The plan had been made.
They had only been in Concordia’s atmosphere for an hour.
But already Anakin was pacing nervously across the Guarlara’s bridge deck.
By all accounts, everything should be going well.
Obi-Wan was busy down on neighboring Mandalore, discussing the situation with “his girlfriend.” The Slayer hadn’t arrived yet.
But perhaps Death Watch had been alerted beforehand and was assembling for an assault…
The doors to the bridge hissed open, and Ahsoka strode in.
She came beside Anakin and looked up.
“What’s going on, Master? Delta Squad said they had some business to attend to.”
Anakin looked down.
“Well, Ahsoka, if it’s Delta Squad’s business, it should remain their business.”
“They’re on a mission?” Ahsoka guessed.
Anakin nodded; it was as good as confirmed already.
“They didn’t even ask for a Jedi backup,” Ahsoka said, looking away and folding her arms.
“It’s like… they don’t trust anyone else to support them.”
“Something tells me if you had accompanied them, you would have slowed them down,” Anakin noted.
“They’re a squad, a team. Anyone else’s presence would disrupt the cohesion.”
“Yeah,” Ahsoka noted, still downcast.
“Why are you so eager to get back in the field?” Anakin asked after a second.
“We need to get back to business, right?” Ahsoka answered.
“Back to clanker scrapping, chassis kicking.”
“Ahsoka, getting back to business would be… when the war’s over.”
Ahsoka remained silent, realizing her mistake.
A few moments later, a clone from the bridge’s lower computer decks looked up.
“Sirs! Scanners are detecting several Separatist ships emerging from hyperspace.”
Anakin turned in the appropriate direction out the front viewport.
Sure enough, four eerily familiar ships soon cracked out of thin air from the other side of the moon, moving at full sublight speeds to Concordia’s gravity well.
The onboard cameras and high-resolution scanners soon revealed that each of the ships were moving in tandem, as if it were one body, and the paint job on the outside of the command ship was dark green.
And the Mark of the Beast, as the Holonet called it, was proudly emblazoned on its front and sides.
Anakin smiled.
Here he was.
The battleships made no effort to acknowledge the Guarlara.
They simply plunged for the planet as fast as they could.
And Anakin suddenly felt wary of Obi-Wan’s instructions to stay out of the Slayer’s way.
He was so used to engaging Separatist ships that to see them and not interfere was causing his foot to bounce irritably.
Yet if Quinlan’s information was to be trusted, sending their ships directly into battle would be counterproductive.
Surely the Slayer knew of their presence.
He knew there was only the one Venator, to the Slayer’s four ships.
Yet he made no move to reposition his fleet or launch any fighters.
Odd.
If the Slayer wanted them dead, he surely would have pursued them by now.
“Anakin, are you sure it’s a good idea to leave Master Vos down on the surface?” Ahsoka whispered, as if she was afraid the Slayer’s ships would turn towards her if she spoke any louder.
“We have the plan,” Anakin affirmed, quiet in return.
“Once Master Vos confirms he’s engaged the Slayer, we’ll follow and box him in. Besides, Vos has a few tricks up his sleeve. He’ll keep him occupied while we come down.”
Ahsoka nodded soberly.
___________________________________________________________________________
Pre Vizsla stood at parade rest, helmet in hand, gazing up and out of the room-wide viewport at Mandalore.
His Mandalore.
The planet was fuzzy, and up in the encroaching twilight sky, it wasn’t entirely visible.
The richly colored planet was only as big around as one of the circular energy shields their wrist armor provided.
It was as if he could reach out and touch it.
Clench his gauntlet around it and squeeze tightly.
Death Watch had managed to flourish so far under his command.
Count Dooku had expressed his approval of their movement.
Vizsla didn’t care that Dooku only cared about Mandalore joining the Separatists.
He could have it, of course.
Vizsla cared about the people, and not completely the planet they were on.
Even outcast, even outlawed, they were still Mandalorians.
Warriors, with a lineage and a culture.
So it was before the Republic.
So it would be when the Republic would turn to dust.
Just as beskar did not taint, tarnish, or rust over time, neither would their culture, history, and philosophy.
Or rather, should.
Pre Vizsla grimaced as he pondered.
Duchess Satine didn’t understand.
She couldn’t!
She wasn’t a wampa in a galaxy of tauntauns.
It naturally followed that strength ruled over the weak.
In fact, it was correct.
What, was the weak going to rule over the strong?
It would always right itself in time.
Duchess Satine was susceptible to groupthink, higher in agreeableness and therefore subject to manipulation, and prone to using emotional arguments over practicality and pragmatism.
Her days were numbered.
This was not how rulers ought to be.
How Mandalore ought to be!
And to make it worse, the whole of Mandalore had produced that product.
The whole of Mandalore’s culture had become corrupted.
When you find mice in your food supply, you kill and throw out the mouse.
Along with anything the mouse touched.
