The Master's Mercy, Part Three

Posted on Mon Oct 12th, 2026 @ 6:12pm by Mange & Hollow & Kelderesh jai Nektus

3,968 words; about a 20 minute read

Chapter: Chapter IX: The First Verse
Location: Refugee Station, Bothan Space
Timeline: In the days after "Hollow Pursuits"

The station changed as they advanced. The refugee concourses and reception areas had been open places, designed to move frightened people efficiently between medical stations, temporary accommodation and departing transports. Here, nearer the critical treatment sectors, the architecture narrowed considerably. Reinforced bulkheads divided the passageways at regular intervals and broad observation windows gave way to thick durasteel partitions. White overhead illumination flickered beneath emergency power whilst crimson strips embedded into the floor painted the lower walls in bloody light.

The defenders had changed with it, too. Panic was now giving way to organisation. At the first major intersection, a barricade had been assembled from overturned medical beds, stacked supply containers and two portable blast shields. Bothan personnel crouched behind it alongside Judicial officers and armed station workers. Someone had mounted a heavy repeating blaster upon the central emplacement. Its barrel tracked through the smoke as the first cultists rounded the corner.

The cannon opened fire; three disappeared beneath the barrage before they had taken another step. Red bolts hammered through armour, flesh and cloth with such violence that one acolyte was spun completely from his feet and smashed against the wall. Another collapsed screaming as most of his right arm vanished above the elbow.

Those behind scattered for cover - but Mange did not. The albino Wookiee emerged through the haze like some enormous white apparition dragged from the oldest nightmares of Kashyyyk. Both enormous lightsabers erupted into life, his sharpened claws, both organic and mechanical, gripping the sharp-edged hilts tightly as he advanced. Mange roared as the cannon turned upon him. The first bolt met one crimson blade and ricocheted into the ceiling, whilst the second struck the other and disappeared back towards the barricade, and the third slipped between them.

It tore into Mange's shoulder and white fur vaporised. The smell of scorched hair filled the corridor, and the impact turned the enormous Wookiee sideways by half a step. He looked down at the smoking wound then back towards the gunner. His cracked lips pulled slowly away from yellowed teeth as he then accelerated. The cannon fired again but Mange twisted one blade across his chest and knocked the shot into the ceiling. Another struck the heavy metallic guard of his opposite weapon and burst apart in a shower of sparks close enough to blacken the fur along his forearm.

Still, he came, and the gunner adjusted desperately.

Mange's cybernetic hand closed and the entire emplacement shuddered. Metal shrieked across the deck as the portable shield and repeating cannon tore loose from their supports. The Bothan operating it barely had time to release the controls before weapon, shield and gunner were ripped bodily across the barricade. Mange then swept his arm upward and the whole assembly struck the ceiling hard.

The gunner disappeared somewhere inside the collapsing machinery and the Wookiee reached the barricade a heartbeat later. Rather than leaping it, he smashed his way through. Medical beds, crates and portable shields exploded outward beneath the collision of his enormous frame. One Judicial officer disappeared beneath a tumbling supply cabinet and another managed to raise his rifle before Mange's right-hand blade came diagonally downward and passed through weapon, armour and torso in one stroke.

His second lightsaber extinguished but the heavy hilt remained in his hand. Mange smashed the jagged metallic projection across the face of an approaching Bothan, and there was a wet crack before teeth scattered across the wall. Before the soldier could truly fall fall, sharpened claws raked through the front of his uniform and hurled him bodily aside.

The cultists surged through the breach their vanguard had created, and both Kelderesh and Hollow followed, almost serenely.

A Judicial officer lunged from behind the broken barricade with a vibroknife aimed toward Hollow's throat. Against Mange's enormous brutality, the young Muun seemed almost impossibly delicate; tall but exceedingly narrow, long-limbed and pale beneath the folds of her clothing.

She shifted merely half a step and the knife missed. Hollow caught the attacker's wrist between both hands and allowed his own momentum to draw him past her. The rusted-orange blade sprang into existence with a low, guttural hum, and one short movement opened the officer's back from shoulder to hip.

