A'Sharad fucking Hett.
Darth Krayt. The One Sith guy.
What the actual fuck? Is this the Legends Extended Universe crossover episode? Is Kyle Katarn going to show up and try to steal my ship? Is Mara Jade gonna be banging farmboy Luke in the homestead?
My entire meta-knowledge, the one ace up my sleeve, just got downgraded from a royal flush to a pair of deuces. If Hett is here, what else is different? Is the Force having a goddamn sale on discontinued lore?
I can't spiral. Not now. I've got an audience.
I pulled my vibro-blade from the Tusken's skull. It made a wet schlick sound that was deeply unsatisfying. I wiped the gore off on his robes, the vibrating blade making the cloth smoke a little.
The hiss of the Scythe's ramp lowering was followed by the sound of boots crunching on sand.
I turned. Nari was standing at the bottom of the ramp, his face that lovely shade of greenish-pale he was getting so good at. He was staring at the... well, the carnage.
Thirteen bodies. Some were clean cuts from my blade. Others... well, the Predator cannons don't exactly 'do' clean. They 'do' catastrophic disassembly. The air smelled like ozone, burnt hair, and a barbecue gone horribly, horribly wrong.
Nari just stared, his hands clutching his robes. He looked like he was about to donate his breakfast to the Dune Sea, right here, right now.
"By... by the Force..." he stammered. "Fulcrum. You... you killed them. You killed them all."
"Observation skills: 10/10, Knight," I said, my vocoder flat. "They weren't exactly lining up to surrender. Besides, they had slaves."
I gestured with the still-humming blade toward the last hover-sled.
That finally seemed to snap him out of it. He looked past me, and his "oh shit" expression was replaced by a different, sharper "oh shit" expression.
I walked over, Nari following a few steps behind like a spooked loth-cat.
It was bad. Four people. Two humans—a man and a woman—one Rodian, and one Twi'lek. All stripped to their underwear, tied with crude fiber-cords, and piled on the sled like a cord of firewood. They were bruised, badly dehydrated, and shaking with a terror so deep it was almost silent.
When I got close, the woman flinched so hard she hit her head on the Twi'lek's leg.
Yeah, that tracks. Armored maniac who just turned thirteen guys into abstract art approaches you with a buzzing sword. Fair reaction.
I hit the switch on the hilt. The blade's hum died with a click. I crouched down and pulled a utility knife from my belt—a simple, non-threatening piece of metal—and started cutting the ropes.
"It's... it's okay," Nari said, rushing forward. He finally found his Jedi groove. "We're here to help. You're safe now." He started projecting that Force-hugs-and-calm-vibes thing, and the shaking actually subsided a little.
Good. He can be the good cop. I'll be the... well, the guy who just committed a small-scale war crime.
I walked over to one of the dead Banthas, unhooked its water skin, and tossed it to Nari. "Get them drinking. Slowly."
While he did that, I found the sled with Nari's hyperdrive. It was... well, it was exactly what you'd expect a high-precision piece of machinery to look like after being dragged through two klicks of sand by people who think "maintenance" is a type of food.
While my eyes were looking at the sandblasted piece of tech from Clone Wars, thoughts of a different topic had started to fester in my mind.
If Hett was here, did Ben know? In the old Legends timeline, their paths definitely crossed when Hett attacked the Lars homestead. But right now? Was that arrogant Tusken Jedi out there right now, building his little desert empire, completely under Ben's radar?
Hett himself wasn't the main problem. He was a localized asshole. But his story… his fucking storyline was a goddamn cancer.
A'Sharad Hett doesn't just become Darth Krayt. He gets captured by the Yuuzhan Vong. He gets infected with a Vong crab armor symbiote. He learns from the Sith holocrons of XoXaan. He eventually founds the One Sith that plunges the galaxy into another dark age a century from now.
And the Yuuzhan Vong… extragalactic invaders who are completely cut off from the Force. My Hyper-Perception, my entire budding connection to the Force… would it even work against them? Or would I just be a blind man staring into a silent, screaming void?
And XoXaan… an ancient Sith Sorceress. Her teachings were a direct line to the deepest, most corrupting shit the dark side had to offer.
