First and Last to Laugh

[Laira Darkhold]

Bothawui was a veritable fortress world. On the Edges of Techno Union Space it protected the northern border and was a classic shipyard. Numerous companies owned shipyards in the system, even ArmaTech had few orbital shipyards that sat in system. A few dozen defense stations and a sizeable defense fleet in orbit around the planet. Classically the Bothans had been rather paranoid and closed off, even xenophobic sometimes, and they retained that somewhat in modern times. Fortunately the Union had claimed the world and they had been accepting of the new regime. Mostly because they maintained a lot of their sovereignty and now that ArmaTech had its headquarters there and I lived there and operated the Office of the Foreman from the world, it added some prestige to the planet. The only issue was there were other people on the planet. While the city had a few other major buildings, it was mostly just the ArmaTech Tower. That was the main reason I selected the city. Besides my presence there it was worthless. Made me feel more important, and let me take certain security liberties that otherwise the Bothans might have had issue with and might have made me report such liberties to the Executive Council.

The tower was tall and well protected, and my office was surprisingly on the fourth floor. The turbolift moved slowly to make it seem as though it was further up than it was, the floor plans didn’t include the fourth floor, skipping it as though it didn’t exist. Going to the top floor was labeled to be the second highest, adding to the illusion that the office was on the top. The view screens that sat behind me made it appear as though they were panoramic transparisteel windows. Only a few people were aware of the change, and it was simply a security measure. I thought it made people have to try and calculate what they couldn’t see, made them believe I was more paranoid than I truly was. Overestimating an opponent could lead them to make assumptions that weren’t true. And I liked playing mind games with the few people that came and visited me here.

The military advisors currently sitting in the office continued handing me forms to fill out. “This is for the Hypori security alterations after the raid.” He said, handing another form.

“I don’t see the need for this. It was two Jedi after a private operation. It is nothing compared to the Yuuzhan Vong raid that occurred on Rothana. Cancel this order. It’s a waste of what limited resources we have left.” With so many of the Executive Council resigning the amount of resources the Union would have access to was at risk. Conservation was important in the next months if war was on the horizon, and it seemed to be so.

“Uh, yes sir, I must disagree. I think there is a clear and present danger to the planet. It’s possible that-”

“I was there, there was no danger to the planet. It was nothing but a personal attack on a private industry. If Innote Q wants more security they will beef up security themselves. Moving on.” The meeting was going fairly well, fairly quickly and wasn’t requiring a lot of thought. It was mostly just the final yes or no for a lot of minor decisions.

Three light years away from the planet sat a trio of ships. Each of them pointed in the direction of the planet, but sitting idle at the moment. Pirates. Privateers. Mercenaries. Raiders. Even the mid rim was subject to raids, but normally larger worlds with heavy populations weren’t subject to pirates like this. And certainly not a planet guarded and protected by the Techno Union. Normally such an attempt was suicide, or just asking to be thrown in the bottom of a Techno Union prison. The three frigates weren’t anything special in their appearance. Dull grey metallic and with an appropriate number of weaponry. Outwardly there was nothing particularly special about the frigates that sat waiting to attack the planet.

The thud of boots on metal rang out as the Captain walked along the corridor towards the bridge of the lead craft. “Tell me, has the Raptor reported back yet with the data?” He said, voice bellowing out over the bridge.

“No sir, she is still in system last report we got. I think she would have called out if they had of stopped her or something.” Came the response from a ragged looking Duros sitting at a comm-station, listening to communication channels. “There wasn’t any chatter about her either. Sounds like she checked out and delivered the false cargo to the ground no problems.”

The captain smiled coldly, looking over the bridge. Excellent. “We need her data to make a precision jump without hitting anything. Without it we might run smack into station and get gutted before we even get to do anything fun.” No, couldn’t have that. Had to slip in system all quiet like, otherwise there wouldn’t be any reason to leap in.

Even a large scale pirate crew couldn’t hope to assault a planet like Bothawui, even with a precision jump past preliminary defenses. But these pirates had a pretty tricky plan of action to get them inside the system without being noticed and get them to the planet’s surface without being intercepted.

