The Day of Wrath

[Cyrus Tregessar]

LWHEKK SYSTEM
FIRST ORDER SUPER STAR DESTROYER, FIV WRATH
THREE DAYS BEFORE THE SIEGE OF BAKURA


They made for an impressive show in reversion, at least. Neat clusters of localized formations that expanded out to become a monstrous geometric shape, a hundred and forty nine little dots, specks in the vast blackness of space, like a living, breathing constellation. For a moment, the void was still, basking in the glow of the the thrust lines and engine exhaust from the warships that had just arrived. Silent, empty, almost welcoming, the comforting embrace of the abyss.

It was not to last. One speck at first, a torch in the dark, then another, then two more, then expanding rapidly, like beacons alight. Fear! Fire! Foes! Here they were, and their enemy awaited them. Like a brushfire the network of light spread and expanded, many times beyond the number of the ships that had arrived. The Ssi-Ruuk had recalled their fleets, they had withdrawn their attacks, they had fled from across the Outer Rim. They had returned to defend Lwhekk, as he had known they would.

One hundred and forty nine ships. Five years ago, at the height of the war with the Galactic Alliance, it would have barely rated a combat-ready force. But times change, sometimes so rapidly the most battle-proven strategic commander in the galaxy wasn't able to react fast enough. But that was the nature of war at the strategic level. You adapt to change, shift the center of gravity, change the pivot point. And he had tried, with the Warmind at his side, he had imagined himself unbeatable, he had been even so arrogant to see the First Order itself as unassailable.

He was wrong.

Had he not designed the defenses? A network of sensor and tracking stations. Interdiction nets spread throughout major lanes. A web of traps and probing eyes, enough to see any foe, stop them, and see the best plans laid to ruin. And that was just the first layer. Planetary Bastions, anchored around massive fortress worlds, were to have been bulwarks against any invasion, the wall upon which the enemy would assail fruitlessly until, as reserve forces arrived, they were to be torn apart like beasts caught in a vise.

One hundred and forty nine ships. The dregs, the survivors. The Broken but Unbowed. The Stragglers. The Damned. Those that remained.

The last fleet of the First Order.

For a month he had been waging a war of survival, stripping the dwindling military resources of the First Order in a desperate behind-the-lines action to chip away at the strength of the Ssi-Ruuk Imperium. The first ten days had been a waste, a foolhardy expenditure, like throwing men at an impregnable fortress. How they had miscalculated. For a decade the Ssi-Ruuk had been preparing, for ten years working with a single goal in mind. And in the end, they had succeeded.

But they would not see the glory of their victory.

For all their planning, all the precision, all the foresight, the Ssi-Ruuk had made one key miscalculation. Oh they had expected the guerrilla fight, they had anticipated the behind-the-lines offensive well enough, but they had not gone far enough. Even as he gazed at the display before, saw the armada of a thousand ships that awaited him, he knew he would win. For even at their cruelest the lizard-creatures were motivated by the notion of Empire, to expand, to control, to make things theirs. And, as ever was the case when intelligent life met intelligent life, they assumed others wanted the same. There would be nothing to control, nothing to conquer. The men and women of the First Order here had placed their lives in his hands with a different goal in mind. Here and now, they were the wrath of the fallen, those who could still stand, they had come with a single, overwhelming purpose.



Retribution.

 

[Cyrus Tregessar]

Four Weeks Earlier


Cyrus awoke in a darkness so complete that for a moment he wondered if he were dead. The very absurdity of the notion drove him to awareness, and he lurched out of bed a found himself both partially dressed (like any good spacer) and in something of a fighting stance before he was truly awake. The first thing he noticed was the distinct lack of lights, ventilation, or even the hum of the main reactors and thrusters that were always noticeable even throughout the entire ship. The second was the lack of emergency lighting, or any sort of emergency systems that were supposed to kick on automatically in the event of a loss of power.

