Ravensdagger_Overkill

Overkill

Annotation

Taylor survived being Khepri and she isn’t happy about it. Swearing that she would find a way to get back to those that left her for dead, she begins to make her way across the desert world of Tatooine in search of allies and just maybe, a new purpose.

[A Star Wars / Worm crossover fanfic]

Overkill

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One

Chapter Forty-Two

Overkill

Prologue

Prologue Until the moment that the sky split apart, the only movement had been the lazy haze of heat rising from the sands and the slow crawl of shadows hiding from the twin suns above.The slit was small, a rough window into a world that was not this one. Air rushed out of the tear, cool and humid and entirely different from anything the desert had felt. The world sucked at it like a parched man taking a swallow of fresh water.The form that slid out of the hole and fell into the side of a sand dune was small, a lithe package covered in tatters of black cloth. The impact sent dust into the air, more when it rolled unceremoniously to the bottom of the dune.A figure stepped out of the hole in reality, landing with its feet just-so to absorb the impact on sandy ground.The tear slid shut without sound or protest.Masking its visage with a raised hand, the figure searched the horizon, gaze darting across an ocean of sand and more sand. Their hand lowered and they turned their gaze down to the pile of cloth and exposed flesh that was already cooking under the relentless gaze of twin suns.If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.With sure steps, the figure made their way down the dune, sands shifting beneath them but never enough to compromise their balance. They stood above the pile of cloth for a while, then reached around to the small of their back and removed a bottle. Water sloshed within it, condensation covering the tin surface with droplets that were wicked away by the heat.“Good luck,” the figure said before dropping the bottle onto the sand.They turned just as another tear opened up in the world and stepped into it.The desert remained, unphased by the drama, by the horror that had passed on its surface. It had buried its share of sorrows in sand and heat, and it would do so still.From the pile of cloth came a hand, emaciated and weak. Fingers like withered branches reached out with only the slightest tremble and grasped the bottle.

Chapter One

Chapter One Her feet trailed across the sand with a rasp. Each step lifting a thin layer of dust into the air behind her and leaving a smooth mark atop the dunes she travelled.Taylor passed the back of her hand across dried lips. What little moisture she’d had was long gone. She could feel the skin of her lips peeling under the sucking heat and her eyes stung even when the wind died down and didn’t spray her with flaying sand.She shook her bottle, the half full container feeling far, far too light. “Damn it,” she swore as she continued walking. She didn’t know where she was going, exactly, only that the bigger of the two suns was behind her.

* * *

She shivered. Her costume, the tattered remains of it, at least, weren’t insulated for the cold of a desert at night.Three unfamiliar moons hovered above. She wasn’t on Earth anymore, that much was infinitely clear.Coughing to clear her dry throat, she turned over and looked at her bottle. Only a quarter left, and already the thirst was getting to her.

* * *

Bugs.Or maybe not bugs, but some sort of scorpion. She felt the nest of them waiting in ambush just under the sands not a hundred meters away. Still she walked on, legs dragging along with a constant plodding pace that did little to eat up the distance.She had them move out from under the sands and inspected them with none of the passion she would usually bring to that sort of thing. They were flat, wider than they were tall, with two barb-tipped tails made of overlapping chitinous plates.They had eight legs, she noted idly as she passed by them. The scorpions followed after her, not making a noise or even shifting the sand as they kept up with her slow pace across the dunes.She wondered if they were edible.

* * *

Another night.She was out of water.The scorpions, more of them now that she had started to gather them, were guarding her little nook in between a rocky shelf and a sand dune.She wondered if they would eat her body come morning.

* * *

She was dying.Just pushing her feet forwards a step was a chore. Her legs ached, her stomach was a gnawing pit and the wavering haze of the sun beating on the sand left lingering afterimages in her mind that she couldn’t get rid of.Her every thought was a muddled mess. Memories flashed by in disjointed parts, thoughts of her friends, of Scion, of the world going to shit.She would have cried, but there wasn’t a drop of water to wring out of her body now.Another step, then another.She heard a distant rumble.More steps, feet dragging through sand that already filled her shoes.The rumble grew more insistent.Frowning, and without even the power to raise a hand to shield her eyes, Taylor looked around through sand-crusted eyes and tried to find the source of the noise.Her scorpions felt it too. They wanted to scuttle away and hide under the sands for protection.She ignored them. The rumbling came from off to her left, far, but not so far that the sound didn’t carry. There was a pillar of dust rising into the bright blue of the midday sky. Thick, and laced with black smoke.Breathing in deep and suppressing the kernel of hope in her chest, Taylor turned towards the rumble and kept walking.

