Saga - OT The Mists of Mehr | Imperial OCs, drama, post-Jakku | Short story, Fanon Horror Challenge

Title:The Mists of Mehr
Timeframe: 5 ABY (immediately after the Battle of Jakku)
Continuity: New Canon
Characters: OCs
Genre: Drama/horror
Length: Multi-post short story
Summary: The last Imperials on Marfa must conduct one final mission before leaving the planet.
Notes: This story was written for the Fanon Horror Challenge. The fanon element I chose is divapilot’s city of Mehr.
Jump to: Part I – Part II – Part III – Part IV

 

The Mists of Mehr​

“He who betrays the values of honour shall suffer the vengeance of the sea.”
Mehrine proverb​

Part I

There was a bitter aftertaste to the on-going preparations in the Imperial garrison as the last stormtroopers stationed on Marfa gathered their blasters and adjusted their armour for a final raid on the coastal city of Mehr. News of the Empire’s disastrous defeat on Jakku had hit morale hard. For the past week, transport after transport of personnel and equipment could be seen leaving the planet to regroup with what was left of the Imperial forces, and rumour had it that Mas Amedda was suing for peace with the New Republic. Commander Kasnil very nearly gagged as the words formed in his mind – the scum that had once been known as the Rebellion was now negotiating with the Empire on its own terms, as if it were a legitimate galactic government. This was truly the end of an era, and the mists that floated over Mehr only added to his sense of gloom.

Still, he thought – the thick fog resulting from this year’s extended misty season would be a useful ally for today’s operation. Instructions had come from High Command to abduct as many prominent Rebel sympathisers as possible before the final evacuation, probably to use them as bargaining chips during the peace negotiations, and the Wedding Festival was the perfect opportunity to jump in, seize the members of Mehr’s governing council and whisk them away on the shuttle that would carry the last Imperial troops to safety. Kasnil relished the thought of the mayhem his stormtroopers would inflict on the gathering. The Mehrine had caused him more trouble than he cared to admit during his admittedly short stay on Marfa and the time for payback was long overdue.

He glanced at his men to verify that everything was in order. The squadron of stormtroopers had boarded the armoured speeder bus and the Lambda shuttle was on standby on the landing pad. Everything was ready. He smiled as he took his place in the front seat of the bus. This was his chance to earn the promotion that had eluded him so far, no thanks to the Mehrine’s insubordination.

* * *​

TQ-531 was going to miss Mehr. The thought surprised him a little when it popped into his head as the speeder bus flew through one of the monumental gates in the battlements on its way from the Imperial barracks to the heart of town. He had been stationed on Marfa for more than three years and he was realising now, as he was about to leave, that the place had grown on him. Granted, the Mehrine weren’t the most loyal citizens of the Empire, but there was something endearing to their fierce sense of independence and their city was among the most astounding settlements he’d had the opportunity to see. He had strolled on the rampart atop the walls on his off-hours to admire the view on the sea and Rook Island during the misty season, and he had spent many hours lounging in the tapcafés that lined the Market District plaza to watch the world go by during the warm season. He had read many a book about the town’s history and architecture and he had learned everything he could about its culture and legends. He had even come to the Wedding Festival in his second year on-planet and he had greatly enjoyed the celebration.

Which was why it felt odd that his last action on Marfa would be to raid this year’s iteration of the same celebration and to spread consternation among the couples that were getting married, their families and their friends. Still, orders were orders, and in the end it was a simple op: go in, grab the councillors, get out, fly away. Why the higher-ups in the Empire had decided that this should happen today was a question well above his pay grade in the end.

He looked at his fellow stormtroopers as they neared the drop-off point in a side street adjacent to the plaza where the entire city would be gathered now. Like him, they were among the veterans who had been stationed on Marfa for several years and they knew the town like the palm of their hand. For all his arrogance and lack of experience, it looked like Commander Kasnil had all the bases covered today. He pushed the nagging feeling of discomfort to the deeper recesses of his mind and decided to focus on the upcoming confrontation.

* * *​

This was not how Commander Kasnil had expected things to go.

The fog had grown even thicker by the time the speeder bus reached the Market District. It was so opaque that they could barely see the crowd, let alone each other, the white of their armour blending so perfectly in the cottony haze that blasters were not an option lest half of the commando be wiped out by friendly fire. He could sense the hesitation in his men’s step as they walked the last hundred metres to the plaza and he ordered them to switch to stun batons. They were only facing a throng of civilians, after all – a few blows would be enough to keep the revellers out of their way while they seized the councillors.

And then, someone wolf-whistled somewhere on the plaza and the entire crowd shifted. It didn’t come across as an aggressive move – the newlywed couples and their guests couldn’t see through the mist anymore than the stormtroopers anyway – but the path to the officials’ platform was now even more packed than before and it took quite a bit of shoving, jostling and elbowing to get there. The commando finally reached its destination only to find out that their prospective hostages were gone. Kasnil could vaguely make out in the distance a group of people in elaborate robes hastening towards the harbour. Meanwhile, his men were sitting mynocks against the colourful banners that lined the stage and improvised projectiles were flying their way.

He pulled out his blaster and sent a few volleys into the crowd, and all hell broke loose.

* * *​

TQ-531 did not like this. He did not like it one bit.

The commander had shown poor judgement when he decided to press ahead with the operation after it became clear that the hit-and-run had failed. It would have been a much sounder strategy to pull back to the barracks and attempt a new infiltration of the city later during the day or even at night, but chances were that Kasnil hadn’t planned for this sort of contingency. Instead he led the squad into a dense throng that pulsed and throbbed like a single living being, he failed to reach the councillors before they made their getaway, he lost his temper and fired at the crowd – and now they were both hunter and hunted, running after their targets who had escaped towards the harbour while a roaring, howling mob chased after them.

