The molten rivers of Mustafar cast a red glow across the observation deck. The smell of scorched metal and sulfur hung heavy in the air, but Anakin barely noticed. He stood beside Maul, small yet unnervingly still, eyes fixed on the endless hellscape beyond the reinforced glass.
"Jabba has lost his grip on Tatooine," Maul said, arms crossed behind his back. His tone was factual, emotionless. "The Besadii clan is rising. Gardulla the Elder leads them. She broke the stalemate. Now she's at the edge of full control."
Anakin's jaw tightened. The name sparked something immediate and visceral.
'Gardulla… I will always remember that name. The bitch who owned us. Who sold us. Who treated my mother like dirt.'
He didn't respond. His thoughts burned hotter than the lava.
Maul turned to him, the firelight catching his tattoos. "I don't know Sidious' full plan. I don't need to. He wants us to break her momentum. Jabba still has his palace. The city... less so."
"So we take the city?" Anakin asked.
Maul smirked faintly. "We take what we're told to. Starting with the city. The rest will follow."
Anakin nodded slowly, but inside, he was already boiling.
'That bitch is there. I can feel it. This is my chance. I don't know how yet... but I'll make it happen.'
The trip to Tatooine was silent.
The wind blasted hot sand across the landing platform outside Jabba's palace. The vessel settled into the dust with a mechanical hiss. As the ramp lowered, the stench hit Anakin first—sweat, rot, blood, and cheap spices. Familiar.
They entered without ceremony. Maul said nothing, letting the guards recognize him or die failing. The rusted doors creaked open. The darkness inside was not empty.
Jabba's court was chaos. Music blared—off-key, frantic. The air reeked of blood and unwashed flesh. Slaves crawled along the floor: beaten, drugged, or barely conscious. A Twi'lek girl whimpered as a fat mercenary shoved her aside with a boot, her leg twisted unnaturally.
"Disgusting," Anakin muttered under his breath.
He followed close behind Maul, stepping over a Rodian passed out in a pool of his own vomit. On the dais at the end of the room, Jabba the Hutt lounged, his grotesque body rippling as he adjusted himself to see the newcomers. Beside him stood Bib Fortuna, red-eyed and twitchy.
Jabba barked something in Huttese. Bib stepped forward, bowing slightly. "The mighty Jabba demands to know why Lord Sidious sends only the two of you… one of that barely a child."
Anakin's eyes narrowed. Hatred brewing inside him
'This slug... who does he think he is ? He thinks I'm weak? I should cut his tongue out and shove it down his throat.'
Jabba chuckled, eyes gleaming with cruel amusement.
Maul said nothing. He simply raised a hand.
Two Gamorrean guards, stationed near the steps, began to twitch. Their arms flailed. They dropped their axes and clawed at their throats as if choking. The music faltered. Gasps rose from the gallery. One slave screamed.
Bones cracked.
Their legs buckled, and a second later both collapsed—blood bubbling from their snouts, eyes bulging. The scent of piss joined the mix as one voided himself.
Silence.
Jabba's smirk vanished. He barked another command, lower, less confident. Bib translated quickly, nervous. "Mighty Jabba apologizes. He meant no disrespect. You are… welcome."
Maul lowered his hand his voice cold. "We are here because your failures require correction. Not because you're owed our presence."
Jabba growled but said nothing. Bib gestured to a set of cushions near the side.
"The great Jabba invites you to rest. Tomorrow, you will meet his lieutenants. They will guide you through the situation in Bestine. The city must be reclaimed at all cost. Gardulla has stationed elite mercenaries there. The city is well protected."
Anakin didn't bother to listen, he glanced around the room. A Trandoshan devoured something bloody in the corner. Two Weequay arm-wrestled, the loser already bleeding from a shattered wrist. A Twi'lek girl limped past, her collar leaking fluid where the circuit shorted.
'They act like animals. They wallow in filth and power like it's the same thing. I hate them. They live like parasites. They deserve extinction.'
He forced himself not to react. Not yet.
Maul sat cross-legged on the floor, back straight, already slipping into meditation. Anakin stayed standing.
"Sit," Maul said without looking.
"I don't—"
Anakin wanted to refuse but suddenly his knees buckled, and he dropped hard onto the stone floor, his lungs seizing. Invisible pressure crushed his chest.
