Empty Entha
Posted on Sun Feb 22nd, 2026 @ 6:05pm by Mentis & Kalen "Rex" Vickers
4,081 words; about a 20 minute read
Chapter:
Chapter VIII: Broken Chains
Location: Mos Entha, Tatooine
Timeline: High Sun, After "The Long Dune"
OLD
As he finally reached the top edge of the wall, shortly after Mentis, Rex stopped.
For a long second, he did not move. Then, very slowly, he pulled himself up and crouched, one hand braced against the stone as he looked down into the settlement proper.
The wind stirred faintly, carrying with it the smell of hot sand, old metal, and something else underneath - something stale and offensive.
The stench of decay.
NEW
From the wall, Mos Entha lay open beneath them in the harsh, unforgiving light of the suns. The settlement looked wrong in ways that were difficult to catalogue at first glance. Buildings stood intact, but uneasy. Doors were sealed with improvised barricades from the inside, durasteel sheets bolted over entryways that had never been designed to withstand a siege. Antennae lay snapped or bent at unnatural angles, some torn clean from their mounts, others twisted as if something heavy had fallen against them. An overturned speeder rested in the street below, only slightly covered by drifting sand, its undercarriage exposed like the belly of a dead animal. Banners and GalactaWerks signs littered the roads, whilst others barely clung to buildings and poles. Power was still running for most buildings.
There were scorch marks now, too. Not the scattered, chaotic burns of a Tusken raid, but controlled, directional scoring along walls and doorframes. Blaster fire, but disciplined, and even holes from slugthrowers. Near the speeder, darkened handprints smeared across the hull where someone had tried to pull themselves up, fingers dragged down through drying blood. A thin trail led away from it, disturbed sand mixed with darker stains, disappearing into the narrow mouth of a nearby hovel. The doorway there was blocked, planks and scrap welded into place. Whatever had gone inside had not come back out.
Rex crouched beside Mentis, shoulders tight, eyes fixed on the streets below. His fear was no longer something he bothered to disguise. It sat in his posture, in the way his breathing had gone shallow, in the way his hand hovered near his blaster without ever quite drawing it. This was not the wariness of a smuggler sizing up a bad port. This was personal. This was a man staring down the bones of the place he had grown up in, recognising it even as it lay broken before them. For a moment, it looked as though he might say something, but his jaw set instead, and whatever words might have come stayed locked behind his teeth.
After a beat, Rex shifted back from the wall and dropped down onto the street with a muted thud, boots sinking slightly into the sand. He did not look back as he started forward, moving with purpose now, threading between abandoned stalls and shuttered homes, following routes he had learned long ago. He slowed only long enough to check corners and doorways, then glanced back once, just enough to make sure Mentis was with him.
"C’mon," he said quietly.
Mentis looked around uneasily for a moment, appearing uncertain of whether to follow Rex down, but quickly cast the thought aside and obliged.
Silently, the Rattataki swept down into the shaded street and stayed low as he cast his gaze around. The stench was thicker down here and the two of them stood for a moment, realising the horror of what had occurred here, even if the true nature of it was still hidden from them. From behind, a faint desert breeze weaved through the street, fluttering the torn fabric that still clung to the frame of a market stall and urging them forward with its faint pressure.
They obliged and slowly inched forwards, rounding a corner, where a small convenience shop resided. The doorway was open, with some attempt at barring it being unsuccessful and the shutters were half-lowered, appearing to have jammed on something in the corner. The pair stopped before it, staring into the darkened interior with concern and curiosity.
"Doesn't look like everyone managed to close up shop in time for whatever it was that went down," Mentis observed, stepping gently forwards.
A sun-bleached banner above declared the establishment, 'Marrlo's Corner'.
Darkness pressed close inside the shop, thick and warm like breath trapped beneath a blanket. Something moved in it: slow, sticky, dragging.
Marrlo’s remaining eye, clouded and milky, twitched beneath a half‑closed lid. His cheek was fused to the floor by dried blood, and when he lifted his head, it came away with a soft, tearing sound. His jaw hung slack, working in small, instinctive motions as though chewing on a memory.
