a fate worse than death.
The bitter realization of his betrayal bored into the clone’s consciousness like a laser drill, but there was something else… Something that made the disgraced soldier run without looking back.
Eyes burning with red lights and the damned roar of a motor in the hands of the steel-clad monster.
This creature had run out of the darkness at his men, but the Clone Commandos had heard it much earlier.
The sound of steel soles hitting the metal floor, amplified by the echoing acoustics, had warned the clones of the enemy’s approach long before visual contact was made.
Jakku was a good soldier and, he had to think, not the worst commander.
With a series of short gestures, he ordered his brothers to take good firing positions, prepare thermal detonators, and wait to receive their guests.
The creature that his helmet’s visor picked out from the darkness, Jakku initially took for a massive but rather clumsy droid.
A sort of B-2, only on steroids.
It was alone, its massive armor painted blood-red, leaving only the helmet and pauldrons to the black color.
At the time, the clone didn’t pay much attention to the practical purpose of such an unusual paint scheme.
He even managed to chuckle to himself at the stupid piece of metal that, upon spotting an enemy in the form of his brothers, instead of seeking cover, decided to charge straight ahead, mindlessly relying on its size.
Jakku fully realized his mistake a few seconds later.
The armored enemy, shouting a battle cry in an incomprehensible language, rushed to the attack.
What happened next, the clone’s memory only replayed in small fragments.
Images… sounds… smells… All derivatives of this seemingly unreal nightmare, from which Jakku wanted to wake up more than anything in his life.
His brothers fired a volley from their blaster rifles.
Something like that shouldn’t have taken down a massive droid.
It was supposed to slow it down and set the stage for the thermal detonators.
The enemy didn’t have any firearms; in its hands, it clutched only an oblong… chainsword?!
Except the globs of Tibanna gas, heated to unimaginable temperatures, caused the giant no more damage than raindrops on the clone’s home planet of Kamino.
And the soldiers of the Grand Army of the Republic were not given a chance to throw their grenades.
The enemy, having covered the distance in a few powerful strides, crashed into their formation.
Jakku saw his brothers fall one after another.
The chainsword, humming with a terrible roar, tore through armor and flesh with terrifying ease.
The thermal detonators, which the clones had prepared, were useless in close combat.
The monster, ignoring the blaster bolts burning its armor, methodically destroyed the squad.
Jakku ran.
He ran, not understanding where, not seeing the road, driven only by animal fear.
The roar of the chainsword and the screams of his brothers echoed in his ears.
He ran until he stumbled and fell, hitting his head on some pipe.
Darkness enveloped his consciousness… When he came to, Jakku was lying in a narrow ventilation shaft.
His head was pounding, his vision was blurry.
He didn’t know how long he had been unconscious.
He didn’t know where he was.
He only knew that he had to get out of this damned ship.
He had to warn the others… He crawled along the shaft, trying not to make noise.
The sounds of battle could be heard from somewhere below: the crackle of blasters, screams, the roar of chainswords.
Jakku clenched his teeth and crawled on.
He was a traitor.
A coward.
But he was still a soldier.
And a soldier’s duty is to survive and complete the mission.
And his mission now was to report what he had seen.
He crawled for what felt like an eternity.
The shaft ended, leading into a dark corridor.
Jakku carefully looked out.
The corridor was empty.
He got out and, pressing himself against the wall, moved on.
He had to find a way to the hangar.
To the shuttles.
To get off this ship… A sound was heard ahead.
A heavy, measured step.
Jakku froze.
The step was getting closer.
The clone pressed himself into a niche in the wall, trying to become invisible.
A figure emerged from the darkness.
The same one.
The red armor, the black helmet, the chainsword in hand.
The monster stopped a few meters from Jakku and turned its head, as if listening.
Jakku held his breath.
The monster stood for a few seconds, then moved on.
Its steps faded into the distance.
Jakku exhaled.
He was lucky.
But luck wouldn’t last forever.
He had to hurry.
He moved on, trying to navigate by the ship’s layout.
The corridors were confusing, like a labyrinth.
Several times he heard sounds of battle or the steps of the monster.
He hid, waited, and moved on.
His strength was running out.
His legs gave way, his head was spinning.
But he kept going.
Finally, he saw a sign indicating the hangar.
Jakku quickened his pace.
He was almost there.
He turned the corner and froze.
The hangar was in front of him.
But it was empty.
All the shuttles were gone.
Only the gaping blackness of space yawned beyond the open bay doors.
Jakku fell to his knees.
It was over.
He had nowhere to run.
He was trapped.
A sound was heard behind him.
A heavy, measured step.
Jakku turned around.
The monster stood in the corridor, blocking his escape route.
The chainsword roared to life.
Jakku closed his eyes.
He was a traitor.
A coward.
But he would die like a soldier.
He stood up, straightened his shoulders, and looked the monster in the eye.
“Do it,” he said.
The monster took a step forward.