So, too, would he treat Mandalore.
To preserve the people he truly loved.
A squeal and hiss accompanied the sliding open of the door to the Lucrehulk core’s command bridge, and Vizsla turned his head a millimeter to see, in the glass, behind him.
Four Death Watch troopers accompanied Bo-Katan Kryze, his most trusted second-in-command.
“Mand’alore,” she addressed, bowing stiffly at the waist; their helmets were all still on.
“We’ve found two Jedi trespassers at our perimeter.”
“You know the punishment,” Vizsla boredly reminded her without turning around.
“Take care of it.”
“They… wished an audience with you.”
Vizsla did turn this time, and the four Death Watch troopers obediently stepped aside.
They revealed two bizarre figures, cuffed in binders but with their heads held high.
One had a yellow stripe painted across his dark predatory face, while the other was pale and smooth as chalk with eyes like amethysts.
Bo-Katan handed Vizsla their lightsabers, and he took the three weapons idly, still examining them curiously.
“This was a bad idea, Vos,” the bald one hissed.
“We’re only in trouble if we die, Ventress,” Vos calmly spoke back.
He raised his voice a bit, obviously speaking to Vizsla now.
“We came willingly, Mand’alore. We knew the risks of getting caught. There’s simply a common interest we share now.”
Viszla glared down at the two Jedi.
“You must have strong trust in the Force indeed if you came to me this way. Don’t you know that with a word, I could take your very lives?”
Quinlan nodded.
“Perhaps. Without even listening to what we have to say?”
“Whatever you Jedi have to say, Obi-Wan has already made it clear.”
“Hey, hey. This has nothing to do with politics,” Quinlan easily calmed, as if he was talking to a friend at a Coruscant undercity bar.
“I’m Quinlan Vos, and this is my associate, Asajj Ventress. We’ve come to offer protection.”
Vizsla nearly burst into laughter.
“Protection.”
“There’s a man out there, jumping all around the galaxy. Perhaps you’ve heard of him. He slew the Hutts and the Black Sun. He’s coming here next. Soon. I’d check how soon, but your, uh, friend took our comms.” Quinlan jabbed his head at Bo-Katan.
Vizsla didn’t turn away from him.
His lips thinned.
“It doesn’t befit a Mandalorian to ask for aid until he knows he can’t win.”
“You think you can succeed where the Black Sun and the Hutts failed?”
“They were not Mandalorians,” Vizsla softly declared.
He took the black beskar helmet in his left hand and hefted it, speaking as much to it as he was to Quinlan.
“No one else in the galaxy is. We have endured for this long. We will endure after it.”
The other one, Ventress, groaned and rolled her eyes.
“You truly think you can stop a man like that? Don’t let your arrogance run away with you.”
“We’ll see,” Vizsla irritably denounced.
He raised his voice, issuing commands to the B1s deep in the crevices of the bridge.
“Deploy three divisions of droids. Guard the grounds surrounding the command ship. Bo-Katan, inform all Death Watch personnel to go to yellow alert. Prepare for incoming forces.”
Bo-Katan nodded and swirled around, leaving the bridge.
Quinlan eyed her as she went, face pulling.
His comms were still with her, after all.
“In the meantime, what shall I do with you?” Vizsla softly asked.
“We can’t have you Jedi dogs out of your kennel for too long.”
Ventress visibly grimaced at the word Jedi.
Vizsla smiled briefly at the sight.
“Well, what do you usually do with dogs?” Quinlan easily answered, shrugging and lolling his head.
“You pet them nicely and feed them…” he pondered a second.
“…blurrg steak?”
Vizsla glared at Quinlan.
“…Or not. I don’t own a dog,” Quinlan admitted, his cuffed hands up in surrender.
“I am going to die because of you,” Ventress resigned, her eyes squeezed shut in irritation.
“You will die, believe me,” Vizsla said in return.
“But only in combat against the Huttslayer. Perhaps you will serve as a good distraction while I deliver the final blow. Very well. You shall be by my side.” He smiled cruelly.
“For better or worse.”
___________________________________________________________________________
The Horn emerged from the Unbreakable’s hangar bay and shot to Concordia like a loosed arrow.
The new and improved SS-54 gunship was far different from its original design.
Shiny silver skulls capped the tops of the enormous twin engines, their mouths screaming wide open.
Yet another skull had been outfitted on its front, and from its gaping mouth came the twin forward facing guns.
Rotating rapid-fire guns had been attached to the two sides of the bulbous forward cabin.
The fuselage connecting the engines to the chassis had been reinforced and bulked.
Forward facing spikes and long, shallow blades decorated the cabin and ran along the length of the engines.
Everywhere, more armor plating had been flattened down, and silver spikes were arranged like sprinkles on a cookie.
As he entered Concordia’s atmosphere, the Slayer silently hoped that it wouldn’t get ruined too soon.
He had spent quite some time on the ship’s redesign.