* * *

The machine was huge, a lumbering brick of rusty metal that moved along and over dunes on four tracks the size of minivans. It moved with no grace or elegance, just the slow, sure crawl that all things in the desert adopted.Taylor shifted, her steps bringing her into the machine’s path where what little strength she had left finally abandoned her.For a moment, head bowed and eyes closed, she lost what little will kept her going. She rested, waiting as the machine rolled onwards, approaching her from afar like an unstoppable behemoth. It wasn’t until the rumbling engine shifted tones that Taylor awoke from her haze and looked up again.She was in the long shadows cast by the box, a respite from the boiling sun. The front of the machine hissed as it opened, revealing a long ramp built into the front that came clattering down on long hydraulic pistons.Blinking dry eyes, Taylor stared at the trio of brown robed figures that moved out of the machine, two of them carrying long rifles tucked against their shoulders while the one in the lead, the shortest of the trio, had a black device in hand. He pointed it at Taylor and she tensed, but all it did was beep a little. “M'um m'aloo?” the creature asked, glowing yellow eyes staring at her from the depths of its hood.“D-” Taylor tried to speak, but her voice was little more than a rasp, her tongue thick and mouth too dry to speak. She swallowed, but all that did was send a shiver of pain down her throat.“Mi’amo ro! Massa kaa, roo? Waa,” the creature said, its voice pitched so high that she could barely hear it. A scent wafted by, like wet dog and rotting grass. It touched a canister at its hip, and from the sloshing she could hear it wasn’t hard to guess at its contents.The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.“I, I can’t,” Taylor said. She pointed at her mouth.The creature nodded and took a few more steps towards Taylor. Steps that brought it into her range.She didn’t want to, not again, but in the back of her mind there was a snap, like a rubber band going off and between one blink and the next the tiny creature was her. She shook her head. It wasn’t her, but it was hers to control, to play with, to dominate.The creature stopped, almost falling over until she had it take another step to regain its balance.She looked into glowing yellow eyes, her mind, meanwhile, was scouring over unfamiliar nerves and a body that was unlike anything she had ever controlled. She felt sick for a moment, but she was already on the brink. “I’m sorry,” she said to the little creature.It was alien, not human in the least. It had two arms and legs, but the similarities ended there as far as she could tell. Not that it truly mattered. With the creature’s arm, she had it reach to its hip and pull the canister away. It handed it to her.Its partners had kept their rifles lowered, but now they were chattering at her and at their friend. She didn’t have forever, or many options besides.Taylor paid them little heed. She popped the lid off with a trembling, desperate hand, the bottle leveraged between her knees. She almost cried with a few drops splashed out of the side and to the sand where they disappeared with a hiss.She sniffed at it just once before her self control broke and she tipped the flask back. Water, lukewarm, leather-y tasting water, ran down her chin and up her nose. Taylor almost choked as a relieved sob escaped her. She swallowed one mouthful, then another.There was a vague memory of advice about giving too much water too quickly to someone who was dehydrated. She didn’t give a damn as she choked down more. The two creatures outside her range got a little more antsy as their companion stood stock still.Throat wet for the first time in days, Taylor lowered the flasked and ran the back of her hand across her mouth, then licked her lips. She focused on the creature frozen before her. She could feel its nervousness, its fear, but surprisingly no panic. “I need a place to rest,” she told it. “I don’t have anything to pay you with. I’m sorry.”She wasn’t sure what the impressions she was getting from the little creature were, it probably didn’t understand what she was saying to begin with. She certainly didn’t understand it. Sighing, she had the creature step back until it stumbled out of her range.There was chattering, a whole lot of high-pitched squealing and the repetition of the word ‘jii die’ a few times while pointing at her.One of the riflemen ran back up the ramp on stubby legs, gun catching on the entrance before it disappeared into the bowels of their huge home. She wished there were bugs within, but it was clean. Or, perhaps, it was too damned hot for the average insect to live. There were certainly few enough in the sand around them.She brought her scorpions closer, but figured that they would not be appreciated by her new friends. Said new friends were gesturing at each other with expansive waves of their arms and more squealing noises.A minute later, maybe two, the creature with the rifle returned, and this time it was being followed.The thing was large, half again as tall as the nearest robed creature and made of rust coloured steel. Yellow eyes inset into an almost cat-like face of steel glowed briefly as it followed after the creature. Its steps were faltering and weak, as though it should have been more graceful but couldn’t get up the strength to move right. She could sympathise.It wasn’t until the new creature spoke, its voice flat and monotone that she realized that it was some sort of robot, not a living thing. It rattled something at her, then shifted dialects. Again and again for a few long minutes, a new series of sounds every time.“Are you, are you trying to talk to me?” she asked it. Her mind was still a hazy mess. It was going to take more than one bottle of water to fix that.The robot paused, then turned to the little creatures and chittered at them. There was a distinctly annoyed tone to it as it gestured towards its chest. A silvery medallion-shaped thing was bolted there, the only part of the robot that wasn’t rusted.“Can, can I have more water?” she asked. They, of course, didn’t understand. She shook the canteen towards them and the nearest creature jumped back and started pointing its rifle at her.More chattering. They eyed her for a moment, three pairs of glowing yellow disks half hidden within deep cowls taking her in. One of them came a little closer, then pointed to the darkness within their boxy home.Taylor’s choices were simple. Follow the little creatures into their home, or wait in the great desert for the sun and sand to end her once and for all.

