Public Almost a World Breaker

[Sal Katarn]

The sudden galactic shift did a lot of things that Sal Katarn did not quite understand. Something to do with the repositioning of stellar bodies and dark matter and extra dimensional rifts and other science-like terms that did not rightly fit into his Firrerreon skull. But he understood a few things.

Things like a shifting galaxy hid some things and uncovered others, just like sand. Makes sense, right. Things like an ancient Hutt-built planet-killing railgun‘s long dormant beacon going active. Well. Not actually planet-killing. More like planet-denting. Sounded like one of their smaller models. But yeah, that part Sal understood alright. Including the part after.

The part about that relic weapon‘s beacon being broadcast to every karking moon-eyed smuggler, two-bit pirate, and nation-building defense fleet within the entire sector.

And organized crime syndicates, like the Black Sun. Like the ship he was on right now. The Vigo in charge of this operation gave a briefing earlier to the syndicate’s “repo” team. Ship sensors indicated that they were not the only ships en route to the formerly hidden system. And that was just the ships the sensors could see. No telling what other stealth ships were on their way.

So, to recap, there was a big railgun out there in deep space capable of spitting out slugs of such size and velocity that it would smash giant space stations like eggs. An unknown number of parties were on their way to seize it. And they had absolutely no idea why the Hutt railgun had come back online after thousands of years dormant.

Hutts called them planechangas. Built them during the Cataclysms. Probably caused some of ‘em. Now one of them - albeit a smaller version - was out there, a literal loose cannon. Up for grabs. And damn, did the Black Sun want their hands on it something fierce.

Sitting in the cargo hold - which doubled as the ship’s armory - Sal cracked his neck and looked at a young tattooed Mirialan sitting next to him, a big ole’ black sun emblem tattooed right onto the kid’s neck. Heh. We all make choices.

The kid’s knee wouldn’t stop jumping up and down. Sal’s lips twitched.

“First time?” He rasped.

The kid frowned. “For what?”

“Yeah.” Sal shrugged.

“It’s old, so, it’ll probably be empty,” the kid looked sidelong at him, “right?”

“Sure. Empty.“

The ship’s deck lurched under their feet, marking their arrival out of hyperspace. A red light immediately started flashing, followed by a klaxon.

Sal smiled at the wall.

* * *

If you want it, come and claim it. Planechanga

 

[In Rhan]

In just happened to be in the area. It was strange how that kept happening.

The waves had lit up with news and inquiries - something big had been hyperdropped out in the middle of nowhere, something potentially valuable. Then something potentially ancient. Then something potentially dangerous. Over the course of twenty minutes, the inquries had become less about curious excitement and more various interested groups gathering information, that information being relayed down the line to... who knew. In had a couple of ideas. She was in a position to get there first, but that wouldn't last long.

The Dancer in Green slipped into local space swiftly, her domestic cargo safely abandoned some distance away in a sealed container for retrieval later. The Besaid-Class freighter's skipdrive ran buttery smooth but the sublight engines hitched a little.

Planechanga. A brutal word for a very old gun. A long tube designed to drive metal at such speeds that anything they hit would be turned into interesting physics unless it were something planetoid or larger. It was the sort of machine that In personally believed shouldn't exist, nor one that she was eager to trust to even the best-intentioned government. After all, nearly any of them would find a reason to put it to use or study it to make a better one to put to use. In's mental calculus was simple, efficient, and she'd already arrived at a conclusion before she realized her intention to carry it out. The Planechanga had to be destroyed.

If the Wardens of the Sky wouldn't do it for the good of the Galaxy, if the various Jedi who claimed to be allies of the ways between wouldn't do it for the good of the Galaxy, SOMEBODY had to. Leaving this thing behind would mean inevitable station-or-planet cracking at some point in the future, and In could not conscience billions of deaths for her inaction.

So she had to destroy it. Somehow. Possibly by directing it into a sun, possibly by finding some way to fail the reactors. She'd have to figure it out on the way, because she likely had less than a couple of hours before some military clown showed up to 'secure the asset' for a flag.

In piloted her ship on an aggressive course, noting the various fweeps and alarms that suggested an automated defense was coming online. Her fingers flew across the controls, twisting dials and flipping toggles - routing power to try and narrow her profile and make her ship harder to lock onto while she engaged in evasive maneuvers.

 

[Niysha]

Every time In got involved in something, there was about a fifty-fifty chance that Niysha would be within spitting distance. Part of that - a huge, demonstrative part - was because she lived on In's ship and crewed it as co-pilot. An only slightly smaller part was their recent, fraught, and high-drama partnership that had landed them in no less than four life-threatening situations in the recent past. But at some level, Niysha was quite well aware that In was just a straight-up disaster magnet, and disasters tended to attract old, dangerous, powerful gizmos.

Normally the old, dangerous, powerful gizmos in question were hand-sized. They'd found two Sith artifacts, some cool plants, a holocron, a couple of neat Rakata statues, some weird algae... all of it was easy enough to understand. Easy enough to study and digest at her own pace. This was not one of those times. Their quarry this time was an old, dangerous, powerful gizmo the size of a capital ship with the firepower to leave craters the size of mountains in unsuspecting planets.