Along with other things.
The Slayer’s hand went subconsciously to the long silver lightsaber at his side.
He glanced at the ship’s small holoprojector, alternating between that and the dark moon he was descending into.
The hovering blue image of a Mandalorian’s helmet and armor flickered with turbulence.
The Slayer knew from Ordo on Florrum that Mandalorians knew and respected their armor.
That was something the Slayer understood completely; his Praetor Suit was his most prized possession.
Mandalorian material, beskar, was far stronger than anything the Slayer had seen in the galaxy thus far, relative to its scarcity.
So would that mean he needed to respect their armor in return?
Or simply crush it?
Well, why did they deserve to even have it, again?
Death Watch was a terrorist organization that planted bombs in non-combat zones, took hostages, and plotted assassination attempts against civilians, against pacifists.
Not demons, or even legitimate military targets.
It wasn’t exactly honorable of them, and so all their bluster about Mandalorian honor boiled down to nothing.
The Slayer’s movements got a little bit more forceful as he punched buttons and yanked on controls.
In the files and websites VEGA had shown him, it seemed like Death Watch sincerely believed they wanted to be like the warriors of old, whatever that meant.
Well, perhaps it would do wonders for them to see what a true warrior was.
If they hoped to even be a fraction of what Argent D’Nur had been, they needed to be exposed to Hell.
Or rather, the man who had brought Hell to heel.
The Horn dropped below the cloud line at last.
It was early in the twilight hours, with the sun at his back.
It illuminated a small sphere in the distance, but of course it was only that way because of perspective.
Though it was no bigger than a golf ball, the Slayer could see that the ball was the little donut hole of a Lucrehulk battleship.
The logo of Death Watch was proudly emblazoned on the curved outside.
So this was the Separatist funding?
Perhaps this would take more time than he had expected.
Maybe an hour and a half more than the expected half hour to wipe out Death Watch.
“We cannot get much closer without being spotted and shot down,” VEGA informed from the center console.
“Approaching drop altitude.”
The Slayer stood from his seat and stomped into the Horn’s cargo bay.
The green ship had plowed deep enough into the atmosphere to the point where, if the Slayer looked through the viewport, he could see the ground a few hundred feet away.
It was going by deceptively slowly.
The Horn slowed to a hovering halt, rotating its engines vertical.
The sideways bay doors slid wide open, and wind roared into the cargo bay as the Slayer drove the Crucible bike out of the side.
As the Crucible plummeted to earth, the Horn rotated and zoomed away back up through the moon’s sky.
And the Slayer gripped the handlebars as tight as he could and leaned forward in his leather seat, plunging through the air.
The Crucible hummed and whined as its repulsorlifts struggled to find ground beneath it.
Wind howled in the Slayer’s helmet, buffeting his armor, and his heart jumped into his throat.
His butt lifted off the seat, and tingles went into his feet.
The Slayer reached for the emergency booster engine and pulled when he was only a hundred feet above the ground.
He pulled up, as if doing a wheelie.
He shot forward and down.
As the repulsorlifts finally detected ground and flared to life, it blew the earth aside as if a tornado had struck it.
The speeder zoomed across the surface, whirring with strain as the Slayer flew at max speed towards the faraway Death Watch base.
___________________________________________________________________________
The trip in the air-sealed, red-tinted LAAT was mostly quiet.
Only the muffled warbles of the whirring carrier penetrated the interior.
Even Scorch wasn’t saying anything.
Delta Squad’s hands were all on their weapons, all locked and loaded.
The glowing blue T-visors were all that could be focused on in the darkness.
The small transport creaked and grumbled as it made its way into Concordia’s atmosphere.
Boss finally produced a handheld holoprojector and turned it on.
“One more review. The military-grade scanners onboard have picked up a signal matching the signature of a Separatist core ship on the surface below. We suspect Death Watch is nearby. They’ve accepted Separatist funding in the past. Our job is to board the core ship, extract the databanks from the computers, and disable it. Discretion is advised.”
“Boss,” Fixer quietly said.
“If this truly is a Death Watch ship now, discretion will be difficult.”
“I’ve no doubt,” Boss replied.
“Discretion does not mean non-violent, however. We all know the interior of Seppie core ships. We know the route to take to get to the bridge. But should we encounter the Mandalorians there, it is imperative we take them down efficiently. Along with any battle droids inside.”
Mandalorians.
Boss could feel the tension rise in the air at the intentionally used word.
“Remember,” Boss amended.
“If these Mandalorians do engage you in battle, they are not your brothers. Perhaps by blood. But not by cause. Vode look out for each other more than the enemy.”
Scorch made a small noise of derision.
“Mandalorians’ve always been warring against each other. Suppose we’re just carrying on the tradition. This Is The Way.”
Perhaps it was jovial.
Perhaps it was bitter.
None of Delta Squad knew, not even Scorch.
The trip was mostly silent after that.
