Severance Package
Posted on Sat Jun 6th, 2026 @ 10:58pm by Mentis & Kalen "Rex" Vickers
Edited on on Sun Jun 7th, 2026 @ 2:19pm
4,030 words; about a 20 minute read
Chapter:
Chapter VIII: Broken Chains
Location: GalactaWerks Spaceport, Mos Entha
Timeline: Night
Mentis descended the boarding ramp with his blade unlit at his side, back into the flashing hazard beacons that splayed amber light across the sand-sprinkled duracrete.
The Despot was waiting.
It stood in the centre of the docking bay like a grotesque sentinel, its hunched silhouette framed by the flickering lights. The moment it sensed him, its head lifted. Those milky, uneven eyes tracked the lightsaber hilt in his hand with a disturbingly focused awareness. A low, grinding growl rolled from its chest, and one elongated arm lifted to point at him.
Mentis ignited his blade with a shuddering hiss, blue light cutting across the bay.
"Mos Entha is finished," he called out, trying to keep his voice firm, not knowing if this Blackwing-infused horror was even capable of understanding, "GalactaWerks has taken everything it wanted from this place. Whatever you are, you should know they were never going to let you out. So let us leave... or I will cut you down."
For a moment, impossibly, the creature seemed to listen. Its head tilted. The growl shifted, warping into a bubbling, almost speech-like churn.
Then, the moment breaking, it roared and charged.
Mentis flung out his free hand, hurling the nearest object, a crate of sealed liquid canisters, straight into its path. The Despot smashed through it without slowing. He sent a cargo lifter skidding across the floor next, then a stack of durasteel frames, anything he could reach with the Force, but the creature tore through each obstacle with mindless, accelerating fury.
As it closed in, Mentis darted sideways, drawing the monster away from the shuttle. At the last second he pivoted sharply, blade flashing in a tight arc. The saber bit deep into the creature’s leg, but not cleanly. The sinew resisted, thick and rubbery, and the cut dragged instead of slicing.
The Despot’s claw raked across his side as it collapsed, sending Mentis tumbling across the gritty floor. He rolled, clutching his arm, feeling the sting of torn skin and the scrape of sand grinding into the wound.
For a heartbeat, panic stabbed through him.
His hand hovered over the gash at his side; had the claws broken skin? Had anything seeped in? He couldn’t tell. The pain was sharp, but not spreading. The skin felt hot, but that could have been adrenaline. Or fear. Or... something much worse.
He forced the thought away. Not now. He had to fight, whatever had happened to him.
Mentis looked up, hoping to see the monster downed and crippled. Instead, his breath caught: the Despot’s ruined leg was knitting itself back together.
Muscle fibres twitched and crawled across the exposed bone, reattaching in writhing strands. The bone itself seemed to pulse, reshaping, sealing. The whole process was wrong - a grotesque parody of healing, as if the body were remembering how to be whole but getting the order of steps confused.
The creature spasmed, snarled, and began to rise again.
Mentis staggered back, scanning the bay desperately. What stops something that won’t stay dead? Not the blade, not blunt force and certainly not time as they didn’t have any to spare.
Then he saw it: a loose fuel line hanging from the underside of a crane arm.
He reached out with the Force and yanked.
The line snapped free, spraying a sheet of volatile fuel across the Despot’s torso. The creature recoiled, confused and looking at itself, nostrils flaring as it tasted the acrid stench.
Mentis didn't hesitate - a sharp spark of lightning leapt from his fingers.
The fuel ignited instantly.
Flames roared up the creature’s body, engulfing it in a shrieking column of fire. The Despot thrashed wildly, slamming into crates and bulkheads, its howls echoing through the bay. For a moment, Mentis dared to hope this would be the end of it as the hulking, lopsided form collapsed to the ground attempting to starve the flames on the ground. Yet, the fire still clung to its body, blackening flesh, curling muscle, reducing its skin to charred plates.
But then the screaming changed. The blackened crust began to crack. Flakes of charred tissue fell away, revealing raw, pulsing muscle beneath, already beginning to knit.
"No..." Mentis whispered, stepping back as the creature pushed one arm against the floor, trying to rise again.