And if we're going that far down the rabbit hole, what about Abeloth? The fucking Mother, the Bringer of Chaos, trapped in the Maw. An entity so powerful it took the combined effort of the Jedi and Sith of a whole other era to contain her.
My meta-knowledge wasn't just compromised. It was a goddamn minefield. Every piece of "future" I thought I knew could be booby-trapped with a hundred different apocalyptic possibilities I had no way of predicting.
"Fulcrum? Are you… alright?"
Nari's voice cut through the static in my head. He wasn't by the hyperdrive; he was still kneeling by the survivors, the empty water skin in his hand. He was looking at me, his expression a mix of concern and confusion. I'd been standing perfectly still for a solid minute, just staring at the dead Tusken at my feet.
"Yeah," I said, my vocoder strangely flat. "Peachy."
I shook my head, the motion jerky inside my helmet. The cosmic horror could wait. The here-and-now needed a medic and a mover.
"Just considering the long-term economic fallout of today's events," I added, forcing myself back into the moment. I strode towards them, my boots crunching on the gore-stained sand. "How are they?"
"Dehydrated. Terrified. The Twi'lek... she's not responding well," Nari said, his voice low. "They all need proper medical attention. We can't stay out here."
"Right. Let's get them inside." My gaze fell on the Twi'lek woman. Her blue skin was pale, her eyes staring at nothing. A long, angry gash on her calf was puffy and seeping a yellowish fluid. The sight of her lekku sent a fresh, cold spike of anxiety through me—a useless, emotional comparison to Vasha. I pushed it down.
I approached her slowly, keeping my movements obvious. "Hey. We need to get you onto the ship. It's not safe here."
No response. She was just mumbling a name under her breath, over and over.
"Okay. Sorry about this," I muttered, and carefully slid one arm under her knees and the other behind her back, lifting her in a princess carry. She was light, too light. As I adjusted my grip, I let my Hyper-Perception skim over her, a quick, clinical diagnostic run. I consciously avoided the private areas, focusing on trauma.
The readout was grim. A dozen superficial cuts. Lacerations on her back and buttocks. Seven bone-deep bruises on her limbs. And that infected gash on her calf was the worst of it. The physical damage was bad enough, but the mental static radiating from her was a dense fog of shock and trauma. This wasn't just from the last hour. This was older.
I carried her up the ramp into the Scythe's cargo bay and set her down as gently as I could on one of the bench seats. Her head lolled to the side.
"You're safe here. Just wait a moment, I'll get the others," I said, knowing she probably couldn't hear me.
As I walked back down the ramp, I passed Nari. He had the human man's arm over his shoulder and was helping the Rodian stumble forward. The Jedi was stronger than he looked.
The human woman was the last one on the sled. She flinched hard as I approached, scrambling back against the piled junk.
"I'm not going to hurt you," I said, keeping my hands visible. "But you need to get out of this sun. The heat will kill you faster than any blood loss."
I offered a hand. She stared at it for a long moment, then, with a trembling breath, reached out and took it. Her grip was weak. As I helped her down, another quick, impersonal diagnostic scan confirmed my initial guess. Most of the blood on her was superficial; she was the least injured of the four, just covered in the evidence of the others' suffering.
I guided her to a seat opposite the Twi'lek, deciding against putting them together. The Twi'lek girl needed space, not another trigger.
"Stay here. We'll get you something for the pain," I told the woman, who just nodded mutely.
I headed to one of the ship's storage lockers, coming back with a stack of thermal blankets and two standard-issue Imperial medpacs. I tossed one to Nari as he finished settling the two men.
"The two men and the human woman have mostly impact trauma and lacerations. You handle them," I instructed. "The Twi'lek has a deep, infected laceration on her calf. I'll deal with it."
Nari blinked, catching the medpac. "How did you...?"
"Read a book," I said, cutting him off. I turned back to the Twi'lek girl. "Alright, let's get you patched up."
I picked her up again. She was still mumbling that same name, lost in her own private hell. As I carried her towards one of the side rooms to get some privacy, I was left wondering with questions about the world that had no answer.