Not until the gunship reached its optimal altitude and distance from the Separatist core ship.
Once the green lights came on, Boss motioned.
The rest of Delta Squad re-checked their equipment and holstered their weapons.
Once they were done, Boss hit the door release, and the side of the gunship opened up.
Five thousand feet below them, the surface of Concordia lurked.
It was dark from the encroaching night, and even though Boss’s commando helmet could see in night vision, there was nothing to see.
Except the silhouette of the spherical core ship way in the distance.
“Have fun out there,” the pilot bid over the loudspeakers.
With those words, Boss stepped out of the gunship without hesitation.
He was followed by Scorch, who flipped out.
Fixer went next, arms crossed and feet together in a pencil dive.
Sev jumped out last, diving forward.
As the gunship turned and puttered away back to the Guarlara, the four commandos ignited their jetpacks, bobbing them gently in their descent.
Gleaming from the flaming tips, the four spots in the night sky slowly sailed to the core ship.
It took a bit longer than Boss expected.
The fuel in their jetpacks was running alarmingly low.
But by the time they reached the gentle metal curve of the spherical command station, there had been no intercepting Death Watch troops.
The scanners would have only picked them up as rather large avians, and any visuals would have been dismissed as a Mandalorian patrol.
Scorch was the second one to hit the deck with a clang, and he leaned on his hands and knees, keeping his center of gravity as close to the curve of the ship as possible.
His leg was bouncing uncontrollably.
He was hyperventilating as he turned his comm on.
“That’s… the first time I’ve… used a jetpack. Last time, too.”
“Height get to ya?” Sev teased, landing beside him with another soft clink.
“It was more the fact that there was nothing under my feet,” Scorch grumbled.
He adjusted his position, keeping his stance wide like a mountain goat.
“Never been happier to see a Seppie warship.”
Fixer landed last, crouching and also keeping his center of gravity low.
“Boss. We need an entry point.”
After some thinking, Boss nodded.
“Scorch’ll find a way in. Fixer, cover him once he gets inside. Me and Sev’ll keep lookout.”
They moved as one body up the slope of the ship, eyes in four directions.
Each of their footsteps made a metal clink that all merged together and made Boss wince.
The noise probably wasn’t enough to warrant concern, but everything seemed louder in their isolation.
It was still highly unlikely that anyone would have noticed their approach, but it never hurt to be sure.
Scorch led the way up the slope of the ship to the underside of a pair of heavy point-defense turrets in the horizontal ridge near the crown of the ship.
At this angle, it was too steep for anyone in the glass bubble to notice them, but neither could Delta Squad see anyone in the bubble.
Scorch went up one way, to the side of the bubble.
He peered around and, upon seeing the empty cockpit, he gave a thumbs-up to the rest of his squad.
Then he drew his sidearm and fired once through the largest glass pane.
He ushered to the others and clambered inside.
Fixer followed, then Boss, and finally Sev.
As Boss’s boots struck the floor, he instantly drew his primary weapon, as Fixer and Scorch had also done.
The hallways, of course, were empty.
Death Watch was not a very large organization, and the battle droids weren’t in practical use yet.
It was fairly dark, too; power conservation was active, since the core ship wasn’t in the air.
The four commandos remained on guard, however, and as they passed the doorway leading to the turret, Sev slammed the door shut.
“The command computer isn’t far from here,” Fixer muttered, glancing at his datapad.
“We just need to find a way to draw the commanders away from the bridge.”
“Explosions?” Scorch suggested mildly.
“Perhaps,” Fixer allowed.
“But remember, discretion. We should manufacture a fake distress signal from the comms center.” He took his head up and peeked around the corner once they reached it.
He ushered the rest of the group and kept leading the pace– quick and purposeful, but not exhausting.
Three turns later, they were outside the doors of the comms center.
Fixer put his arm to the square once they reached the side of the doorway, and Delta Squad halted.
“Life signals. Ten. Twice as many droids.”
“Nice. A warm-up,” Sev growled with pleasure.
Boss held his hand up and pointed.
“Scorch, cover our back. Fixer, breach that door. Sev, knock ’em down.”
Fixer crouched near the panel and got to work.
Scorch handed off a smoke grenade to Boss, then turned and kept an eye out while Boss and Sev waited patiently.
Finally, with a spark from Fixer’s fingers, the door slid wide open.
Boss tossed the smoke grenade inside.
A muffled bang accompanied a billow of pale clouds, and Sev entered the doorway with a cocked fist.
Punching the air made a sonic pulse blast from his wrist, parting the smoke and knocking everyone in a fifteen-foot cone down.
Sev, Boss, Fixer, and Scorch filed in, firing as they went.
The disoriented Death Watch troopers and B1 operating droids blindly began firing in their general direction after some moments of confusion.
Half their forces were already down by the time the four commandos were completely inside.
Once this happened, Sev barreled through the smoke, nailing three operating droids as he went.