Then the shuttle engines roared to life behind him, flooding the bay with heat and vibration.
Repulsors thundered beneath the hull and the executive craft settled lower against its landing struts for a moment before beginning to rise fractionally, engines building toward full ignition. White light flooded across the docking platform in harsh bands that cut through smoke, sand and drifting embers alike.
Inside the cockpit, Rex nearly slammed both hands against the console in relief.
"Yes!" he barked breathlessly, half-laughing in disbelief as systems finally began responding around him. "Yes, you gor-"
Then another warning flashed across the lower display.
AUTOMATED FLIGHT GOVERNOR ACTIVE
REMOTE DEPARTURE LOCK ENGAGED
Rex's face dropped instantly and he swore. He then lunged back over the controls, whilst outside the shuttle canopy the Despot continued dragging itself upright through the fire, and he tried not to dwell on the beast Mentis was facing for their survival - the thing should have been dead.
Rex knew that with the cold certainty of instinct. He had seen flesh burn before and had seen people burn before - even tonight, he had seen walking corpses even forced through enough injury to end their unlife decisively. The charred tissue hanging from the Despot’s frame split apart in strips as fresh muscle forced itself through from beneath, wet and red and pulsing beneath blackened crust, almost like something was wriggling beneath the flesh... and still it kept getting back up.
"Mentis!" Rex shouted through the cockpit glass, voice tight with panic. "The launch governor's still locked in! I need another minute!"
The Despot's head snapped sharply toward the shuttle at the sound - its attention shifted, but not fully from Mentis. Just enough; the creature now understood the shuttle mattered.
Heavy footsteps shook the platform again as it began moving forward once more, flames still clinging in places across its asymmetrical frame. One oversized claw dragged through the duracrete hard enough to throw sparks behind it whilst strips of unstable tissue writhed visibly beneath the ruined hide of its shoulder and neck.
Inside the cockpit, Rex jammed another spike into the lower console access and physically ripped away part of the polished executive panelling to expose the systems beneath.
"There you are..." he muttered rapidly, sweat dripping from his brow as lines of old Company code flooded the screen. "Knew you’d have a manual layer somewhere."
The reactor warning sounded again overhead and another calm chime sounded, as the pleasant voice returned, the timer counting down. This time, it also added:
"Employees are reminded that panic-related behaviour may negatively impact final performance evaluations. GalactaWerks Corporation thanks you for your continued professionalism during this transition."
Outside, the Despot accelerated suddenly. Its movements had become more unstable since the fire - less restrained. The elongated arm twitched violently between steps whilst the oversized claw flexed with increasing irregularity, bits of blackened flesh still sloughing from it as new tissue forced itself through beneath.
And still it advanced directly toward Mentis and the shuttle - toward the only way off Mos Entha.
Rex swallowed hard and looked back out through the cockpit canopy, fear written plainly across his exhausted face beneath the pale instrument lights.
"Just hold it together..." he whispered under his breath, whether to the ship, Mentis, or himself even he no longer knew.
Back outside Mentis felt his heart pounding so hard it threatened to tear through his chest. He watched as the Despot shed the charred, blackened remnants of its outer flesh and revealed a newly-knitted skin. It had yet to become leathery or grow hair so it looked like a rubbery contorted mass but with that same giant claw and glassy eyes that now were now looking more at the craft than at him.
Mentis knew he had to keep the creature's attention away from the craft - while this was an executive shuttle, it was not a military craft and even a quick battering from the Despot could cripple its take-off capability.
Drawing out his weapon again, which had previously drawn the creature's attention, he raked it across the floor, spitting a brief cascade of molten sparks into the air before twisting the weapon before him in a flourish.
"This way!" he called, eyes flicking between the cockpit and the creature, "Follow the lights."
There was a brief moment of hesitation from the Despot as it too seemed to consider its target. It seemed less interested in the shimmering blue weapon now that the shuttle was beginning to rumble to life. The monster's body began to turn away and reaching towards the hull.
"No, damn you!" Mentis exclaimed and cast another, stronger bolt of lightning energy over towards the creature. It caught the softer reforming flesh with a clear fizzle and the creature shrieked and withdrew its claw, looking at its arm and seeing the reddish flesh charred again already with the intense energy.
