Despotic Measures

Posted on Wed May 20th, 2026 @ 9:08pm by Mentis & Kalen "Rex" Vickers
Edited on on Wed May 20th, 2026 @ 10:46pm

3,345 words; about a 17 minute read

Chapter: Chapter VIII: Broken Chains
Location: GalactaWerks Spaceport, Mos Entha
Timeline: Dusk/Early Night

The darkness of the corridor ahead threatened to swallowed them whole.

Rex and Mentis ran hard along the narrow connecting passageway, boots hammering against metal that trembled with every distant groan of the failing facility. The spinning amber emergency beacon in the control centre cast an uneven glare behind them in long, flashing pulses.

The horrific, asymmetrical silhouette of the Despot filled the passage behind them. Each time the light turned, it shifted ever closer.

Mentis risked a glance back. For a heartbeat the corridor was just empty darkness, then the beacon spun again and the Despot’s hulking outline snapped into existence further down the passage, as if it had jumped forward between breaths. Its limbs dragged and twitched in the half‑light, the tubes along its back pulsing like veins filled with molten tar.

"Keep moving!" Mentis barked, igniting his blade again to cast a thin blue cone ahead of them. The light barely pierced the dark.

They reached the next security door. Mentis was on it instantly, ignoring the locking mechanism and carving directly into the door clamps with a deep powerful stroke. Behind him, Rex skidded to a halt and fired a volley of blaster bolts back down the corridor. The shots vanished into the dark, swallowed by the creature’s mass or the shadows around it. It didn’t matter. The Despot did not slow.

"Got it!" Mentis snapped, "Quickly - in!"

They threw themselves through the widening gap. Mentis slammed his shoulder into the door and dragged it shut, thrusting his blade into the seam long enough to melt a crude, glowing line across the frame. It wasn’t much, just a weak seal, but it was all he dared before turning away.

The new chamber opened around them: a broad administrative bay with branching corridors leading toward the docking rings and back toward the entry terminal. There was still some power here and a number of displays were still glowing with light here, each screen showing fractured security feeds of the surrounding bays.

The door behind them buckled.

A thunderous impact caved the metal inward, cracking Mentis’ hasty seal instantly. However, the warped frame jammed against its own housing, buying them seconds, nothing more.

The sound roused movement in the room.

Two figures stirred from the shadows. Bodies twisted by Blackwing, their forms slack and wrong, eyes clouded with the same milky pallor as the others: one was Human and the other a Trandoshan. They shuffled toward the noise, toward the living.

Mentis didn’t hesitate. His blade snapped up and cut the Human down in a single, clean stroke. The reptilian undead lurched forward in response, but he hurled it back with a sharp burst of the Force, sending it crashing into a bank of consoles.

He exhaled sharply.

"Who’d have thought..." he stuttered, still shaking with adrenaline, "I’d be missing these guys."

The administrative bay gave way to a series of ascending transit corridors that curved upward through the upper structure of the facility. Here, the architecture began to change. The exposed coolant pipes and improvised research infrastructure slowly disappeared behind cleaner walls and recessed lighting strips. Even under emergency power, the difference was obvious. Someone had cared what these levels looked like, despite it being built out of an old once largely hollowed-out starport of sandstone.

The corridors widened and the air smelled less of rot and chemicals and more of stale filtration systems and expensive polish that had sat untouched. Decorative metalwork lined sections of the walls, geometric patterns etched into bronzed panels beside illuminated Company insignia. Frosted transparisteel partitions revealed private lounges and observation alcoves overlooking the darkened docking areas below. Somewhere in the distance, soft instrumental music still played intermittently through damaged speakers now that primary power was restored, albeit warped by static into something eerie and hollow.

Rex and Mentis slowed briefly as they passed a reception chamber whose curved desk had been overturned during the initial outbreak. The bodies here were different. Tailored coats and expensive fabrics clung to pale, bloated corpses slumped across polished floors. One Human senior staff remained pinned halfway through a security shutter that had sealed across his torso during the lockdown. His upper body still twitched weakly, fingers scraping uselessly at the metal even as blackened blood dried beneath him in thick layers.

"Containment protocol," he echoed the term he had seen and heard numerous times here as they hurried past, sweat dripping down his forehead. His eyes flicked toward the sealed windows overlooking the executive hangars beyond.

Another impact boomed somewhere deeper in the port - the Despot was still coming.

