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The Decadent Lord, a ancient Centurion-class battlecruiser, has finally reappeared. It's currently trapped in the pull of an unnamed black hole in the Unknown Regions, slowly breaking apart while salvage crews and rival factions race to claim its cargo before gravity destroys it all.
The ship is a massive prize. Its bays still hold six heavy dropships, a complement of Blade-class fighters, and two to four war behemoths. Further down, the main cargo hold is packed with raw Lignan ore, industrial mining gear, and invasion supplies, while an intact Massassi armory houses stacks of tremor swords, lanvaroks, shields, armor, and boarding gear.
Past the standard bays, the cruiser turns into a dark Sith stronghold. Near the bridge lies a ritual focusing chamber, followed by an alchemical lab and a beast hold still guarded by living, loyal Massassi. Scattered nearby are several lesser artifacts, including a Force mask, an officer's Sith sword, an alchemical poison kit, a pair of talismans, and an ancestral funerary mask.
At the heart of the vessel are its most dangerous secrets. Secured deep within the hull is a Sith holocron, protected by physical locks and dark side wards. Below that sits a sealed forbidden deck, welded shut to contain whatever is left inside whether that's a failed experiment, a dormant beast, a cursed relic, or the commander's tomb.
You have a singular opportunity to retrieve what you can from the debris before it is lost to the black hole. It's a race against time to fend off your competitors and obtain the prize you wish from the holds.
I stood upon the bridge of a Impressor-class Acclamator, though the name of the vessel held no place within my mind. It was merely another Imperial carcass of durasteel and circuitry, another obedient machine drifting through the black cathedral of space.
Beyond the massive viewport, the stars hung like cold, distant eyes, their pale light swallowed by the vastness surrounding us. Ahead, the unidentified vessel drifted without guidance, without transponder, without the comforting rhythm of a living ship.
The bridge crew scrambled behind me, voices reduced to frantic whispers as they attempted to nestle away every fragment of information concerning the derelict craft; sensor records, identification scans, tactical readings, as though knowledge itself had become something poisonous.
I watched the vessel in silence, feeling something ancient stir behind the veil of reality.
At last, the captain approached, his composure cracking beneath the weight of what his instruments had revealed. “Minister Asara,” he said carefully, “the ship's signature definitely matches that of the Decadent Lord, my Lady. Retrieval and scout teams are prepped in the docking bay and waiting your arrival.”
I did not turn toward him.
My gaze remained fixed upon the drifting vessel, upon its dead silhouette suspended against the infinite night. Something moved within it; not flesh, not machinery, but a disturbance in the Force that crawled across my senses like icy fingers beneath the skin. “Cancel both teams,” I said, my voice low enough that the bridge seemed to lean closer to hear me.
“I sense disturbances in the Force radiating from within that ship. Whatever has taken root aboard the Decadent Lord is not something your scouts or retrieval crews are equipped to confront.”
I finally stepped away from the viewport, my robes trailing behind me like a shadow given form.
“I'll bring a team more than capable of handling this situation.” No one dared question me.
I left the bridge and descended toward the docking bay, the corridors filling with the muted thunder of my approaching escort. Waiting beneath the cold illumination of the hangar were two full companies of my personal Drakonis Praetorian Guard, their armor dark and severe, their weapons held at the ready.
They stood in perfect silence as I entered, and for a moment I regarded them as one might regard a procession of executioners awaiting the name of their condemned. Then I continued toward the waiting shuttle, carrying with me the certainty that whatever possessed the Decadent Lord was not prepared to deal with its excorist.
Roughly several hours after it had first reappeared back into realspace, Mahporeem had become aware of the ship's existence, thanks to its robust network of informants and intelligence agents. Not wanting to waste any time in reaching the vessel, Mahporeem had dispatched any and all units in close proximity to the vessel, though such units were admittedly few and far between in the Unknown Regions. It had really been more of a stroke of luck than anything else that Ronhar and his ship was returning from a training exercise in the Caragachi Commonwealth with FN-999 (restored)
, which allowed him and his team to respond far more quickly than most Mahporeenian ships currently could.
Of course, most did not mean all, as was evident by the arrival of R'ayne Asara
and her ship.
Captain Tane immediately hailed R'ayne's ship to alert her to his presence. He did not want there to be any misunderstandings during a mission such as this, as the ship itself was slowly being pulled to its doom inside of a black hole. The longer the waited, the less time they would have to scour the vessel for the prizes it held within, and if the Imperial Remnant thought that what was on the ship was indeed on it, they could not afford to waste any time whatsoever.
R'ayne Asara
and her crew could sit tight if they wanted. It would be Ronhar and his men who claimed the glory for Mahporeem.
A squadron of TIE/sa SLEPs with boarding pods began flying toward the doomed vessel, escorted by a pair of QIE/FN squadrons as all the ships made their way toward the prize to be had. It did not matter who else made an attempt at the vessel, because the Imperial Remnant had gotten their first, and they would be the ones to claim the treasures within!
Sal tightened his hold on his heavy blaster while checking his data pad for details. He had opened Doctor Sam Witten's So You Want to Be an Archaeologist during his journey as a quick refresher for his archaeology career, even though he wasn't officially certified by any University. He considered them pointless, believing that hands-on skills and knowledge would always be more valuable than sitting in a dusty lecture hall.
The first page advised him to observe his surroundings for any useful information on the hunt, but all he saw were endless corridors stretching for miles across multiple decks, slowly being torn apart by the black hole outside, much to his annoyance. He flipped the page with one finger and read that shouting loudly could help identify if any enemies were nearby.
He thought of a humorous line and finally decided to shout, "Who forgot to pay the light bill?" down the corridor, listening for the echo of his own voice. So far, this book felt like a total waste of time, but he continued reading to avoid boredom as he walked.
He sensed the gravity warping the hull around him, causing slight tremors on the floor as he balanced himself. He tucked the pad under his arm, checked the the ammunition level on his blaster, and glanced down the flickering hallway toward the main bays.