Naturally, In had opinions about this. She was the "can't sit by and do nothing" sort, and her heart was in the right place. That might've been enough on its own to get Niysha involved, though this time, the two of them agreed on at least a couple of points. A weapon that big was literally too dangerous to allow to exist; it would be the peak of hubris to assume that she and In could hold onto it for the indeterminate future, and anyone else who secured it couldn't be trusted not to do something impressively stupid with it.

When she was in motion, In Rhan was a woman possessed. Niysha might as well not have even been there. Still, she did what she could. The Dancer was a one-woman, thirty-odd plant with a funny hat on its leaves show, but the Miraluka sometimes did enough work as a copilot to merit consideration. Right now, that work boiled down to quieting the poor, screaming Dancer as it threatened a collision course with an archaic, possibly non-functional superweapon.

The Miraluka sailed into her seat beside In at a solid glide, prepped for a landing operation, because they'd basically absolutely need to dock with that monster to do anything about it. "Batteries are holding. Garuda's a bit hot, but there's really nothing we can do about that right now," she reported, flipped two toggles of her own and twisting a dial down. "I know we're in 'make it up as we go along' territory, but it'd really help if we at least knew where to start forming a plan."

In Rhan

 

[Sal Katarn]

The weapon sat in the midst of the absolute blackness of space. Sal stared at it through silvery-blue haze of their ship’s hangar shield, the Mirialan kid next to him, the rest of the Syndicate hit squad checking their gear as they moved quickly through the hangar to board a shuttle.

The Planechanga was an enormous, long tube of a station.

“It looks like a -“ the kid began.

“Yeah.”

Sal kept moving for the shuttle ramp, once inside he sat with the rest of the motley crew as their pilot took them out and straight for the station - apparently ignoring sensor alerts indicating arrivals into the system and a lot more chimes that might have been lock on alerts.

The kid fiddled with his gun, his knee rocking again wildly. “Do you think when we get down there’ll be-“

“Yeah.”

Sal closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the bulkhead. At somewhere north of 60 (been enough places that diluted time for long enough that he really couldn’t be sure) Sal was old for a human, middle aged for a Firrerreon. The streaks of gray In his greasy, blonde hair showed it. He would say he was getting too old for this chit, but what else was he supposed to do… pack up and go be a moisture farmer? Tried. Didn’t take.

So, decked head to toe in as much Akure gear as one person could possibly wear and cradling his slugthrower, Sal tried to enjoy the ride down to the giant tubular space station and hoped if turbolasers or a missile greeted them on the way end that it would at least be a quick end.

“When we land, our Sakiyan needs to make it,” he rasped.

“Why.”

“He’s the slicer. He knows this tech.”

“I thought we were going to take the station.”

Sal opened one eye and stared at the kid.

“Nope.”

In Rhan Niysha

 

[Tilon Quill]

So she had to destroy it. Somehow. Possibly by directing it into a sun, possibly by finding some way to fail the reactors. She'd have to figure it out on the way, because she likely had less than a couple of hours before some military clown showed up to 'secure the asset' for a flag.

In Rhan was, as in most cases, entirely correct. She'd barely needed to make the case at all. See, Tilon was currently struggling with the extent to which being a Jedi was part of his life, and the opportunity to be a budget Luke Skywalker for a day appealed to his sense of balance. Or rather, his guilt, because he was more private citizen than Jedi in terms of day-to-day time commitment. He tended to feel like he should be doing more. So: value menu Skywalker.

He settled the little North Ridge in on the flank of the Dancer in Green and warmed up the twin heavy ion cannons strapped to the roof.

"Quill here, made it after all. Don't let me get in your way, you two, but I'll watch your back."

Or stunt on the unsuperweapon as opportunity demanded, but In Rhan and Niysha knew him well enough to hear the subtext so why bother saying it.

 

[In Rhan]

Niysha's presence was expected, centering, comforting. The Miralukan saw problems In couldn't she often moved with a degree of prescience to solve them long before they became issues. In the months since their partnership had begun, In had come to rely deeply on the Miralukan scholar. Really, she aught to tell her that. In made a mental note to take Niysha somewhere nice if they survived this so she could express that. Somewhere with less ferrets than the last place they went on a date.

Tilon Quill 's presence, however, was entirely unexpected. Wasn't he supposed to be deep in Companion Grek right now? Not that she minded the backup. Tilon was solid in a crisis, and In agreed with him more often than not - especially when it came to the important things. Things like this. With Tilon AND Niysha at her side, In really couldn't help but feel bad for the world-ending station from several epochs ago.

"Good to see you, Tilon." In sighed, sounding audibly relieved. She brought The Dancer In Green closer to the North Ridge, flying slightly closer in formation than was usually advisable. The Pantoran woman's awareness of her ship bordered on proprioception most of the time, especially when she was locked in. And In WAS locked in - she took a breath, centered herself without really knowing what that meant, then grinned as she leaned into the flight yoke. Focused. Thriving. In: her lane.