The mists were somewhat thinner over the harbour, enabling the stormtrooper to glimpse a sailing ship that was casting off and gliding away on the dark sea. Kasnil looked around frantically, searching for a way out, but the harbour was a dead end. TQ-531 hesitated for the briefest of moments. Mehr’s coastal area was notoriously difficult to navigate, and there wasn’t a single seatrooper among them with the knowledge, experience and equipment to handle himself on these tricky waters, but the angry Mehrine were on their heels. He gestured towards the only other vessel that was moored to the mole, a medium-sized seaspeeder that could hold the entire squad if they squeezed a little, and shouted for everyone to get on board.

It was only after the seaspeeder rose on its repulsorlifts and was swallowed by the fog that he wondered why no other ship was anchored in the harbour.

* * *​

Commander Kasnil was furious. He was furious at the Mehrine for standing in his way, he was furious at the councillors for escaping, he was furious at TQ-531 for taking the squad aboard a ship that no one knew how to manoeuvre, he was even furious at the weather for blurring his vision. The seaspeeder was engulfed in a white, cottony mass so heavy that it felt almost material, the sailing boat carrying the city councillors was nowhere to be seen, he only had the vaguest idea where Rook Island stood in relation to the mainland and more generally he didn’t know where they were or where they were going. Meanwhile, TQ-531 and another stormtrooper had slipped into the two seats by the bow and had taken off their helmets to examine the navigation equipment as the craft drifted towards the open seas. It was time to reclaim leadership of this mission. “Report,” he said in a decent approximation of his command voice.

“I think we have it under control, sir,” TQ-531 answered tentatively. “My understanding is that the repulsors will keep us above the reefs, and the sonar seems to be top-of-the-line, but...” His voice trailed off.

“But what?”

“But the navigation system doesn’t appear to work,” the stormtrooper said. “Or the maps aren’t loaded, I can’t tell which. As long as we’re in this fog...”

“... we can’t know where we’re going,” his colleague completed.

There was a long silence as everyone aboard tried to peer through the mists, looking for anything that might indicate their exact location. Volutes of vapour rose from the dark water, swirling and twirling in the air until they dissolved into the all-encompassing white cloud. A few of the stormtroopers twitched every now and then as if they had seen something, but no one dared to speak. Kasnil’s eyes focused on a point in the distance. He thought that he could detect movement, but it didn’t look like a sailing ship – rather like an exceedingly tall human being standing on the water. But no, that didn’t make sense. He was still trying to regain his composure when one of his men piped up.

“There’s someone out there.”

 

OMG OMG OMG you wrote about Mehr!!! This is amazing. This slides so perfectly into the fanon and into my story that I’m going to have to incorporate it now.

Lady, your use of language is exquisite.

There was a long silence as everyone aboard tried to peer through the mists, looking for anything that might indicate their exact location. Volutes of vapour rose from the dark water, swirling and twirling in the air until they dissolved into the all-encompassing white cloud. A few of the stormtroopers twitched every now and then as if they had seen something, but no one dared to speak.
Gorgeous imagery!

I’m intrigued by TQ-531. He seems to have been seduced by the romance of the place whereas the commander finds Mehr to be a stubborn, recalcitrant thorn in his side. And what is this giant looking across the water? A ghostly protector of the ancient city? Or something altogether different?

I can’t wait for more!

 

Thanks for the review divapilot and thanks to everyone who stopped by to read!

Of course I wrote about Mehr! When the challenge was announced I looked at the index of fanon posts, and Mehr was such an obvious choice to me (Okay, also because I've read your stories and I know that... no, I'm not going to say it just yet ) I'm exceedingly curious to see why you want to incorporate this story into yours; I always assumed that BOHM ended well before the Galactic Civil War and now I'm super-excited at the idea that it stretches all the way to after Endor.

Commander Kasnil was the first character I came up with for this story – I love writing the classic, rigid imperial type who thinks that blunt force is the way to go. But then I realised that I needed someone who actually knew about Mehr to tell the other side of the story, and the idea of a stormtrooper who was interested in the city's lore just made sense to me. It must be a boring life, being a stormtrooper... As for the giant, does he even really exist?

Thanks again for your very kind review, and thanks to the Loyal Lurkers out there who read this story fo far!

 

Part II

TQ-531 stared in the direction that the trooper was indicating. All he could see was fog, fog and more fog. He glanced at the instruments. “The sonar doesn’t detect anything. What do you mean, ‘someone’?”

“I don’t know,” the trooper said sheepishly. “I thought I saw a human shape, but –”

“I saw him too,” another man interrupted. “Tall, white fellow in flowing robes.”

“Me too,” a third one chimed in. “Looked like a ghost.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Kasnil snapped. “There is no such thing as –”

“There! Do you see it?”

The speeder pitched dangerously as they all turned at the same time to scrutinise the mist. “Take it easy, everyone,” TQ-531 called from his seat. “There are too many of us on this boat as it is, don’t make any sudden moves or –”

The engine whirred ominously and the speeder lurched again. “Not to worry, not to worry,” he shouted. “We just came a bit too close to one of the reefs and the repulsors had trouble adjusting. Just stay calm, okay?”

There was another silence. “I can see him again,” one of the men said. “He’s just over there. No, wait, he’s gone –”

“He’s back! Right there! The ghost!”

“Cut the chatter, and that’s an order,” Kasnil retorted angrily. “It’s just a trick of the fog. Ghosts do not exist.”

TQ-531 inhaled deeply and tried to focus on the controls in front of him. Kasnil was right, ghosts did not, could not exist – except in Mehrine tales of sailors lost at sea.

* * *​

It beggared belief, Kasnil thought, that a group of grown men, of the best-trained soldiers the Empire had to offer, would become so jumpy and apprehensive at the mere mention of the word ‘ghost’. The commando had remained silent since he had given an order to that effect, but he could see them nodding at each other and angling their chin over here or over there to indicate where the mysterious silhouette was appearing and disappearing. They were behaving like schoolboys, really, thinking that he didn’t notice; and they always bowed their head in shame when they felt the weight of his gaze upon them.

The minutes stretched into hours. The mists turned pink as the sun began to sink under the horizon and still no one had uttered a word – not that the commander needed his men to voice their fears. The already-palpable tension among the commando rose to unbearable levels when the haze around them became pitch-black, and one of the troopers finally spoke.