Travelling near a black hole was never high on his to-do list. Then again, it wasn't everyday rare salvage was rumored to be nearby.
Outsourcing the piloting to a company member, Makai was able to watch through the viewport as they approached. In a small exploration craft, it was clear they were outflanked by some type of Imperial warships fairly quickly. The Rockfish slid in the shadows cast by the Imperial vessel, the crew making a calculated effort to avoid being seen.
TIE fighters were deployed, breath was held and it was clear they weren't the target.
"Bet they are going right for the front door. Imperials never do anything subtle." The pilot scoffed, leaning forward to watch the two TIEs disappear towards the floating prize.
"Good thing we didn't bring any of the larger vessels....Let's use this to our advantage. Let them go through the front door. We can use the side door so to speak. Focus on swinging around and getting towards the backside of this thing." "I'll increase rear shields. Pray they are too busy deploying TIEs to notice."
Zev was lucky he and his crew usually stayed in the unknow regions, most of the time it was just for protection but his caution seemed to pay off today. As the marauder corvette that Zev and a portion of his crew where on he addressed them "Ight then boys, we got Imperials here already. They are most likely after bigger stuff, though they'll probably take anything they can get their hands on. We'll be doing the same, any weapons, armor, tools, or resources ya can grab, grab it. And just anything that would sell for a decent chunk o' credits. I recommend not fighting if you can help it, we're on a strict schedule here. I don't want to loose any of ya to others on board or to that big black hole now. I'll be taking a team of sixx with me, rest of ya spread out. Treat this like any other boarding scenario got it?"
They where gonna be like the others, sending small ships to the giant battlecruiser. Nah, it was a lot more simple to make their own entrance, treat it like any other ship, besides the fact it was falling into a black hole. Besides the thing was over 1000 meters long, their small ship, little under 200 meters, wouldn't matter to much.
As the ship began to dock Zev checked his weapons and explosives. Once everything was accounted for and docking finished Zev placed some detonation pack and standing back. After the explosion Zev went first as always, his twenty eyes scanning the he saw nothing and gave the all clear.
Walking forward as everyone spread out Zev took out a cigarra pack, offering some to the six with hiim. None of them took one, so Zev was the only when with a now lit cigarra in his mouth as the proceeded forward
Jyote Veyr had learned a very important lesson about salvage long before she'd ever put on an Imperial uniform. Getting there first was useful. Getting the prize home was what actually mattered. Which was why, while other people had apparently heard ancient Sith battlecruiser full of priceless artifacts and immediately started loading guns, Jyote had heard the same thing and asked a much more practical question.
"How are we hauling any of it out?"
The answer presently occupied most of the viewport. The Decadent Lord was enormous. Jyote leaned forward in the pilot's seat of the recovery transport she'd managed to acquire for the expedition, forearms resting against her thighs as she stared through the transparisteel. Jyote had dressed for the wreck rather than the bridge. A dark Imperial recovery suit replaced her usual uniform, its belt already burdened with the assortment of tools, scanners and emergency equipment experience had taught her were worth carrying into a dead ship. Only the battered officer's cap remained, planted stubbornly atop her head until circumstances forced her to trade it for the sealed helmet waiting beside her seat.
Beyond the glass, the ancient warship was slowly dying. Sections of hull twisted beneath stresses they had never been designed to endure. Debris surrounded the vessel in a widening halo, some pieces tumbling freely while others had already begun the long, accelerating fall toward the darkness beyond. And scattered around it were ships. Lots of ships.
Jyote's eyes narrowed. "Scavengers." There wasn't any real condemnation behind the word. Mostly professional recognition.
Her attention shifted to the Imperial contacts. R'ayne Asara's vessel was impossible to miss. Ronhar's movements were considerably more aggressive, his boarding elements already making their approach. Of course they were.
Jyote reached toward the controls and opened an Imperial channel. "Ghostfield to Mahporeem elements. Recovery vessel is on station." Her eyes flicked across the sensor display. "Anything you can't fit in your pockets, tag it. Anything you think you can fit in your pockets but requires three stormtroopers to carry, tag that too." A pause. "General Tane, that last part was mostly for you." Jyote killed the transmission before Ronhar could immediately answer.
A smile threatened at the corner of her mouth. Then she went back to work. Her hands moved comfortably over the controls, plotting the debris field and marking the safest approach corridors she could identify. The black hole complicated everything. What looked like open space now might become decidedly less open after another section of the battlecruiser tore itself loose.
She had worked dangerous wrecks before. None of them had been falling into a black hole. That was new. "Let's stay outside the stupid zone."
A crewman glanced toward her. "Which one's the stupid zone?"
Jyote gestured broadly at the viewport. "Currently?" She considered the ancient Sith battlecruiser, the competing salvage ships, the Imperial boarding craft and the gravitational abyss waiting patiently behind all of them. "Most of it."
A warning tone interrupted her. Jyote's attention snapped toward the sensor display. Something substantial had separated from the Decadent Lord. Not recently—the fragment had been drifting long enough to establish its own trajectory—but its rotation intermittently exposed what looked suspiciously like part of a hangar structure.
Her fingers danced across the console, magnifying the return. Metal. Structural framing. Power signatures too weak to mean much. And several shapes inside. Jyote became very still. Those weren't cargo containers. She leaned closer. "No..."
Another rotation. The sensor profile sharpened. Her smile returned. This one wasn't professional at all. "Those are fighters."
The crewman beside her looked between Jyote and the increasingly distant Imperial boarding craft. "Aren't we supposed to be supporting the General?"
"We are." Jyote was already adjusting their heading. The recovery ship began turning. Slowly. Very deliberately. Away from Ronhar.
"General Tane is an experienced officer commanding armed troops. I have complete confidence in his ability to survive without me for..." She checked the trajectory of the drifting hangar section. "...twenty minutes."
"Commander—"
"Ghostfield."
"Ghostfield. That's moving toward the black hole."