The sound travelled upward through the structure itself now. It was still not a frantic pursuit but measured destruction, the sound of metal and equipment being smashed away in the path behind them. They looked back once into the dim corridor behind them, but there was nothing there yet - only darkness and the distant pulse of amber warning lights.

"Yeah," Rex said under his breath to Mentis, following the glance of his friend without slowing. "I know. Me too, Mantis."

They reached the upper transit station moments later. The lift itself was dead, frozen halfway between levels, forcing them into a maintenance stairwell that spiralled upward through the final stretch toward the executive landing suites. The climb burned through what little strength either of them still possessed. More sweat rolled down Rex’s neck beneath his duster whilst the intermittent blue flare of Mentis' unstable weapon repeatedly lit the stairwell ahead whenever another sealed latch or maintenance barrier blocked their ascent. For a short time, there was no obvious sound of the Despot following, nor did they see it below them as they ascended.

By the time they finally forced open the final security hatch, both men nearly stumbled into the executive suite beyond, and the the difference was immediate.

Silence surrounded them, although it was not a true silence. The distant groaning of the dying facility still lingered beneath everything, but here it felt insulated, muffled behind wealth and privilege. Soft white lighting cast warm reflections across polished stone floors and dark wooden furnishings imported from worlds far richer than Tatooine. A circular lounge occupied the centre of the chamber, complete with untouched glasses, expensive bottles, and datapads abandoned mid-conversation when the lockdown had begun.

Large panoramic windows overlooked Mos Entha beyond, the settlement now little more than scattered lights beneath the deepening desert night. Far in the distance, fires still burned where infected packs wandered the streets below.

And beyond the glass partition ahead sat the ship.

Sleek. Faintly-yellow hull. Standard GW corporate fare - an executive shuttle resting silently within its private docking cradle, and Rex stared at it like a starving man seeing food.

"Oh, you beautiful little bastard..."

Hope flared properly for the first time since entering the facility.

Then, the first corpse moved. A Duros in an expensive charcoal robe lurched upright from beside the lounge seating, jaw hanging loose and eyes clouded pale with infection. Another followed near the dock access controls, this one Human, its neck twisted almost fully backward where it had clearly died slamming against the locked blast doors during the initial outbreak.

The quarantine had worked here, as nothing escaped - but nor had anyone inside.

"Kriffing figures," Rex muttered, dragging Cindra back up. "Couldn't just die quietly in your fancy tower, could you?"

Mentis was already eyeing the rousing infected, blade already poised at his side and ready to act.

"Company employees?" he queried before abandoning his curiosity as another wrenching of metal echoed fro, behind them, "Never mind - let's just put them down quickly."

The Duros executive staggered sideways into the edge of the lounge table just as Rex fired, the blaster bolt punching through its cheek and out the back of its skull in a burst of blackened blood and burnt flesh. The body collapsed across the polished floor, but the second infected was already moving. It slammed bodily into the transparisteel partition leading toward the shuttle access corridor, clawing wildly at the locked door controls as though some final instinct still understood escape waited beyond it.

Mentis frowned, confused at the action, before bringing his blade with sharp precision through the twisted skull and out again into the transparisteel barrier. He disengaged the blade, rather than drawing it back out and the Human dropped down with a weighty thud upon the solid floor.

Silence settled over the suite again, broken only by distant alarms and the low hum of restored systems somewhere deeper in the structure.

Rex lowered his blaster slightly and approached the doorway control, pushing the corpse aside gingerly to then reach the console with his free hand. His fingers moved across the interface instinctively, old habits surfacing despite the adrenaline still hammering through him.

The display flashed red immediately.

EXECUTIVE LOCKDOWN ACTIVE
QUARANTINE OVERRIDE DENIED

Rex stared at the screen, eyes wide.

"...oh, come on!"

He tried again anyway, manually accessing the lower command structure beneath the polished executive interface. Underneath all the panic and horror and failing reactors, these small moments in their shared nightmare had still made still sense to him, whether the droid head in the shop, the system in the control room or even this doorway.

Corporate systems, security loops and locked machinery. His father's workshop had lived and died on Company contracts, as much as the whole family and neighbourhood had hated it, as well as salvaged GalactaWerks hardware. Later, the Marines had drilled the rest into him before the Hutts taught him how to break whatever the Company tried to protect.