A faint sound filtered through the shutters inviting scattered thoughts in his fragmented mind: Voices...Footsteps...Alive?
Marrlo’s fingers flexed against the floorboards, nails cracked and blackened. He turned toward the sliver of light beneath the half‑lowered shutter. He dragged himself forward an inch with his one remaining arm, then another inch.
An all-consuming hunger guided him.
Rex did not step inside Marrlo’s Corner. Instead, he shifted slightly to the side of the doorway, back to the sun-warmed stone, letting his eyes adjust while Mentis peered through the half-lowered shutter. The smell was worse here. Thicker. Sweet and wrong beneath the dry tang of Tatooine dust.
The street around them bore more signs of struggle the closer they looked. Classic Tatooine architecture - rounded sandstone facades, inset doorways, shallow archways carved generations ago - were streaked now with long, drying smears of red. Handprints dragged downward along pale walls where people had tried to brace themselves. One doorway bore a set of prints so clear that the ridges of fingers were still visible in the blood, five distinct trails that ended abruptly at the threshold.
Farther down the street, just past a collapsed market awning, lay a heap of droids.
They were not the rusted shells of old farm units. These were GalactaWerks models - sleek, angular security frames with faded yellow striping along their plating. A pair of GWM1-derived labour enforcers lay split open at the torso, internal cabling spilled across the sand like exposed intestines. A smaller surveillance unit had been crushed flat, its photoreceptor lens cracked clean down the centre. One of the heavier sentry units had been torn apart with such force that its arm had been wrenched completely free from its socket.
There were blaster burns on some of them, but others had simply been ripped.
Rex moved toward the pile without comment, crouching beside the largest frame. He reached out and nudged one severed limb with the barrel of his blaster, turning it over to inspect the damage. His brow furrowed.
"These are Company," he said quietly, more to the street than to Mentis.
He studied the damage more closely, fingers hovering over a split seam in the plating before pulling back. The metal was bent inward, not blown apart. Not disabled, but torn.
His eyes flicked briefly to the buildings around them, calculating distances, lines of sight, avenues of retreat. Whatever had done this had not been short on strength. Behind him, the half-lowered shutter of Marrlo’s Corner rattled faintly as something inside shifted against it.
Rex’s attention snapped back toward the shop, blaster rising instinctively though he did not fire. He held still, listening, and half-watching Mentis.
The desert breeze moved again, whispering through the narrow street, stirring loose fabric and carrying with it that same stale, offensive rot.
For a moment, nothing else happened.
Rex exhaled slowly and glanced back toward the droids, clearly weighing whether to attempt access to one of the units. If any internal memory core had survived, it might hold something useful. A timestamp or a security feed. Perhaps even a log entry.
He stepped closer to one of the less-damaged chassis and reached down, fingers brushing the access seam at the back of its neck plating.
Then, he noticed Mentis bending lower by the shutter.
Rex straightened immediately.
"Mantis-" he began, voice low but sharp, little more than a stern whisper.
His gaze followed the line of Mentis’ attention to the dark wedge where the metal slats had jammed. Something pale was caught there, wedged between shutter and frame. At first glance it might have been torn cloth.
It was not.
The skin was sun-leathered and split, blood long dried along the knuckles. The forearm disappeared into the darkness of the shop interior.
The shutter creaked under the slightest pressure.
Rex’s grip tightened on his blaster as he took a single step forward. The Rattataki may not have drawn the same conclusion.
"I don’t-"
Mentis interrupted Rex’s warning with a small, dismissive splay of his fingers and a widening of his mis-matched eyes.
"I’ll be careful," he murmured, before returning his attention to the object in the shutters, leaning forwards to get a better glimpse.
Rex stayed half a step back, watching the Rattataki crouch toward the jammed shutter. The smell coming from the gap was enough to make his stomach turn, but Mentis pushed closer, squinting into the gloom.
A moment later, his voice confirmed Rex's suspicions:
"…it’s...an arm. A severed arm."
There was an uncomfortable pause.
"There's something else," Mentis added, "It's still clouded, but I'm sensing something..."
Suddenly, there was a burst of noise from the shop's interior. A rasping, strained snarl paired with scrambled clattering. Mentis shot back suddenly, pulling his arms back instinctively just as something lurched out of the darkness behind the shutters.
