Public Playing Ball with a Blackwall

[Kaia Starchaser]

The Blackwall. That extra protection the Sith Empire had. It was a problem. Not for her in the way it was for her father, well not entirely. The Sith Empire didn't matter much to her. They were Sith, sure, and they ran counter to her life as a child of a Jedi Master. And the sister of one who never claimed his rank in the Jedi, but acted just like one.

No. It was a problem for her as a Warden of the Sky. People were in both sides. And not all of them were supportive of the Sith Empire. But what made it worse? It was a blight on the freeness of hyperspace.

With a recent addition to her ships permissions, Kaia was not qualified to seek out bounties. Not in the way of the Judges of the Outer Rim, or the Mandalorians of today and of legend, but one who was able to help break through hyperspace issues and find planets people were looking for.

A navigation bounty really.

And that was why the Wandering Star was reverting to Real Space where it was. The boundary of the Blackwall. Near the Chommel Sector. Bound for Sullust. A world that held history for her family.

"Here goes…" she whispers to her droid as she deployed some probes.

 

[Merion Oreno]

The Sith will be hunted everywhere, not only within our borders.

Everywhere was really big, encompassing a very large Blackwall-ed area among others, but the Diarches had decreed and what the Diarches decreed they generally got. So to that end, Merion Oreno found himself in command of an old Naboo Jamillia-class cruiser, a strategic awareness and mapping vessel, poking around deep space near Omwat and Chryya. From here, Sullust's system primary was a bright star tinted slightly to the yellow. Extremely dangerous territory, many roving Sith patrols and raids. Grandmother had adjusted and attenuated her lines of communication once the anti-Sith decree went out, but she'd mentioned some competitive annihilation ritual called a Velgrath that sounded too complicated to spare much interest, but did add to the region's hazards. Bad place to be running around with a few hundred colleagues from the Chancellorate of Commerce in a ship with limited combat capability.

Right just now he could get used to this boat, show its age though it did. Even leaving the towed array undeployed to allow for a quick escape jump aligned to Chryya, he was overseeing a fifty-parsec sphere of old SUREC probes from the most comfortable command chair of his career. So all that hazard, anything within that sphere, he saw every bit and piece in range.

And more, there was someone else scanning. They'd see his SURECs by now. They looked to be using more modern gear but nothing that screamed Sith or triggered Merion's Isopteran sense of impending disaster.

Kaia Starchaser

 

[Kaia Starchaser]

Damn her brother for getting her into the classics. The music, synthetized covers of old songs. As always when she was scanning local systems down, she got Ally to play some music. And today? A cover of an ancient song came on, and she started humming along. The StarMapper allowed her to control the probes fairly well, but with the Blackwall? Well, it was time to see what it could do. And with Starchaser Tech, there was always the chance of it exploding for doing too many different things.

Luckily the StarMapper was pretty lax.

What she didn’t expect to see, and it was clear in the way she half-shouted “Niamos!” before her voice trailed.

That was old tech.

Very old tech.

“Drifter, scan for ship signatures?”

And where did that one probe go. She played at the controls, and a handful were gone.

What was this Blackwall?

Merion Oreno

 

[Merion Oreno]

The old ship's sphere of awareness shifted in the holofield. Merion got up from the command chair and circled around to peer at the holo from different angles. It contained not just the general sphere of awareness from the ship's active scanners, but the data from scout fighters and SUREC probe droids. In their day, forty or fifty years back, they'd been revolutionary — autonomous tiny vessels with Class Two hyperspace capabilities. The ships and SURECs were two tech generations old, obsolete these days across multiple axes, but their sensors had been elite back then and were still serviceable now, trustworthy against anything but modern stealth tech. The high-resolution strategic holotank gave him a reliable list of confirmed and probable contacts.

That list was shifting. Not in clear ways, but shifting nonetheless. The number of someone's probes out there — the tentative ID was the Starchaser Enterprises StarHunt model, even older than the SURECs but ultra-reliable and ubiquitous — was declining. Either someone was shifting their deployment in an attempt to scan down, say, Merion, or refugees, or Sith...or something was killing probes.

On cue, one of Merion's scout fighters disappeared from the screens seven parsecs out. Conflicting potential orders ran through his mind, but thinking about his own instinctive navigation abilities, he opted to assume at least some Sith had them too, or sensors as good as his own.

He'd aligned the cruiser and got it moving at a good clip to mitigate such risks, but that wouldn't be enough. He felt very sure of it in an Isopteran sense. Out here nerves weren't something to fight, they were instincts born of experience.

"Stutter-jump on my mark," he said, trying to keep his voice calm inside the mask. "Along our set vector, but only a light-year. All scout fighters to rendezvous with each other at a point one light-year farther along that vector."

"Probe loss, sir."

That came up as a little marker not far from the dead scout fighter or the disappearance of the unknown probe. Yep. Something out there with real stealth was killing things.

Kaia Starchaser

 

[Kaia Starchaser]

Seeing older ships was not something that surprised Kaia. Born and raised in the Sanctum and living more of her young adult life among the Fringers of the Outer Planets Alliance, but here? In a space that was on the border with the Sith Empire, something old was either a blessing or a curse. Older systems could be outdated away from Sith electronic weaponry, or they could just not be powerful enough to do what was needed. She never thought of bringing a different type of probe with her. Something to help find older tech.

She wasn’t sure what the Blackwall honestly was.

Part technology, part alchemy, she assumed. Though That wasn’t the best decision, to make an assumption from Sith technology. Watching her scanners, as was second nature for half the jobs she did, Kaia could see the other ship and the scout fighters arriving. And then disappearing.