Jyote glanced at the display. Then at the wreckage. Then back at the display. "I noticed." The engines climbed in pitch. Somewhere beneath the Imperial commission, the bridge experience, the tactical displays and all the careful professionalism she'd accumulated since leaving the salvage life behind, something considerably older had just awakened.
Jyote pulled the brim of her cap down. "Let's go steal a starfighter."
The message from Ronhar Tane
reached me through a passed message from a deck officer, his words crawling across my ears like starving insects upon a corpse; the corners of my mouth curling upward.
A grin.
Of course.
It was no surprise that my allies would take an interest in the drifting carcass of the Decadent Lord; vultures were rarely capable of resisting the scent of something already half-dead.
Yet I found myself curious. What, precisely, was the prize they intended to snatch from the hands of the Decadent Lord? What secret, relic, weapon, or forbidden knowledge had drawn them to this mechanical dead husk?
My shuttle descended through the darkness and made its approach toward the ship; as I cautiously watched the black hole prepping to devour the vessel, docking with one of the main bay doors far to the left of the vessel's cavernous hangar. When the doors opened, I stepped into the darkness, my personal guards following in perfect silence.
Their equipment provided the only illumination within the bay; tiny dots of artificial light cutting through the oppressive blackness as they dispersed, establishing a perimeter around the hangar and around me. The Decadent Lord seemed less like a ship than a tomb drifting between stars, its corridors swallowing every fragment of light we brought with us.
I walked toward a half-opened blast door at the far end of the bay. Beyond it, something flickered; a tiny, sickly pulse of light that appeared for the briefest instant before vanishing into the darkness.
I stopped.
The sensation struck me immediately.
The Dark Side was calling. Not whispering as it had before, but calling with a strength that made the air itself seem to grow heavier around me. I closed my eyes and allowed that malignant presence to wash over my senses, and the answer came with exquisite certainty.
Nothing aboard this vessel could radiate such corruption, such cruelty, such malice and hatred so completely infused with the Dark Side as a Sith holocron.
The thought alone was intoxicating.
How precious.
How wonderfully soothing.
I opened my eyes and regarded the darkness beyond the door. “Nothing else aboard this vessel matters,” I told my guards, my voice low and absolute. “I have found what I came for. Our allies will be arriving soon; ignore them. They are not our concern. But anything aboard this vessel that is not dressed as an Imperial is to be killed.”
With that, I stepped through the half-opened blast doors and allowed the darkness of the Decadent Lord to swallow me.
Sal walked down the corridor, feeling a bit anxious about the black hole outside trying to pull him in, but he pushed his worries aside for now. His eyes widened for a moment when he thought he spotted a ghost at the end of the corridor. He blinked a few times, realizing he had forgotten to wear his anti-ghost underwear.
As he got closer, the ghost turned out to be just faulty lights, and he felt relieved as he turned the next page of his book. A loud screech rang out above him, followed by a strong tremor that sent a shower of metal dust falling from the ceiling. Sal steadied himself against a bulkhead, grimacing as the deck plates vibrated under the pull of the black hole.
"Patience, Doctor Witten," he muttered, glancing at his datapad. "If this ship holds together for twenty more minutes, I might even leave you a nice review." He continued on, maneuvering around a rusted access ladder that had fallen into his path. Ahead was the entrance to the main cargo bay, but the structural damage worsened with each step.
Stopping outside a heavy blast door that was jammed half-open, Sal crouched down and peeked into the bay. Rows of large supply crates were secured with heavy magnetic chains, surrounded by industrial mining equipment and bins of raw Lignan ore. It was intact, but not empty. On the bay floor, two figures in mismatched scrapper armor were busy cutting the lock off a sealed container, their voices muffled by the noise of their gear.
Sal leaned back against the door frame, resting his blaster on his knee as he unclipped a small pair of macrobinoculars from his belt. He adjusted the focus, counting their gear and checking for any heavy weapons they might have hidden nearby. They were moving quickly, clearly aware that the hull was failing around them.
CAPTAIN RONHAR TANE, TK-3301
UNKNOWN REGIONS
OBJECTIVE: GET THAT SHIP!
Ronhar and his men had managed to get aboard the ship with minimal difficulty.
No starfighters had opposed their arrival, no defense turrets had contest their breeching attempt, and no infantry had tried to stop them from coming in. Yet sensor scans from the Fool's Errand indicated that they were not the only one interested in finding what was aboard the Decadent Lord. Multiple IFF tags indicated that a number of Mahporeenian units were either on the ship themselves or making their way onto the ship, and additional unknown tags indicated the existence of third party interlopers, undoubtedly looking to secure the treasures on board the ship for themselves.
Between that and the ship being pulled further and further into the black hole, Ronhar and his forces were in a race against time itself.
There main objective was the Sith Holocron allegedly still onboard the vessel, its location apparently known to the Junkyard Knight that was accompanying Ronhar. How he knew where to go and what route to take, Ronhar wasn't sure, but what he did know was that the Knight could apparently detect the Sith Holocron and was thus drawn to it. Granted, Ronhar had the schematics of the ship downloaded onto his HUD, and thus a rough idea of where the Holocron should be, but if anything happened to the Knight it would curtail his ability to find what he was lookin for.
Given that time was of the essence, it was imperative that he find the Holocron as soon as possible.
Yet progress was slow going, hampered by the other lifesigns that had been detected and Ronhar having to cut through blast doors ever so often.
"Ghostfield to Mahporeem elements. Recovery vessel is on station. Anything you can't fit in your pockets, tag it. Anything you think you can fit in your pockets but requires three stormtroopers to carry, tag that too. General Tane, that last part was mostly for you."
A transmission from Jyote Veyr
cut through the silence over Ronhar's comms, though they disconnected before Ronhar could even think to get a reply in. Was that...a joke? Ronhar shook his head as he finished cutting through the blast doors. He could Jyote the next time he saw them. Not that he had any time to think about it, since he had two hostiles coming up on his HUD...
QV-611 had not expected to find herself in the same detachment as the legendary Ronhar Tane for her very first mission. After all, she was not part of Salvage Team Six, Valkyrie or any other elite special forces formation in the Mahporeem Imperial Army. She was a standard Junktrooper, clad in Smog Trooper Armor and armed with a medium blaster cannon.