Rex only caught a glimpse: the ridged, once‑orange features of a Nikto, now leached to a sickly grey, skin drawn tight over the sharp angles of its skull. The creature’s jaw hung slack and crooked, tusk‑like teeth exposed in a warped snarl. Its eyes, normally alert and predatory, were filmed white like frosted glass, unfocused yet ravenous.
The impact rattled the whole frame and the trapped arm was nudged an inch as Mentis recoiled from the one outstretched arm grasping for him that remained attached to the decaying humanoid. His boots skidded in the sand as he jerked backward, the Nikto still battering the shutters as it tried to propel itself desperately toward its target.
The other trapped arm shifted again. It rolled and finally came free.
The shutter dropped like a guillotine, falling to the floor with a deafening clang that resonated down the sandstone streets.
The metal slammed down onto the creature's upper torso, pinning him in place. His ruined mouth gnashed uselessly at the air, hands clawing at the sand as he writhed beneath the weight.
The pair stood for a moment, bodies processing the sound and shock, watching the now-wearier Nikto before them snarl more faintly, no air left in its lungs to cry any louder.
Then, as the first impact settled, they heard something more: soft, distant, multiplying.
Murmurs rising from the alleys. Shuffling from behind sealed doors. The settlement, seemingly dead moments ago, had been roused by the noise.
Mentis just stared at Rex, breath tight, the look of someone who had just stepped into a nightmare he wasn’t prepared for and needed Rex to pull him through it.
Rex hesitated, face torn aghast at the horrific sight. The blaster in his hand shook, but he wasted no time, even as his body screamed at him to run.
The pinned Nikto thrashed once more beneath the fallen shutter, ruined mouth snapping weakly at the air. Rex stepped forward, brought the blaster up without flourish, and fired once into the creature’s skull. The shot was clean, close. Bone and grey matter spattered across the sandstone and the thing went still.
The report cracked through Mos Entha like a whip. For a heartbeat, there was silence again. Then, something answered.
A door down the street banged open. A figure stumbled into the light, half-shielding its face from the suns, skin already splitting where the heat caught it. Another shape dragged itself from a shaded alleyway, one leg useless, fingers scraping grooves into the sand. And then - from behind a GalactaWerks checkpoint kiosk further along the road - a third form lurched upright, head twitching at an unnatural angle as if listening with something other than ears.
The one nearest the shade moved first. It staggered, faltered in the sunlight, then let out a rasping snarl that vibrated wetly in its chest. For a second it seemed sluggish, joints stiff, decay fighting the desert. Then it saw them - and it accelerated, and it released a new noise. One much worse.
It let out an ear-splitting, unholy scream that no normal Humanoid could possibly replicate, which echoed across the whole area. Within seconds, more screams answered it from other parts of the city, both near and far. Dozens, perhaps hundreds or even thousands of alien, twisted voices, coming together to echo the horrendous, horrifying sound.
That first screaming creature closed the space. It was not coordinated nor tactical - just violent.
It covered the distance in a sudden, jerking burst, limbs pumping with raw, desperate strength before the extreme sunlight began to slow it again - something not usually considered a mercy on this blistering desert world. Sand kicked up beneath its boots. Its jaw worked, hungry and blind.
Rex swore under his breath, stepping back, firing twice in controlled succession, no cowardice preventing his survival instinct. One shot tore through the creature’s shoulder and spun it sideways. The second took it clean through the temple. It dropped hard, momentum carrying it forward in a spray of dust before going limp.
More movement sounded closer, as more screams echoed through the streets. Nearby, windows rattled. A shadow passed behind a balcony rail. Somewhere to their left, something fell heavily against a sealed door from the inside.
Rex’s eyes swept the street once, rapid, calculating. There were too many angles. Too many dark thresholds... and the heat and sunlight would not save them forever.
"We’re not staying out here," he said sharply.
He grabbed Mentis by the arm just long enough to pull him clear of the open street and nodded deeper in the settlement.
"The Moisture Farm. Centre of town!"
Without question, Mentis allowed himself to be tugged and fell in line with Rex as they started moving again.
