A slightly comical and random twist on a story or two you'll all already know. Came up with the idea and decided to write it.
The Sixth FingerThe cybernetic hand flexed, powerful but yet strange in the artificial smoothness of its movements. The husky, harsh rasps of breath were all that could be heard in the quiet of the control room, telling the figure whose hand it was that he was still alive. Whatever alive meant nowadays. There wasn't much challenge left in the job, or sacred task, or whatever it was he was supposed to be doing. Construction projects behind schedule, generals and admirals bungling around trying to squash pathetic attempts at resistance. He suspected he could have tackled a lot of the recent wars on his own. Without backup.
He looked down again through the red-tinted lenses of his dark eyes. Six. Had that just been a mistake on the part of the Emperor? The six-fingered cyborg stood and walked over to the screens that showed him a read-out of what was going on across his space station. A sith lord, the most powerful ever perhaps, and here he was sitting looking at screens that were reminiscent of an old gaming console. That was galactic progress for you. Darth Vader would have snorted, if he had still owned a functional nose.
In the old days, it had almost been fun, enforcing the new Galactic Empire. Tortured, he had endlessly scoured the galaxy, defeating all who came before him in deathly rages, utterly devoted to the Dark Side of the force. And then came the second wave, the sons or fathers who sought him out - him, personally - bearing a grudge. But they were amateurs. They had a little grief, a little fear, but it deserted them too fast and a red flash of light ended their quest. The six-fingered man, the dark sith lord, the enforcer, became so feared it was rumoured he was invincible. Eventually, slowly but surely, the good ones died out, and thereafter the stormtroopers shot most potential assassing. And then in the end they had stopped coming altogether.
A light flickered on the monitor. Intruder alert. It would have been of interest, but the damn security systems on this thing were still incomplete and kept playing up. Three figures, apparently. Probably stormtroopers whose security keys had malfunctioned.
Tapping fingers on the keyboard, Vader asked the station to give him readouts on the people. One very weak, not much life, helped along by one big and strong, with another normal figure accompanying them. Odd. Could it be intruders for real this time? Some old nemesis, a remnant of the jedi order? One of the rebel captains on a suicide mission? He glanced down at his dormant lightsaber, getting half hopeful. In fact, he almost let himself think that it might be master Yoda, or Ben Kenobi, the last missing Jedi masters. Ben would be old now... perhaps the weak figure was him?
He took note of their coordinates within the Death Star, and strode towards an elevator. He was swiftly transported to their level, and glanced around, almost nonchalant in his mastery of the known universe. A dying soldier slumped by the wall, gasping something about a giant and a fighter. Interesting. Or at least, almost interesting.
A trail of dead stormtroopers led around the level, the occasional broken blast door. Drat. Further behind schedule on building this thing.
Linking up to a communications channel from his helmet seconds before the intruders blew it, he heard the first crackle of a conversation.
"Level... next... take West... princess..."
Rescuing a prisoner. So that was it. Was it Leia, the girl from Alderaan? He barely bothered to remember the names of prisoners. Either they were pleading or dead, generally. She could have been called Emma, or K'duri, or Buttercup for all he cared. He sighed, the noise jarring with the stillness and only interrupted by the clank as a dead stormtrooper's hand finaly relaxed and let the gun it had vainly held clang onto the metal floor.
He found the monitor room for the level, and pulled some of the broken cables together momentarily with the force. Gone were the days when force chokes were all the rage, he reflected; he also realised what a revolutionary career he might have had in the electronics business. It seemed a little late to consider retraining at this point in his career, however. The screens flickered back to life; the party had split up, with two heading for the cells, and one... for him. Interesting. Perhaps two were on a mission and one was on a vendetta? He could but hope.
His boots thudded down the corridor, in perfect time with the bionic clocks that were built into his very life support systems. And then, black cloak swirling in suitably dramatic fashion, he saw his opponent. And his shoulders slumped. Pathetic. Not even a decent suit of body armour.
The man had ragged hair, and a moustache. His attire spoke of some far-off planet, lost to time, with a battered brown jacket and some sort of hand weapon holder at his belt. He could have been any of the feeble types who had come hunting a six fingered man before and failed. Except even worse. And he'd pretty much destroyed an otherwise moderately complete level of the ship, and he didn't have enough electricians as it was. It would be a short fight; he'd slash a few times, make a couple of blocks, and then probably decapitate his enemy. Boring. Thoroughly boring. Life is not fair to brutal galactic dictators.
The man looked up, seeing the dark-robed figure loom in front of him. He had been hunting for a six-fingered man for a long time, Vader realised, sensing his foe's emotions. His skin bore an impression of having once been tanned, but it had grown pale in colder climes since. And then, through the lenses of his face-mask, Vader looked into the eyes of the man. And there he saw something that made him both glad and unsettled. The eyes were cold. This one had steel in him.
Would it actually be a challenge? The corridor was lit bright with the red glow of the sith lord's lightsaber as it flashed into action. Tensing, waiting for the fight to come, he looked at his opponent again. A bright silver blade appeared in his foe's hand, and the stranger took a couple of practise swipes, flicking his wrist expertly with the blade. This one had studied, too. How strange. How had he come here? What of the things Vader had done riled him so? The questions would probably never be answered.
The stranger then spoke - softly, in a voice that had the melodic sound of a warm homeland, but with an edge to it. His eyes flickered with a heatless fire, and he nodded to his opponent with a small smile, almost bowing, but holding his weapon at the ready. He only spoke one sentence, with the air of one who has been waiting to say it all their life.
"My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die."