“Why is he still white?”

“I dunno,” another whispered. “I can see him too.”

“He’s getting closer. Minutes ago he was just over there. I think he’s –”

“Quiet!” Kasnil roared. “He – whoever that is – does – not – exist.”

The little group sank again into despondent silence and Kasnil went back to this thoughts. The stormtroopers’ unease was beginning to grate on his nerves, and he took several deep breaths to calm himself. The sudden contact of a hand tapping on his shoulder caused him to jump in fright, and he spun around abruptly, only to look into the foggy night.

“Which idiot thought this to be funny?” he shouted.

“It’s not us, sir,” one of the troopers answered. “It was him. The ghost. He was right there, behind you.”

* * *​

The last thing they needed right now, TQ-531 thought, was for Commander Kasnil to lose his mind. It was bad enough that they were stranded at sea in the middle of the night, that the commando was growing increasingly jittery and that there was no way to tell how and when their situation would improve. What could make it worse was Kasnil stirring up a panic among the men, which would make the stormtrooper’s task of navigating Mehr’s treacherous waters even more difficult and possibly result in the speeder capsizing in the dark. He checked the sonar to verify that they weren’t in the vicinity of any reefs while he took his attention off the instruments, nodded at his co-pilot and unclasped the safety webbing so as to turn around and look at his party.

“When I said ‘stay calm’, I meant everyone stay calm,” he said sternly. “That includes you, Commander.”

He couldn’t quite discern Kasnil’s face through the mist and the darkness, but from the tone of his reply alone he knew that his cheeks had taken a deep shade of puce. “How dare you!” Kasnil spluttered. “I’ll have you disciplined for your insolence. You –”

“You’ll have me disciplined if and when we get out of here,” TQ-531 interrupted as firmly as he could. “If you want to hasten the process, I suggest that you take over at the helm.”

He held the commander’s gaze a moment longer and added, “So, everyone stay calm. That means, don’t move, or move as little as you can. We’re doing our best to avoid running onto the reefs here. When daylight comes the tide will be low and it’ll be easier to –”

He stopped in mid-sentence and stared in petrified horror at a white shape that was forming above the waves. It looked like a tall human, a towering, misty silhouette that bowed ominously over the vessel intruding on its territory. But before he could even blink to confirm that his eyes weren’t deceiving him, the co-pilot shouted a warning, the sonar’s proximity alarm blared to signal a submerged ridge – and suddenly the speeder lurched violently to starboard and half the commando plummeted into the sea.

* * *​

Kasnil let out a string of curses most unbecoming of an Imperial officer and hung on to the guardrail for dear life. TQ-531 was suspended from his unsecured safety webbing while he fumbled with the repulsor commands with the hand that wasn’t busy keeping him from falling overboard; he managed to turn a dial leftwards and the seaspeeder fell back to a horizontal position with a loud splash, lifting a geyser into the air and drenching the commander in salty water. The stormtrooper scrambled back on board, coughing and spitting, and immediately knelt by the edge of the hull to retrieve his comrades.

Kasnil could hear his crew screaming for help as their heavy armour dragged them towards the depths of the ocean. He wiped his face as best he could and joined in the rescue effort. The undersea currents were strong and the fog was as dark and thick as ever; many of the troopers had drifted out of sight in the few seconds it took TQ-531 to stabilise the speeder and their cries were already becoming fainter and dying out one by one. He could only discern two white shapes in the black water. One was near the ship and struggling to come closer; the other was just out of reach and floating away. He looked around for a cable, a rope, anything – he spotted one under the bench seat and reached for it –

There was a victory whoop and he looked up to see that one of his men was half-hanging over the hull, his arm outstretched to the trooper who was nearby. They had apparently managed to get hold of each other, and he doing his best to pull his colleague back towards the craft. Kasnil hurried to his side. He shouted words of encouragement as he readied the cable, but his voice died in his throat. He saw a white hand emerge from the waves and wrap itself around the rescuer’s wrist, and the stormtrooper was yanked into the abyss.

* * *​

There were no two ways about it, TQ-531 thought when Kasnil gave the order to cease the rescue operation: the commander was truly a piece of scum.

“It is not only pointless, it is dangerous,” Kasnil was shouting to one of the troopers who was still scrutinising the sea for survivors. “There were seven of us moments ago, and now we are only six. If you want us to become five, be my guest.”

“But they’re right there, sir!” the trooper shouted back. “We can save them!”

“We cannot! There’s something dragging them down, don’t you see it?”

TQ-531 intervened. “What ‘something’?”

Kasnil seemed to come to his senses. He took a deep breath. “The currents. Their armour. The laws of gravity.”

The stormtrooper looked at him carefully. “That’s not what you meant when you said ‘something’, sir.”

There was a long silence. “They say there are sea creatures here,” one of the troopers piped up. “Giant squids of sorts. Monsters. I heard about them once when –”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Kasnil snapped. “There is no such thing as –”

TQ-531 held his gaze steadily. He could discern fear in there, panic even. “What did you mean by ‘something’, sir?” he asked again as calmly as he could.

Kasnil looked around to see that the five surviving stormtroopers were staring at him. “I saw… I saw a hand,” he said after a moment. “A white hand. It came out of the water and pulled TQ-498 overboard.”

TQ-531 snorted. “A white hand?” He raised his arm to display his armoured glove. “This sort of white hand?”

“Of course not!” the commander retorted sharply. “It was… white… misty…”

His voice trailed off. TQ-531’s co-pilot shook his head in dismay. “He means the hand of the ghost.”

 

Oh man, they are in for it now. The ocean is claiming what's hers. The idea of the men being the victims of the very armor designed to protect them as the weight of it drags them under the water is creepy. Of course, it's even creepier that a hand reaches up from the water to interrupt a rescue!

And as for this:

well,

Spoiler

I know of a young Mehrine man lost at sea about 15 years before this...

As for my story, it's got a ways to go but I do see it reaching past the fall of the Empire. There are two generations to discuss in that particular story, and right now we're only on Mom and Dad's story.

