Chapter 36 – Mustafar (3)

While traversing the Jedi ruins, Layan was carrying a lit lightsaber and a decapitated head.

The other force-sensitive individuals could now feel him and were surprised as they couldn't detect him when he intruded upon their headquarter. Not only this, but they felt the death of the Kursk, their leader.

They all headed toward the intruder with their lightsabers drawn, as for the non-sensitive members they took their blasters and followed the others, ready to fight to the death.

When they come into view of the intruder, a gruesome view awaited them as they saw him walking with the cut head of their leader in hand.

"Good, you're all here. Now, I have an offer for you. Join me, or die."

While saying that, he let fall the head of San'sii and took one of the lightsabers he retrieved from his body before taking a Makashi opening stance with in hand a red blade lightsaber and a silver blade lightsaber in the other hand.

"We will kill you even if we have to fight to the death!! Everyone open fire!"

A woman near human in classical Blackguard clothes howled before giving an order to her subordinates.

Layan only smiled and waited for them to shoot at him.

A hail of red blaster fired at him but all collided with an invisible barrier that Layan erected.

"I see you made a choice."

He raised his left hand holding the red lightsaber and sent a powerful Force Push toward the non-force-sensitive and sent them rolling on the floor before charging at them with a sprint.

In a second, he was on them with his double blades and used a fast and agile offensive to attack the four lightsabers wielders in front of them.

He attacked the first one, the leader of this group without stopping his sprint and strike toward her face before turning around while his opponent was destabilized and launching an attack to the one standing behind their leader. As his opponent guard was high, he launched a knee kick that hit him in the liver. Then he attacked the third one with a horizontal blow which was blocked, but the goal was a headbutt that made him step back in pain, as for the fourth one he sends him fly with a force push before rushing toward the simple soldiers in the rear and which were getting back up.

Before they could raise their blasters, he unleashed various strike all around with his two lightsabers. In a matter of seconds, most of them were bisected and the four lightsabers wielders were rushing toward him with hatred for killing their companions.

"Oh, you're back. Good, I started to feel bored."

He was looking at them with a smirk before decapitating the last one of their backups. Seeing their expression, his psychological destabilization was pretty effective.

Layan was now in a 4 VS 1 situation but wasn't too stressed as their lightsaber skills battle weren't extremely strong, even their leader was barely average.

They encircle him and soon the one in front of him, the leader stabbed toward him and behind him, another one did the same.

Layan simply took a side step and walked forward before turning around and slashed with his lightsaber and cut the hand holding the lightsaber and made her howl in pain. With a move of his second lightsaber, he decapitated her before readying his defense.

"One less. Three to go."

One of the three rushed toward him as his anger to take over. The other two wanted to rush to help him, but Layan used the force to raise the lightsaber of the dead leader in the air and throw it at them.

As for the one charging at him, he parried his attack with one blade, and pushed it outward, letting a clear path for his second blade to stab him in the heart. He didn't even have time to cry in pain before he died and fell to the ground.

"Two to go."

Rushing to the two-left standing, he launched a series of attack and before a long time, he cleaves them into two by the middle with one slash each.

After scavenging the lightsaber from the dead bodies, he started to explore all the rooms of the ruins and found a few books with some knowledge that may be added to the library and the design of a furnace made to create synthetic crystals.

"9 lightsabers, books and a furnace design. Too bad this fight wasn't really enjoyable."

Layan was happily checking every room while thinking to his booty but found nothing else and to have to leave and continue his search for the HK-47 droid.

After exiting the ruins, he pressed the button on his wrist bracelet and the explosive devices he hid started to explode, reducing the ruins into rubbles. He did it to let no trace as this organization may be larger than just this handful as these books were coming from every corner of the galaxy.

Boarding the Phoenix once again, he resumed his search for several hours.

"T3, you're sure you didn't miss it? The separatists base shouldn't be far from the capital, and they would have no reason to explore this planet. Our goal must be near, somewhere."

"Beep."

The droid started to speak in binary to Layan. He was tired of this world and wanted to leave soon. He even lived on Hoth during winter to train his primal instincts and understand better the dark side, but it was less annoying than this volcanic world.

They resumed their search while Layan was listening to a holonet broadcasting music to alleviate his boredom, R2-T3 was in the cockpit, flying the ship and checking the radar.

After flying over a lake of lava, an echo-radar appeared on T3 screen. He directly contacted Layan using the ship's intercom.

Heading toward the location indicated by the radar, they soon spotted a crashed Hammerhead cruiser covered in soot. The massive head of the ship was still in one piece, but everything else really suffered from the crash. A big opening was showing all along the hull, and several impact marks were still visible.

"Bingo."

The ship was in a depressed area, and lava was flowing near it. He couldn't land the Phoenix here. He landed at the nearest he could, put a few devices a data pad in a bag and took his speeder bike to reach the crashed ship.

He lit his lightsaber before heading inside the Hammerhead cruiser in stepping through the big aperture of the hull.

Inside, it was dark as the ship was laying here for thousands of years, every power cell were long depleted. He walked through the empty corridors with his lightsaber as the only light.

"What's that. I am in a kriffing holo-horror movie?"

Layan could hear the sound of something hitting metal at fast pace. The sound was short but powerful. He could feel something living rushing toward him at extreme speed.

Taking out a second lightsaber, he prepared himself for what was to come, and what a thing. Something charged through an already damaged wall and continued its course toward him. It was a creature, light brown and looking like a giant scorpion, but with a giant round mouth filled with spiky teeth. Its skin appeared to be armored, and at the end of its body was a giant tail with two spikes.

"How gross. I want to puke."

This thing was horrible and would give nightmares to anyone seeing it as it was horrible to look at and looked deadly.

The creature sent its tail at Layan to stab him, but he avoided it with a jump and cut it using his lightsabers.

The creature howled in pain and fury, but Layan didn't bother and jumped above its head and stabbed his two lightsabers in it. The creature fell dead on the metallic floor of the ship.

"Is it what they call a Sher Kan? How gross."

Taking a last peek at the dead creature, Layan couldn't help but repeat it again.

After this encounter, he resumed his exploration of the ship, but with more caution. After cutting open a few doors, he arrived at the bridge of the ship where he saw the droid, he was searching for laying inert on the floor.

Walking cautiously toward what could be the deadliest droid of the galaxy, he used Mechu-Deru to check if he really was off and finally breathed a sigh of relief as it was. This would ease his task.

After scanning the droid up and down with a device he brought for the occasion, the external data of the HK-47 appeared on the data pad he was carrying.

Opening the head of the droid, he saw something that made him marvel at what it was. The thought matrix functioning was totally incomprehensible, and Layan could feel that the force was used to alter it.

"You really are a special one. The two of us will have to talk about a lot of things."

He downloaded all the design elements in his data pad and only left alone the thought matrix and the droid's memory. He was now ready to reproduce it, but before that he wanted to know more about this particular droid that will try to take over this world in more than twenty years.

He put a new battery inside the droid and initialized the rebooting of the droid. The droid optical lit up, he then stood up and looked directly at Layan.

"…Meatbag."

"Oh, you're so sweet."