The roar of the chainsword filled the hangar… In the next instant, a massive steel whirlwind with the terrible roar of a revved engine crashed into the ranks of the clone commandos.
In that moment, Jakku understood why the stranger needed that paint scheme.
On red, you can’t see the blood of your enemies until you’re covered in it from head to toe.
The roar of the engine, the crunch of armor buckling under the relentless pressure, and the screams of his brothers, whom this being was gutting right before the sergeant’s eyes, would become the stuff of his nightmares for the rest of his days — which, to be honest, would likely end soon.
Jakku realized that the animalistic cruelty with which the steel giant was tearing his men apart simply could not belong to a cold, unfeeling machine.
This monster was savoring every kill.
It was definitely alive and certainly possessed a mind, but… in that moment, Jakku couldn’t take it anymore and ran.
He ran like the worst kind of coward.
He didn’t know what happened to the remnants of his men, didn’t know if the steel-clad madman had given chase.
Jakku knew none of that.
In the clone’s head, in his ears, before his eyes, the chainsword kept roaring and the armor kept giving way with a sickening crunch, spilling the blood-red innards of his brothers.
Only his legs, as if they had gained a will separate from their master, kept carrying the clone through the impenetrable darkness of endless corridors.
* * * The disgraced Jedi General Taron Malicos was making a titanic effort to think clearly.
Right now, he sincerely thanked the Force that he had once managed to master Battle Meditation.
Without that technique, his soldiers would hardly have been capable of anything remotely organized… and yet they were dying at a terrifying rate.
Veterans of the Clone Wars, capable of single-handedly fighting against vastly superior Separatist forces, were now dying like flies, torn to pieces by these monsters.
Now the Jedi understood perfectly that his premonition hadn’t deceived him, but it had all started out fairly well.
The boarding party, consisting of a company of clone commandos reinforced by two companies of regular soldiers, had loaded into LAATs and landed without any problems on the damaged alien ship.
The steel monster was too massive to try and wander through it in one mighty group, so Taron Malicos made the executive decision to split the boarding party into three assault teams.
Thankfully, there were no particular problems getting inside — thanks were due to the unknown benefactor who had so conveniently torn open the ship’s hull for them.
Judging by the abundance of angel-like statues, skulls on the heraldry, decorations, and even the hull plating itself, this ship resembled a temple more than anything else.
Or a cathedral… the cathedral of some cultists obsessed with the worship of the dead.
Back in his time as a Jedi Knight, before the war, Taron had already encountered something similar in the Outer Rim.
Of course, there was no talk of any multi-kilometer vessels back then.
The clones of the 404th had to put in some work with thermal detonators, and Malicos himself wasn’t averse to shaking off the rust and using his lightsaber to get his men inside.
Honestly, Sheldon had stubbornly refused to let the general go with the boarding party.
The final argument that convinced the responsible clone was only the commander’s threat to put the commander before a court-martial (which, coming from a disgraced Jedi, sounded unconvincing, to say the least).
Inside, total devastation awaited Taron.
Traces of a fierce battle were visible everywhere, and rotting corpses… of humans, appearing here and there, became more and more frequent the deeper the clones ventured into the belly of the steel giant.
The clothes the dead were wearing were unfamiliar to the Jedi, meaning their owners were most likely “locals” and had nothing to do with the local pirates.
“Comms are down,” the comms officer reported worriedly.
Needless to say, this fact ratcheted up Malicos’s already screaming sense of alarm to an entirely new level.
Even before departure, Taron had given Sheldon orders, just in case, to command the ships to open fire on this tub with every gun they had, without a second thought.
Of course, the Jedi had no intention of dying a hero here, taking the steel giant with him to the afterlife; he simply sincerely doubted the ability of the turbolasers mounted on the Venator to crack this tin can open in a short amount of time.
“By the crazy Force, what the hell is that…” One of the clones up ahead gasped, spotting a being whose mere sight made the breakfast Taron had eaten urgently want to come back up.
A horrifying hybrid of man and machine crawled slowly on its tracks, paying absolutely no attention to the intruders standing before it.
For a moment, the disgraced Jedi thought he was seeing a character from a horror movie he’d watched back in the distant days of his Padawanhood.
A victim of a mad scientist… “Re-e-pa-a-a-a-a-a-ir… uh-uh-uh…” the creature muttered in a raspy voice.
The Jedi Master realized the true purpose of the being a few seconds later, when this, so to speak, “man” turned to a sparking wire and his crudely augmented hand began performing repair procedures.
“Is this… are they replacing repair droids… with this?!” the captain of the clone commandos voiced the question on everyone’s mind.
“Even the Separatists never went that far…” The unpleasant sight finally overflowed the disgraced general’s cup of patience.
He’d had enough vivid impressions for one day.
To hell with the command, the Chancellor, and all his orders.
He wasn’t going to die here.
It was time to get out.
When the research team arrived, it would become their headache.