I carried her into the small side room and laid her on the bunk on her side, careful to keep the pressure off her back and buttocks. Not that it seemed to matter. She was a statue, her eyes still fixed on some internal horror.
"Hey. I need to clean your wounds, okay?" I said, leaning into her line of sight. "I'm going to start with your leg."
Nothing. Not even a blink.
Right. Talking wasn't going to work.
I got to work on the calf first. The gash was nasty, caked with sand and dried blood. I cleaned it as best I could with antiseptic wipes from the medpac, the sharp smell cutting through the room's stale air. Applying the bacta-patch was the easy part; it sealed over the wound with a soft hiss.
Now for the hard part.
The major injuries were on her buttocks and lower back. The remains of her clothing were just blood-soaked rags fused to the wounds by dried blood and sand. There was no way to be delicate about this.
"Alright, just a doctor, just a doctor, moral and ethical... blah blah blah."" I muttered under my breath, the mantra feeling stupid but necessary.
I carefully rolled her onto her stomach.
Using med-scissors, I started cutting away the fabric. It was a messy, tedious job. Most of it came away easily, but one piece near a deep laceration was stuck fast. I gave a slightly firmer tug.
A low, pained moan escaped her lips. It was the first real sound she'd made.
"Sorry, sorry," I said instantly, my voice tight. I went back to work with more delicacy, using a damp cloth to loosen the edges before peeling the cloth away.
This, of course, left her completely bare from the waist down.
It was impossible not to notice the details. The curve of her hips or the swell of her buttocks, the dark triangle of hair between her legs.
A hot flush of pure, awkward embarrassment went through me. This was so far outside my wheelhouse it wasn't even funny. I was an engineer, not a medic, and definitely not a gynecologist.
I forced my focus back to the injuries, scanning the area with a clinical detachment I had to fake. Thank the fucking Force. The worst of the lacerations were on the fleshy part of her buttocks and her lower back. The skin around her actual genitals was bruised, but intact. There were no tears, no signs of... specific trauma. They'd beaten her, savagely, but it didn't look like they'd raped her.
Small mercies. The bar was on the fucking floor, but I'd take it.
I got back to work. With her face buried in the bunk, I had a clear shot at her back. I held a hand over the worst of the wounds and reached for the Force, not to heal, but to manipulate. I focused on the individual grains of sand, feeling their tiny, inert presence against the vibrant, pained energy of her living tissue. One by one, I coaxed them out, a faint trickle of grit rising from the wounds and sprinkling onto the sheets.
It was painstaking, minute work, but better than digging around with tweezers. Once the wounds were as clean as I could get them, I applied the bacta-patches, covering the network of cuts and bruises. At least the Inquisitors stocked their medkits well.
She was still breathing, still mumbling that name. It was the best I could do.
Job done. I pulled a thin thermal blanket over her lower body.
I straightened up, my spine cracking in protest. The servos in the armor whined as I stretched. Thank fuck that was over. The whole situation felt like a goddamn minefield. One wrong move, one wrong word, and I could have made things a thousand times worse.
My mind flashed back to Vasha. She would have known what to do. She would have had a gentle word, a soothing touch. Me? I was a wrench-wielding sociopath with a vibro-blade. My version of "comfort" was telling someone to stop bleeding so messily.
I turned to leave, my hand already reaching for the door panel. The job was done. The physical part, anyway. The rest was way above my pay grade.
"Rest," I said, the word flat and metallic through the vocoder. It sounded hollow, pointless. Like telling a drowning man to try not to get wet. It was a useless platitude, the kind of thing you say when you have no idea what else to say. I was already turning, my mind clicking over to the next item on the shit-list: check on Nari, figure out how to get a sand-blasted hyperdrive functional, and then maybe have a quiet, screaming meltdown about A'Sharad fucking Hett.
I was halfway to the door when her voice stopped me.
"Why?"
It was barely a whisper. A dry, raspy sound, like sandpaper on bone. It cut through the quiet hum of the ship's systems.
I froze, my hand hovering in the air.
Why?
What the fuck kind of question was that? Why what? Why did the Tuskens attack? Why did they take you? Why did I kill them? Why did I bother saving you? Why is the sky blue? Why does the sun burn? It was the most loaded, single-syllable question in the history of the galaxy, and she just dropped it in my lap like a live grenade.
