A New Golden Age[Rendili]

[Subject 37]

Rendili
The Bloodhawk
[member="Thengil Ri'Shajirr"]

Space was a distant thing.

Most people didn't think about it in their day to day lives. They thought of it as something out there, something untouched, but lingering. Even those that traveled the stars never truly considered the vastness of it, the possibilities. They knew it was there, lingering, but they never thought what might be hidden just beyond their view. They lived within their happy comfortable little lives, never wondering if today was the day they were going to die.

They never even considered it.

Instead they lived their selfish little lives, they continued in abject misery in their day to day jobs. Bankers, laborers, factory workers, all of them moved along the same path even if they thought themselves different. They were chained to their little lives, eternally and always. They thought themselves free, they thought that just because they had some choices to make they could declare themselves liberated.

Yet they were so wrong.

So very wrong.

His fingers twitched on the organic throne within the center of the bridge, his lips thin but hidden behind the holographic skull upon his helmet. His eyes were closed, a deep breath of filtered air filling his lungs before finally he released it. His eyes opened and his gaze fell towards the man to his left.

Arthis raised his hand, fingers flicking for half a moment. The man besides him simply nodded and wandered off, the blue streaking lines in the viewport ahead shifting slightly, and then a lurch rushing through the ship as The Bloodhawk dropped out of hyperspace just a few million kilometers from Rendili.

 

[RC 212]

[member="Arthis"]

Another day another dollar. RC still had enough Pirate contacts spread about the void to know when a raid was about to go down. He was eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich when this one had come down. Good thing too, because he was bored, and when RC got bored he was usually looking to cause some massive scale destruction.

"Oy Jake, how far are we from Rendilli right now?"

Jake his outlaw companion grinned, and turned his face backwards from the helm.

"Bout a few hours Cap'n. Shall I alert the men?"

Jake didn't have to ask. He'd flown with RC long enough to guess the Captains moods at a whim. When he was eating, was when he was thinking, and thinking normally led to raiding.

"How does the idea of another ship in the fleet sound to ya?"

"Sounds great. Where we gonna get crew?"

"Droids maybe? Who cares. Gentlemen!" RC roared, rising to grab the railing on his small catwalk.

"Set condition two, Helm plot me a jump to Rendilli. Weapons start spinning up torpedo tubes. Soon as we get in system, it's boom time!"


Several Hours later

And boom time it was. RC knew there was another crew here somewhere. That was fine by them, because they could have whatever the hell was left when he was done with the place. They exited Hyperspace a few thousand Kilometers from the Rendilli Drive Yards. RC's eyes scanned the viewports and TAC screens. Then he shoved his helmet on and gripped the railing with both hands.

"Bring us in hard and fast Helm. Make us a static firing line at five hundred kilometers out. Boarding crew will conduct a five hundred kilo Zero-G movement to the platform. Weapons hot?"

"Aye Cap'n."

"Good, good. Standbye to fire, all stations report when we are a go."

Was slagging half the orbital platforms the right thing to do? Was it fair to the innocent workers on board? RC didn't care. He'd sent thousands into the void and stopped letting petty issues concern him long ago.

 

[TB-705]

The Scourge

Starlines faded, viewport reverting back to the empty void of real space, save for the visage of Rendili sitting in the distance. Thengil lounged upon the captain's chair, watching lazily as the mainly Togorian crew went about their tasks. No one could mistake the crew for a military vessel, though every crew member carried some form of weapon. Most wore crystalline edged sc'raths stuffed into sashes or sheaths. Many Togorians disfavored use of more technologically advanced weaponry. Thengil cared little.

What mattered were their hearts and minds. They were an angry people, enslaved for many years beneath the cruel fist of the Iron Tyrant. Their home world laid to waste, as Cathar had been. Their bodies sold into slavery, as Cathar had been. They would not soon forgot what they had suffered. It had been millennia, but every Cathar remembered the histories.

They crewed a former Panathan prison ship - the same ship that they had been held captive on - and Thengil could feel their hate strengthen with every passing moment they stood free. Thengil sniffed the air. Good.

"Corsairs," he rumbled from his chair, drawing their attention.

There stood Ak'ar, leader of the Fras, fur orange and black; Mokir Cinderfur. Chief of Yil Clan, beside him; and Rakhad Redclaw, paw on the hilt of his sc'rath. The three lieutenants.

"Do you hunger for blood?"

A few yowls went up and a steady growl built in the throats of every feline present.

"Rendili lies, throat bare, belly up. Shall we feast?"

Yowls turned to full-throated roars. Thengil added his to theirs, reveling in the thrill of the pride's bloodlust.

"Battle stations!"

The Cathar turned attention to the tac screen, and noted his allies had arrived. "Hail the Bloodhawk..."