 

Thank you for the review divapilot and thanks to everyone who stopped by to read!

DRL (in the form of work and housework) has been in a foul mood lately and even though I have the rest of this story written I don't seem to be able to make time to clean it up So I'm just posting a quick reply today and hoping I can find a moment to edit part III sometime this week.

Oh yes, they are definitely in trouble... but does the hand belong to the ghost? or to a trooper who had fallen into the water? or is it just a figment of their imagination?

Oooh, I hadn't thought of him in particular... but now that you mentioned him I may want to revise part IV of this story, because that could fit... It could fit very, very well

Now this is excellent, excellent news Hurry up on that librarian training so we can read the rest!

Thanks again to everyone who's been reading this; I'll try to sort out the rest of the story asap.

 

Well, on the upside for the imps is that at least nobody is singing 'My Jolly Sailor Bold'

 

This was a very good and intriguing tale.

I liked how the rank and file stormtroopers were fond of the place and the people, and not overly enthused with the idea of the final raid.

The well described mist, and the people being sought, vanishing into it, was quite creepy, and then the boat trip began to be a bit ominous.

For some reason, I was reminded of that mythical bay or harbour guarded by a giant statue (cannot recall if it is/was real).

Not sure about actual horror, but this was definitely a scary mystery. Those poor troopers.

 

That's a pretty scary story. I like the way you incorporated @divapilot's fanon, the independed nature of the Marfans causing trouble for the empire. Nice to see that even 20 years of oppresion haven't broken their spritit the slightest. Also a nice view into the mind of the imperials stationed there, the commander being a straightforward military man with little tolerance for the planet he is stationed on and the stormtrooper who has grown fond of it in his own way, makes the an intresting pair. The fog seems defenetly not very natrual and now with the ghosts appearing it becomes clear that the imperials and their actions against the Marfans have awoken something dangerous. These beings below the surface make me kinda think of Lovecraft and his stories. I'm very intrigued how this continues.

 

So! I came back to this story thanks to the 2023 WIP month, and I'm never too sure what board etiquette is for replies that come, ahem, five-and-three-quarters years late, but I'll do them anyway.

@Gamiel Thanks for reading, and sorry for not completing this story on time for the challenge you had suggested! It was a really good prompt and I enjoyed working on it, but I was sidetracked by DRL.

After a bit of Googling I came to the conclusion that this must be a reference to Pirates of the Caribbean, which I haven't seen, but I get the gist... and, well, no mermaids here, but the upcoming chapter does feature something not entirely different.

@Findswoman Thank you as always for the detailed review! Like you I thought that @divapilot was truly inspired when she created a SW world centered around the sea, or more specifically around sailors (instead of beings who can live in the sea, like Mon Calamari or Nautolans). It opens a lot of possibilities both in terms of narrative and worldbuilding in that it allows to connect an earlier, less technologically advanced age of the GFFA to the "present" of the OT. And, well, being myself from a country whose connection to the sea is an essential part of our culture, I grew up on a steady diet of sailor tales and it just feels like a natural environment for me to set this story. As for the contrast between Kasnil and TQ-531, I would add to your comment that, as a "typical hard-nosed Imperial", Kasnil doesn't know anything about the people he's occupying; he therefore has no sense of the nature of threats on Marfa, whereas the stormtrooper has a much better understanding of the poodoo they're in – although there are no guarantees that it will do him any good.

@Mira Grau Thank you for reading and reviewing! I know that you've also been an avid reader of divapilot's stories set on Marfa so I'm glad you thought I used her fanon adequately.

That would be one way of putting it! As you'll see in the conclusion of this story, I'm just elaborating on an aspect of divapilot's fanon again, but I hope I won't disappoint!

And lastly, I know that @Sith-I-5 isn't with us anymore, but if you're seeing this from wherever you are, know that you are sorely missed

Once again, a very belated thanks to all readers and reviewers. Part III is coming up at long, long last.

 

Part III

Kasnil had managed to sleep for perhaps an hour when he was jolted awake by a bump against the hull. He opened his eyes to see that the fog had cleared just enough to enable him to see the water without having to squint; the sun was about to rise above the invisible horizon and the cottony haze was shifting from black to silvery pink. The stormtroopers had taken off their armour as a precaution; they now sat in their black body gloves, which made them easier to spot in the fuzzy daylight. However, the commander wasn’t entirely sure if the speeder was still moving or if he was only looking at the flux of the ocean around it. “Report,” he ordered.

“Low tide, sir,” TQ-531 said glumly. “So low that we ran onto a sandbank. The repulsors can’t cope, they require a minimum depth to operate.”

“Does this mean we could walk to the shore now?”

“Maybe – if we knew where the shore is.”

The six men scrutinised the mists in all directions, but all they could see were more volutes of vapour rising into the air and melting away in the dense cloud that had settled over Mehr’s seas. “He’s still there,” one of the troopers whispered. “He’s looking at us.”

To Kasnil’s great relief, TQ-531 spoke first. “Stop talking about him. There’s nothing we can do about it and we’re not even sure he exists. Focus on finding the coast.”

There was a long pause. “There!” a trooper exclaimed suddenly. “The battlements! Mehr is right there!”

The commander stared in the direction the man was indicating. All he could see was blurry whiteness. “Are you certain?”

“I can’t see a thing,” TQ-531 said. “You’re sure it’s not just a trick of the fog?”

“I’m telling you, I saw the city!” The trooper collected the coil of cable from the deck and handed one end to the commander. “Let’s rope up!”

“Now wait a second,” Kasnil said. “We shouldn’t set out on foot unless we are certain –”

“I agree with the commander,” the co-pilot interjected. “We can’t just go and walk out into the water –”

“We’re not going anywhere,” TQ-531 said firmly. “One glimpse of the city is not enough. Let’s wait a bit, the mist will thin out as it gets warmer and we can confirm.”

“The tide will rise if we wait,” the trooper retorted. “You guys stay here if you want. I’m leaving.”