“Contact!” The Force warned Malicos of danger a second before the clones announced the enemy’s appearance.
Lit only by the dim emergency lights, the corridor exploded with blue flashes as the clones rained a deadly hail on the enemies who dared to show themselves.
A hail that dealt absolutely no damage to the foes.
As if in slow motion, the Jedi watched a laser bolt shatter against the steel armor of the huge, three-meter-tall monsters, leaving behind only small scorch marks where, by all logic, a through-and-through molten hole should have been.
More than a hundred soldiers followed Malicos, and the enemy, barely perceptible even to the Jedi’s eye and armed exclusively with melee weapons, crashed into the crowd like a krayt dragon that had decided to devour a lone bantha.
“Fire!
Fire, you sons of bitches!
Shoot!” the captain screamed, his voice breaking.
Taron sincerely regretted not ordering a few RPS-6s to be brought along, due to their bulkiness and the sheer madness of the idea of using missile launchers inside a ship.
However, the blasters, frankly speaking, were failing to crack open these… people?
clad in their tin cans.
The Force whispered to Taron that it was humans who were gutting his men right now.
“Stay awake, brothers!
Take the bastards out with grenades!” Malicos saw that in the face of this new, terrifying enemy, his soldiers — veterans of countless battles — were utterly helpless.
They were being mowed down with impunity, like ripe rye, several soldiers per swing.
The steel giant with the chainsword effortlessly tore apart a clone who was hysterically firing his blaster at him.
The killer removed his helmet, revealing to the Jedi’s gaze a human face, albeit augmented.
Taron would remember to his dying day how this monster greedily gulped down the spurting blood of the clone it had just flayed.
“Get away, monster!” Pouring all his rage and pain into it, Taron Malicos unleashed it in a devastating Force Push.
The steel-clad madman, now deprived of his helmet and about to eliminate the commando captain, took the rage-charged blow to the chest, was thrown backward, and flew a good ten meters.
A normal person would have turned into a bloody paste on the nearest wall after that, or at least shattered every rib into tiny splinters.
This “killing machine” just dryly spat a bloody glob onto the floor, revved his chainsword, and rushed at the Jedi like a bloodthirsty predator.
“Let’s see how you handle this,” Malicos hissed, igniting his blue lightsabers.
Through the Force, the Jedi raised his reflexes and speed to a level unattainable for a normal human, his body’s movements leaving only a blurred image behind.
Taron didn’t wear the title of Master for nothing; in lightsaber combat, he could make even Obi-Wan Kenobi break a sweat.
The form he practiced was his own interpretation of Jar’Kai, and credit where it’s due — Taron was good at it.
The Jedi dodged the opponent’s first few strikes thanks to his precognition.
Even with the Force as his ally, Taron barely managed to evade the teeth of the chainsword, which thirsted to sink into his flesh, while his enemy deftly adjusted on the fly, leaving no window for a counterattack.
During the brief, deadly dance, Malicos realized two important facts about his opponent.
First — the strength and power, unattainable for a normal human, that Taron achieved through the Force, were the natural state of the steel giant’s body.
Whether he had acquired it through some method unknown to the disgraced general or had been born that way didn’t matter.
Second — the mad warrior’s combat experience clearly surpassed that of the Jedi Master, but… “Now you’re mine!” Taron hissed through gritted teeth.
Malicos had to take a risk.
Letting the chainsword pass dangerously close to his head, the Jedi spun sharply, channeling all his skill, luck, and rage into the strike.
With a dull thud, the severed piece of the roaring weapon fell to the ground, and the giant’s chestplate was now adorned with an orange stripe of superheated metal.
“Damn it…” The plan had been to reach his head with the second blade.
The next moment, Malicos’s world flipped upside down.
With fading consciousness, he felt his feet leave the ground, defying artificial gravity, and he himself flew in the opposite direction from the enemy at the speed of a decent projectile.
The Jedi’s face, without a doubt, had turned into a bloody pulp.
The disarmed opponent didn’t hesitate and immediately slammed his iron-clad fist into Taron’s face.
The Force had warned the knight of the light side about this outcome, and he had already begun to dodge, but his body had failed him.
Even though it was just a glancing blow, the giant caught Taron, though it felt to him like he’d been hit by a truck.
“Evacuate the general!
Cover his retreat!
Detonate the charges!” The subsequent events for the Jedi Master were nothing more than brief flashes of consciousness.
He would never know how the clones, at the cost of their own lives, dragged his body to the LAAT just before their own bodies were torn to pieces by grenade-like projectiles; he would not see the Venator’s futile attempts to get even with the aliens for their lost brothers.
A bright beam of terrifying power erupted from one of the previously dormant guns of the awakened colossus.
Its power was enough to punch straight through the shield and shear off a large part of the Republic fleet’s pride’s engines.
The corvettes, not expecting such a turn of events, tried to make a hyperspace jump but were shot down by the aliens’ “corvettes,” after which boarding torpedoes rained down on the immobilized Venator…