The Knight, Death, and the Devil

Chapter 39: No Rest For The Weary

Ash still filled the evening sky above the Revanite compound when the scavengers first descended on it, coming from all over Rishi to pick over the remains like vultures. There wasn't much left to pick over, but some of the military hardware would have survived. That was what it was built for, after all. Those pieces could be sold to scrap merchants—or even straight to pirate groups, if a particularly intact bit of hardware was found.

One such scavenger, Ronga, had come to Rishi four years ago. The jungle planet was supposed to have served as his retirement home, but his love for the Pazaak tables—and his bad luck with the cards—had forced his entry back into the sweaty, back-breaking world of scavenging. Luckily, the Rodian had a nose for valuable finds, and Rishi had turned out to be a surprisingly lucrative salvage site. The planet did not have a long history behind it, but it did have a bloody one. Every few months, an armed group would force out another, leaving behind a battlefield full of armor, weapons, and vehicles. Once the site was safe he would jet out with the rest of the salvagers and take a look at what was left behind. Most of it was junk, but occasionally he would sniff out a particularly lucrative find that would fund another half-cycle of gambling losses.

Such thoughts were what occupied his mind as he clambered over rubble, careful to avoid the fires still burning here and there. Details on what had happened were scarce, but he had caught the gist of it—Republic and Empire, both fighting a third foe in orbit. That would not have been that interesting, if he hadn't heard the rumors surrounding the group inhabiting this particular compound. His fellow scavengers spoke of Force users, Jedi and Sith, coming and going alongside each other.

It sounded unbelievable, but the rumors were whispered in stunned confidence in every cantina in Raider's Cove. Now, those Force users were dead, buried under mountains of rubble, their belongings ripe for the picking. Blades of light and heat, artifacts millennia old, ancients computers capable of interfacing with the user's mind—he did not know much about the Sith or Jedi, but he knew enough for his long snout to twitch at the prospect of getting his hands on their prized possessions.

As Ronga walked across broken concrete slabs, he felt his muscles gripped by a burning weakness that made moving an exhausting exercise. Air still flowed through the respirator covering his mouth and nose, and the indicators on the belt-mounted filtration unit were showing green. More than some smoke seeping in, it felt as if the air he drew was simply not going where it was needed, like he could not possibly draw a deep enough breath to satisfy his body. Was age finally catching up to him?

He stumbled forward and leaned against a block of concrete jutting up from the debris, then felt a rumble pass through the entire structure. The ground trembled and shook, followed by a shifting of rocks up ahead. His body became weaker still, and he nearly fell over as an uproar of debris shook the collapsed building. A terrible groan followed, but not from the structure—this was alive. A dark hole formed in the shifting debris—then the darkness moved, clambering out of the wreckage like some wraith formed of the blackness of space. Air swirled around it as it crawled towards him. He tried to run, but his legs would not listen no matter how much his mind screamed at them to move.

Trails of energy snaked their way through the twisted rubble, converging on the creature and forming a skeleton in the midst of the blackened shape. First a skull with empty sockets pointed straight at Ronga, then sinewy arm muscles and a human face. He fell to his knees, and from the corners of his vision he could see every scavenger doing the same.

Fear wasn't what brought him to his knees—fear told him to run. This was death.

The figure pushed itself to its feet as it continued forward, the dark smear surrounding it dissipating to reveal a nude woman, who strode across the debris towards the scavengers' ships. As she passed Ronga, her hand brushed his shoulder. That icy touch was the last thing he felt.