He jumped overboard and found himself waist-high in the water. Kasnil watched him wade away; he could plainly see that the man was struggling against the currents that drew him towards the open sea. “Come back now, trooper,” he ordered. “You’ll never make it to the shore.”

The man shook his head and carried on. “Three-fifty-two, come back,” TQ-531 said soothingly. “What you’re doing is more dangerous than staying here. You know I’m right.”

The trooper suddenly dropped into the water up to his shoulders. Kasnil saw him stagger; his head disappeared for a moment. He was looking at them with panic and despair when he re-emerged, and his lips silently formed the word ‘help’.

And with that, he sank under the water. The five survivors remained staring at the spot where he had vanished. Bubbles popped the surface as he let out his final breath and plumes of steam spiralled upwards, forming the familiar silhouette before fading into the white mass. One of the men behind Kasnil whispered, “The ghost took him away.”

* * *​

When, a few hours later, TQ-531 thought back on his colleague’s foolish last attempt at salvation, he had to admit that the dead trooper had had a good sense of the speed at which the tide rose and fell in the seas of Mehr. It was nearly midday now and it was clear that the surface currents around the speeder that still lay high and dry had shifted. However, the relative warmth of the day hadn’t caused the fog to thin out. Quite the opposite, in fact; the haze seemed to grow thicker by the minute and all TQ-531 could do was to record the general direction of the city in the navigation console in the hope that what his late friend had glimpsed hadn’t been a mirage.

There were only two stormtroopers left on the seaspeeder now in addition to TQ-531 himself, his co-pilot and Kasnil, and one of them was giving TQ-531 serious cause for concern. TQ-159 was a veteran even among veterans; he had been in the service of the Empire for longer than anyone and he had been stationed on Marfa for all of six years. One would expect such a seasoned old hand of the stormtrooper corps to remain calm and steadfast in the face of danger, yet the Pro, as his peers called him affectionately, was so terrified that he didn’t even try to hide it. He was staring blankly ahead, muttering an incomprehensible string of words that might have been a prayer – or perhaps a series of curses, TQ-531 wasn’t quite sure which. He was tempted to go and sit at the man’s side to try and offer some comfort, but taking his attention off the controls wasn’t an option when his last attempt at addressing his passengers had resulted in the deaths of half the squad. He took a deep breath and resolved to attempt to appease the Pro from his seat at the bow when the trooper spoke.

“It wants an offering.”

“What?”

“The sea,” the Pro said haggardly. “It wants an offering.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Kasnil snapped. “The sea doesn’t want. It’s just a mass of water.”

“It does. It’s talking to me, don’t you hear it?”

“You need to calm down, One-Fifty-Nine,” TQ-531 said, putting as much compassion as he could in his voice. “Yes, this is a scary situation, but we’ll get through it. Calm down.”

The Pro shook his head. “It wants an offering,” he repeated. “A sacrifice.”

TQ-531 felt the seaspeeder list a little. He glanced behind him to see a very agitated TQ-153 standing and pointing at the only other stormtrooper that was still sitting in the back. “It wants him.”

“Sit down now, trooper,” Kasnil snarled. “You’re going to earn yourself a court-martial if you keep this up.”

“No!” the Pro shouted. “It told me, it wants him –”

It all happened too fast for anyone to intervene. The Pro lunged forward, grabbed his comrade and flung him overboard like a sack of root vegetables. TQ-531 thought to leap from his seat to contain him, but before he could even remember that he was bound in place by his safety webbing, a bolt of red light pierced the fog. The deranged trooper’s eyes widened and he fell into the sea with a splash, leaving TQ-531 to gaze at Kasnil, who was re-holstering his blaster. Behind him, the mists were swirling again to outline a white giant above the dark water before they dissolved once more into nothingness.

* * *​

It occurred to Kasnil, when the haze surrounding them took shades of silvery pink to signal the arrival of dusk, that they hadn’t exchanged a word for hours. He could see that the two remaining stormtroopers kept their attention on the instruments before them and occasionally pointed at this or that indicator or gauge, but they’d done so in absolute silence, as if they were perfectly attuned to each other’s thoughts – which they might have been, for all he knew, but they were nowhere closer to finding the shore, and he could only hope that whatever they were up to wasn’t taking the speeder towards the high seas.

On the upside, the… ghost hadn’t appeared again since the three of them had stopped speaking, and that was just as well.

Still, he should probably remind them of his existence. He dug into the utility belts of the suits of armour that his dead men had abandoned on the deck, extracted a few ration cubes and offered them to the pilots.

The stormtroopers accepted them with a nod of thanks, but didn’t take their eyes off the controls. From his new vantage point, Kasnil could see that a red indicator was flashing – and, as he sat there wondering what it was, its glow became fainter and fainter, until it faded and disappeared altogether.

“Oh no,” the co-pilot mumbled. “No, no, no, no, no!”

“What happened?” Kasnil asked.

TQ-531 let out a sigh. “It’s the sonar, sir. It’s been acting up for a while, but it just went offline.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

Kasnil forced himself to inhale a deep, soothing breath before panic could overcome him. “This is high tide, right?”

“It is, sir.”

“And we still have geolocation?”

“We do.”

The commander pondered the situation for a few moments. “Here’s what we’ll do. We know that there are no reefs here, so we want to stay precisely where we are. This fog can’t keep forever. We’ll move again only when we see the coast.”

“But, sir –” TQ-531 objected.

“Do you have any better ideas?”

The stormtrooper’s shoulders sagged in defeat. “No, sir.”

“We’ll take turns to keep an eye on the control board,” Kasnil continued. “I’ll take first watch. You two need to rest.”

“If it’s okay with you, sir, I’d just as well stay up,” the co-pilot piped up. “I won’t be able to sleep anyway.”

Kasnil examined him carefully. He could see the lines of tension etched in his face. “Fine. But the moment you feel that you may fall asleep, you ask me to take over. You’ve been at it for thirty-six hours, trooper. You need to rest lest you get us all killed.”