Rex used one of his computer spikes, fumbling it out from within his duster quickly, as his fingers moved faster now across the terminal, darting through buried access menus whilst warning symbols flashed angrily across the display. Every few seconds the system attempted to throw him back out into the executive interface, but he forced his way deeper each time, manually bypassing the standard programs.

"Yeah, yeah, quarantine override denied, I heard you the first time!" He muttered bitterly beneath his breath. "Karking Company trash..."

Behind them, a claw now appeared at the lip of the maintenance shaft they had climbed through. Bone ridges scraped sparks from the metal as the Despot hauled itself higher with slow, terrible strength. The asymmetrical bulk of its body followed gradually after it, forcing itself into the executive level one movement at a time. Tubes dragged loose behind it like torn veins, black fluid smearing across the polished flooring as its enormous frame emerged further into view.

It had not rushed and the creature's milky eyes now locked immediately onto the movement around the terminal.

Mentis went rigid, as though stopping movement now would somehow deter the Despot experiment. He eased himself over to the terminal.

"Time's up, Rex," he half-whispered, inclining his head in the direction of the emerging monster and allowing Rex to turn to follow his gesture, "It's now or never."

"Oh, no, no, no..." Rex whispered quickly, turning back to the screen and forcing his hands to keep moving despite the panic trying to climb up his throat. "Come on, sweetheart, open for me..."

The docking access display flickered violently once and then the doors beside the terminal unlocked with a heavy mechanical thunk and immediately split apart.

Rex barked out a short, disbelieving laugh. "Ha!" He began, despite the threat stalking toward them. "Got you, you arrogant-"

Something slammed through the widening gap at once as two bodies collapsed inward together in a violent tangle of limbs and rotted work gear, the momentum of the suddenly released seal sending them crashing directly into Rex before he could react. One was still wearing the remains of a dock technician harness whilst the other’s jaw hung half detached beneath a stained breather mask. Both shrieked the instant they hit the warmer air of the suite.

Rex disappeared beneath them with a startled yell as all three went hard to the floor and his blaster skidded away across the polished stone as the infected workers clawed wildly at him, fingers digging into his duster and shoulders as snapping teeth lunged for his throat. Rex twisted beneath them on instinct, one forearm jammed desperately across the nearer creature’s neck whilst the other fought to keep the second from reaching his face.

All the while, the Despot moved forward, its towering silhouette filled the entrance to the stairwell behind Mentis, massive claw flexing slowly as strips of damaged muscle shifted beneath stretched hide and patchy fur. The split ruin of its mouth hung open slightly as it watched the scene before it with awful focus.

"No! Rex!" Mentis suddenly sprung over, igniting his blade and swinging it down in one desperate, fluid motion. The orange jacket of the infected technician was an easy target and his blade came down quickly to sever it cleanly without striking Rex.

With some of the weight parted, Mentis attempted to drag the man's body out from under the heap of hungry decay. However, like a snagged branch, he felt resistance as the mask wearing former-sentient grasped desperately at Rex's duster, trying to plunge what remained of its mouth around Human flesh.

"Let go of him!" Mentis snarled, voice crackling as a cold shiver crawled along his spine as dragging footsteps approached slowly but inevitably from behind him, "Please just let this end," he added more desperately.

Rex felt the weight shift as blue light carved violently across the heap above him. Burnt flesh and rotten cloth sprayed across his face as the upper half of the infected dock worker collapsed sideways in twitching pieces, yet even severed at the waist the thing continued clawing wildly across the polished floor. Fingers hooked desperately into Rex’s duster whilst its ruined jaw snapped blindly at whatever warmth it could still reach.

Mentis hauled hard against him and Rex twisted free at last with a ragged gasp, boots scraping across the floor as he was dragged backward out from beneath the remaining infected mass. The second worker lunged immediately after him, mask hanging loose from one side of its face as blackened teeth snapped inches short of his throat.

Rex reacted on instinct, snatching Cindra from the floor and fired wildly from his back. The first bolt tore through the infected's shoulder and spun it sideways. The second struck centre mass hard enough to burst rotten tissue across the partition. The third finally punched through its skull and sent the body crashing limp against the lounge seating beside them.

The bisected upper half still clawed onward, still trying to reach them.

"Kriff off!" Rex shouted breathlessly, firing again and again until the twitching remains finally stopped moving.

Then he saw Mentis' pale features change and he followed the line of his gaze and everything inside him seized.

"Mentis!"