Hollow stepped over him as another defender fired farther down the corridor. She lifted one long hand and the bolt passed several centimetres from her face, bent away rather than deflected.

At her side appeared Kelderesh, his clawed fingers extended rather than his lightsaber, carving through the haze of blaster smoke as though shaping it. His eyes flicked to the young Muun for a moment as he passed before centring on the remaining defenders.

He thrust one hand upwards and several of the armoured Bothans shot to the ceiling, along with the beds and artillery that had just been their line of defence. Now it was just another weapon against them. His other hand carved a path to the left and the remaining resistance was pinned to the left wall.

The Kaleesh held the position, his sharp gritted teeth growing ever more visible below his bone mask, as he crushed the air within their lungs. With the way cleared, Mange charged forwards to meet another line of soldiers forming at the next junction, just in front of a heavy bulkhead. Already blaster fire began to pepper the narrow hallway and Kelderesh grunted and thrust his hands down, bringing their opposition to the ground with deadly force.

The resistance was clearly growing more determined as they approached the medical wing.

Several passageways had been sealed completely. One adjoining section had been deliberately depressurised and abandoned rather than surrendered intact. Elsewhere, wounded personnel withdrew in carefully protected groups rather than fleeing individually.

Whoever remained in command had stopped trying to defend the entire station. They were contracting, bringing themselves closer to the Cult's quarry and it's powerful defender.

As they strode on, Kelderesh reluctantly abandoned the elegance of the Force for the certainty of his dusty red lightsaber, joining Hollow and the others in cutting down any of the fallen Bothans that still drew breath, while Mange cleared the path further along.

Another sealed bulkhead blocked their primary route ahead. Mange still strode toward it, both crimson blades ignited. The Wookiee drove them simultaneously into the centre of the door. The metal glowed orange before turning a brilliant white. Mange dragged both weapons outward with a deafening shriek of tortured durasteel, cutting two great diagonal scars through the bulkhead. He extinguished one blade, thrust sharpened claws into the molten opening and pulled.

Hydraulics ruptured as the door folded inward, and blaster fire erupted immediately from the far side, and Mange disappeared through it.

The sounds that followed were brief. A roar, several shots and screaming. Then, the unmistakable hum of lightsabers cutting through metal and flesh.

Hollow followed Kelderesh and the surviving cultists through the opening - and immediately felt it. A beacon of power in the Force, bright and fierce, but not the younger presence they had encountered behind them. This was something older, tired and controlled, powerful enough that the fear saturating the station seemed almost to bend around it. She had been confronted with incredible dark power numerously within the Cult in servitude to Axion, to the extent where it was what she was accustomed to. This, however, was unlike anything she had confronted before.

The medical wing opened before them, and rows of treatment stations stretched beneath harsh white illumination. Several had been hastily abandoned, bloodied sheets still hanging from them. Others remained occupied by wounded Bothans, Humans and aliens whose evacuation had apparently been interrupted by the attack. Medical droids hurried amongst them whilst attendants struggled to move those still capable of movement towards the rear wards.

At the far end stood another set of blast doors that were open. Beyond them waited the final defence: more Bothan soldiers and Judicials, as well as Rift Jedi auxiliaries - perhaps two dozen in all.

None fired yet, as someone stood before them. It was an old woman - the source of the power she had felt before. A Zabrak, she stood almost casually before the defenders gathered behind her. Time had settled deeply around her eyes and mouth and softened tattoos that had once been much darker across her skin. Several of her cranial horns bore old damage. One had been broken almost to the scalp and never regrown properly. Another ended bluntly where some ancient injury had shorn away its point.

The rest of her body told the continuation of that story. One leg was largely mechanical beneath segmented armour plating. The opposite hip disappeared beneath a reinforced assembly that travelled upward beneath her clothing. Synthetic supports showed briefly along the side of her neck before vanishing beneath scarred flesh. Her left arm was prosthetic above the elbow, an older design polished smooth in places through decades of use and repair rather than replaced simply because newer technology existed.