My brain tried to compute a million answers at once and crashed. I had nothing. I had a gauss rifle, a cobbled-together suit of armor, and a head full of useless pop-culture references. I did not have an answer for "Why."
I let my hand fall to my side. The soft hiss of the hydraulics as I turned back around sounded deafening in the small room.
She hadn't moved. Her face was still buried in the thin pillow, but her body was tense, waiting. It was the first time she'd acknowledged anything since I'd carried her in here.
I couldn't just walk out. That felt... wrong. Even for me.
I walked back to the bunk, the floorplates groaning under the weight of the armor. I knelt, the metal joints clanking softly. I was eye-level with the back of her head, with the two smooth, cylindrical lekku resting on the pillow.
I reached out, then stopped. My gauntlet was a cold, metal claw. That was the last thing she needed right now.
With a sigh, I unbuckled the wrist plate and pulled my hand free. The air in the room felt cool on my skin. I hesitated for another second, then settled for her shoulder, giving it a gentle squeeze. She didn't react.
My hand moved up, slowly, hesitantly, and I gently placed my bare hand on her head, my fingers resting on the base of one of her lekku.
It was smooth. Cool to the touch, but with a faint, underlying warmth, like a snake that had been basking in the sun. The texture was like how Vasha's felt. Not skin, not muscle. Something in between.
I started patting, a slow, awkward rhythm. Like I was trying to soothe a nervous animal I'd never met before.
The patting continued for what felt like an eternity. My hand was starting to sweat against the smooth skin of her lekku. This was possibly the most awkward thing I'd done since that time Vasha walked in on me trying to figure out how Twi'lek reproduction worked with a medical textbook and too much time on my hands.
"I don't know," I finally said, my voice softer than I intended. "Why what? Why them? Why this? Why you?"
She shifted slightly, turning her head just enough to peek at me with one eye. It was red-rimmed and clouded with pain.
"Why save us?" she whispered. "Why kill them? Why... care?"
Oh. That's what she was asking. The big one. The one that philosophers and priests and Jedi Masters had been debating for millennia. And she expected a guy in a cobbled-together suit of armor who'd just committed mass murder to have an answer.
Great. No pressure.
"Because someone did it for me once," I said, the words coming out before I'd really thought them through. It was true, in a way. Vasha had taken in a scrawny, traumatized kid with nowhere to go. Now I was... well, I was doing the same, except with more explosions and questionable medical practices.
Her eye widened slightly. "Someone... saved you?"
"Yeah. Found me when I had nothing. Gave me a home. A family." My throat felt tight. "She's why I'm here now. Why I'm doing... all this."
The Twi'lek rolled onto her side, wincing as the movement pulled at her injuries. She looked at me properly now, really seeing me beyond the helmet and armor.
"They took my sister," she said, her voice cracking. "Two weeks ago. From our farm. Just... took her. I was looking for her. Following the trails. That's how they caught me."
Fuck. That hit close to home. Too close. Vasha's face flashed in my mind, her smile as she taught me how to calibrate a power converter, her exasperated sigh when I "forgot" to knock before entering her room.
"What's her name?" I asked, my voice rough.
"Herana," she whispered. "Her name is Herana."
I nodded slowly. "I'll keep an eye out. No promises, but... I'll keep an eye out."
It was a stupid promise to make. I had enough on my plate with Vasha and Scarif and now the potential Yuuzhan Vong invasion and whatever the hell A'Sharad Hett was planning. But I couldn't not say it.
"Thank you," she said, a single tear tracing a path through the grime on her cheek. "I'm... I'm Lyra."
"Ezra," I replied, then immediately regretted it. Using my real name felt like a mistake.
"Lyra," I repeated, testing the name. It felt weird, saying her name while my bare hand was still resting on her lekku. The intimacy of it was throwing me off balance. "Look, about that name... forget you heard it. Around here, I'm Fulcrum. Got it?"
She blinked slowly, processing. "Fulcrum? That's... an odd name."
"It's a codename," I said, pulling my hand back and quickly reattaching my gauntlet. The metal clicked into place with a finality that felt like closing a door. "Less weird than Ezra, trust me."