It had been another thrilling surprise to learn that she was being sent out on a boarding mission instead of a quiet patrol or garrison assignment. Still, seeking to make a good first impression, QV-611 had thus far worked hard to mask her girlish excitement behind cold Imperial discipline. No matter her outward peculiarities, the Pantoran did her best to play the role of just another Junktrooper: moving competently with the squad, clearing her designated sectors, and keeping the comm channels free of excess chatter.
Thus, QV-611 dutifully stood sentry as a crimson-goggled Salvage Trooper armed with a large vibro-drill helped Captain Tane cut through the blast doors ahead. When the work was finished, the Pantoran punched a stim-shot into her thigh, the familiar burn surging through her system as her pupils dilated. Then, she pushed through the broken doors after Ronhar and the vibro-drill-wielding Salvage Trooper, her senses primed and hyper-alert.
Her blaster cannon was raised just as a pair of unidentified, presumably hostile signatures bloomed into view in her HUD. The Junktrooper immediately dropped into a low, ready stance, her finger resting lightly against the trigger guard as she poised herself for immediate enemy contact!
" The Council has been deployed, alongside many of our Order in the Thyferra system, to defend the High Republic from the Sith incursion. Invasion of the Mid-systems has begun. A declaration of war by High Chancellor Dominique Vexx has been broadcasted across all bandwidths. However bleak the situation back home might be the Order retains a duty to protect no matter the circumstances. "
" Our long range scouts have traced rumours of a Centurion-class battlecruiser that is being tracked by salvagers mobilising in the Outer Rim Territories. This ancient war ship's design predates the Four-Hundred Year Darkness by several millennia. It's find is of importance due to it's links to the ancient Sith. Cartography of the region, where the rumours begun as they pertain to our historical archives, are outdated and little is known about what is out there. We have sent you all that we know. "
" We will stop the Sith at Thyferra. Good luck on your first mission, Knight Eupraxiane. "
It has been a standard week since the Council's message and the Horzionblade was the bit-part home during all that time as a lone Jedi traversed the Star Ways on course for a region that had been formerly occupied by the Imperial remnants from a confederation that was destroyed by the Sith Empire. The rumours that had been supplied told Eupra things that were unsubstantiated and sparse. Without much else to go on Eupra followed the hyperlanes until she was closer to where they had started. The telemetry telling the young Jedi Knight about what was happening on Thyferra went out of range somewhere in the Mara Corridor. She tried not to think about what was happening back home after the radio went dark.
Picking up the hyperspace trails of the Fool's Errand hadn't been luck. To the untrained eye, who did not know the mysteries of the Force, it would appear that Eupraxiane had stumbled upon something lucky as she passed through the ruined star systems of the Imperial Confederation. However, it was through the guidance and intricacies of the invisible power that had allowed Eupra to make the decision to allow her starfighter to be caught in the gravitational well of the larger Imperial grade carrier (called the Fool's Errand according to the intercepted messages Eupra had picked up) as it set course into the Unknown Regions. Something indivisible and elusive told the vulnerable Jedi Knight to follow that ship as it set course from Mahporeem to where the Decadent Lord laid prone for the taking.
With her ship powered down Eupra fell into a still meditation in order to conserve her energy and to still the mind as she was taken on course for the ancient Capital ship along hyperspace corridors her navigational computer hadn't known before. It was best to let these scrapyard Imperials do all the heavy lifting for now. Days after infiltrating Imperial space, a soft woooing sound emanating from the astromech unit brought Eupra back to her senses. As her eyelids flitted open, with the starfighter levitating in the black canvas of space, and no longer caught in the gravitational well, Eupra sat up in her seat and peered out through the canopy to look around.
"So the Fool's Errand dropped out of hyperspace then," she muttered to herself.
That would explain why the ship was no longer caught in it's gravitational well.
"I guess we should look for that ship again. Can you pull up any nearby telemetry?" Eupra asked the astromech quietly as she turned to look back at the droid. On the nearby main screen a regional scan of the area around them exposed not only the Fool's Errand but other ships that were nearby as well. In the centre of the moving mass was a much larger vessel than all of them combined. But it wasn't the discovery of the Decadent Lord that was concerning Eupraxiane anymore. It was the anomaly close-by. A singularity of power and scope beyond comprehension even to the Jedi.
A black hole.
"I'll be taking the stick now," Eupra muttered to the droid.
A hooting affirmative followed as the starfighters controls were passed back to the Jedi Knight. Powering up the sub-light thrusters, Eupraxiane took the Horizonblade on an intercept course for the Fool's Errand. As she took her ship towards where the Mahporieem vessel was initiating it's salvaging mission on the Decadent Lord, Eupra asked her astromech: "Can you start transmitting a message to those ships explaining that we are here to help? Asking them not to shoot would be a good place to start, I think. We have come in peace."
Another hooting sound confirmed that they were now broadcasting on all nearby channels. This was usually the part where the intervening Jedi Knight would tell these no-good scavengers, salvagers and Imperials to stop what they were doing. But this particular Jedi wasn't the dooey-gooey-good-doer like her other contemporaries back home. There was no wisdom in telling these people what to do here, or trying to stop them, and besides that, how was Eupra supposed to find out why they were all so interested in the Decadent Lord in the first place?
The closer they got, the worse the idea became. That wasn't necessarily a reason to stop. Jyote watched the detached section of the Decadent Lord tumble across the recovery transport's forward viewport, slowly rotating against the stars. What had looked like a relatively clean piece of wreckage at range proved considerably less cooperative up close. One entire side had been torn open, twisted ribs of metal protruding from it like the bones of some enormous carcass. Every rotation exposed the remains of the hangar within before hiding them again.
And every second brought the whole thing a little closer to the black hole. "Relative velocity?"
"Closing."