“Once she hits us with that data we can start making our way in system, then all she has to do is overload those Hyperdrives to cause a disturbance to cover our entry. We will let the cloaks do the rest to get us to atmosphere, then it’s just dropping shuttles for the drop. We will have about sixty minutes to get to the ground grab whatever it is we want and book it.” The captain said, looking more and more pleased with himself as each word escaped his lips. This was going to be good.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

The small civilian craft, currently flying under the name Condor, sat just outside the planet’s gravity well. Everything checked out, it had told Air Traffic Control it had a few Holocalls to make before jumping out of system and everything had been cleared and checked. Nothing out of the ordinary to any observer, just a civilian freighter getting ready for the next run. Why a bulk freighter had brought only a half cargo was only a testament to the hard times the galaxy seemed to have fallen on and little else. Beyond a few select individuals, no one was really making out like a bandit. Just like in every previous war, the first year or so of it was great for a stagnant economy, followed by stress and strain on the warring government funds, forcing them to sell bonds, take massive loans, and continue supplying the war machine they needed to keep going. Once it started war always ended with people going into debt, and some people ending up with more money and resources than they knew how to deal with. For Bothawui, they had a couple of the latter that lived on the planet or had locations there and the poor knew it. And sometimes poor people are willing to go to drastic measures to stop being so poor. That was what the case was for most of the pirates aboard the Raptor, currently flying as the Condor.

The officer of the ship sat at the command salon, aware it was going to eject soon to save his life and the life of his crew. “Oi, send that data along to the Cap’n. Once the message is sent wait forty seconds then set the hyperdrives to malfunction and explode in eighty seconds.” Pirates rushed to get the work done. One hundred and twenty seconds from data being sent to detonation wasn’t a large amount of time to get the heck off the ship, but it needed to be done like that in order to cover the hyperspace entry of the three incoming ships.

“Data package sent sir. Hyperdrives are revving up now. One Hundred Twenty seconds until kaboom.” The pirate at the comm station made an exploding gesture with his hands laughing to himself quietly.

“Alright, all hands to the command salon. Go ahead and prepare ejection from the main craft. We have to wait until the hyperdrives hit critical or the fleet will know something is up so our timing needs to be perfect.” The officer in charge said sitting and watching the countdown tick away, his heart fluttering nervously as he waited for it to hit the point of no return.

At the Frigates sitting out of the system waited patiently. There was almost no lag with a holocomm relay and so they data was received and taken almost immediately. “Alright, jump in five, four, three, two, Mark.” The captain’s voice bellowed out, the crew snapping to do as ordered. One hundred twenty one seconds from data received to reversion from hyperspace.

“Activate stealth fields so that they can’t see us when we pop in system.” He said watching the crew snap to his commands. Most of the pirates were in assault craft ready to drop into atmosphere and raid the planet’s surface while their parent ships evaded fleet support so that they could catch the ride home without having to give up cargo they were stealing. It was only a short time now until all hell broke loose and everything started burning on Bothawui. It was about time the rich paid out to the poor anyway.

In system the freighter’s crew sat waiting, staring at the countdown tick away knowing that their compatriots were in bound. Questions they hadn’t thought of were streaming through their minds now, the twelve pirates thinking of scenarios that hadn’t occurred to them in the hours or even weeks of planning. But now that it was do or die time they were wondering about one of the most important questions. How were they going to be rescued while the floated around in real space with no cloak, no shields, and limited life support. The hyperdrives hit the red mark, there was no going back now. But they were clear to eject from the ship at will now. “Eject us, please Curnar.”

The Cathar pressed a button and they heard a pop and hiss, but the little command salon didn’t budge. “What is the issue?” The officer asked excitedly.

“Uh, one sec.”

“Time is of the essence Curnar.”

“It looks like we are welded to the ship sir.” Treachery. Betrayal. The Captain had already betrayed them, having their escape pod, their life line removed from the equation. Apparently twelve extra shares of the profits were too much. The pirates on the bridge scrambled to find their way off the death trap, but as the clock started counting down from ten seconds, it was too late to try and frantically put on EV Gear and survive the vacuum, much less the explosion from the hyperdrives.

The stealth frigates reverted from hyperspace a second after the explosion, their entry masked by the overloaded hyperdrives of the bulk freighter. It would be a moment before other ships came to investigate the explosion, and even then they wouldn’t be reacting like it was hostility. Unfortunate accident indeed, but convoluted plot by pirates, no one would jump to that conclusion without serious, serious paranoia issues. So no one just sitting in space right now.