Sabotage? An assassination attempt? It was a half-assed piss-poor attempt if that, the Wrath was large enough to have air for years in a worst-case scenario, assuming you couldn't get any backup generators online. Another, more remote possibility flickered through his mind, one that conjured up the barest approximation of what Cyrus imagined might be 'fear.'

He tabled the concept, for further review pending the acquisition of more evidence. Conjecture was useless, right now he needed to know what was going on. He dressed slowly, feeling his way through his uniforms by touch until he managed to uncover a small handgun that had a glowing LED thumb-release, which he used to acquire a brighter light. Once he could see, he dressed properly and immaculately in his Grand Admiral Whites, eschewing the cape in this instance because of the impracticality.

After brief consideration, he retrieved the holster for the sidearm and strapped it on. Then, weapon in hand, he made his way through the extensive Executive Suite to one of the three entrances. As expected, the complete loss of power rendered almost all its functionality useless, but every sealing hatch and door on the ship had a manual hydraulic release behind the access panel, assuming you knew to look for it. For someone who had spent most of their 57 years onboard ships, it was second nature to pop the electronic display off and get at the controls below. As with most secure spaces, it could only be opened in situations like this from the inside, and as Cyrus pulled the lever he stepped back and behind the corner, just in case.

The door slid open with surprising speed, slamming into the sides with an audible thud and causing the half a dozen officers on the other side to jump. The personnel were well illuminated by the hand torches they carried, but the passage beyond was as black as the Executive Suite had been, confirming to Cyrus that in all likelihood, the entire ship had lost power.

That was supposed to be impossible. That was supposed to be the Warmind's job. Unless...

He stepped out from cover, and as the five officers and one enlisted Chief started or threw a informal but respectable salute (respectively).

“Report.”

The officers gawked, the Chief answered. “Sir, Seventeen minutes ago the ship experienced a complete loss of power with no backups engaging. We've detected no forces beyond our escorting vessels, or any sort of electronic attack. Long-distance communications are down as of fifteen minutes ago, and uh, the six of us here were close enough and had handheld communicators, so we got ordered to get you.”

He glanced down at a wristwatch, an archaic affection of some of the working class of Avalonia and other human cities. “Make that eighteen minutes ago for the loss of power. Security teams were dispatched about three minutes after the power failure, no response as of yet, it is uh, a big ship.”

“Manual restart?"

Nobody had a good answer. Internal communications were down along with everything else, and on a ship the size of the Wrath, that meant reporting delays measuring in tens of minutes at best. Everyone also assumed that had already been tried, and failed. Every section of the gargantuan vessel would have its own procedures to follow in the event of a loss of power, and Cyrus had little doubt they were acting independently even now, but all the plans were based around the very reasonable assumption that a total loss of power to all systems in the ship was impossible. When you were able to capture the power of antimatter and *supercharge* it, quaint things like 'losing power' became something of a 'last ten millennia ago' problem. And yet.

He dispatched the officers on various tasks nearby and made his way towards CIC alone, following the path of a Mouse Droid that had arrived shortly after the door was opened. The only light was of a pair of dim LED's on the front of the droid, and the scattered hand torches held by packs of crew who gathered here and there on the ship, either hard at work or falling to that classic human response of clustering in groups in times of uncertainty. Cyrus' mind raced. They were essentially on a derelict, and there was a very strict set of rules to follow to maximize survivability. The outer edges of the ship needed to be evacuated and the air pumped, by hand if need be, into the interior. Oxygen was less of an immediate issue than heat, but you still had to consider having too many people in once place given the total lack of airflow.

The main door to CIC was open, a normally horrifying breach of security protocols that made perfect sense considering the circumstances. He lingered there only briefly, to give out some orders, leave a private message for any senior personnel who happened to stop by, and left to continue to attempt to regain control of a ship that by all accounts appeared to have been sabotaged from the inside.

Which of course, it had.