"I gathered that." Jyote's hands rested lightly on the controls. She had pulled the recovery transport alongside the fragment rather than directly behind it, matching the wreckage's trajectory before beginning the more difficult process of matching its rotation.
This wasn't a fighter. The transport answered her commands with all the grace of a loaded cargo hauler because, fundamentally, that was what it was. She couldn't throw it around. Didn't need to. A touch of lateral thrust. Wait. Counter the rotation. Wait. Another correction. The old instincts were still there. They just had more time to work now.
Jyote felt the familiar little rush anyway. "Easy..." The fragment rolled. The broken hangar came around again. Her sensor operator had already isolated the shapes inside, and at this distance there was no longer any question about what they were looking at. Three fighters. Or what remained of three fighters.
One had been crushed beneath a collapsed section of overhead structure. Its wings were mangled badly enough that Jyote dismissed it almost immediately as anything more than parts. The other two..."Now those," Jyote murmured, "I can work with."
One looked remarkably intact from this angle. The second had taken visible damage along one side, but its primary hull remained together. Two ancient starfighters. Two very old, very interesting starfighters that were presently attempting to fall into a black hole. Jyote smiled. "Bring the tractor system online. Low power. I want the section stabilized before we start pulling anything out."
A transmission interrupted her. The voice didn't belong to Ronhar. It didn't belong to R'ayne. It certainly wasn't one of theirs. Jyote's attention shifted toward the communications display as the approaching fighter identified itself and, rather unusually for someone entering an Imperial salvage operation uninvited, announced peaceful intentions and requested that nobody shoot.
"Well." She looked toward the sensor return representing the Horizonblade. "That's polite." The fighter was headed toward the Fool's Errand. No weapons fire. No aggressive targeting signature that Jyote could detect. For the moment, anyway.
She keyed the channel. "Horizonblade, Ghostfield. Message received. Keep your weapons cold and stay clear of Imperial recovery operations, and nobody should have a reason to shoot you." Her eyes shifted briefly toward the enormous darkness dominating far too much of their sensor picture. "Fair warning, getting shot might currently be the second most dangerous thing you could do out here." She released the channel.
Jyote stared at the unfamiliar contact for another second. A Jedi. Wonderful. The Sith wreck had Sith things aboard it, R'ayne was somewhere inside doing whatever R'ayne did when confronted with Sith things, Ronhar was somewhere inside probably trying to claim those same Sith things, and now a Jedi had arrived.
Jyote looked back toward her starfighters. "Not my problem." A warning flashed across the sensor board. That one was. Jyote's smile disappeared. "Hold tractor." The low thrum that had begun beneath the deck immediately faded.
She leaned toward the display. The computer had updated the fragment's projected trajectory, but it wasn't the change in the hangar section that concerned her. Jyote expanded the sensor picture around the Decadent Lord. More debris. Not little pieces, either. A section along the battlecruiser's ventral hull had begun separating from the main structure. Another fracture was propagating through an already damaged portion of the ship. Some of the debris patterns she'd plotted only minutes earlier were no longer following the projections she'd assigned them. The ship was coming apart faster.
"Run that again."
"We already—"
"Run it again."
The calculation repeated. Jyote watched the numbers settle. Then she opened the Mahporeem channel. "All Mahporeem units, Ghostfield. I'm seeing increased structural separation across the wreck. Gravitational stresses are accelerating faster than my initial projection."
Her gaze remained on the schematic. R'ayne was aboard. Ronhar was aboard. Ronhar had brought soldiers with him. There were probably a whole lot of people aboard who were currently more interested in whatever treasure they'd found than in watching the ship's orbital decay. Jyote knew salvagers like that. She had been a salvager like that. Occasionally still was, apparently.
"Don't get comfortable in there. I'll update you when I have a better estimate on the extraction window. If you find something worth keeping, tag it and keep moving. Hardware is replaceable." A beat. "You aren't." She closed the channel.
For several seconds Jyote remained staring at the wreck. Then the detached hangar rolled through the viewport again. Two fighters remained inside. Her expression tightened. "Right." She reached beside her seat and pulled the battered officer's cap from her head. The sealed recovery helmet waiting there replaced it, locking into the collar of her suit with a hiss.
The crewman beside her stared. "What are you doing?"
"We're too close to trust the compartment integrity if that fragment clips us."
"That's not what I meant."
Jyote looked at him. He looked toward the hangar. Then toward the tools hanging from Jyote's recovery belt. Then back to her. "No."
"I haven't said anything."
"You put the helmet on."
"Safety precaution."
"You checked your fusion cutter."
Jyote glanced down at the cutter she'd apparently already unclipped. "Habit."
"Ghostfield."
She sighed. "We stabilize the section first." The tractor emitter hummed back to life. The recovery ship shuddered gently as the beam caught the rotating fragment. Jyote immediately adjusted thrust. "Match rotation. Don't fight its momentum. Just bleed it off." The wreck turned. Slower. "Three degrees starboard." Thrusters answered. "Hold."
The hangar rotated into view and stayed there longer this time. Jyote could finally see the fighters clearly. The damaged one would need to be secured before they moved it. The other...The other might actually be intact.
Her pulse quickened. "Once we've got it stable, we'll send the utility droids across and attach tow lines."
The crewman relaxed slightly. "Good."
Jyote continued. "Then I'm going over."
His relief vanished. "Why?"
"Because those fighters are thousands of years old, they've spent Force-knows-how-long sitting in a Sith battlecruiser, half their restraints have probably fused solid, and I'm not trusting a utility droid to decide where to cut."
"That's why we have salvage crews."
Jyote pointed toward the Decadent Lord. "Our salvage crews are currently helping General Tane rob a haunted battleship." There wasn't much of an answer to that.
Jyote returned her attention to the controls. Then she remembered the additional fighter moving through the area. Her eyes flicked toward Eupraxiane's contact. A Jedi who had specifically volunteered to help. Jyote smiled faintly.
She keyed the channel again. "Horizonblade, Ghostfield." The recovery ship shook as another piece of distant wreckage separated from the dying battlecruiser. Jyote watched the trajectory settle. "You said you came here to help."