Almost simultaneously, a wall of dense battery fire erupted from the ancient station. While there were several crews circling the Planechanga, The Dancer and The North Ridge were the first to cross over the invisible, automated line of engagement. 16k year old turbolasers weren't the MOST threatening weapon In had had fired at her, but capital weapons were capital weapons. The Dancer in Green plunged into the wall - and once In had made it clear the dance floor was open, other scavenging teams followed suit.

"We're not the only people here, Niysha - see if you can get us any friends or ID our enemies." In directed pointedly. "I trust your instincts" She leaned over the yoke, dipping the ship into an almost lazy aileron roll. The Dancer was a bit more than six times longer and four times wider than The North Ridge, and her shields and hull were made to absorb considerably more punishment than a shuttle could. "Tilon, stay in my shadow until we get close. I want your torpedos ready to deal with any especially nasty crews that might move to gank." She normally wouldn't be worried about being picked out of a crowd like this, but they HAD been the first to cross the line of engagement.

"I'm gonna come in under the belly and loop around the Planechanga once, see if we can spot any weaknesses to press. If not, we're landing by the fueling storage on the back of the tube, three-quarters down." She directed.

 

[Niysha]

Shield tech wasn't Niysha's strong suit, but was nothing if not a studious understudy. Sensor tech also wasn't her strong suit. Fortunately, she'd had a lot of practice with that recently, in the Dancer and elsewhere. Being left in charge of both was entirely understandable and more than a wee bit stressful, but In had far more important things to worry about than staring at computer screens and slowly twisting the shield dial to make sure ancient turbolasers didn't vaporize half of her favorite plants.

With a calm that belied her mild, inexperienced scramble, Niysha flipped two comms channels open and began twisting through frequencies, trying to find anyone actively trying to reach them. The first few seconds, she concentrated very intently on just sensors and communications to teach her body the basic muscle movements required. After that, though... she had far more important things to do that only she could do. While In was a much, much better pilot, the main reason Niysha's position on the Dancer was safely secured in the copilot's seat was so she didn't fall over when she needed to leave her body behind.

With a deep breath and a mission in mind, Niysha let herself slip away. The space around her was distorted, though "around her" was far too generous. There was nothing around her, and nothing around that. There was nothing for a hundred meters. The amalgamated cloud of cognizant perception that frequently identified as Niysha noted a tiny speck of something beyond that, and identified the beating heart of the North Ridge, and Tilon Quill within it. All formed and shaped. Real and present. And so very, very small in the ocean of endless absence that drowned them.

Somewhere in that endless ocean was a small island of activity and power. The higher consciousness that once was and might once more become Niysha identified it as the object they were chasing, un-small enough to be a space station. Entropy cloaked it like a glove, with a thin layer of time sprinkled atop like so much dust. How much of that time continued into the future was lost in the swirling, chaotic infinity of the Force. As dispersed and irrelevant as it was, the ambient motes of dust that comprised what other tiny motes of dust might call Niysha couldn't form that chaos into anything understandable.

A miniscule speck of Something alighted within the unending Nothing that the station swam in. Another ship. That made three. The formless mass of feeble intent that sometimes called itself Niysha alighted on that tiny, delicate world to find its way deeper. Tiny beating hearts of life within. They were surrounded in a field of anxiety and uncertainty, but with none of the malice that a pirate crew normally seeped in. The ship had a soul. And it was...

Niysha fell back into herself. After a moment of breathing quietly and shaking her fingers through her hair to remember what being a body was like, she turned her attention back to the sensors and comms. "Got something. The station itself is too obscured to check, but there's another ship out there. Not pirates. I'll search for their frequency."

Sal Katarn Tilon Quill In Rhan

 

[Tilon Quill]

"Tilon, stay in my shadow until we get close. I want your torpedos ready to deal with any especially nasty crews that might move to gank." She normally wouldn't be worried about being picked out of a crowd like this, but they HAD been the first to cross the line of engagement.

"I'm gonna come in under the belly and loop around the Planechanga once, see if we can spot any weaknesses to press. If not, we're landing by the fueling storage on the back of the tube, three-quarters down." She directed.

Got something. The station itself is too obscured to check, but there's another ship out there. Not pirates. I'll search for their frequency."

"Sounds like a plan."

The North Ridge's slim profile and relative maneuverability were its main defenses in most situations like this. Letting the Dancer tank freed up attention that Tilon could put into weapons and sensors. So far he didn't see the other boat in question.

The dual heavy ion started its slow chug. It could brute-force its way through the ancient shields just fine, losing maybe fifty, sixty percent of its strength to do so, which left each shot at least equivalent to a capital-scale ion blast — enough to cripple a turret.

One emplacement in particular got them dialed in; over the course of three tries, Tilon slewed out from cover to snipe it, not an easy task with a dorsal mount. But that big gun went dead, giving them a somewhat safer approach vector for the moment.