"On screen."

"[member="Arthis"], we answered the call. I trust you have targets?"

 

[Subject 37]

[member="RC 212 "]| [member="Thengil Ri'Shajirr"]

Arthis was, by nature, a man of very few words.

He was an Ubese, and their species had an unfortunate lack of developed vocal cords that allowed them to speak in proper terms with anything louder than a rasping whisper. Contacting him through comms was near enough impossible, if not downright annoying for the Pirate. He frowned for a second and then turned to regard the screen. He observed the cat like man for a few moments, trying to place exactly what the hell he was before he simply waved his hand.

If Thengil was familiar with his kind the subtle crook of his finger would be telling of a simple, singular word. Yes

The word was simple, mostly because it didn't need to be anything else. As soon as Arthis answered one of the deck hands, dressed in similar armor to him, typed in a few key commands into the keyboard hooked into the central console of the bridge. A few seconds later the Yuuzhan Vong biots would convert the info into standard transmission and disperse it to the two Pirate vessels already within the system. RC 212 had no IFF, and thus Arthis and crew just assumed.

The targets were simple.

One was an orbital storage depot between Rendili and it's moon, a place where the corporations stored air-frames as well as raw materials. The other was a piece of the shipyard itself, a recently completed cruiser that was ripe for the taking.

As The Bloodhawk crept closer, it was clear Arthis was going for the former.

 

[RC 212]

[member="Thengil Ri'Shajirr"] [member="Arthis"]

Fleet:


ThorHammer- Interceptor Class Corvette
ArcHammer- Maruader Class Corvette






On Board the ARCHAMMER!

"Looks like we got some kind of incoming message Cap'n."

RC glanced over the screens and then spread his hands wide, palms up.

"Where?"

"Biots, some kind of austere form of communicade."

RC grunted. He hated Imperial Remnants, Bugs, and generally anything found around Sith. Which Vong fell into about two of those categories.

"Well we ain't even got the tech to decipher that sooooooo."

"So ignore it?"

"Yep."

"All weapons are up, trajectories locked."

The small flotilla came off the Orbital Platforms at the exact distance RC had commanded. As he watched commandos began to streak from the sides of the twin Corvettes, making their way with Jetpacks towards the platform. Had he known how to communicate with the Vong guy he would've sent something over the net. As it was RC was left with the other guy.

This The Scourge ship.

"Let our would be friends know we are opening fire on the Orbital platform, to stay clear for a few secs. We sure our guys are safe?"

"Yep. They are not in the firing lane."

"Excellent then. All heavy ordnance away!"

And it was on. Twin torpedo tubes fired four heavy rounds each. They ripped from the noses of their respective craft towards the drive yards. Massive explosions detonated off the platform, and pieces of it were instant slag. The force propelled a dozen other larger chunks spiralling away into the void, some burning up in orbit.

"They know we're here now. Set Condition One. Update me as soon as our boys touch boots on the platform."

 

[TB-705]

Thengil's lips curled into a slow smile at [member="Arthis"]' gesture. Ubeninal.

"Good hunting," he rumbled, then cut the feed.

Another ship appeared and began to fire on the orbital station. Thengil let out a short chuff.
"Rakhad, take a katarn and board the docked cruiser. We will head for the depot."

"Yes, capitan," snarled Redclaw.

The Scourge moved ahead, engines at full, batteries powering up. Suddenly, the station lit up with fireballs.

"What was that."

"One of the corvettes is firing on the station with torpedoes."

Blowing up the prize.

"If they continue to do so, bring targeting solutions on those ships."

 

[Subject 37]

[member="RC 212 "]| [member="Thengil Ri'Shajirr"]

Arthis didn't particularly care about The Orbital Station, he wanted the Depot.

Rendili had been a manufacturer of Starships for almost as long as anyone could remember. They couldn't quite compare to Kuat Drive Yards, Fondor, or even CEC, but they produced a massive amount of starships, some of them quite good. The production of those ships required a huge amount of resources, and those resources were almost always stored onsite and in space. Arthis knew this because during his tenure as a Son of Titan he had protected those installations from incursions by The Republic.

Titan had been the One Sith's Premiere Production company, and thus utilized a great many resources.

Take us to the depot. His fingers flicked forward, the crook of his pinky hanging for a moment before he continued. Take out the defense drones around it.

Though many within the crew weren't Ubese, they all knew enough of the odd-sign language of his people to understand his commands. Titan, for all its faults, had trained their soldiers expertly, and part of that had been in communication with their brothers. Most of the time Arthis didn't need to speak, or sign, for them to actually do everything properly, but the drones of the defense station were fast, and The Bloodhawk was slow.

It was best to take them out from afar with the ships Dovin Basals.