Maul opened one eye. "Control yourself boy. Or I will break you until you learn it."
The pressure lifted.
Anakin gasped, sweat trickling down his back. He sat still, trembling not from fear, but from the restraint it took not to strike everyone in the room.
'Gardulla's here. Or her people are. She's winning. That can't be allowed. She's part of that world. Slavers, liars, animals. I'll see her die screaming.'
He closed his eyes. His thoughts returned to the cave in the desert. The holocron.
'It's still here, somewhere. Buried in the sand. I'll find it. Not now. Not with Maul watching. But soon.'
The palace buzzed around him. Screams, laughter, music. Every sound burrowed under his skin.
He breathed in and out.
His room was hot, suffocating even by Tattooine standards. Anakin sat cross-legged in the center, his eyes closed, his breaths shallow and precise. He focused, as Maul taught him: on control, on breath, on silence. But inside, the storm was never still.
Pain. Images of his mother, bleeding in the sand. Rage. The crunch of bones beneath his will. Hatred—pure, clinical hatred. Not passion, not emotion. A weapon forged in the fire of loss.
He didn't flinch when the door to the chamber hissed open. He knew someone was coming long before the sound. His senses had widened. Sharpened.
The mercenary was a grimy Weequay with a bandolier of rusted knives strapped across his chest. "Kid," he said gruffly, "you're summoned. Time to move."
Anakin stood silently, without acknowledging the man, and walked past him.
He moved through the citadel's shadowed halls. The interior of Jabba's Palace was a sprawling monument to gluttony and cruelty. He passed holding cells that stank of sweat and rot, walls scored with claw marks. A Twi'lek woman sobbed quietly in a cage barely big enough to kneel in. One of her lekku had been crudely severed. Anakin didn't slow down.
He passed through the old B'omarr monastery's lower corridors, where mechanical monks skittered through the shadows, their brains encased in jars, suspended on spider-like limbs. He wondered how much they remembered. Whether they envied the dead.
Then came the hangar.
The air was heavy with oil fumes and the stench of unwashed bodies. A dozen desert skiffs hovered just off the ground, their repulsorlifts whining softly. Two sail barges gleamed with layers of golden paint and welded plates. Among them were a handful of battered starfighters and freighters, surrounded by open crates of ammunition and supplies.
Nearly a hundred mercenaries swarmed the hangar like flies—Rodians, Nikto, Aqualish, humans—all armed to the teeth. Loud voices argued over credits and kill counts. A Devaronian slammed a pipe wrench against a fuel pump while a Gamorrean guzzled water from a dented canister, half of it spilling down his torso.
At the center stood Maul.
Anakin approached, and the crowd instinctively parted, murmurs rippling through them. The lieutenant—a scarred Klatooinian with a jagged vibro-spear strapped to his back—stood beside Maul, pointing at a projected holo-map.
"This is the casino," he said, jabbing a finger at a square building deep inside Bestine's commercial sector. "Outwardly, it's a typical pleasure den: gambling, spice dens, slave auctions in the basement. But inside, it's Gardulla's primary recruitment and supply hub. Guns, drugs, credits, information, people. All of it flows through there. Taking it out won't just cost her credits—it'll gut her operations across half of the Northern Dune Sea."
He brought up a second overlay—shipments, patrols, logistical routes. "We've confirmed a massive shipment of spice arrived last night. Uncut. Unmarked. Worth at least few hundred thousand credits. Maybe more. If we capture it, it'll cripple her trade lines."
Maul's voice cut through the noise like a blade. "We will divide our forces."
The lieutenant looked surprised but didn't interrupt.
"We strike simultaneously from the north and south," Maul continued. "Flanking positions to the east and west will serve as crossfire zones. Any survivors will be executed. If reinforcements come, they will be delayed or eliminated."
The lieutenant grunted. "Makes sense. I'll take south, you'll take—"
"No," Maul said. He turned his head, slowly, toward Anakin. "The boy will lead the southern assault."
The room went silent. For a long second, only the hum of engines and creaking of metal filled the air.
The lieutenant exploded. "What? That's insane! You want to hand command of half our forces to a fucking child?"
Anakin's knuckles went white, his jaw clenched. The blood in his veins turned molten. He imagined driving his fingers into the man's throat, tearing it open—
But he didn't.
He held the rage. Focused it. Let it burn inside, but didn't let it rule him. He turned to the lieutenant and stared.
