Corvus Raaf
Adieu...
Corvus took off from the Jedi Academy on Ossus, soaring above the treetops and leaving the Temple behind. She manoeuvred into interplanetary space, heading toward her insertion point into hyperspace. She had an important place to see.
For no apparent reason, an old space-ship had dropped out of hyperspace and was broadcasting a Jedi distress signal. It was likely other Jedi Orders will have picked it up and sent someone to investigate. But given it was a very old frequency, there was a chance there was more to this dead ship than met the eye.
Later, when she emerged from a numbingly long flight through hyperspace, Corvus squinted through the cockpit windows as the star system snapped into view around her.
At high speed, she headed straight into a river of stellar fire. Even as Corvus reacted with Jedi reflexes, her astromech droid squealed in mechanical alarm, Corvus banked and rolled, roaring the Corvette away from the giant solar flare that slapped across their path like the licking tongue of a Krayt dragon. The g-forces smashed her to the right, but she did not relent until the craft had followed a sharp hyperbola path to safety.
Corvus felt a strange, twisting agony in her gut as another explosion occurred deep in the unsettled sun, and a flaming belch of ionized gases spewed out from the chromosphere.
The Force was in all things, Jedi teachings were clear on this, and Corvus could feel the pain and the anguish of the prematurely dying star.
"Not a good way to start our visit," she said. Her droid shrilled in agreement. "Recalibrate the instruments and we'll proceed with a bit more caution."
The dead station was huge, glimmering under the boiling bath of solar radiation. The wrecked starport was rotating, trying to maintain some semblance of its original artificial gravity, although it was cockeyed and off balance. Its precession, like a gyroscope's, was enough to bring the station erratically closer to the stellar inferno.
Corvus studied it from a distance, taking in every detail. "Find us a docking port," she said as he raced toward the beleaguered station. "The place is in real trouble."
The droid transmitted to the ancient systems on the station and received a warning in response. "I appreciate the last functional docking bay is about to rotate into the sunlight," Corvus said. "Let's land in there and get to protection before the bay heats up, OK?"
The Corvette swooped around in a tight manoeuvre, just as if Corvus were fighting One Sith ship. On her approach she noticed engine ports dotting the ring of station – orbital adjustment jets and all-axis thrusters used in times past to stabilize the space city.
The docking bay doors opened sluggishly, and Corvus easily slipped her corvette between them, anxious to get inside. The relentless patch of sunlight crept like a flame across the outer hull of the station, but Corvus managed to land and close the groaning bay doors before the direct glare struck that sector of the abandoned starport.
As safety levels rose to nominal, Corvus left the cockpit and headed down the landing ramp. As she turned, Corvus saw another ship deep inside the cargo bay.
At first she wondered if it were abandoned along with the station. But she sensed that the craft was warm, recently landed... another visitor.
"Somebody else is here…" she said to nobody in particular. "Whoever they are, let's hope they're planning on getting out of here soon,"
And she strode into the dark and stuffy chambers of the long-abandoned station.
[member="Nima Tann"]