The creature roared at Mentis with an intensity that rocked the entire bay, drowning out all the alarms and forcing Mentis to reflexively bring his hands up towards his ears.
Before he could fully recover, he saw the Despot charge at him - faster than all his previous movements as though shedding all those heavy outer layers had made it more agile. It pounced forward on all fours, more like a Nexu than the previous upright form.
Summoning a burst of frantic Force inertia, this time focussed on the Despot, Mentis paused its movement for just enough time for him to fling his own body aside and avoid another swipe from those ferocious claws. The creature shot past him, reacting quickly and skidding across the floor and tumbling into a stack of cargo at the rear of the ship, placed there by a cargo clamp that still hung above.
Mentis tried to react in turn and attempted a saber throw, casting his lightsaber towards his foe in a shimmering blue halo of light. However, the newly-built weapon was poorly weighted and the arc Mentis foresaw was erratic. The spinning blade carved towards the Despot but fell to the ground too quickly and served only to carve a gash of blinding sparks at the creature before its safety trigger fizzled the weapon out and it clattered away.
The flash did serve to hold the Despot a moment, however, and the Rattataki warrior took the moment to bring down the cargo clamp. He thrust out his hand, fingers splayed, and seized the heavy mechanism with the Force. The clamp assembly groaned overhead, its magnetic jaws hanging open like a durasteel maw. He yanked and, with a groan of stressed metal, the entire crane arm tore free and came crashing down upon the Despot.
The weight of the clamp was enough to wrench the monster, still on all fours, to the ground and the jaws of the clamp engaged around its limbs automatically as soon as Mentis stopped exerting influence on it. The creature convulsed, muscles bulging and writhing beneath half‑formed skin as it tried to wrench itself free. The clamp’s servos whined in protest, sparks spitting from the housing as the monster’s strength pushed the machinery to its limits.
Mentis staggered back, chest heaving, sweat stinging the cut along his ribs. He drew his saber back from the floor with a Force pull and clenched it tight in his hand, immediately testing that it would still ignite after the throw. He was relieved when that brilliant blue light once again sputtered forth.
He looked up, seeing the creature's resistance and feeling its rage, knowing it was more than capable of tearing through metal as it had done with the blast door. He could feel the creature’s rage like heat against his skin and, for a moment, his thoughts went again to the scrape on his arm before he dismissed it once again.
He wrenched out his free hand once again and began squeezing the clamps with his own powers. The clamp’s jaws tightened under the telekinetic pressure, bending inward with a tortured groan. For a moment, the Despot’s limbs were forced tighter against its torso, its movements stuttering as the servos fought to hold position.
Then the creature twisted.
Not with strength alone, but with that same grotesque, reorganising motion its body used to heal. Bones shifted. Muscle slid. Joints reoriented. With a wet, cracking wrench, the Despot’s shoulder collapsed inward, dislocating itself entirely to slip through the narrowing gap. The clamp snapped shut behind it violently but it was too late: the Despot was once again free.
Mentis barely had time to register the failure before the creature surged upward and hit him like a landspeeder. Still reforming its shape after the dislocation, the creature did not swipe but merely charged at him with its full force. The chalk-skinned combatant was thrown away and he slammed into the deck hard enough to knock the breath from his lungs. He barely held on to his saber as pain flared along his ribs and his vision blurred from the shock.
He saw the blurry shape of the claw coming down upon him and rolled aside just barely in time to see the dark claws carve deep gashes into the ground. He felt the grit from the duracrete showering his face with how close it was.
Mentis scrambled to his feet, half‑stumbling, half‑dragging himself upright. His breath came ragged. His side burned. His fingers trembled as he struggled to hold his blade aloft. Another thrum came from behind the creature as Rex brought another system to life. As his eyes re-settled he saw the Despot turning once again to face the shuttle.
Its head lifted, nostrils flaring at the rising heat. The engines were fully activated now, the repulsors whining, the air shimmering behind the craft in rippling waves.
"No..." Mentis cried out, voice still raw and failing to muster the same conviction as before.