She wore no elaborate Jedi robes, but instead a battered flight jacket that sat over lightweight armour. A yellow lightsaber rested loosely in her organic hand whilst a blaster pistol occupied the mechanical one. Several narrow throwing blades sat openly across her belt, and there was no attempt to disguise what she intended to do with any of them.

Kelderesh came to a rest at the centre of the line of cultists that was growing as they weaved through the melted doorway and spilled into the medical wing. Beside him, a panting, snarling Mange was already flitting his head around the larger room, while keeping his hulking body firmly angled at the single combatant who stood before them. On his other side, Hollow stood like a quiet obelisk, resonating with untapped, yet unmistakable power.

With a dry hiss, the leather-bound hilt of the Kaleesh cultist's weapon retracted its plasma and was secreted back into his robes. Drawing his right arm out again, he caressed the air before him, gesturing in the direction of the armed older woman before his army of dark warriors.

His jaw lowered and he held his tongue for but a moment before drawing his lips together to pour out Axion's sermon.

"The will of Axion has arrived in your midst, infidels," the venomous words spoken precisely as his darkened yellow eyes pierced the woman, "We are His will and decree that the architect droid in your possession is rightly taken by us on this day. Deliver it unto us and the suffering of yourselves and those you protect will be minimised. Alternative action is futile. Negotiation is not an option."

His fingers curled into a clenched fist as he concluded his sentence.

For several moments, the Rift Guardian Jan Varsk simply stared at Kelderesh. Her expression betrayed little beyond exhaustion, though the muzzle of the blaster in her mechanical hand shifted almost imperceptibly until it rested upon the Kaleesh. Behind her, Gnayuh remained motionless amongst the defenders, whilst the old Zabrak's lightsaber still hung at her side.

"You came aboard a relief station under a false distress signal, butchered its wounded and murdered your way through the people trying to protect them," Jan said at last, her voice remarkably quiet. "Don't insult me by pretending you're offering mercy."

Beside Kelderesh, Mange's cracked lips peeled back from his teeth and a low growl rolled from somewhere deep within his enormous chest. One crimson blade remained burning at his side, blood and soot mottling the brilliant white fur surrounding it.

Hollow was quieter still. Her dark eyes remained fixed upon the old Jedi, feeling the extraordinary discipline behind that tired presence and, for perhaps the first time since leaving the enclave, understanding that the figure before her was not merely another obstacle awaiting execution.

Jan's thumb shifted against the blaster's grip. "Negotiation isn't an option?" The faintest trace of a something touched her age-lined mouth. "Good."

She fired.

The cluster of cultists shot to either side, like insects scattering away from a beam of light. But the momentary reaction quickly morphed into a surge of bodies back towards Guardian Varsk from all angles; blades of burning plasma shrieking down towards the older woman.

Jan answered with a hail of her own blaster fire across the medical bay, deftly avoiding the final wounded occupants who were being evacuated, while bringing up her own lightsaber to meet the quickest attackers to reach her. The surprising strength in her arm as it cast away the first cultist was impressive, throwing the young man back and over a drug trolley, with a nasty plasma burn straight through his dark cape and searing into the flesh of his right side. The next attacker, a female Duros with pale, haunting eyes, caught her guard and held it, so Jan turned her blaster to the woman and sent a blaster bolt into her leg, sending her opponent crumpling down and ready to kick away.

Kelderesh held back, just off from the centre, away from the Rift Guardian's blaster side. His eyes drilled past the defending Jedi to the other defenders and Rift Jedi, holding the line and helping the final patients through that made it to them. He scowled at the frustrating bottleneck they faced and instead looked up to an upper mezzanine level behind a wide transpariseel observation window, that overlooked the medical bay. Behind the window, a smattering of individuals in medical scrubs and white coats fearfully cast their eyes down at the melee. Behind them, a passageway down - perhaps another way into the inner wards.

Gritting his teeth, he reached his arms out and felt for the inevitable breakpoint in the transparisteel. Through the tendrils of the Force, he found a loose thread and allowed his influence to force it apart. Silent against the conflict directly below, a crack began to tear across the face of the viewing window.