Maul's lip curled in satisfaction as he nodded to Anakin. He gestured to the crowd. "Anyone who wishes to challenge him for command, step forward. Prove your worth. If you win, the southern squad is yours."
Laughter erupted. A Rodian elbowed his companion, muttering something crude.
The lieutenant didn't hesitate, he didn't bother to talk any more nonsense. He pulled his blaster. "Let's end this farce."
He didn't get the shot off.
An invisible hand closed around his chest. His mouth opened, but no sound came out. His eyes bulged.
Anakin didn't speak. He didn't scream. He didn't gesture. He just stared.
The man's ribs cracked inward. Blood gurgled from his lips as his lungs collapsed. Then his heart gave out. He dropped to the floor, twitching once before going still.
"Magic," someone whispered. "What kind of magic is that?"
Anakin looked at them. "Anyone else wishes to challenge me ?"
Silence.
Maul walked to him, unsheathing a vibroblade from his belt. He handed it over. "If you want to earn the lightsaber back you will have to prove your worth. Bleed for it."
Then he turned to the rest. "We have sixteen skiffs. Six to the south. Six to the north. Two for the west and east. Move out."
The desert stretched endlessly in every direction, dunes rising and falling like a dead sea. The skiffs moved in a tight formation, kicking up trails of dust behind them. Anakin stood at the prow of his transport, his eyes closed.
He did not speak to the mercenaries. They avoided him, kept their distance, whispered behind his back—but never to his face.
He sat cross-legged near the bow, the wind tearing at his tunic. He breathed slowly.
In. Out. In. Out.
Darkness gathered.
His vision flickered—his mind dragged backward.
The cave. The holocron. The first lesson.
"Power is hunger," the voice had said. "To devour is to exist. To exist is to rule."
Tatooine. Screaming. His mother. Blood in the sand. Her skull split open like fruit.
He clenched his fists.
Visions. He saw himself standing before Watto. Not the pathetic slave boy—but as he was now. Powerful. Cold. Watto begging, groveling in the dirt. Then silence. Watto's body crumpling to the floor.
He saw himself cutting the chains from his mother. Taking her hand. Walking free.
He saw Maul—beating him, humiliating him. He saw Mustafar, red skies and molten rivers. The endless halls of pain and fire. He saw the future.
He opened his eyes.
The sun was beginning to set.
Ahead, the spires of Bestine City shimmered in the heat, rising from the dust like a mirage.
The assault began with thunder.
From the southern edge of Bestine, a dry wind howled down the alleys and broad market avenues, throwing sand into the faces of terrified civilians. Anakin led the first line of mercenaries through the city's outskirts, his small frame nearly hidden among the swaying brown cloaks and sand-drenched armor of Jabba's thugs. His boots crunched over broken pottery and dry bones. Traders, street children, beggars scattered in every direction, some screaming, others too stunned to move.
They encountered almost no resistance at first.
The outer rim of the city had already fallen into chaos—brawlers in alleys, gamblers in spice dens, slavers dragging half-naked bodies across sunburnt courtyards. Jabba's mercenaries, half-drunken with anticipation and bloodlust, opened fire on anything that moved. Blaster bolts ripped through fruit stalls, tore through flimsy walls, and painted the dusty walls of Bestine red. One Rodian mercenary laughed wildly as he shot an old man in the back simply because he ran. Another sprayed an entire cafe with fire, the smell of scorched meat mixing with the scent of roasted caf beans.
Anakin said nothing. His face was expressionless, his blue eyes hard. He walked straight down the main boulevard, unbothered by the chaos around him. Civilians tried to flee, some bumping into him without realizing who he was—until they looked into his face and saw a hatred far too deep for any ten-year-old.
"They're animals. All of them. Sniveling, weak, crawling in their own filth like they deserve it. This city deserves fire."
He had no pity. His grip tightened on the vibroblade Maul had given him. He could still hear the zabrak's voice: "If you want to earn the lighsaber back you will have to prove your worth. Bleed for it."
A guard post ahead.
A shot rang out, missing his head by inches and killing the man behind him. The mercenary crumpled with a gurgle, face half-gone. Screams. More shots.
Anakin didn't flinch.
He raised his hand slowly and reached with the Force.