* * *

Chapter Two

Chapter Two Taylor’s first days in the machine were strange, a haze of half remembered emotions, of being shown to a little room and being given water, of having dozens of small creature become a part of her only to be pushed away by her own fleeting will.She wasn’t sure how long had passed. A day, maybe two. The only real company she had was the rusty robot who would occasionally repeat her own words back to her. She knew that it was night when it grew colder, and that it was day when the temperature inside the machine reached the point where the air was so thick it was hard to breath.They left her alone, for the most part. On the first day she woke up to find bandages wrapped around her missing right arm and a strange collar around her neck. Her costume had been torn up some more by grubby little hands, but she didn’t have anything worth stealing to begin with.Still, she recovered. Some sleep, some water, a bit of gruel that tasted like spicy oatmeal and more sleep besides. After some time she was beginning to feel alive again.“So, what are you?” she asked the robot.“So, what are you?” it repeated in a low monotone.It was a tall and rather imposing machine. Or it would have been if it didn’t look like it was a stiff breeze away from falling apart. “Are you trying to translate?” she asked it.“Are you trying t-”“Stop,” she said, and motioned with her hand with a cutting gesture. “It was cute at first, but now it’s just annoying.”With a grunt of effort, she climbed onto her feet and had to bend back down to avoid hitting her head on the ceiling. Everything was built to the scale of creatures who were a good foot shorter than her. She was going to have to be careful around doorways. It didn’t help that the constant rumble and sway of the vehicle threw off her balance, like being aboard a boat on choppy water.“I’m going exploring,” she said to the robot, just to see if it was starting to understand. She doubted it. Sighing at the machine, she started to move towards the door when its arm shot out with surprising speed and blocked her path.The machine pointed at its neck with its other hand, then made a pre-recorded explosion sound.Taylor touched the collar wrapped around her neck, feeling all the weird lumps and canisters on it. “It’s explosive?” she asked.The robot stared at her, then pointed to her neck and made the exploding noise again.“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” she swore. “How does it activate?” she asked. “Is it remote controlled?”The robot just stared, its unblinking red lights fixed on her.Sighing, she pointed to the collar, then mimed walking out the door before making an exploding noise of her own. She felt rather ridiculous, but it seemed to get the point across.The robot pointed to her collar, then to three points around the door where little cylinders were tack welded in place and fairly recently. He made walking motions with two fingers, pointed to her, the cylinders, then out the door. He repeated the exploding sound.“If I cross the door, I explode,” she said.He nodded.She frowned, wondering when, exactly, she had decided that the robot was a he, and what she was going to do about her new necklace. She had better things to do than wait around on some little creatures to decide her fate. She had to find a way back to Earth, or at least back to Contessa. The woman’s power might have been bullshit, and maybe she was right to dump someone as dangerous as her on some desert rock to die, but that didn’t mean that she was going to lie down and take it.“Can you remove the explosive?” she asked, pointing to her neck, then making a one handed gesture that she hoped the robot understood as removing the collar.The robot shook its head, then pointed to the thing on its chest.“I don’t get it,” she said.What followed were a few minutes of playing charades with a surprisingly intelligent robot, though she had the impression that it was growing frustrated with her.“That thing on your chest,” she said, pointing to make sure it understood. “Is stopping you from helping me.”“Stop helping,” the robot said.Taylor almost jumped out of her skin. For nearly half an hour already she had been the only one talking. To hear another voice, even one that had be be loud enough to be heard over the rumble of the vehicle’s engines, had surprised her.“You learn quick, huh?” she asked it. “How? I get the stop part. There was context there, but the help bit. But you knew a lot of languages. You’re learning as I speak, aren’t you?” She bit her lip. If he could learn to speak in a few days or hours then she could communicate. That was one issue out of the way. All it needed was time.He didn’t have anything to say about that.She pointed to the tiny mattress she had been sleeping on. It was too small to stretch out on and uncomfortable besides. “Mattress,” she said. She mimicked sleeping, adding a bit of a snore to it. “Sleep.” She gestured to the whole of the bed. “Bed.”On and on it went, with her pointing to an item, then calling it out. Her cell, because if she was locked in there it certainly wasn’t just a room, was tiny and spartan, and the few items in it were forein besides. Soon enough she was miming eating, talking, seeing and feeling. Every gesture and body part she could point to she named and the robot just watched with its glowing red eyes.Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work!She hoped she wasn’t too much of a fool, but at least it was something to do.