The crack across the transparisteel did not escape Jan Varsk. Her eyes never left the attackers before her, but something in her expression tightened as the fracture spread soundlessly across the observation window above. She had spent too many years in cockpit not to recognise failing transparisteel when she saw it. She knew someone was looking for another way around.

She did not have time to warn the defenders before Mange came for her. The Wookiee crossed the remaining distance with terrifying speed. One of the twin blades descended in a brutal diagonal arc intended to break straight through her guard, whilst the second swept low enough to remove both legs if she attempted simply to retreat. Jan gave him neither contest aa her yellow blade snapped upward only long enough to glance the first strike aside before she twisted her reconstructed body around the second, the edge passing so close that its heat scorched the fabric of her flight jacket.

Mange roared and came after her again, but Jan stepped inside him. Her mechanical hand drove the muzzle of her blaster almost directly against the exposed workings of his cybernetic wrist and fired twice. The first bolt burst against the armoured housing in a shower of sparks; the second struck deeper between the plates and made the enormous hand spasm violently around its lightsaber hilt. Mange snarled and swung for her with the other weapon, but Jan was already gone, one damaged mechanical leg carrying her sideways with an ungainly efficiency that looked nothing like conventional Jedi footwork.

"Still too slow," she muttered, although it did not carry much weight to antagonise the albino.

Behind Mange, Hollow watched. There was no fear in the young Muun's expression, but something colder and more useful had begun to replace the quiet certainty with which she had entered the medical wing. Mange possessed power enough to tear apart barricades and soldiers alike, yet the old woman had allowed him less than a second of meaningful contact before injuring him. Varsk did not move like Verse. She did not move like Kelderesh. She did not even move like the Rift warrior left behind at the junction.

She moved like someone who had already survived every mistake she could make, her body being clear testament to that.

Jan's gaze then flicked upward once more, as the crack was exerting power upon had widened.

"Gnayuh," she called.

The architect droid rotated its head towards her. "Yes, First Guardian?"

"Lantern protocol," she said simply.

"That protocol has not been invoked in one hundred and eighty-seven years," it replied.

Gnayuh then considered the brief glare from the Rift Jedi as she continued her conflict with the cultists before nodding sagely without further comment. Panels along the droid's narrow torso immediately sealed and its delicate manipulators folded inward and locked against its frame whilst a data connection running from its lower back released with a soft hiss. The ageing machine turned away from the battle and began moving towards the rear wards with surprising urgency.

Hollow's eyes followed it - the prize was moving! Kelderesh saw it too and he snarled his frustration at the old woman delaying their task.

Above them, the crack across the transparisteel lengthened again. Channelling the frustration he was feeling into power, the Kaleesh clenched both his hands.

The entire transparisteel face exploded inwards, as though the vacuum of space itself had suddenly seized hold of it. The whole screen became thousands of minute shards of near-invisible metal that whipped through the upper deck, cutting through medics, attendants and technicians alike. Bodies collapsed against the glittering storm, white coats dyed red in an instant.

The screams and gargled cries lasted only a moment before being drowned by the sound of combat once again, with Kelderesh now setting his gaze again on the corridor beyond and the path to the architect droid. He reached out and felt the imprint of the unique droid, fading as it got further away.

He snarled again before shooting out an arm in the direction of the young Muun cultist.

"Hollow!" his voice commanded her attention across the din, "Take the higher path and head off the machine."

The clawed finger of his other hand traced the path he intended her to take.

"We will follow below once she is dealt with," he continued, his burning yellow eyes settled upon Jan Varsk, "Do not let it escape."

Hollow did not hesitate. She bent deeply at the knees and sprang. The Force caught her almost immediately, carrying the impossibly slender Muun upwards in a sweeping arc towards the ruined observation level. Her dark robes streamed behind her as she passed through the rain of settling transparisteel and disappeared beyond the shattered frame, landing amongst overturned chairs, bloodied medical equipment and the bodies of those Kelderesh had cut apart without ever laying a hand upon them.

Jan saw her go - there was nothing she could do about it, as Mange was already upon her again. The albino Wookiee had recovered from the damage to his mechanical wrist with terrifying speed, transferring more of the burden of his weapon into the enormous organic hand whilst the damaged cybernetics spasmed and recalibrated. He came forward with neither elegance nor hesitation, both blades hammering at Jan's position in alternating sweeps that forced the octogenarian Zabrak backwards between treatment stations.

