A/N: Thanks to the readers for having the patience to bear with me. As an apology and compensation, next few days are gonna be total marathon for updates.
And for patreon users, I am really thankful for your continuous support over past few weeks and really apologize for not being able to give advance chapters to compensate you guys, I am gonna update next chapter over there before next 12 hours passes, promise!
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The twin moons of Tatooine cast long, skeletal shadows from the dunes, painting the desert in shades of blue and silver. Down below, nestled in a crater like a festering wound, a collection of orange fires flickered. They were the only signs of life for kilometers around.
I lowered the macrobinoculars, the plastic cool against my sweaty palms. The night air was surprisingly still, carrying only the faint scent of sand and something vaguely like burnt meat. Huh. So this is what peace on Tatooine smells like.
"They're just… sitting there," I muttered, more to myself than to the old man crouched beside me.
Obi-Wan lowered his own pair of binoculars, his face a mask of grim concentration in the faint light. "Are you certain this is the place, Ezra? This is a significant risk to be taking based on a hunch."
I picked up my helmet from the ground, dusting off a fine layer of orange sand. "Clans, as in multiple clans. And yes. I've spent the last forty-eight hours running sensor sweeps and pattern analysis. This isn't a hunch, it's a high-probability assessment. The overall plan was mine, but the data collection was a—"
"Ezraaaaa." His voice was a low, warning rumble, like a distant thunderstorm.
"Ahem," I cleared my throat, pulling the helmet on. The HUD flickered to life, overlaying a grid on my vision. "Right. So, as I was saying, I'm 87.3% sure this settlement is the primary conglomeration point for Hett's forces. Life signs are nearly three times the standard for a single clan, thermal signatures indicate a large, shared cooking fire, and their perimeter patrols are synchronized in a way that suggests a central command structure. A dozen other factors, but I have a feeling they'd just make you go yawning."
Obi-Wan shot me a look that could curdle milk. "So I can take that as a 'yes, I am sure'?"
"Yup! Oh, found it!" I turned away from him, kneeling by the backpack I'd stashed behind a rock. I rummaged past the ration bars and spare power cells, my fingers closing around a smooth, metallic object. I pulled it out.
It looked like a high-tech Roomba. A sleek, dark gray disc about a foot in diameter, with no visible seams or controls.
Obi-Wan stared at it, his skepticism practically radiating in the cold desert air. "And that is the thing you've been talking about? The crux of our infiltration?"
"Absolutely!" I said, a little too excitedly. I set it down on the sand. "Meet Arachnae v1!"
I tapped a sequence on my wrist-mounted datapad. A low whirring noise emanated from the disc. The smooth, seamless exterior plates fragmented, retracting into the body to reveal an intricate network of indented lines. Six circular ports opened across its chassis, and from each emerged a small sphere. The spheres unfolded like mechanical eyelids, revealing a faint purple glow within. They blinked in perfect synchronization.
*Piiiin... piiiin.*
As the outer plates fully retracted, the device's body lifted. Six stubby legs emerged from its sides, unfolding with a series of soft clicks. They were sharp, articulated, and ended in points that dug easily into the sand. The body rose a few inches off the ground, balanced perfectly. From the front, two smaller, more delicate appendages extended, looking like a cross between tweezers and manipulator arms.
It wobbled for a second, finding its balance, then its purple eyes swept across the landscape. When they landed on me, it let out another series of squeaks and scurried over, rubbing its smooth top chassis against my leg.
*Piiiin piiiiin!*
I couldn't help it. A grin split my face. "Who's a good girl!? Yes, you are!" I rubbed the top of its chassis, and its six eyes did a little happy dance, the pupils shifting from dots to wavy lines. *>>>.<<<*
Obi-Wan just watched, his expression a perfect blend of 'I am too old for this' and 'what in the nine hells is that thing?'
Obi-Wan cleared his throat, the sound cutting through the desert quiet. "Fascinating. Does it… do anything besides beg for affection?"
"Oh, she does plenty," I said, giving Arachnae one last pat before straightening up. I unclipped a small, hardened case from my belt. It clicked open, revealing six slender, metallic vials filled with a faintly luminescent green liquid. "She's our delivery girl."
I knelt and began slotting the vials into custom-built ports on Arachnae's undercarriage. Each one locked into place with a satisfying snick.
"And what, precisely, is she delivering?" Obi-Wan asked, his voice low. He was watching my hands, his gaze sharp. He knew a weapon when he saw one, even if it was just a component.
"Paralytic agent," I said, not looking up from my work. "Fast-acting. This stuff is potent. One good breath and they'll drop where they stand, conscious but unable to move a muscle. Think of it as a forced time-out, but with more drooling."
I sealed the last canister into its housing on Arachnae's undercarriage. The device gave a soft chime, indicating all payload bays were full. I stood up, brushing the sand off my knees.
"Arachnae is going to take a little stroll," I explained, tapping a few commands on my datapad to bring up a schematic of the camp. "But she's not planting these like landmines. She's going to get right into the thick of it. See these clusters of heat signatures? That's where the warriors are congregating. She'll deploy a canister right in the middle of them. Another for the central pit, another for the penned-off livestock area where they keep their Massiffs. We hit them all at once. Maximum shock, minimum fuss."