She paused just long enough to make what followed sound less like a request and considerably more like the sort of instruction she issued from the Collateral Star. "How are you with precision flying?"
The Force was a treacherous thing aboard a dead ship. I could feel the holocron somewhere ahead, buried beyond layers of durasteel, circuitry, technological corpses, and forgotten machinery, its presence a black ember smoldering within the vessel’s womb.
I followed that ember through the dark, allowing the currents of the Force to draw me onward, but the passage was continually being disturbed. Every new body brought aboard, in hopes of salvageable riches, seemed to ripple through the unseen fabric, causing the currents to twist and recoil like something wounded, as if the holocron was trying to test me.
Even my bond with the Dark Side, cultivated through years of hatred, discipline, and suffering, could not prevent the emotional fluctuations from these arrivals. The living were meddling in my affairs.
I disliked that.
My soldiers followed silently as we rounded a corner and entered a corridor suddenly illuminated by the violent white-orange shower of welding sparks. Three salvagers stood before a sealed turadium door, attacking it with a savage-looking cutting tool.
My troops immediately raised their rifles. I lifted one hand, and they froze. The salvagers had not yet seen us. I watched them work for several moments, studying the door and the crude instrument chewing happily into its surface, until one of the men finally glanced over his shoulder. He stopped dead, then hurriedly waved his companions into stillness.
“These damn turadium doors are a pain to cut through,” he muttered, lowering the tool. “I imagine they’re all over this ship. Speaking of the ship, though, you look military. Not scrappers.”
I looked from the door to the three men, then to their crude cutter, and allowed a small smile to form. “We are not scrappers. In that observation, you are correct. But I am here for something nonetheless.”
I gestured toward the sealed door.
“These troublesome doors. They are all over the vessel, you say?” The salvager nodded. “That’s correct. And you and your friends look rather unequipped to tackle that problem. No offense.” My smile widened.
“None taken. But I have a proposal.”
I stepped closer, my soldiers looming behind me like silent executioners. “As you have stated, we are unequipped and, consequently, unknowledgeable in the use of such tools. And, as you may have deduced, this ship will become attractive to every manner of nefarious individual. Pirates will be the least of your concerns. So this is my proposal; help me breach the doors that will pose difficulties for me and my friends in the near future, and I shall ensure that you are protected; and handsomely rewarded for your efforts.”
The three whispered among themselves, their voices little more than frightened insects beneath the hum of machinery. At last, the principal salvager turned toward me. “You make a valid point, lady. And seeing as you’re equipped to handle the bad guys, I say we have an agreement.”
I clapped my hands together in delight.
“Excellent.” I turned toward the nearest soldiers. “Kill the other two.” The salvager recoiled, waving his hands frantically. “Wait! You said you’d protect all of us, if we agreed to help you!”
I looked back at him, the warmth draining from my expression until nothing remained but cold amusement. “I only said you. You probably should have paid more attention to our dialogue.”
"Horizonblade, Ghostfield. Message received. Keep your weapons cold and stay clear of Imperial recovery operations, and nobody should have a reason to shoot you... Fair warning, getting shot might currently be the second most dangerous thing you could do out here."
Eupra raised a finger to the instruments before her as an incoming transmission started playing in the cockpit. After accepting the transmission Eupra learned back in her seat to listen. It was a warning not to interfere with an Imperial recovery operation, and that nobody would have a reason to shoot her down if she kept her weapons offline. Eupra frowned at the idea that she would try to shoot anyone in these circumstances as the Fool's Errand floated nearby with weapons large and accurate enough to shoot her down with one volley. That wasn't to mention the dozen Starfighters and other Imperial craft flying around the Decadent Lord.
But then again Eupra had to remind herself that she wasn't in the Mid-systems anymore. These were the Outer Rim Territories. This is a lawless place filled with the type of characters who would likely try and shoot down these Imperials even in a Starfighter like this. Fortunately they were dealing with a Jedi this time who didn't want to cause them trouble. She was here merely to learn and follow. Not to interfere. As Ghostfield continued to speak Eupraxiane changed her intercept course and maneuvered the Horizonblade away from the Fool's Errand to take a new flight path that would take a spiral pattern on the fringes of the operation. Eupra was more than happy to be the quiet observer here.
"All Mahporeem units, Ghostfield. I'm seeing increased structural separation across the wreck. Gravitational stresses are accelerating faster than my initial projection."
"I think it would be a splendid idea to listen in on what is happening," Eupra said almost to herself. Her droid bleeped in agreement. Patching in her ship's antennae to intercept Imperial communications Eupra heard Ghostfield's voice filling her cockpit again.
Jyote Veyr said:
"Don't get comfortable in there. I'll update you when I have a better estimate on the extraction window. If you find something worth keeping, tag it and keep moving. Hardware is replaceable... You aren't."
As the Horizonblade continued to spiral around Eupra checked her fuel reserves and was happy to see that she still had plenty leftover. Using the Fool's Errand's ion trail to pull her ship in it's wake had saved plenty of it before they found the Decadent Lord. Ghostfield's voice continued to fill into the cockpit. They sounded like a woman (as far as Eupraxiane could tell) and their voice was filled with static in parts as their transmissions continued to play into the Horizonblade.
It wasn't a very good connection on Eupra's end but she understood most of it. These Imperials already had people on board the ancient war vessel. Reaching out with the Force for guidance the Jedi decided to remain still in the moment. Boarding that ship was extremely dangerous given how close it was to the Black Hole and given the readings that she was picking up (alongside Ghostfield's transmissions) Eupra learned that introducing herself onto the ship was likely to disrupt the salvage operation that was happening here. That felt dangerous not just for her but for the other people on board as well.
If Eupra boarded the Decadent Lord then it would lead to a loss of lives she felt. She didn't know these people but Ghostfield had warned her not to involve herself in their operation. It was likely that if she boarded that ship then they would be inclined to do something about it. Besides they were the ones salvaging whatever was on board and it was becoming apparent that the Decadent Lord itself was being torn apart by the nearby anomaly.