He lunged forward, slashing at the creature’s flank. The blade bit deep, carving a molten line through half‑formed muscle. The Despot shrieked and staggered, but its momentum didn’t break. It simply redirected, now pushing toward the rear of the shuttle, toward the engine cones glowing hotter by the second.
Mentis saw its path and wondered if, like with his saber, it was drawn to the heat. The faintest flickers of a plan came to him as he watched it marching on and he knew he could not hesitate: he threw himself between the creature and the ship, driving it back with a flurry of desperate strikes. He knew he would not kill the creature, but he might just be able to herd it where he wanted. Each blow forced the Despot a step sideways, then another, then another, angling it toward the widening cone of shimmering heat behind the shuttle.
The creature roared and lashed out, catching Mentis across the shoulder and sending him sprawling again. He hit the deck hard, sliding across the sand‑dusted floor until he collided with a support strut. His vision became blurry again and his ears rang with a terrible whine, yet he felt his saber firm in his hand.
He saw the shape of the Despot, now at the rear of the ship, reaching out again to claw at the vessel. But, this time, he was standing somewhere much more dangerous.
Wrenching himself up onto one knee, Mentis summoned enough air into his body and, with the aid of the Force, bellowed out to Rex.
"It's right by the thrusters Rex! Burn it now!"
For half a second, Rex simply stared. The words reached him through the cockpit canopy, distorted slightly beneath the growing thunder of the engines, but the meaning landed instantly.
The Despot and the thrusters - now.
His eyes snapped toward the rear camera feed. The creature's immense silhouette occupied the display almost entirely. Mentis had somehow done it. Somehow, against every sane expectation, he had forced the thing exactly where it needed to be. It stood within the widening shimmer of exhaust wash, still reaching for the shuttle through waves of distorted heat.
His hand slammed down across the ignition controls.
Outside, the engine cones flared from brilliant white to something closer to a miniature sun. The landing platform vanished beneath a torrent of superheated plasma and the Despot disappeared inside it. The initial blast struck like a physical wall. Duracrete cracked and exploded outward beneath the engines. Loose sand instantly became glass and cargo containers nearest the shuttle buckled and burst apart, fragments vaporising before they could even hit the deck.
Mentis felt the heat wash across him even from where he had fallen. The air itself seemed to ignite - his clothing snapped violently in the exhaust gale and he was forced to shield his face as the world became white fire.
At the centre of it all stood the Despot. For the first second, it somehow endured. Yet, for the second after that, it finally became to come apart. Freshly reformed skin vanished first, stripped away in sheets. Muscle followed almost immediately afterwards, boiling away from the skeleton beneath. The oversized claw blackened, cracked, and began shedding fragments like burning stone. Tubes melted and teeth shattered.
Still, it remained upright. Its body tried desperately to rebuild itself even as it was being destroyed. Raw tissue surged across exposed bone, which then warped and thickened. New muscle still forced itself outward - only for the thrusters to tear it away again.
The process repeated over and over in horrifying succession, flying between regeneration and destruction. The Despot's entire body became a war between opposing forces. And, for the first time, something deeper revealed itself; beneath the burning flesh and reconstructed organs lay something that was not entirely Wookiee, Trandoshan or Blackwing. A dense core of writhing biological matter became briefly visible at the centre of its torso. Tendrils of muscle and nerve radiated outward from it in all directions, desperately trying to rebuild the creature around itself every time the engines stripped another layer away.
It pulsed, contracted and expanded - alive and trying to survive. Some part of Mentis' far-off recollections recalled the Gen'Dai species, of its miraculous ability to regenerate, its true form little more than a writhing mass of tentacles - it must have been the final component within this awful amalgam GalactaWerks had forced together.
The thrusters kept burning, nevertheless. The landing pad beneath the Despot began failing outright now. Duracrete glowed red-hot beneath the sustained assault. Support struts warped visibly and one section of plating collapsed entirely into the levels below, exposing twisted framework and burning conduits beneath.
Then another facility-wide alert sounded. The pleasant corporate voice had become slightly more urgent now and a sequence of warning tones echoed across Mos Entha, some ancient siren mechanism signalling across the fallen settlement.