Sev’s upturned knee struck a Mandalorian right in the sternum, slamming him against the wall.
Stunned, he could do nothing as Sev next struck his throat with the barrel of his custom sniper rifle.
Two blasts later, and the trooper was down.
Turning half a second after that gave him enough time to fire at a trooper emerging from behind a monitor.
Two high-energy rounds through his side later, and he was down too.
Fixer rolled under a line of blasterfire from a second Mandalorian, sweeping the legs of one droid as he did so and snatching another by the small of his back.
Using the B1 as a shield, Fixer shot the droid on the ground, snagged the droid’s blaster, and dual-wielded them against the Death Watch trooper charging at him.
One shot went into his shoulder, and another into his hip, but the trooper just kept rushing.
As he came close, Fixer hurled the B1 at him and leaped out of the way.
The injured trooper barreled past, and Fixer tripped his foot.
As he sprawled on the ground, Fixer stomped on the small of his back and fired thrice into his spine.
Boss shot another trooper in the unprotected knees.
He collapsed, squeezing the trigger of his own blaster.
A stray shot from the Death Watch trooper hit his pauldron, and Boss retaliated by stamping on the trooper’s beskar helmet and unloading ten shots into the trooper’s torso point-blank.
He spun around and beheaded a B1 with a swipe of his arm, then shot two rounds into a second one’s head.
The final Death Watch trooper spewed a gout of flame from his wrist at Scorch, who emerged from the stream unhurt and whalloped him in the gut.
The enraged trooper struck Scorch in return and quickly locked each other in place, grappling each other’s arms and wrists.
“Filthy clone,” the trooper grunted with venom dripping from every word.
“You’re no real Mandalorian. You never were. Never will be!”
Scorch headbutted the trooper, which didn’t do any damage.
Scorch was punched in his own helmet twice in retaliation.
Scorch snarled and stamped his heavy boot on the Death Watch trooper’s knee, bending it clean in half the other way.
As the trooper bellowed and dropped, Scorch drew out a flashbang from his waist and wedged it between plates in the trooper’s armor.
“And you still died to me,” Scorch hissed with equal venom.
“Vode an!”
With one final kick, Scorch sent him flailing into the wall.
One second later, the flashbang erupted, shredding his ribs and lungs into smoking raw meat.
Finally, the room was silent.
Though smoke was filling the comm office, Boss and the others could see in false color and heat vision.
The four ominous sentinels took one final look around, ensuring they really were alone.
Sev rolled a shoulder, cracking it.
“Good times. But piss easy. Hope they’ll get better.”
“Yeah. Shoulda packed more grenades,” Scorch sourly concurred.
He tramped to the door and sealed it once again, trapping them inside and leaving no trace.
Fixer, meanwhile, was typing insistently on the computers.
“Great job not hitting the main computer. Makes things a lot easier.” The click-clack of his gauntlets on the keyboards continued.
And then… “Huh. Says here a full ten squads of droids were sent out onto the plains.”
“Why?”
“Dunno,” Fixer answered Boss.
“Maybe they’re expecting someone.”
“The Slayer,” Sev grimly deduced, hoisting his rifle.
“Yellow alert has been sounded,” Fixer continued, scrolling and tracking the monitor.
“And the base’s core has been fired up. If things go wrong, they’ll try to leave in a hurry.”
“Then we need to take our data before they do that,” Boss concluded.
“Can you cause a fake incident requiring their attention?”
“All of their attention?” Fixer rhetorically asked, glancing at Boss.
“In this critical moment, right before the Slayer comes? Too convenient. Heck, it even makes our job easier. If they’re correct, our incident is already well on his way.”
___________________________________________________________________________
The sparse flat path opened up into a wide ravine, which blurred beneath his feet as the Slayer zoomed ever closer to the core ship.
Pebbles flew up and clanged off the side of the Crucible.
He was so close now, he needed to tilt his head to see the top of the core ship.
Cliffs gradually rose on either side of him, and the Slayer turned his head to see them blur past.
Over the sound of his whirring speeder, there wasn’t much else he could hear.
So he relied primarily on sight and the scanner on his dashboard to check for incoming enemies.
And sure enough, his scanner eventually picked up three signals approaching his position from the left.
He looked up and to the side.
Three small shapes in the darkening twilight sky were glowing with flame, growing closer by the second.
Likely Mandalorian patrols, investigating his intrusion.
The Slayer smiled.
First ones of the day.
Three eruptions flashed from the patrol, and three homing rockets shrieked at the Crucible.
The Slayer pointed his arm at the rockets and shot a spread of blasterfire from his gauntlet.
One by one, the rockets exploded in midair, but the last one was close enough to shake his speeder, and he needed to quickly adjust the steering.
If they seriously tried to destroy his bike right after it had finished being upgraded–!
The three Mandalorians soon latched onto his tail, about ten feet above him, and they began opening fire.