I stood up, my joints protesting. The armor suddenly felt like a cage. "You need to rest. The bacta patches will help, but you're still going to feel like you got hit by a speeder bike for a few days."
I closed the door to the side room, the hiss of the hydraulic seal sounding final. I leaned back against the cool metal, letting out a breath I didn't realize I'd been holding. My hand felt weird. Bare skin against lekku was... a lot. My brain was still trying to file the sensation under "not relevant" and "do not think about again" at the same time.
Right. Other problems.
I walked back into the main cargo bay. Nari had the two men and the human woman settled on the benches, wrapped in thermal blankets. He'd done a decent job patching them up. The Rodian was already snoring softly. The human man was sipping water, his eyes wide and vacant. The woman was just staring at the wall, all cried out.
Nari looked up as I approached. "How is she?" he asked, his voice low.
"Stable. Patched up. Traumatized," I summarized. "Her name's Lyra. They took her sister a couple weeks back. She was looking for her."
Nari's face fell. "A tragedy upon a tragedy."
"Yeah. Welcome to Tatooine." I walked past him and out of the ship, back into the scene of the massacre. The sun was starting to dip, casting long shadows from the corpses. The smell was getting ripe.
I crouched next to the sleds holding the looted parts from Nari's shuttle. The hyperdrive was the centerpiece, and it was a fucking mess. The outer casing looked like it had been used as a sledding toy down a mountain of sandpaper. I ran a gauntleted hand over it, feeling the deep gouges and grit.
Nari followed me out, his eyes fixed on the ruined machinery with a kind of pathetic devotion. "My... my parts? Are they... salvageable?"
I stood up and gave the hyperdrive casing a solid kick. It thudded dully, and a shower of sand poured from a new crack. "It's fucked, Nari. Sandblasted from the inside out. The primary couplings are scoured, and there's enough grit in the injector assembly to start a small beach." I crossed my arms. "You could get it repaired, but that'd cost you more than this heap is probably worth."
The hope drained from his face so completely it was almost comical. He looked like a kid who'd just been told his pet took a one-way trip to the glue factory.
I let out a long, static-filled sigh. "But... you just so happened to run into a certified, albeit reluctant, genius. So I'll fix it."
His head snapped up. "You... you would? Truly?"
"Yeah, don't make a big thing out of it. I'm not doing it for you, I'm doing it because watching you mope is even more annoying than the thought of the work." I gestured at the pile of junk. "Now, start loading all this onto the Scythe. Every bolt. We'll see what we can cobble back together."
"Yes! Of course! Immediately!" The man practically vibrated with renewed purpose, immediately trying to heave the massive hyperdrive core by himself. It was a valiant, if utterly stupid, effort.
I watched him strain for a moment. The attachment was pathological. This wasn't just a ship; it was a relic. Had to be his Master's. No way a Jedi Knight his age would have a personal T-6. The emotional baggage radiating off the thing was palpable.
"Use the fucking hover-sled, Nari," I called out, turning to survey the other wrecks. "It's what it's for."
My eyes landed on the Banthas. One of them was still alive, making low, pained sounds. Its rider was very, very dead beside it. A quick scan confirmed it wasn't going to make it. A broken leg, massive internal bleeding.
I walked over, unholstering my gauss pistol. The recoil was a bitch, but it was clean.
The shot echoed flatly across the dunes. The pained sounds stopped.
Nari flinched at the noise but didn't look over. He was too busy trying to coax a half-crushed landing strut onto the sled. Priorities.
I looked from the dead raiders to the loaded sleds, then back towards the ship where four broken people were trying to remember how to breathe.
All this chaos, and the fact that I was playing a game where someone had secretly swapped out the rulebook for a Lovecraftian horror novel and I was the only one in the galaxy who might have even a vague inkling of the table of contents was still buzzing in my skull like a trapped insect.
The timeline was broken. My advantage was shot. And I was stuck in the desert with a traumatized Jedi, a bunch of salvage, and a new, potentially galaxy-ending problem.
Just another day on the job.
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A/N: Was still busy yesterday so couldn't update.
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