A young woman in the crowd—civilian, screaming—was ripped from her feet. She flailed in the air, her shrieks breaking into sobs as Anakin held her like a rag doll in front of him.
"Shield," he muttered.
The men behind him hesitated. Some looked at one another. Then Anakin moved.
A burst of blaster fire hit the woman's back, her body twitching in the air. Anakin pressed forward, using her limp corpse to deflect the barrage until he was only meters from the makeshift barricade.
He stretched out his hand. The Force surged through his limbs.
With a sudden twist, he pushed—hard.
The sand-covered column supporting a crumbling roof buckled. The structure collapsed, burying three of Gardulla's men and sending a plume of debris skyward.
Jabba's mercenaries surged behind him.
The firefight ignited. The narrow streets of Bestine became killing fields. Civilians fled in all directions as blaster bolts turned brick and sandstone into flying shrapnel. Two of Anakin's men dropped, one with his chest opened by a slugthrower, the other blown apart by a grenade.
It didn't matter.
Anakin locked on to the strongest cluster of resistance—a balcony two stories up with a team of entrenched shooters. He hurled the corpse forward, catching them off guard.
Then he ran.
The Force surged in his legs. His feet barely touched the ground. He closed the distance in a heartbeat.
With a scream—more instinct than tactic—he leapt up the side of the wall using the Force, landed amid them.
His vibroblade sang.
The first man's head rolled off his shoulders before he registered the movement. The second tried to scream, but the blade sank into his chest, sawing through bone. A third, an Aqualish, raised his weapon—Anakin's hand shot out, and the alien flew back, spine-first into the wall so hard it crumbled inward.
Blood sprayed across the balcony.
Another group opened fire from the street. Anakin turned and pushed again. Four mercs were hurled back like ragdolls. Their bodies hit the sandstone wall with such force that ribs and limbs shattered. One slid down in a heap, coughing blood. Another didn't move at all.
Anakin's boots thudded against the rooftop. He sprinted forward.
Two snipers were up there—he sensed them. Their fear. Their confusion.
He reached them in seconds. They tried to raise their rifles. Too slow.
He grabbed the first by the throat and hurled him off the rooftop. The second went over with a scream, landing headfirst on a broken antenna.
Gunfire roared below. His men, emboldened by his advance, pushed forward. Gardulla's line cracked. Dozens fled down the alleyways, only to be gunned down by encircling skiffs.
Anakin stood on the roof, soaked in blood and sweat. His blade was dripping. His breath came sharp.
"That's what you get. All of you. This city is filth and deserves to be wiped out in its entirety"
In the north, Maul descended like a storm.
His skiff didn't make it to the center. A missile struck the lead craft—fire and metal, civilians incinerated in the blast as half the building collapsed beneath it. Maul leapt into the chaos, his saber cutting arcs of red through sand and flesh.
He landed atop a fallen balcony, his saber igniting mid-air.
The first enemy didn't even have time to scream. Maul sliced through his rifle, then his chest, then spun and severed a Devaronian's legs in a blur.
His men dismounted, spreading across the courtyard. Blaster fire danced between alleys. One of Jabba's mercenaries was cut down—a headshot. Another exploded under a grenade.
Maul didn't care.
He moved forward, alone.
Gardulla's men tried to regroup. Five came at him from the alley. He didn't stop walking. The Force danced in his muscles.
He jumped.
Spinning in midair, saber extended, he landed behind them. One head rolled. Another man staggered back, his guts spilling from a precise slash. The third tried to run. Maul's hand clenched. The man's neck snapped with a sharp crack.
Bodies littered the alley.
He moved again, his soldiers fanning out behind him. Resistance was crumbling fast.
Inside the casino, alarms shrieked.
In a dark office behind the main hall, a grim-faced Nikto hit a switch. A green hologram showed fire and smoke outside.
"We are under attack," he snarled.
Another mercenary, human, leaned in. "That's Jabba's lot. Those skiffs—south side. At least fourty man."
"Raise the guard alert. Move the shipment. Get the loaders and stash it in the secondary vault. Now."
More men spilled into the room. A backdoor opened—more weapons handed out. More orders shouted. Panic, but not chaos yet. They had numbers.
But the city burned.
And the boy was already inside.
Anakin stood above the carnage, his body still.
He turned to his men.
"Push to the next district. Leave nothing standing."
And they obeyed as the assault continued.