One standard minute left.
Somewhere nearby the platform came a tremendous crash. Mentis heard it even through the engines and a chain of impacts followed.
Far behind them, emergency bulkheads and shattered access doors gave way as dozens upon dozens of infected workers, corporate busybodies, technicians and marines finally broke free of the areas that had contained them since the quarantine began. Through broken windows and damaged corridors, pale figures now began spilling toward the landing platform, drawn by light, heat and movement - a whole tide of them.
Within the inferno, a tiny writhing mass of black-filled pustule-like tentacles was finally blasted away, the ground beneath falling away and consuming it in the structure beneath - but great cracks spread further across the landing pad, barely giving Mentis time to rush to the ship and for them to safely take off.
Not sparing another glance at the collapsing mass or the other swarming figures, Mentis wrenched himself back upwards and tried to sprint but halted momentarily as he felt a sharp pain in his ankle. Whether it was broken or just twisted, he didn't have time to determine. He limped swiftly onwards and ascended the ramp into the executive shuttle, thrusters now settling down from their full burn but still churning the air with amplified heat.
He pulled himself against one of the shuttle seats and half collapsed, panting as his adrenaline and Force endurance began to wane.
"Rex..." he winced, finding his throat sore from bellowing, "Please tell me we're ready..."
Rex did not answer immediately. His hand hovered above the flight controls as the shuttle trembled around him, engines primed and the governor finally defeated. Through the canopy and spaceport, he knew Mos Entha stretched beneath the night. Even through smoke and emergency lighting he knew he could recognise the old streets, the industrial blocks clustered around the Company works, and the neighbourhoods that had spent generations feeding their machines. He had not called it home for years, but some part of him still recognised it as such. His father had worked here. He and his mother had died here. He had learned to repair machines, learned to survive, and eventually learned to leave. In less than a minute, none of it would remain.
The decision was taken from him by a violent impact against the hull. Warning indicators flashed across one of the auxiliary displays, revealing infected figures spilling onto the landing platform and throwing themselves against the ship as it prepared to depart. Pale hands scraped across polished plating whilst others stumbled through the heat and smoke behind them. Rex swore beneath his breath and shoved the controls forward.
The repulsors roared to full power. The shuttle surged upward, tearing free of the platform and throwing several infected back into the collapsing structure below. Others lost their footing and vanished into smoke and debris as the vessel climbed. Only once the landing pad had fallen away beneath them did Rex glance toward Mentis, who had collapsed heavily into one of the passenger seats. The Rattataki looked exhausted beyond words, bruised, bleeding and barely upright after everything the facility had thrown at him.
"Yeah," Rex said quietly, his eyes returning to the canopy. "We're ready."
The final announcement began before either of them could say anything further. That corporate voice echoed through the shuttle's systems one last time, calm and professional despite the catastrophe unfolding below. The countdown reached its conclusion and, for a fraction of a second, nothing seemed to happen.
Then, Mos Entha vanished.
The explosion began deep beneath the settlement and erupted upward with terrifying speed. Entire districts disappeared inside a sphere of incandescent energy as the overloaded system finally failed. Buildings were simply erased. Towers folded inward and vanished. The Company facility at the centre of the disaster ceased to exist beneath expanding waves of fire and secondary detonations. Fuel reserves ignited and docking infrastructure shattered.
The shockwave followed moments later and the executive shuttle shuddered violently as the expanding wall of force caught it broadside. Rex was thrown hard against his restraints whilst every alarm aboard erupted simultaneously. Fire, dust and debris swallowed the canopy. Something large struck the underside of the vessel, sending a metallic shudder through the entire frame, and the shuttle immediately rolled out of control.
Rex fought the controls with both hands as fire and desert spun together beyond the glass. One engine briefly flamed out before stuttering back to life. Warning lights multiplied across the console as the vessel corkscrewed through the night sky until, through equal parts skill and desperation, he finally managed to wrestle some measure of control back from the chaos.
Even then, the damage was done. The navigation display flickered erratically, reporting course deviations and system faults across multiple subsystems. Behind them, where Mos Entha had stood for generations, only a burning wound remained in the desert.
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