Yellow bolts bounced off his deflector shield and armor, and peppered the zooming ground.
“Unidentified craft! Stand down!” the middle trooper yelled.
The Slayer irritably hit the controls, and the self-preservation protocols engaged.
The rocket launchers welded on the side rotated up and fired into the rear.
The first missile missed, but the second struck the center Mandalorian trooper.
It engulfed one other, taking them both down in a fireball.
The third and final Death Watch trooper hit full throttle on his jetpack.
He got close enough to drop off on the rear of the speeder.
Scrambling for support, he tightly wrapped an arm around the rear headrest.
The Slayer flipped a switch on the headboard.
And the rear flamethrowers roared to life.
The Death Watch trooper was in the way of the emitters.
The flame seeped between his beskar armor and superheated it, roasting him alive.
This close to his head, the Slayer could hear the screams as the terrorist burned behind him.
Five excruciating seconds of this later, and the flaming body slipped off.
The Slayer instantly left him behind.
The core ship was now right ahead.
No more rocks, shrubbery, or greenery was obstructing the Slayer’s view.
The ship was situated in the center of a dry, flat, rocky mining plateau, with plenty of room all around it.
Floodlights from the ship’s exterior lit the surrounding area.
In that space, about a hundred B1 battle droids stood in a patient square.
AAT hovertanks, 50-foot Octuptarra droids, and homing Spider Droids accompanied them.
The core ship was whirring and whining loudly as an alarm repeated from its loudspeakers.
It seemed as if the Mandalorian patrol had called him in before they died.
Now the enemy was out in the open.
Or at least, the vanguard enemy.
Perhaps the Death Watch troopers were waiting for his actions.
So the Slayer sped up.
He barreled right through a vulgar chain-link fence like it was paper and plowed deep into the abandoned mining plateau.
And finally, as the homing Spider Droids began firing laser shots on his vehicle, the Slayer decided it was time to abandon his speeder.
Leaving VEGA in control of the vehicle, the Slayer leaped out at 120 miles per hour and double jumped, bringing him to the altitude of the closest Spider Droid.
His meathook sailed out and embedded deep in the Spider Droid’s front radar dish.
As he zoomed in with inhuman speed, he shot his left arm forward, blasting the weapons systems right off.
He completely overshot the crippled tank, and while still in midair, his attention went to the AAT tank to his left, training its main cannon on him.
Rather than try to evade, the Slayer spread his arms wide out, increasing his area.
And the shot, which ordinarily could cripple a vehicle of similar size, merely gave the Slayer a very warm, very forceful push–
Directly into a second homing spider droid’s chassis, caving it in instantly.
He emerged from the other end of the exploding droid, his meathook already firing again.
It hooked into a leg joint of a spherical Octuptarra droid to his right, and his trajectory changed accordingly as he was reeled in.
As he flew beneath the towering droid, the Slayer drew out his RPS-6 rocket launcher with his left hand and fired twice in quick succession at the underside of the droid.
As the droid’s underside blew open, the Slayer detached the meathook and sailed in a swooping arc to land atop a second Octuptarra droid.
Igniting one end of his lightsaber, he plunged it into the droid’s very top, and dropped off the edge with the saber still embedded within.
A long, glowing line appeared in the side of the droid as he landed on one of its three arm-wide cannons.
Ripping it out and dashing its photoreceptor to pieces, he spun around to see a second AAT tank fire a second round right at him.
The Slayer leaped off, and the blast staggered the Tri-droid instead.
The Slayer landed in a somersault, and as he rolled to his feet, his second emitter ignited, and he swirled and spun it around, dicing the B2s he had landed amidst into scrap metal.
A twisting roundhouse shot a closing B2 backwards hard enough to blow each of its limbs clean off, and the spin continued, slamming a bubble-shielded droideka to the side and shorting out its shield.
Smoking and sparking from the overload, the droideka could only continue its orders, and fired for about half a second more until the Slayer finally thrust his lightsaber deep through its curving spine.
A few more wide swoops of his arms beheaded six close B2s in quick succession.
He punched in a different direction so hard, the air blast from it created a shallow trench in the earth, tearing the droids in that direction apart.
Finally, he spun in a 180, shot through half a dozen B1s, and slammed his fist into the deflector shield of a droideka hard enough to rupture the shield out of existence and send the sparking droid flying into the front of an AAT, which skewered itself on the main cannon like a kebob.
The Slayer snarled.
He didn’t have time for this!
Turning his head, he locked onto the Crucible bike sowing carnage among the droid infantry– plowing through the masses of spindly things with chainsaws out and flamethrowers roaring, blasters on full auto, cutting a wide swath through half of their ranks already.
Five units bounded above the mass of troops, however, their blasters on full auto.
They flipped, leaped, and spun to avoid the blasterfire the Slayer irritably shot at them.