* * *

Taylor woke up to a mechanical hand shaking her shoulders.She was instantly awake and searching for a weapon. Her arm reached out and grabbed a pipe, one that she had torn off from a broken fitting on the ceiling the night before and got ready to fight.The robot was above her, arms held away from her as he slowly backed away and to his corner. Then he turned his head and started chittering and squeaking in the strange tongue of the locals.There was one of them in the entrance, a tall one with white bandoleers across his brown robes. It chattered back at the robot and then looked her way. The little creature gestured at her, as if asking something but Taylor couldn’t make heads or tails of what it was saying.The robot turned to look her way, then pointed to the creature. “Translation: Jawa. Taylor help.”She raised an eyebrow at that. “He wants me to help?” she pointed between herself and the creature, the Jawa.“Yes,” the robot said.“Why?” she asked.The robot and the Jawa conferred for a moment while Taylor rubbed the sleep out of her eyes. It was surprisingly difficult to do one handed.“Translation: Jawa hurt. Jawa explosion, pain, hurt. Jawa bad... Tusken Raider. Hurt Jawa.” The robot seemed just as frustrated as she was at the lack of decent communication.“Someone is hurting the Jawa? A...” She hesitated before repeating the unfamiliar word. “A Tusken Raider. Is that another clan of Jawa? Another group, a family of them?”The robot shook its rusty head. “Answer: No.”“Right, so it’s not a Jawa, but it can hurt the Jawa?” she asked.It was then that she heard over the rumble of the vehicle, a distinct whining sound. She didn’t have anything to compare it to, but it was always followed by a hollow thud like something impacting against steel.The entire vehicle shook, and it wasn't the usual rocking that they had been suffering through from the moment it took off.The little Jawa was growing frantic, pointing and chattering louder and louder. “Translation: Help Jawa. Free. Collar.”Taylor frowned. She didn’t know what was going on, or who was attacking them, but fighting was something she could do. Maybe. She wasn’t in the best of shape, even with over half a week to recover. Her missing arm still threw off her balance and she felt weak. Then again, the Jawa didn’t look all that strong.“Sure, I’ll help.”The robot was hardly done translating that the tall Jawa pulled out a device and pointed it to each cylinder around the door. They all beeped once.“Is he turning off the collar?” she asked the robot.“Yes,” was the machine’s quick reply.Taylor was out of her bed and across the room in one stumbling, graceless motion. The room was long enough that staying at the far end meant that the Jawa was outside her range, and even if she stood by the door there was plenty of room for it to pass unmolested at the far end of the corridor, but her sudden burst of movement caught the creature flatfooted and it had hardly taken a step back that it was in her range.Between two blinks she was in control of the JawaShe grinned and had the impression that she didn’t look all that docile to the Jawa as she towered above it. Moving its body like an extension of her own, she disabled the other traps around the door, then had the Jawa move into the room.“Can you have him disable that thing?” she asked, pointing to the medal on the robot’s chest.The robot looked down, then back up. “Answer: No. Tool.”“You need another tool for that?” she asked. The robot would be useful to have, if only to translate. It helped that he was a big hunk of hard steel that could probably take a battering for her. “What does it look like?”The robot made helpful gestures while explaining in halting, one-word sentences. “Answer: Long. Metal. Ring. Buttons. Jawa have.”“Right, I’ll keep an eye open for it. Can you follow me?”The robot paused. “Answer: You can say to follow. Robot can not. Jawa can say to follow. Robot can.”She had to parse that for a second, but as soon as she thought about it, it made sense. “What would the Jawa have to say, exactly, for you to be allowed to follow me and fight?”The robot chattered in the Jawa’s strange tongue, and she had the creature next to her imitate the sounds. Its tongue was well suited to the strange words and they came easily to it. That was going to be a handy skill to have, if she ever encountered other devices that were voice activated.“Okay, do you know of any other explosives?” She pointed to her collar. “Or how to remove this one?”“Answer: No,” was the robot’s response.It was all she was going to get, she figured. There were a few bugs in her range, mostly flies that gathered in the vehicle’s kitchens and a few of the sand scorpions she had grown familiar with. She started moving the latter towards the Jawa’s mobile fortress, skittering over the rocky terrain outside to get closer.She didn’t know what a Tusken Raider was, or even if she wanted to help the creatures that had essentially imprisoned her, but she did have a debt to repay and a life to get back to, and none of that was going to happen if she sat back and let her new friends die.