"No arguments about that," Mentis puffed, still winded with shock.
He flinched as another ghastly screech erupted from a boarded doorway right next to them followed by a weathered arm wrenching through the gaps.
Rex saw Mentis' hand go to his side.
"Kark! I'm useless without my saber," he cried, then scrambling to the other side of his belt, where he produced a compact scout blaster pistol, "They're coming from everywhere. How far is this place?"
They moved at a run, boots slamming sand and stone, Rex taking the lead with the kind of instinct that did not need thinking. He fired as he went, two quick shots that were less about killing and more about buying space. One infected folded when a bolt caught it in the cheek and took out an eye, but it did not drop until the next shot caved in the upper skull. Another took a hit through the ribs, stumbled, then found its feet again with a wet, animal persistence, shambling faster in the shadow of an archway before the light caught it and stole some of that momentum back. The heat was a cruel ally, slowing them in flashes, but it was not enough, not against numbers and noise.
They cut hard around a corner and the street widened, opening onto the settlement’s spine. A battered sign hung crooked on an old duracrete bracket, its lettering half sandblasted but still readable: The Moisture Farm. It sat ahead like a promise made too late, lights still on behind grime filmed windows, its doorway framed by a shallow awning that threw a bar of shade across the sand. Rex lifted his blaster, scanning left and right, then forward again, jaw clenched. For a moment it looked as though they might make it in a straight sprint.
Something stepped into the street between them and the cantina.
It was too tall to be Human. It was Ala Wookiee, fur matted dark with old blood and fresh wetness, one eye missing entirely so that the socket gaped black and glossy in the sun. Sections of its pelt were burnt away in irregular patches, exposing grey, split skin beneath, as if it had been too close to a fire and kept walking anyway. It moved with a heavy, lurching inevitability, shoulders rolling, breath making a thick, rattling sound that did not belong in living lungs. As it turned its head, what remained of its eye fixed on them without recognition, only hunger.
Rex stopped so abruptly he nearly ran into it at full pace. For a heartbeat he did nothing, frozen with blaster half raised, as if the sight had reached into him and grabbed something old. His mouth opened, then shut again. His hands tightened on the grip until his knuckles went pale.
He moved his mouth to protest, but panic robbed him of his voice in that moment.
Mentis skidded to a halt beside Rex, breath catching in his throat as the towering shape resolved into the spectre of a nightmare. His eyes widened, the colour draining from his already pale features.
"By the..." he began, before the remainder of the words died in his throat.
The creature took a slow, lumbering step, mouth hanging ajar. It did not scream like the others but emitted a low, warbling garble like a distorted Nexu's purr.
As Rex faced the beast head on, Mentis flicked back, now appearing to sense the creatures more clearly in their roused state.
"I'm not sure they're even alive, Rex," he flicked the small blaster to one, firing some shots that peppered one before flicking to another and delivering several more, "Not properly alive, at least."
The Wookiee loomed closer and it was now Mentis' turn to take a grasp of Rex and pull the pair of them to one side as the fiend made a dive towards the Human. It crashed to the ground beside them, blood mixing with dusty sand as it thrashed out desperately towards them still. In his panic, Mentis pulled too hard and the pair also skidded to the ground, scrabbling away from the claws.
Rex hit the ground hard, sand grinding into his palms as he scrambled backward with Mentis beside him. The Wookiee’s claws raked through the dust where their legs had been a heartbeat earlier, its tattered body thrashing with blind, animal hunger. He eyed the beast with wide-eyed disbelief as his nostrils stung with the stench of its rot.
Then Mentis grabbed his arm again. Not in panic this time, but with a sudden, focused urgency.
"Rex! Rex, listen," the Rattataki hissed, eyes wide but sharpened now with something like clarity, "The cantina. The Moisture Farm. There are people in there. Living people!"
They scrabbled back in the sand, elbows and boots fighting for purchase, the Wookiee’s shadow swallowing them in jerking fragments as it lunged again. Rex’s breath came thin and sharp. Whatever the sight had taken from him, Mentis’ words shoved something back into place.
Living people.