Once they got close enough that the Slayer could see the whites of their photoreceptors and the mud-brown of their bodies, the Slayer could see them more clearly.
Commando droids.
Fast, durable, and skilled in combat.
Well, to any normal person, perhaps.
The Slayer slumped as he was reminded of it.
But he might as well see what they could do.
Once in melee range, the commando droids pulled out swords, of all things.
They whirled them in a series of guarding stances and slowly encircled him.
The Slayer sneered.
He pulled out the RPS-6 rocket launcher and aimed it at the space between two.
The droids were gone by the time the rocket hit the earth, of course, but they were staggered.
The Slayer reached for the closest one, batted its blade aside, and tore its head clean off.
He clenched his fist, and it crumpled like a soda can.
The other four droids made strikes in an arc in front of him, alternating their cuts so there were always two blades lunging for him every half second.
Each time, the Slayer easily dodged one and parried the other with his lightsaber.
On another target, the commando droids would have been debilitating.
Perhaps.
He wouldn’t know.
Finally, the Slayer grew weary of the pantomime.
He lunged for each droid individually, tearing his hand through their torsos and beheading them.
It was like punching Styrofoam.
They were about on par with mecha-zombies.
Then, once the commando droids were all dead, the rest of the droids suddenly stopped firing.
They withdrew several paces.
Once they cleared out in a wide enough space, they even stopped moving.
The tank turrets drooped, and the hovertanks shut off.
The Crucible finished its pass and swerved off to the side, puttering and vibrating patiently.
The Slayer narrowed his eyes at the sight of his retreating enemies, casting his eyes around the wide open space, now free of droids.
Someone had been in charge of those droids.
They had evidently seen enough.
The faraway ignitions of jetpacks made the Slayer turn his head up.
Finally, Death Watch was emerging!
They came from the hangar bay of the gargantuan spherical core ship, way up above his head.
They were like fireflies, glowing from their jetpacks in the twilight sky.
The Slayer patiently allowed them to descend, hover above the earth, and drop, surrounding him on the silent battlefield.
Their numbers grew by the second, but they were easily manageable.
Once about fifty were surrounding him, the obvious leader hovered and dropped in front of him.
The Slayer folded his arms as he examined him.
The leader of Death Watch was tall, armored in black and navy blue, and had a cape across one of his shoulders.
(Which, oddly, didn’t burn up from the jetpack on his back.)
The leader had an entourage of two troopers, holding two other cuffed people; they must have carried the prisoners down.
For what reason, the Slayer didn’t know.
And a trooper, very clearly female, stood by his right hand with her own arms crossed, matching the Slayer.
“I’m impressed,” the man complimented, filtered through his helmet.
“It seems the Jedi weren’t lying. You can take and give a hit. Speed. Power. Durability. Combat intuition. Whoever you are, you would make a fine member of Death Watch.”
The Slayer scoffed.
No, he wouldn’t.
He didn’t believe in their cause.
He had better things to do than become the leader of a band of terrorists.
He wasn’t even one of them.
You were never one of us.
The words echoed to him from Argent D’Nur, all those years ago.
The betrayers, the Marauders, spitting that vitriol at him as the planet was consumed by Hell.
The Slayer frowned uncomfortably at the reminder.
You were nothing but a usurper.
A false idol.
Even if he were to enter Death Watch, history would just repeat itself.
Outsiders had no place in proper ranks.
Mandalore belonged to the Mandalorians.
Earth belonged to humans.
Hell belonged to demons.
So where would that put him?
Seeing him not move, the Mandalorian leader spread an arm allowingly.
“My name is Pre Vizsla. And I’m sorry if our first impression started with violence. We merely wished to see what you were capable of. And you have more than delivered.”
The Slayer’s ire only grew.
He had no need to prove himself to these men.
He had no desire.
If violence was the only thing they listened to and respected, perhaps he’d give them more than they bargained for.
“I must ask, however. Where did you get that armor?” Vizsla probed.
“If it’s beskar, you should know that only Mandalorians wear it. If you aren’t one, then… you took it from one of our brothers.” Vizsla swished his cape behind him and pointed a finger.
“And that, dear friend, is something we look down on.”
The Slayer glared at Vizsla.
The fury in his mind translated into softly boiling audio that played darkly from his suit’s speakers.
Then the Slayer turned away from Vizsla and stomped to the nearest Death Watch trooper.
Vizsla watched in silence, evidently wondering about his design.
Once he was right beside the quivering trooper, the Slayer turned back to Vizsla.
Looked him dead in the eye.
And he reignited his lightsaber and swiped it through his neck in one fluid motion.
The music in his suit suddenly spiked, fast and hard.
The rest of Death Watch yelped in alarm and opened fire on him.
The Slayer ignored the yellow blaster bolts pinging off him and lunged for the next trooper in range.
He put his fist straight through his thin beskar alloy breastplate, emerging from the back.