“Looks like they did their job perfectly.” The captain said with a smirk. Only a handful were aware of the betrayal that had went down, everyone else assumed that they would have gotten away. The stealth frigates floated through space at Quiet Two, waiting to hit atmosphere before bolting away as fast as they could to the next location, away from where the fighting would be happening.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

Fire and death. My eyes closed it was all I could see, but alas my precognition wasn’t too far ahead of where it should have been. I should have been able to foresee what was happening well before it had happened. A trio of ships had appeared from nowhere, dropping shuttles to the surface and firing turbolaser barrages into the city. The Tower survived unscathed, the shield holding fine, but the defensive turrets had nothing to lock on to. As quickly as they had arrived they had disappeared unleashing the pirate horde into the streets. ArmaTech Tower had sealed into a veritable fortress deploying its army of droids to secure the surrounding blocks of the city, but alas the pirate forces had been smarter than that.

I was using Force Horror on them, but the thousands of them were having trouble being afraid, having caught bothawui with its pants down and battering the military installations with turbolaser strikes while they had been unware. The Pirates were well aware they had the upperhand and that it would be over and hour before any help could find its way out this far away from the capital. In fact the capital wouldn’t be sending any aid, shoring itself up in case they were attacked next. Fools. If they had been the target they would have been hit first. It was obvious the pirates were after banks, deposits, and easily resold valuables, not whole scale invasion or raiding.

Regardless to my plight the streets were filled with fire and death on a scale I had not seen since Contruum. It was partially my fault, but it wasn’t important. What was important was that it never happen again. Already plans had been laid out to the Research and Development Department about building a better detector ship to counteract this threat. If we could see the enemy coming, we could stop them from doing such damage. Try as they might, if we had of had an early warning system in place we could have prevent the carnage currently occurring in the streets.

“Sir, we need you to fall back to the bunker.” A soldier entered the room in full armor. The black armor and large rifle he was carrying showing him to be one of the Darksteel Dragons. There were not many of them still active these days. I normally relied on the warriors of my clan, but there were small units of them here and there, most kept on the Retreat to guard Abigail.

“They aren’t coming for this building, besides we are at the center of the tower. They are not killing us while we are in here. Get some of the soldiers out there to force them back and provide relief for the civilians. In fact once they leave open the tower up as an aid station.” Surprisingly I was calm despite watching the turmoil unfold first hand. He nodded and left to fulfill the orders quietly as they always did. No, there needed to be a few things done to ensure this never happened to one of the worlds under my protection again. There needed to be assurances that an army of thousands could not set foot on my worlds unabated ever again. How was I supposed to protect what actually mattered to me if I could not protect a rock?

As the hours passed the pirates fled on their ships and linked up with their frigates on the least guarded vector. Stealth Frigates. Good ones at that. Gravitic modulators, stygium cloaks, whisperdrives. The works. Probably had cost them a fortune to purchase, but just off what we had discovered they made off with it had been a profitable venture and they could do it again, to another planet.

“Tell me, how do you solve the problem with stealth assaults?” I asked patiently, looking around the room at the men and women sitting in the conference room. “You stop them from ever happening. That is what we are working on now.” I nodded to the woman on my right for her to stand and deliver the pitch for the system she had designed.

She stood and glanced at me nervously before reading her notes. “Well, the whole system is designed for implementation on a single ship. A relatively small support frigate to aid a fleet in battle and early warning detection. Using Ranger Transceivers, Gemcutters, and Hyperwave Signal Interceptors the system is adept at detecting incoming capital ships and groups of smaller sub-capital ships making their way in system.” She paused taking a quick breath and a glance at her notes. “Using these as well as sensors set to detect hyperspace reversion radiation it can detect incoming or reverting ships. Combined with a gravity well projector it can force those ships to revert within its line of fire. This allows it to almost immediately line up and fire the Nebula Cannon at these reverting ships. Once painted or outlined by the Nebula, it’s only a matter of fired enough Ion Cannons and Disruptor Torpedoes into the enemy formation to get them all to de-cloak.”

I stood, nodding for her to take a seat. “Furthermore it finds use as a painter, allowing it to wash enemy ships with an ionized dust making them easier to detect, and thus allowing for targeting computers to detect them more easily and line up, particularly effective and noticeably beneficial at long range. Combined with a Battle Analysis Computer, the Warden will be just what I called it. A warden of the stars to guard the many men and women that live under our protection.” It will watch the stars for their trillions of hidden dangers and enemies hidden among them.

“We will push it into production sir. It is expensive though, arguably it would be cheaper to seed the systems important to us with Hyperspace Early Warning systems like the old Imperial Hyperspace Security Net.” One of the board members spoke up. Agreeing with my plan of action, but offering a different one as well.

“Oh, we will be. Have no doubts about that.”