She gave ground deliberately and Mange followed. Jan's blade caught the inside edge of one crimson weapon and rolled with it rather than trying to stop its momentum. The second came across immediately afterwards and she dropped beneath it, one mechanical knee striking the floor hard enough to dent the plating beneath her.

The great blade passed over her horns and Jan fired upwards. The bolt struck Mange beneath the ribs, and his roar shook the ward - but it was not enough. He kicked and she barely brought her prosthetic arm across in time. The impact lifted her bodily from the floor and threw her backwards through a wheeled diagnostic unit. Plastoid shattered around her and something inside her reconstructed hip gave an audible metallic complaint.

Mange advanced, but then three blaster bolts struck him from behind. The first scorched across his back whilst the second buried itself beneath one shoulder blade. The third struck the bandolier crossing his white fur and blew several of its compartments apart.

Mange wheeled with a murderous howl. Across the ward, Judicial personnel had re-established a firing line behind the remaining portable cover.

"Again!" Jan shouted.

They fired and Mange's blades rose. Jan raised two fingers and the bolts changed course, but not dramatically, not even enough that an observer unfamiliar with the Force would necessarily have understood what had happened. Each shot simply seemed to find a fractionally different line through the chaos, converging upon the Wookiee from angles his enormous weapons could not cover simultaneously.

One struck his thigh and another tore through the flesh high upon his shoulder. The final burst against the damaged housing of his mechanical forearm and showered his white coat in sparks. Mange bellowed and hurled one hand outward, so a treatment bed was ripped from the floor and flew towards the Judicials.

Jan caught it halfway and for a heartbeat, the repulsor-bed hung trembling between them. Then, the old Jedi twisted her wrist and the bed reversed direction. Mange had just enough time to turn before hundreds of kilograms of medical equipment smashed broadside into his chest and carried him backwards into a support column.

"Keep firing!" Jan barked as someone landed beside her - and a green lightsaber ignited.

Jan's head snapped around. One of the remaining Rift Knights had returned through the rear doors, breathing hard, his blade already raised as he positioned himself protectively beside the First Guardian.

For the first time since the battle began, genuine anger flashed across Jan's face.

"What are you doing?" She seethed.

The other Jedi glanced towards the enormous Wookiee dragging himself free of the wreckage.

"Helping you!" He declared.

"I told you to stay with the withdrawal."

"You're outnumbered!" He growled back, his blade entering a Soresu stance, his eyes shifting between their opponents quickly.

"Nobody is covering the withdrawal!" Jan growled back.

The Knight's jaw tightened. "I'm not leaving you here, First Guardian!"

Jan stared at him for perhaps half a second,but there was no time for more. Mange tore the twisted treatment bed apart with both hands and emerged from behind it, his once brilliant coat now scorched black in several places and wet with fresh blood. His mechanical wrist sparked violently, one leg dragged slightly beneath him and a smoking wound marked his ribs. He somehow looked more dangerous than before and Jan exhaled through her nose.

"Fine," she said quickly as her eyes flicked towards Kelderesh. "Then make yourself useful. Keep the Kaleesh away from me."

The Rift Knight adjusted his blade whilst Jan turned back towards Mange.

The Kaleesh was already on the move, his wispy robes snapping at his feet as he strode with power towards the Rift Jedi. As he walked, he wrenched one of the nearby Judicials up and held him as a Bothan shield as he walked forwards. A couple of over-eager defenders let off a few shots before they realised what was happening and found themselves firing at their comrade.

When in range of the green-bladed Knight, he flung the wounded shield towards his opponent and drew out his blade. The knights eyes followed the Bothan with a quiet anger as he sidestepped the attack and carved his weapon down to meet the Vermillion blade that came up to his body. For a moment, they locked eyes in wordless judgement before Kelderesh slid to one side and attacked from another angle. His moves were not aggressive; not yet. But he would find his opening in this foolish challenger. He always did.

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