The two pilots nodded in assent. TQ-531 settled as comfortably as he could in his seat and closed his eyes, while Kasnil returned to the back. He piled two blankets that were stowed under the bench to make a pillow for himself and lay there, watching the co-pilot to ensure that he wasn’t dozing off as the cottony mass around them shifted from pink to purple and finally to black.

He must have snoozed for a few moments. It was a flicker of movement from the speeder that jolted him to full awareness, and what he saw knocked the air out of his lungs.

The co-pilot was standing on the tip of the vessel’s bow, looking straight ahead at the white silhouette that had risen in the distance – only this time, the ghost wasn’t menacing. It was extending its arms towards the trooper invitingly, as if encouraging him to seek refuge in its embrace – and before Kasnil could find his voice, the man took the last step that separated him from the dark waters, and he disappeared into the night without a sound.

 

WOW came up to this story thanks to the WIP-month. Horror at its best with the ocean and the ghost devouring the Stormtroopers. What will happen to the remaining ones

 

Thank you for the reviews and thank you to everyone who stopped by to read!

@Findswoman Thanks I enjoyed coming back to this story after all this time, though I won't lie, it wasn't easy getting back into this very particular head-space. I hope I won't disappoint with the concluding chapter, where everything will be explained in a way, but indeed the "terror", as you aptly named it, seems to know how to drive these castaways to insanity. Just one note though: it's not 531 who accepts the ghost's "invitation" to come to him, but his co-pilot – which was certainly confusing in the chapter itself, as I'm realising now that not giving these characters proper names wasn't such a good idea after all. I really wanted to lean into the idea of faceless stormtroopers for this story, but I can see that it made the story less accessible to readers, and that's certainly something I'll change if I ever decide to re-write it altogether.

@earlybird-obi-wan Thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed what you read. The last chapter is coming right up, and there are only two passengers left on the speeder now...

 

A content warning before we start: this is a horror story, so there was bound to be a bit of violence and gore somewhere... Well, this is it.

Part IV

There was a legend that TQ-531 had read in the public library of Mehr that spoke of a group of sailors lost at sea. He couldn’t quite recall the exact circumstances under which they’d found themselves stranded, but the gist of the tale felt eerily relevant to his current predicament. The men in the story had betrayed the city and caused the Great Burning, a catastrophic attack some nine hundred years prior; when the invasion was defeated, the traitors fled on a skiff. They drifted through the mists for weeks without food or water; in order to survive, they had to drink each other’s blood – until they developed a taste for human flesh and began to kill and devour each other. The last survivor was so possessed by this unnatural appetite that, once all his comrades were gone, he resorted to hacking off his own limbs and eating them, until he did not have enough of a body to sustain his existence and the sea claimed him at last.

It had been two nights and two days since TQ-531’s co-pilot had surrendered to madness and jumped overboard, and, as much as he tried, the stormtrooper couldn’t prevent his mind from wandering back to the legend. The truth was that their situation was dire. In two whole rotations, neither he nor Kasnil had caught the faintest glimpse of anything that looked like dry land, or another ship, or even sea avians or aquatic creatures. The ghost himself had disappeared; as a matter of fact, it seemed that the mists had mutated into a solid mass of white, without any of the swirls and volutes that had brought them such fear, but also nurtured the illusion of hope. Meanwhile, the seaspeeder’s desalination pod was showing signs of clogging up, and, while it was still operational for now, the time was nigh when they would have no means of extracting drinking water. As for food, they had scavenged and eaten the last ration cubes from the discarded suits of armour, and, for all the revenue that the fishing industry generated for Mehr, they hadn’t seen a single fish since the beginning of their ill-advised expedition. Besides, TQ-531 wasn’t sure they could cobble together the tools necessary to catch one, should it ever appear, from the odds and ends that were available on their craft.

He forced the thought away from his mind and brought his focus back to the control board before him. The sun had sunk under the horizon and darkness engulfed the speeder once more; Kasnil had just dozed off in the co-pilot’s seat and TQ-531 had to make sure that they didn’t drift from the position they’d been holding for the past two days – although he wasn’t quite certain that they hadn’t already allowed the vessel to be carried away by the shifting currents. Both he and the commander had nodded off during their shifts or allowed their minds to wander for long stretches of time, and the fact was that, without a proper navigation system, geolocation was pretty much worthless unless one kept his full, unwavering attention on the instruments. For all he knew, they might be as far out as the open ocean, or maybe just off the coast and about to run into the reefs that made Mehr’s seas so treacherous for the uninitiated sailor.

The commander twitched in his sleep, sighed deeply, and twitched again. He had been growing increasingly agitated throughout the day and even his naps had been fitful and restless; yet, as obnoxious as he was – and TQ-531 was determined that he would pay for leading his men into a death trap out of sheer incompetence if and when they made it back to the Empire – his arrogance had become somewhat subdued since only three, and then two of the original squad had remained on the speeder. Instead, he’d been trying to put on a brave face, but the tic at the corner of his eye and the jerky movements of his hands gave away his state of anguish and terror. The stormtrooper was leaning to the side to readjust his blanket in the hope of giving him what little comfort such a gesture could provide when the commander opened his eyes and stared at him in the dark.

And without any sort of warning, Kasnil lunged out of his seat and sank his teeth in the side of the stormtrooper’s throat.

The struggle was short but bloody. The commander was clearly not in possession of his wits and didn’t even appear to hear TQ-531’s protests; his attack was slapdash and uncoordinated, yet he kept coming like a rabid canine seeking to tear into his victim’s flesh. The speeder careened dangerously as the two men fought to overpower each other, and for a moment the stormtrooper thought that they would capsize – but then his fist found Kasnil’s jaw, the commander’s neck snapped under the powerful blow, and he flopped back to his seat like a broken puppet.

For a dazed moment TQ-531 contemplated the corpse of his commander, wondering what had just happened. But then he felt something hot and sticky seep into his body glove, and he realised that he was bleeding. He pushed the body overboard to be swallowed by the dark waters, and he dug into the storage box tucked between the two seats for the medkit.

* * *​

It was the morning light that awakened him.