Obi-Wan was silent for a long moment, his eyes on the distant fires. "A chemical attack," he said finally, his voice flat. "It feels… indiscriminate."
"Master, with all due respect, 'discriminate' fighting gets you killed when you're this outnumbered," I countered, my fingers already prepping the drone's flight path. "This isn't a duel. It's an ambush. We create a window of chaos, and we use it. Either we do this, or you and I try to fight our way through a hundred-plus Tusken warriors who are good at fighting and afterwards an damn rogue Jedi Master. Your call."
Obi-Wan let out a long, slow breath, the sound barely audible over the whisper of the wind. He looked from the settlement to me, his gaze heavy. "I was a General in a war that spanned a galaxy, Ezra. I have made… peace… with such necessities." He paused, a flicker of old pain in his eyes. "That does not mean I must enjoy the taste of them."
"Fair enough," I said, giving him a nod. "You don't have to like it. You just have to watch my back while I do it. Well, you will have to watch more of my back due to me having underage priveldge but Master knows best anyways"
He looked kinda exasperated so I stopped my shit before he packed up his bag and canceled the operation.
I turned my attention back to Arachnae, who was patiently waiting at my feet. "Alright, girl. Time to earn your keep."
My fingers flew across the datapad's screen, drawing a path that skirted the dunes and approached the settlement from a blind spot behind a rocky outcropping. "Couldn't find a processor that could handle a full AI suite," I explained off-handedly to Obi-Wan. "So she's more like a really expensive remote-control car. For now. I give her a general directive, and she follows the path. Simple."
Arachnae gave a soft piin and scurried to the edge of our dune. Then, instead of continuing down the slope, the low hum of her whirring motors deepened in pitch. Her six legs retracted into her body with a series of soft clicks, and she lifted silently into the air, hovering a few inches above the sand. The repulsorlift was so quiet it was almost unnerving.
Obi-Wan raised an eyebrow, a flicker of genuine surprise breaking through his stoic facade. "Impressive."
"You ain't seen nothing yet," I grinned, my eyes glued to the feed now displayed on my HUD. The view from Arachnae's six purple eyes was a strange, composite image, but it gave me a perfect 180-degree view of the desert ahead.
As she glided over the sand, I tapped another command on my datapad. "Activating chameleon mode."
The flat plates on her body shifted, the segmented armor sliding to cover her legs and joints. For a second, her entire body shimmered, like heat haze off a speeder's engine. Then, she was gone. A near-perfect distortion in the air, visible only if you knew exactly where to look and the light hit her just right.
Arachnae drifted over the sand like a ghost. On my HUD, her six-eye composite feed showed the world in a weird, wide-angle panorama of blues and purples. The settlement grew larger, a chaotic jumble of hide tents and crude pen-fences.
"She's in," I whispered, my voice tight with focus. "Approaching the outer perimeter."
Obi-Wan was silent beside me, but I could feel his attention like a physical weight, his senses stretched out, tracking the droid's progress through the Force.
I guided Arachnae toward a cluster of what looked like supply tents. The plan was to place the first few vials on the outskirts, creating a perimeter of paralysis before moving to the center. As she glided closer, I switched her from silent hover to silent crawl. The plates on her body shifted, the legs extending with barely a sound. The camouflage flickered as the joints were exposed, creating a faint, stuttering distortion against the sand. Not perfect, but good enough in the gloom.
That's when a low growl cut through the night.
A Massiff, its scaly hide blending perfectly with the rocks, trotted into view. It stopped, its head cocking, sniffing the air. Its glowing eyes locked onto Arachnae's position.
"Shit." I froze her movement, my heart hammering against my ribs. The Massiff took a step forward, its hackles raised.
"Easy, Ezra," Obi-Wan murmured, his voice a low counterpoint to the growling in my ear. "Stillness. Let it pass."
But it wasn't passing. It knew something was wrong. I had a choice: wait and be discovered, or move. I chose move. I tapped a command, and Arachnae's climbing spikes shot out from her legs. In a blur of motion, she scurried up the side of a nearby rock formation, flattening herself against the stone just as the Massiff reached the spot where she'd been. It sniffed the ground, confused, before trotting away with a frustrated bark.
"Too close," I breathed, wiping a bead of sweat from my brow. "That puts a clock on us. If one gets a good scent, they'll tear this place apart looking for an intruder."
I sent Arachnae scuttling along the rock face, then down into the shadows behind the supply tents. I quickly deployed two of the vials, magnetically attaching them to the underside of a water barrel and the support beam of a food cache. The green liquid glowed faintly inside. Click. Click. Two down.
We moved deeper, weaving through the narrow alleys between tents. The settlement was a maze of sounds and smells—cooking meat, unwashed bodies, the low guttural chatter of the Tuskens. Then, the alley opened up into a large, central clearing.
The feed on my HUD turned into a Hieronymus Bosch painting, if Bosch had a budget for sand and despair.