Rex’s eyes snapped up. The disbelief was still there, but it had been burned into something narrower and more useful. He brought Cindra up in both hands and fired point-blank into the Wookiee’s face. The first bolt punched into cheek and bone and did not slow it. The second blew through the remaining eye, spraying dark fluid across the sand. The third struck the forehead, cracking skull with a sound like splitting dried wood. Rex kept firing anyway, grim and methodical, aiming higher each time, forcing the shots into the braincase until the entire crown of the creature’s head ruptured outward in a wet, final burst.
Cindra whined. The barrel glowed faintly, heat shimmer rising from the venting slots. A harsh warning chirp sounded as the charge pack fought to regulate. Rex forced one more shot out of it and the pistol choked, the power cell overheating and locking with a sharp click. The Wookiee finally collapsed, momentum spent, what was left of its mouth working uselessly for a second before going still.
The silence did not return.
Instead, the settlement answered. Screams carried along the narrow streets, echoed back by others, nearer now. Doors thudded from the inside. Something slammed against a balcony rail. In the shadows between buildings, shapes began to detach from the dark and lurch into the sun, slowed for a breath, then spurred again by sound and scent. The noise multiplied, a ripple becoming a tide. It had been quiet when they climbed the wall. Now it felt as though the whole town had been waiting to wake.
Rex swore, yanking at Cindra’s release catch out of reflex before realising the weapon was still too hot to cycle cleanly. He shoved it back into its holster anyway and grabbed at Mentis’ sleeve, dragging himself upright. They ran. Mentis moved like something uncoiling, faster than a man should across sand and uneven stone, and Rex had to force his legs to match it, lungs burning, boots slipping in drifts. He could hear them behind now, the shuffle becoming a staggered sprint whenever shadow gave way to shade, and the heat did less and less to hold them back.
The Moisture Farm surged into view again, lights still on, sign swaying slightly on its bracket. They hit the doors hard enough to rattle the frame. Nothing gave. Durasteel braces had been thrown across the interior, and the whole entrance held as though it had been built for this exact moment. Rex threw his shoulder into it once, twice, the impact jarring up his arm. Behind them, the first of the infected rounded the corner, arms outstretched, faces pale and wet with saliva.
Rex’s head snapped up, scanning, eyes rapid and ruthless. His gaze caught a shallow awning, a series of deep groves they could serve as a maintenance ladder, clearly too precise for the monsters, and above that a rectangular skylight set into the roofline, its transparisteel dusty but intact.
"Up!" he barked, voice raw.
He jammed a boot into the lowest rung and hauled himself up, pain flaring in his shoulders as the heat soaked through his clothes. Mentis was already there, hands finding purchase with unsettling ease. They moved together without speaking, Rex shoving, Mentis pulling, boots scraping on old stone as they climbed. The first fingers clawed at the wall beneath them. A screech rose, answered by another, closer.
They reached the roof edge and dragged themselves onto it, both of them half-falling into the grit. The skylight was right there. Rex crawled to it, drew his vibroknife in a single practiced motion, and drove the hilt down hard against the corner of the transparisteel.
The first strike spiderwebbed it. The second shattered it. Hot air and stale darkness breathed up at them as the opening gaped wide. Below, something banged against the barred front doors again, this time from the outside.
Rex looked once to Mentis, then back to the hole.
"After you," he said, and shoved the broken frame aside with both hands.
Mentis leaned over the broken frame, peering into the gloom below. His breath hitched as something brushed against his senses — faint, muddled, but undeniably alive.
"I can sense..." he began before a shriek tore through the street behind them, so close it rattled the skylight’s fractured edge.
"Never mind."
He slipped through the opening in one fluid motion, Rex heard his boots hitting the floor below with a muted thud and he followed suit, dropping down into the unknown below.
For a split second there was only darkness, barely lit by faint lighting dotted around, and the distant thud of bodies striking the outer doors.
Then came sharp mechanical whirr. Servos spooled to life and metal feet struck the tile with disciplined precision.
Rex rolled instinctively, reaching for Cindra before remembering it was overheated and useless. He froze as twin red targeting beams cut through the gloom and settled squarely on his chest and Mentis’ brow, and two GalactaWerks droids appeared from the darkness, their rifles trained on the two intruders.
TBC
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