If Eupraxiane wanted to know what they had found then it made sense to let them take it back to wherever they had come from to get here and follow them back to the source. Better still this was an opportunity to learn more about the Imperial remnants. According to the Jedi Order they had been destroyed by a war with the Sith Empire. Yet here were survivors still working out here in the Outer Rim Territories. Survivors who hadn't fallen with the Imperial Confederation and were now seemingly working for someone or something else.
Good enough. Jyote could work with good enough. "Horizonblade, come around to the far side of my position. You'll see a detached hangar section approximately three hundred meters off my port bow. Match its trajectory, but don't get between it and the recovery ship."
Her hands continued making small corrections as she spoke, nudging the transport into position alongside the tumbling fragment. "I'm going to arrest its rotation with the tractor. I need you watching the side I can't see. Debris, structural separation, trajectory changes—anything you don't like, call it." Jyote paused. "And don't be polite about it."
The tractor emitter came alive. Jyote felt the contact through the deck before the instruments confirmed it. The transport shuddered as the beam took hold of several thousand tonnes of ancient warship that very much wanted to continue doing what several thousand tonnes of ancient warship had already been doing. "Don't fight it," Jyote instructed. "Match first. Then bleed."
Thrusters fired. The transport rolled with the fragment. Slowly. Carefully. Jyote watched the stars rotate beyond the viewport, her hands making corrections that would have been laughably sluggish in a fighter. Here, though, every adjustment mattered. Too much thrust could snap something already weakened. Too little would leave them chasing the wreck all the way into the gravity well.
"Two degrees." Correction. "Hold." The hangar opening rolled into view. Slower this time. "Again." The tractor pulled. Metal groaned somewhere through the recovery ship. Jyote ignored it. The rotation slowed. Slowed. Stopped. "Got you." For several seconds she simply stared through the viewport.
Three Blade-class starfighters rested within the shattered hangar. The first was beautiful. Or at least Jyote thought it was beautiful. Someone accustomed to pristine museum pieces might have objected to the scoring, corrosion, accumulated grime and several thousand years of neglect. They would have been wrong. The ancient crescent-shaped fighter was remarkably complete. Wings, cockpit, engines—everything she could see appeared present.
The second had suffered considerably more. One side was scarred and partially buried beneath collapsed structural members, but the central fuselage looked sound. Recoverable. Restorable. The third...
Jyote grimaced. "No saving that one." Half the fighter had disappeared beneath a collapsed portion of the hangar ceiling. One crescent wing had been crushed almost completely through.
A crewman glanced at her. "So we leave it?"
Jyote looked at him as though he'd just suggested throwing credits into the black hole. "No." She pointed toward the display. "We take it apart."
Two utility droids were already moving toward the airlock. "Utility One, Utility Two: Three is donor stock. Strip anything intact that's compatible with One or Two. Avionics, control hardware, actuators, power systems, engine components, weapons hardware—in that order." A pair of electronic acknowledgements sounded. "Don't waste time fighting the wreck. If something takes more than two minutes to remove, leave it."
Jyote magnified the damaged fighter. One surviving section of ancient hull ornamentation looked irritatingly intact. She stared at it. "Leave the armor and decorative plating." A pause. "...Except that panel."
The crewman beside her slowly turned his head. Jyote didn't look at him. "It's historically significant."
"Of course."
"Shut up."
The utility droids launched. The first Blade would be easy by comparison. Recovery lines could be attached to its existing hardpoints and the whole fighter eased from the hangar. Blade Two was another matter. Jyote enlarged the image. "There." One of its forward restraints had twisted with the deck. Another looked fused in place. Worse, the collapsed structural member resting across the fighter meant she didn't trust the droids to start cutting without someone physically inspecting where the load had settled.
She tapped the restraint on the display. "Utility Three, inspect the forward mounting assembly on Two. See if you can disengage it." The droid crossed the gap. Jyote waited. An answer returned. She frowned. "Try the secondary release." Another response. "No?" Negative. "Cutting access?" Another burst of electronic information. Jyote leaned back. Of course.
She reached down and pulled her sealed recovery helmet into place. The crewman beside her immediately sighed. "No."
"I didn't say anything."
"You put the helmet on."
"Yes."
"You only put the helmet on when you're about to do something that makes the rest of us nervous."
Jyote checked the seal and unclipped the fusion cutter from her belt. "That's an unfair characterization."
"You have a fusion cutter."
"I always have a fusion cutter."
"Ghostfield."
Jyote rose from the pilot's seat. "Someone needs to inspect the load before we cut that restraint. I'm not trusting a utility droid with the only damaged Blade we've got a chance of recovering."
"You said hardware was replaceable."
"It is." Jyote looked through the viewport at the ancient fighter. "That particular hardware is just extremely difficult to replace."
She opened the external channel. "Horizonblade, Ghostfield. Change of plan." Jyote started toward the airlock. "One of the fighters is pinned. The droids can't safely determine where to cut, so I'm crossing over to free it manually."
She could already imagine the response. Jyote continued before Eupraxiane could provide one. "I need you outside. Keep watching the fragment, my transport and the debris field. Once I'm over there, you've got the better picture." She stopped outside the airlock. There was one more thing. Something Jyote wouldn't have enjoyed saying when she'd still been flying fighters herself. Something Ghostfield understood perfectly well now. "If that section starts breaking apart, our trajectory changes, or you see something I can't, call the abort. Don't wait for me to agree."
Jyote considered that. "And if I argue with you, remind me I said that." The channel closed.
The inner airlock door opened. Jyote stepped inside. Behind her, the utility droids were already at work on Blade Three. One had opened an access panel while the other extracted some ancient component that disappeared into a recovery container. Good.
The first Blade was being rigged for extraction. Better. That left hers. The airlock cycled. Atmosphere disappeared. Jyote attached a safety line to her suit before the outer hatch opened onto the black. For a moment she remained there.