The central clearing was lit by massive bonfires, their flames casting long, dancing shadows. But the light wasn't for celebration. It was for spectacle. Dozens of people, humans, Twi'leks, Rodians, were staked to the ground in a rough circle. Their bodies were a canvas of fresh wounds, old scars, and filth. Some were moaning, a low, guttural sound that the crackling fire couldn't quite drown out. Others were silent, their heads lolled to one side, already broken.
Tuskens milled about, their guttural chatter sounding like rocks grinding together. They weren't just watching; they were participating. I watched one of them, his gaderffii spear leaning against a stake, force himself on a Twi'lek woman whose lekku had been partially severed. She didn't even scream anymore. Her eyes were just… empty.
Around the perimeter of this hellish arena were crude cages, so tightly packed with bodies that you couldn't tell where one person ended and another began. They were treated like livestock, waiting for their turn at the stakes. This wasn't just a raid camp; it was a factory for suffering.
I didn't need to look at Obi-Wan to feel his reaction. The air around us grew heavy, cold. The steady, calm presence he usually projected in the Force tightened, coiling like a struck nexu. He was a General who had seen the horrors of war, but this… this was something else. This wasn't war. It was sport.
"So," I said, my voice flat and calm. "This is what Hett has built. A festival of cruelty."
Obi-Wan didn't answer. His eyes were fixed on the projected screen I'd flicked on in the air between us, sharing Arachnae's feed. His jaw was a hard line.
"You asked me before if this was necessary," I continued, pressing my advantage. "You talked about honor. Well, there is no honor here. There is no Jedi code here. There is only the strong preying on the weak. This isn't a culture. It's a perversion, a cancer. And you, Master Jedi, were content to let it fester in the Wastes because it wasn't on your doorstep."
My words were cruel, designed to cut. I needed him angry. I needed him past the point of hesitation.
"Every single one of those Tuskens down there has participated in their coming-of-age blood ritual," I went on, my voice low and intense. "They've all killed. They all stand by and watch this. They are all complicit. Being a bystander to atrocity doesn't make you innocent; it makes you an accomplice. And A'Sharad Hett, a former Jedi Master, is the ringmaster of this entire depraved circus. He didn't just fall to the Dark Side; he dove in headfirst and is dragging his entire people down with him."
Obi-Wan finally tore his gaze from the screen, his blue eyes burning with a cold fire I hadn't seen before. "Not all of them are warriors, Ezra. There will be children. The elderly."
"And were there children and elderly among the people they staked out?" I shot back, gesturing at the screen. "Did they show mercy when they stuffed those cages? No. They drew a line in the sand, Master. They drew it with the blood of their victims. We're just crossing it on their behalf."
He was silent for a long moment, the weight of the decision settling on him. The crackle of the fire from the feed seemed to fill the silence between us.
"Very well," he said, his voice like grinding stone. "Hett is mine. The warriors… they will not leave this camp alive."
It was the concession I was waiting for.
"Good," I said, my tone shifting instantly from intense orator to cheeky saboteur. I unclipped a small breather from my belt and tossed it to him. He caught it smoothly. "In that case, you'll need this. The paralytic is about to get a lot more concentrated."
Obi-Wan examined the breather. "You seem very confident in your plan."
"Well, yeah," I said with a grin he couldn't see through my helmet. "Hett isn't gonna give you a clean 1v1. He'll call his elite guard to dogpile you. Which means all the dazed, half-paralyzed scrubs are left for little old me. Hehe."
Obi-Wan let out a long, weary sigh, shaking his head. Even now, on the precipice of a brutal fight, the boy's personality was utterly relentless.
"Here's the final play," I explained, my fingers dancing on the datapad. "I'm going to trigger the outer vials first. A slow, creeping fog. It will take out the patrols on the edges. We rush in, take out any straggers. Once we're close to the center, I'll have Arachnae deploy the big canister and a few smoke bombs right in the middle of their little party. Boom. Instant chaos. Maximum confusion."
I glanced at him. "You good with that? Can you handle yourself in the fog? I heard vision gets a bit… fuzzy in your old age."
Obi-Wan clipped the breather to his belt, a faint, wry smile touching his lips. "You of all people should know this, Ezra. One does not need eyes to see."
I laughed, a short, sharp sound in the desert night. "Fair enough, old man. Let's go bring some justice."
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A/N: In the meanwhile, as I had taken some webdev classes, I decided to do make an supplementary site for the story, kind of like my own ~~Author Page!!
Check it out: https://abstracto-x.github.io/abstracto_tales/
Site is optimized for PC so it would be best viewed on it.
Features:
-Character Image Gallery, Galaxy +World Maps, Lore Book(legend & Canon), Timeline(Fanfic+Canon/Legend) Timeline Viewer , Novel Reader,
Its still an work in progress so please comment your thoughts about it as well as any features you would like to have.
It would be largely an supplementary site for readers if they wanna experience story more than it is here.
I won't endorse Patreon till I put some advanced chapters there so meanwhile check out the site, its made with very much love.