TQ-531 opened his eyes to see that the world around him had taken a bright shade of white as the sun rose somewhere behind the fog. He felt numb and exhausted. It had taken him several minutes to overcome the shock of Kasnil’s attack and tend to the wound that the commander had opened in his throat. The laceration had been squirting blood, indicating that the madman’s teeth had reached the carotid, and patching it up with the bandages available on the seaspeeder had been difficult. He was greatly weakened by the time he’d been able to contain the haemorrhage and he hadn’t been able to keep his attention on the control board after that – not that it really mattered, he’d vaguely thought as he sank into a comatose slumber; being a lone, grievously wounded man lost at sea, his chances of survival were close to nil. Only a miracle could save him.

Now, however, it seemed that the miracle – or the beginning of one, at any rate – had come to pass. The mists had somewhat thinned out during the night and were swirling around him once more, and he could catch glimpses of the water beyond the immediate surroundings of his craft. He sat up gingerly, careful to not reopen the tear in his neck, and took a cautious look around. The silhouette of the old fort that stood on Rook Island in the distance, less than a mile behind the speeder, very nearly jolted him out of his seat.

Maybe the geolocation system hadn’t been all that useless after all.

He quickly recorded the direction of the island in the navigation console as he tried to gather his befuddled thoughts. At this time of day, the tide was receding; his ship was bound to run into reefs or sandbanks as he sought to make his way to dry land – but in his current state of frailty he couldn’t afford to wait for the sea to rise either. He activated the engine and began to manoeuvre the craft towards the island. It wasn’t far, he told himself. He would get as close as possible on the speeder, and he would wade through the last few cable lengths.

He was still a distance away from the rocky outcrop when he felt that he was scraping against the ocean floor. He threw all power to the repulsorlifts to maintain the ship afloat and ploughed ahead, hoping against hope that he could still manage to bring it closer to the island. For a moment, it seemed that his gambit had paid off, and the speeder leapt forward – but suddenly the craft tilted with an ominous crack, and, when he managed to stabilise it, he turned around and saw that water was gushing into the back section through a tear in the hull.

He shuffled desperately through the lockers below the benches for something that would float, but it seemed that the Mehrine had not stored any lifebelts on this particular craft – whether that was an oversight, or a sign of their boldness as sailors, or an indication that all this had been an elaborate trap for the Imperials, he did not know. But there was nothing for it. His salvation was right there; the mists had thinned ever further now and he could see every detail of the fort on the island. He would have to swim.

As soon as he slipped into the water, the currents of the receding tide began to drag him towards the open sea. He fought against them with all his might, kicking and stroking as hard as he could to move forward – but all he could manage was to stay in place, and yet the island was right there, just beyond his reach…

The ocean around him took a murky shade of red when the wound on his throat reopened and blood started seeping through the bandages. His vision grew blurry as life drained out of him, and his struggle against the tide became weaker as the flux of the ocean forced him to drift away.

The last thing he saw was the shape of a tall, white figure standing on the water that dissolved with the last of the mists.

* * *​

In the high tower of the ancient fort that stood on Rook Island, the Seers of Mehr were kneeling on the cracked paving stones, holding hands with each other as they formed a meditation circle. One of them opened her eyes, and then another; and slowly, they came out of their trance and helped each other to their feet.

For the youngest among them, it was the first time that they had been invited to commune with their elders and muster the forces of nature against Mehr’s enemies. For those who were old enough to remember the days of the Republic, the sensation was that of awakening from a dazed stupor. In the decades that had elapsed since the onset of the Clone Wars, their ability to see – let alone act – had been smothered under a shroud of darkness. With the death of the Emperor and the final defeat of the Empire above Jakku, the veil was lifted – and they had been able, if belatedly, to summon the power of the sea and inflict upon their occupiers the punishment they deserved.

The Seers brushed the dust from their robes and made their way down the tower to the island’s pier. They glanced at the clear skies and climbed into the boat that would take them back to the city. Justice had been served. The sea had reclaimed what was hers.

 

Loved this. What a beautiful, horrible, spooky story! You remembered my fanon better than I did, and it brought back such wonderful memories of Brittany for me. (The landscape, not the shipwrecks and cannibalism and creepy mists....)
You are such a talented writer, a master of every genre. Thank you for pulling me out of lurking.

 

Horror. All the men dead with the last one TQ-531 maimed by his commander and killing him before he can see the island. But no saving for him. The Seers defeat all with help from the sea

 

This was a super creepy story and very well done horror! I had an English teacher who loved Stephen King's books, and I remember her telling us once that horror is all about the environment and setting, and you did an amazing job with that. That sense of desolation, being cut off, unable to see your surroundings or what might be coming at you, knowing there were legends that talked of something similar-- I'd be freaked out if I was one of those stormtroopers too. And then all the deaths happened in different ways, so the others could never know what exactly would be coming next or how to prepare for it. This isn't a problem they can fix by shooting at it.

I was hoping that TQ-531 would survive since he seemed to have a real appreciation for the world and the city, so I thought he might possibly be spared. It even seemed at first when he was alone and spotted the fort that that was exactly what was happening... until it wasn't. Poor guy, getting that last bit of hope only to have it yanked out from under him. I'd say the sea (and Seers) punished all of them quite thoroughly.

Great work!

 

Thank you all for reading and reviewing! I'm taking advantage of the Review Race to answer your very kind comments without having to worry that I'll be crowding the first page with all my story threads I need to reply to

@divapilot Thank you for the praise, and thank you for sharing with us your fanon about Marfa and Mehr! This story wouldn't have happened if you hadn't come up with this rich, complex world and society, and I'm glad you enjoyed it. I hope I and many others can pull you out of lurking from time to time. We miss you!

@earlybird-obi-wan Thanks for the review! Given the nature of the challenge for which this story was written, it was bound to have an unhappy end, but I'm "glad" you think I managed to make the conclusion suitably horrible.

@Findswoman Thank you so much!