The claw came through the air like a falling bulkhead and Mentis barely had time to move, courtesy of his enhanced reflexes, before the Despot's oversized arm smashed past him and punched straight into the wall beside the docking controls. Metal exploded inward beneath the impact, the reinforced surface tearing open with a deafening shriek as the creature's claw buried itself nearly to the wrist inside the structure.

For the first time since its emergence, the Despot halted - delayed.Its ruined face remained completely blank as strips of muscle shifted slowly beneath stretched hide and sparse fur. The claw flexed once inside the ruined wall, metal groaning around it as though the creature were calmly deciding whether to tear the entire section free.

Rex did not wait to find out.

"Move!"

He grabbed for Mentis' arm and stumbled toward the open docking access, half-running and half-falling through the corridor beyond whilst the Despot wrenched itself free behind them with a sound like industrial machinery being ripped apart.

The private landing platform opened around them seconds later and cold night air flooded across the exposed docking ring, carrying sand and distant smoke from the burning settlement outside. Emergency lights strobed weakly across the polished platform whilst the executive shuttle rested ahead upon its landing struts, pristine against the chaos surrounding it.

Rex nearly laughed from relief as they sprinted for the boarding ramp just as another impact thundered behind them from inside the suite - the Despot was surely coming again. Rex hit the boarding controls first and the ramp unfolded automatically with a soft hydraulic hiss entirely at odds with everything else around them. Both men practically threw themselves inside.

The interior was absurdly luxurious, as they had probably expected. Soft lighting illuminated cream-coloured seating and polished instrumentation untouched by dust or decay. A stocked refreshment alcove lined one wall beside sealed storage compartments and expensive decorative plating. The cockpit itself curved forward beneath a wide canopy overlooking their surroundings cleanly.

Rex dropped heavily into the pilot's seat and immediately brought the systems online, and the shuttle responded beautifully.

Power.

Repulsors.

Navigation.

Engines.

Hope surged again-

Then the central display locked solid.

LAUNCH AUTHORITY DENIED
EXECUTIVE CODE VERIFICATION REQUIRED

Rex stared at it in disbelief.

"Again!? You have gotta be joking!"

His hands flew back across the controls immediately, trying to bypass the lockout manually, once again returning to this frustrating digital rhythm he had been forced into too many times in this forsaken facility. Finger darted between menus and buried access prompts. "It’s just a launch gate! Just a stupid little Company lock. I can crack this... I can crack this..."

A calm voice suddenly filled the cockpit overhead.

"Attention all valued employees. Attention all valued employees." The announcement was warm and professional. Almost soothing, even. "The Mos Entha quarantine failsafe has now entered critical containment status. Current projection estimates catastrophic reactor cooling failure in five standard minutes. All employees are reminded that departure from the facility remains prohibited under GalactaWerks Corporation quarantine protocols, as per recognised Galactic law. Please remain within designated containment areas. Periodic alerts will be provided to assist staff with spiritual preparation and reconciliation with the deity or belief structure of their choosing. Employees are further reminded that all remaining share allocations and Company benefits shall be redistributed to Company-approved next of kin, less outstanding debts accrued during your period of employment. Thank you for your valued service. GalactaWerks: Building Your Future."

The same announcement repeated again in Huttese.

Then movement caught both their attention beyond the cockpit canopy - the Despot had emerged onto the landing platform. Its enormous silhouette advanced steadily through the flashing emergency lights, black fluid trailing behind it across the polished deck plating. One arm hung lower now where the oversized claw had partially twisted during the impact with the wall, but the creature showed no sign of slowing. The milky white eyes remained fixed entirely upon the shuttle.

Upon them.

Rex's hands stopped moving across the console. The launch lock still blinked red between them and three failed bypass attempts glowed across the screen. Slowly, Rex looked sideways toward his Rattataki friend. Fear sat plainly on his face now beneath the cockpit lights. Not cowardice or shame; it was just the awful understanding of what came next, and something more. He almost looked ready to reach out to Mentis, but stopped short as his voice then came out quieter.

"I... I need more time, man."

Mentis looked at Rex, really looked, and for a heartbeat Rex saw the fear in him, raw and unguarded. But then the Rattataki swallowed it down, jaw tightening, shoulders squaring as if he were physically forcing the emotion back into whatever corner he kept such things.

"I’ll get you your time," Mentis said, voice low but steady.

Rex nodded grimly, already pulling another spike from his belt. He twirled it once between his fingers, a flair attempting to mask his own hammering terror, before jamming it into the port and diving back into the system.

TBC

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