The bloodied body was then flung off his arm and hit a third trooper hard enough to tumble him end over end.
The entire time he was spitefully killing, chaotic and violent audio warbled from his suit.
A shimmering glimmer sprang to life, and the Slayer turned.
Pre Vizsla was holding a bright obsidian, meter-long cut of midnight, gleaming with white crackles.
The darksaber warbled with the slightest movement of his hand, as if it warped space and time itself.
The Slayer eyed it with some interest as more blasterfire pinged off his armor.
That weapon was different from the other lightsabers so far.
But it seemed like there wasn’t anything more than appearances.
And if Vizsla was willing to resort to that, then he was proficient in the weapon.
He could give the Slayer some practice in lightsaber combat.
Probably.
“Time to earn your keep, Jedi!” Vizsla’s female companion barked, tossing three lightsabers to the captive prisoners.
The Slayer’s eyebrow raised as he deflected a blaster bolt into the shoulder of another trooper.
Jedi?
What were they doing here?
Was it like Golyon Chi all over again?
The Jedi caught the weapons in their bound hands, ignited them, and severed their bindings.
A swirling emerald blade and two crossed ruby ones joined the shimmering darksaber, and all three combatants uneasily looked at each other before spreading out to encircle the Slayer.
All the while, the Slayer was deflecting yellow shots from the increasingly-distressed and retreating Death Watch troopers.
It was honestly embarrassing, how easy it was.
And the notion that it was this easy just made him angrier– why even bother again?
But it would have been easier if he had just let the shots hit him.
At least this way, he’d get some actual practice with the saber in.
Finally, the Slayer had had enough with just deflecting blaster bolts.
He ignited the other end and began blazing into melee reach of his targets, completely breezing past Quinlan Vos and Asajj Ventress.
(As VEGA had identified on his HUD.) Weaving his saberstaff in a blindingly quick flurry turned three close Death Watch troopers into glowing mincemeat.
The Slayer kicked the remains negligently into the midst of the others, who jumped back.
The troopers spread out, keeping the Slayer from bunching them all together.
The beskar wasn’t nearly as strong as the Slayer remembered from Ordo’s helmet.
Perhaps the breastplates were made of an alloy–
As soon as the Slayer realized he was thinking of this, he only got angrier.
The fight was so pointless, the most interesting thing was the opponent’s armor!
Fueled and fuming, the Slayer hurled his saber, windmilling in a wide arc and causing a broader collection of Death Watch troopers to turn, keeping an eye on it.
And the Slayer meathooked the next target.
This time, the trooper was pulled into his range, and the Slayer clotheslined him hard enough to take his head clean off.
Clang went his helmet, and splat went his blood on the earth.
Vizsla had had enough.
He sprang at the Slayer with the darksaber high above his head, bringing it down.
It caught on the doomblade ejecting from his bloody left arm.
The Slayer twisted, the blade went out, and Vizsla was open.
The Slayer kicked him in the torso, and Vizsla went sprawling back on the ground again.
Quinlan rushed in next, swirling his saber in a blinding fast snarl of energy that the Slayer barely missed.
Quinlan was wiser than Vizsla, keeping himself back and remaining barely out of the Slayer’s reach.
The Slayer reached anyway.
His lightsaber, just about to reach the ground, suddenly glowed bright blue in the center oo the hilt and on the emitters from the neural link recently installed.
It hovered in midair briefly before zooming back to his hand, spinning and slicing three Death Watch troopers on its way.
The instant the hilt hit the blue pad in the Slayer’s palm, he swung.
Quinlan didn’t even try to match the sheer kinetic energy in the Slayer’s saberstaff, merely shooting backwards, agile as a cat.
And the Slayer’s sensors could pick up the third swordfighter, Ventress, lunging at his back.
The Slayer spun and evaded, narrowly allowing Ventress to stumble past, into Quinlan’s path.
Quinlan caught Ventress before she could go too far, using her momentum to swing her back to face the Slayer once more.
“Even if we do hit him,” Vizsla snarled, back on his feet by now, “it won’t get through his armor. How are we going to take him down?”
Quinlan swirled his blade beside his grim face, and it glowed the same color as his saber.
“Together.”
The Slayer smiled at his words.
Good old fashioned heroism.
He could respect that much.
He’d go easy on them.
Allow them to sharpen their skills on the grindstone that he was.
After all, if he killed any Jedi, they wouldn’t help him in his quest to get back home.
But once Skywalker showed up, all bets were off.
If Skywalker was as important as his vision had implied, the Slayer could afford to see for himself.
The Slayer split his saber in half.
He whirled the two blades in opposing directions and took a defensive stance.
Ventress closed in from the front while Quinlan lunged from his side.
Vizsla shot into the air from his jetpack and descended on him with a mighty two-handed blow.
One by one, the three combatants got their blades locked in combat until all three were pushing on the Slayer’s sabers.
And the Slayer’s music blared ever louder, ever darker.