Indeed, the Seers had planned everything – I'd even say that they knew that the Imperials would raid the wedding ceremony, and that the presence of a single seaspeeder in the harbour when they were chased by a howling mob was a trap, and Kasnil and his men walked right into it. I'm not aware of many profics or fanfics that describe retribution against the Imperials after the fall of the Empire, and I absolutely wanted to write one at some point. This challenge gave me the opportunity to do just that, and while horror isn't a genre I dabbled in in the past, it turned out that it suited my purpose well enough.

That was all thanks to divapilot's amazing fanon. I can't recall right now if you were a reader of But One Hour Mine; if you weren't I can't recommend it highly enough and you should go over there and catch up, even though it's unfinished. divapilot created such a rich, unusual environment for her story, including local specificities that allowed for the growth of a particular Force tradition, and all I had to do was to run with it.

Thanks again, and thanks once more both for the original Fanon Horror Challenge that gave me the original idea for this story, and for hosting WIP Month, thus motivating me to finish it at long last!

@Mira_Jade As always thank you so much for the detailed review! It always makes my day when I see that you posted in one of my threads.

Thanks! Greece being very much a maritime culture, Mehr was an aspect of divapilot's fanon that I connected to instantly. And there's actually a bonus reference to her fanon post in the cannibalism scene, as that idea came to me from the works of Herodotus, who wrote all sorts of fanciful things about places of the world he knew little about, and describes the people of Brittany as cannibals.

Heh. Kasnil is a true believer in the Empire – although I'd argue that it's the case only because the Empire allows him to exercise petty power.

Oh yes, writing TQ-531 was one of the most interesting aspects of developing this story for me. I wanted him to harbour this contradiction that, on the one hand, he's so Imperial himself that he doesn't even refer to himself by his proper name, and on the other hand, he's still able to see and admire the world around him. So in a way he's more human and certainly less petty than Kasnil, but he's not a "good guy" by any stretch of the imagination.

:ackbar: IT'S A TRAP! :ackbar:

Haha! No, it doesn't, and it's certainly going to take its sweet time picking them off one by one!

*bows*

I'm glad you picked up on this particular bit, because the black vs white element became key to me when I was trying to picture this story in my head. I wanted the environment in which the Imperials experience fear to match their own appearance – white for the armour, black for the body glove and the uniform. In a sense I wanted them to meld into their surroundings as an indication that they're already doomed, they just don't know it yet.

Thank you!

Okay, I'll admit here that I didn't go as far as to imagine specific crimes for each stormtrooper that would lead to a specific punishment As a matter of fact, one reason I chose not to give the troopers names was that they're supposed to be generic Imperials, and the fact that they each get "taken" by the mists in a different way is actually targeting Kasnil in order to drive him to insanity and dehumanisation – just as he never saw the Mehrine as properly human but merely as rungs on the ladder of the Imperial hierarchy.

And now you have me very intrigued, because the idea that a lake can qualify as "maritime" just doesn't compute for me Of course, I've never seen a lake remotely close to the size of the Great Lakes, so to me lakes are just big puddles of water that can't be possibly scary. The sea, on the other hand... that's alive, for lack of a better word, and that makes it unpredictable.

Quite frankly, the technical details are mostly technobabble, but I did look up the instruments that are available on a modern boat to develop them

Heh, yes. There's a moment when death become preferable to fear.

I had to look this up, but yes, this would be it. My starting point for this bit was Géricault's painting Le Radeau de la Méduse and the history behind it, which is quite similar.

As you noted above, I wanted the Imperials' environment and their ability to sense it to "shrink" as the story went on, until they couldn't see anything anymore. (Oh, and I wanted to foreshadow TQ-531's fate with the idea that hope is an illusion, of course.)

As I said above, this was, to me, the key difference between Kasnil and TQ-531 from the start: Kasnil is not much of a human, because he doesn't see others as human; TQ-531, on the other hand, has surrendered his humanity in that he doesn't even call himself by a name, but he's more human than Kasnil because he's capable of generosity and compassion.

As I said earlier in my reply to Finds, there was already a hint of such a Force tradition in Mehr in divapilot's fanon. In her description of Mehr she elaborated on the twin ideas that the Mehrine have a deep bond to the sea and that, because they're such an insular society, they have a higher-than-usual rate of individuals with some Force-sensitivity, who often work as seers of the future. I just put these two aspects together for this story Thanks again for the review!

@Thumper09 Thank you!

Thanks! These are indeed two aspects that I tried to elaborate on to make this story spooky – and both, in the end, arise from the fact that, as Imperial occupiers, these men never bothered to truly acquire an in-depth knowledge of Mehr. TQ-531 did learn more than most, of course, but it was all still rather superficial. In the end, he always thought of himself as just passing through and being stationed here today, elsewhere tomorrow, and that superficiality is something he paid for in the end.

I actually did consider an alternate ending for this story, where TQ-531 was allowed to survive and sent back to the Imperial remnant with a message along the lines of "we'll be coming for you", but I ultimately opted against it. First, because the Mehrine are supposed to be this very insular community, and in that sense the rest of the galaxy wouldn't be of much concern to them, and second, because I was on a roll with the "ten little Indians" vibe and I felt that it made more sense Thanks again!

Thank you once more to readers, reviewers and lurkers! If you've read this far, I can only recommend that you look at divapilot's stories that are set in Mehr or feature Mehrine characters, namely:

Don't Be Afraid of the Dark
But One Hour Mine
Code Breaker: The Journal of Kash Ferros
Promise​

 

Heh, this was a fun exchange to read, because my background has made my connotations of the word "lake" almost completely opposite of @Chyntuck 's. I grew up about a ten-minute drive from the shores of Lake Michigan, one of the Great Lakes. We hardly ever called it Lake Michigan, it was just "the Lake." Standing on the shore, it's literally like looking at the ocean-- all you can see in any direction is water. Nothing on the horizon. Now I live about a ten-minute drive from the Atlantic in a place where people call smaller bodies of water a "lake." All I can think of when I look at these lakes, especially ones that housing subdivisions are built around, is, "That's a puddle or a pond. That's not a lake." So, yeah, maybe it's just a Midwestern US thing from the Great Lakes region.

Sorry, back to your regularly scheduled programming.