“Drifter, mark that.” She spun in her chair a second as she watched the vessel and several probes disappear.

“Jamilla Cruiser, identify name and purpose.” Her ship was obvious.

Well, to anyone with proper scanners.

Merion Oreno

 

[Merion Oreno]

“Jamilla Cruiser, identify name and purpose.”

The displays backtracked and spotlit the comm contact as a Starchaser expeditionary ship, one he recognized from some incidental contact off Grek. On one-to-one subspace tightbeam he decided there was no reason not to be honest. A ship like that could be an asset to the mission.

"This is the Diarchy mapping cruiser Peremptory, Merion Oreno commanding. On assignment to establish the nature and boundaries of the Blackwall in this sector.

"Be advised we've begun losing probes near the attached coordinates. There may be a stealth ship."

 

[Kaia Starchaser]

There were so many issues with this job. Kaia was here to collect information, both for the altruism of helping those beyond the Blackwall, but also for the payday she was aware of that crossed the navigation bounty boards. Smirking, she was not expecting the tight beam, but when the name Merion Oreno came across the intercom, her eyes went wide.

The Death Cultist?

“Out here? Anything that interests you, or a job?” She really did want to know what she was getting into. And if he was finding something special here? She was going to need to be ready.

“I noticed, I lost one as well. I didn’t hear any lasers, no signatures of another ship. You sure its stealth?” The dark haired Starchaser reached out in the Force, trying to probe it with that unique scanner of life that was the Force.

Merion Oreno

 

[Merion Oreno]

Kaia Starchaser

"The Diarchy recently barred Sith and Jedi from its territory and declared open season on Sith anywhere. I'm with the Diarchy Chancellorate offices, and I'm out here trying to figure out the bounds of 'anywhere.' And no, I'm not completely sure the culprit is even a ship at all. My cruiser's sensors and probes were revolutionary before we were born — they'll pick up non-stealth ships just fine at these ranges.

"I'll tell you this much for sure: if that is a Sith stealth ship killing our probes, and you help me bloody its nose or kill it, the Diarchy will happily make it worth your while."

 

[Kaia Starchaser]

All she could really do was blink. Her ship was designed to be what her father called slippery and good at finding things. The latter was more a Starchaser trait, anyhow. The finding ways to avoid combat? That was their new testament, after the Endgame. Avoiding being scanned, avoiding being pinned down. “Open season on both religions? And just them thats barred, yeah?” As a Warden of a Jedi family, well, she knew she’d maybe become part of the target. But she also wanted to make sure normal folk could enter the Diarchy.

If it was just Jedi and Sith? So be it.

“I mean, I can work as bait. I’m more than happy to stick it to some Sith. Going to reload a drone-probe. See if we can’t get any eyes on it before it kills it…” She hit a few controls on her ship loading one of the new, not-yet-released drone probe. Perfect for getting into tight spaces. More designed for entering torn up asteroids, or their fields, and broken ships.

But would be perfect here.

Another launch and Kaia moved behind the other screen, manually piloting the drone to the stealth ship.

Merion Oreno

 

[Merion Oreno]

In return, and so as not to create obscurity through paraphrasing, Merion asked his comms officer to transmit the Diarch speech in question to Kaia Starchaser

"Any Jedi or Sith operating in Diarchy space without prior clearance will be hunted down and eliminated. Lethal force is authorized. The Jedi will not be hunted outside Diarchy space, but any found within our territory without authorization will be liquidated. The Sith will be hunted everywhere, not only within our borders.

As for the Galactic Empire, we call for their destruction. They are the reformation of the Dark Empire, risen from its corpse. The pardon we have granted to the Imperial Coalition does not extend into their shadow.

To the Dark Empire, we say this: We will not abide you. Your banners are ash. Your claims are fiction. Your days are already numbered.

We do not recognize your authority. We do not fear your fleets. We do not acknowledge your future. Your worlds will be seized, Your admirals buried. Your legacy shall be a mere footnote beneath your eradicated worlds."

Bearing no ill will toward Starchaser, but being surrounded by a Diarchy bridge crew, that was about as close as he could get to saying 'you're safe with us this far from Diarchy space' without incurring the wrath of whatever. Though actually, if memory served, she wasn't a Jedi.

"Since you're not a Jedi," he said, confirmingly, "none of this applies and I am free to coordinate. Sharing probe telemetry now."

He started piping her the data from his interstellar network of old SUREC probes and stealth fighters.

In the meantime, preliminary scans of that drone probe's construction started scrolling, and that was just as interesting as the prospect of being hunted by a Sith stealth boat or worse.

 

[Kaia Starchaser]

Kaia wasn't a fan of losing equipment. Sure. Her ship was designed for explorers. The people who used it most? Scouts and rogues. And that was fine. It showed how good it was at not getting caught. But wasting probes was not high on her list of things to do.

"Nah. Not a Jedi. Just a traveler making her way. And ensuring others can too." Definitely not even dressed up speak for a Warden. But the other captain was a death cultist. And the trip to Sullust would be one of so many ships hitting the wall and vanishing.

They'd all heard the Blackwall was an isolationist policy. But there was no way it could be patrolled this efficiently. The Sith controlled huge amounts of space.

Having read up on the fabled Stormwall, she had ideas. Could it be a storm seed device?

"Linking my telemetry to you now." She flipped a switch before grabbing the control yolk. The probe/drone was in manual pilot mode as she pushed it towards the last coordinate of her other probe.

"Increasing signal strength…" she said as she jumped the throttle on it once again.

Come on… come on…

Merion Oreno