The Decadent Lord dominated the distance, enormous pieces of its ancient hull slowly peeling away beneath gravitational stresses. Beyond it lay something darker than space itself. And directly ahead floated the shattered hangar. Jyote pushed away from the transport. Her maneuvering unit fired. She crossed the gap slowly, one gloved hand resting near the controls at her waist while the recovery ship held the fragment steady behind her.
The hangar grew larger. Then the Blade did. Up close, the fighter looked even older. Ancient Sith markings remained visible beneath grime and damage. Its crescent hull bore scars that might have been older than entire governments. Jyote landed lightly against the deck beside it, magnetic boots catching with a solid vibration through her legs. She stared. For several seconds she forgot about the black hole. Forgot about Ronhar hunting Sith relics. Forgot about R'ayne. Forgot about the Jedi circling outside. Her gloved hand settled against the fighter's hull. Thousands of years. And somehow it was still here.
Jyote smiled inside her helmet. "Hello, gorgeous." A utility droid rolled past carrying a component liberated from Blade Three. That brought her back. "Right. Work." She crouched beside the twisted forward restraint and swept her scanner across the assembly. The first reading confirmed what she'd suspected. The clamp itself wasn't the problem. The deck beneath it had warped. Cut the wrong support and the load would shift directly into the fighter.
Jyote traced the structural stresses with the scanner until she found what she wanted. "There you are." She pulled the fusion cutter from her belt. Behind her, the utility droids continued cannibalizing the ruined Blade. Beyond the hangar, the recovery transport held them against the pull of the black hole. And somewhere outside, a Jedi Jyote had known for all of several minutes had just been given authority to tell her when she'd become too stubborn to leave.
Jyote ignited the cutter. "Let's get you out of here."
Sal glanced down at the guide one last time, skimming through the remaining seven chapters for any practical ideas on what to do next. Chapter five suggested firmly asserting your ownership of the site, but he doubted these scavengers would respond kindly to his presence. He walked carefully onto the upper catwalk, sliding the datapad into his jacket pocket and keeping his weight light on the creaking metal floor.
He barely made it three feet along the railing when a deafening crash echoed through the chamber. Metal screeched as boarding pods slammed straight through the upper hull, showering the cargo bay in sparks and twisted steel. The hatches blew outward, and stormtroopers in stripped-down, mangy armor spilled into the room, instantly opening fire on the scavengers below.
Sal spotted the painted crest of the Mahporeem on their chest plates. He never did like Junker Imperials, especially not when he was trapped in the middle of their firefight. Red blaster bolts crisscrossed the dark bay, lighting up the crates of Lignan ore and sending the two scrappers scrambling for cover.
Sal flattened his back against the catwalk wall, ducking as a stray bolt sizzled past his horn and melted a chunk out of the bulkhead behind him. "Great," Sal muttered, peering over the edge as a Junker trooper pinned the scrappers behind a mining drill.
"I didn't pack my anti-imperial underwear either." He drew his blaster, resting his wrist against the railing to steady his aim. The stormtroopers were focused entirely on the bay floor, leaving their flank completely exposed to the upper catwalk.
Sal knew he couldn't stay on this high ledge forever while the battlecruiser was breaking apart, but letting the Imperials wipe everyone out meant he'd be next on their target list. He lined his sights up with the lead trooper's power pack and pulled the trigger. The bolt struck true, knocking the Imperial flat on his face and throwing the rest of the squad into sudden confusion.
CAPTAIN RONHAR TANE, TK-3301
UNKNOWN REGIONS
OBJECTIVE: GET THAT SHIP!
"This is squad two, moving to engage!"
Ronhar could feel the weight of the TIE/sa SLEPs as they slammed into the Decadent Lord, releasing their complement of Junktroopers into the ship and adjacent from the pair of scavengers near Ronhar's team. They opened fire without hesitation, pinning the scrappers down as Ronhar's men moved in behind them.
"We'll take of things here, sir!", one of the Junktroopers radio'd Ronhar as blaster bolts began flying in both directions. One of them hit a member of the boarding them square in the chestplate, knocking him down onto the floor, though whether or not he was dead or just unconscious was unclear at the moment. The other Junktroopers began firing back in the direction of that blaster shot, where Sal Malloc
had been, and soon the entire room delved into Chaos as Imperials and Scrapper alike began jockeying for the best firing positions possible, looking for anything that could be used as cover. Though the Junktroopers outnumbered the scavengers, they had been caught out in the open, and were rather exposed at the moment as they attempted to move in and secure the room.
"Understood, thanks for the assist", Ronhar replied as he and his team moved to the door that the scavengers had tried to get open. They had made pretty good progress, and it didn't take long for Ronhar to finish cutting through with Burnblade, making a hole that was just large enough for he and his men to fit through. One by one they entered through it as the ship continued to groan and shake. At this rate, it wasn't going to last much longer, even with Imperial efforts to try and stabilize it, and Ronhar wouldn't have much time left to find his prize.
As the team moved forward, the room opened up into some kind of laboratory, and much to Ronhar's dismay, a laboratory that still appeared to be operational even after all this time. Rows of tanks lined the side of the room, many of them with specimens still in them. Though suspended, they still seemed alive, and Ronhar didn't want to be in here should they wake up for any conceivable reason...
Sal scrambled through the maintenance hatch, slamming it shut as blaster bolts pounded the metal behind him. He didn't waste time looking back. He sprinted down the narrow service pipe, bypassing the mess in the storage room, and into the adjacent corridor to put himself right in front of the Imperial team's path.
He burst out of the doorway into the hallway, catching the squad off guard. Before anyone could get a clean shot off, Sal lifted his left arm and slapped his wrist controller. "Flame on.." He shouted to Ronhar Tane
as a roaring jet of orange flames emerged from his wrist thrower, filling the newly discovered laboratory with blinding heat.
Sparks bounced off the deck plates as the blast created a barrier between him and the Imperial Junkers, forcing everyone to pump the brakes and brace against the sudden wall of fire. He didn't know what they were after in this warship but it must have been valuable for them to go through all this trouble.
