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Ni'gel sighed deeply as he perused a list of contacts supplied by @Pollux.
He found it incredibly perplexing that nothing interesting happened anymore. Did he miss being in harm's way? That was preposterous. With all the screaming, people being set on fire. Most inconveniencing.
Still, after chatting with three librarians on the holo, running those IMs through a intergalactic language database, and finally getting led to a woefully inartistic "museum of ancient cultures" holopage, he discovered a strange word, "Kissai." For some reason, that rang a bell.
Then he remembered why.
Which, of course, was what brought him to Pollux's list of contacts.
Ah.
There it was. Ni'gel forwarded the information and the full IM transcript to a Whiphid with a very peculiar name. Payment would doubtless come in the form of alternative compensation if it proved intriguing in the least.
1,000,001 credits had recently been extorted from a dubious million-credit Star Tours project on Jiroch-Reslia. A significant fraction of that amount went toward leasing a small mainframe, transceiver, and office on the Tion Trade Nexus, in the name of Ni'gel - or whatever alter ego he preferred.
The monstrous massassi howled in rage at the wound Jacen had delivered. It looked down at the blackened gash down its flank. Jacen had hoped that might have forced the creature to back down, but instead it was merely antagonising. He internally sighed as the red-skinned cultist came back at him.
The polearm came up and then crashed down. Jacen was glad of his shield, even if his left arm was taking a beating. Getting past such a long, lightsaber-resistant polearm might have proved fatal. He couldn’t match the creature for strength, but he could reinforce his body with the Force to take blows from that wicked polearm on the shield long enough to find an opening. This time it came quickly.
In pain and weary, the massassi was slow to retract its heavy weapon. Slow enough that Jacen came in more quickly. A quick back and forth slash caught the cultist under the chin and it fell away. Blaster fire echoed down the tight corridors as his War Dogs – Alliance special forces – finished the rest.
“Gabe, where are you?” he called into his comm. “The cultists are tearing each other – and the ship – apart and showing no signs of stopping. If we can get to life support and atmospheric controls we might be able to pump something around the ship to calm them down.”
“This is Rogue One. Got another on my six!” Asmus called. The Sith Starfighters were old designs. However they were still nimble things with prototype twin ion drive propulsion. Laser fire splashed across his shields and Asmus reacted by transferring more power to stabilise them.
“This is Ten, force him out towards me.”
The voice call was placed in the direction of Ten by his headset. A vector was placed on his Augmented Reality display as well a numerical heading. Asmus waited until Ten was closing on him before enacting a quick manoeuvre. Rather than enact it manually he pressed a button on his left stick and gave a gentle tug to port on the control stick in his right. The computer increased inertial dampeners, cut forwards thrust and turned the ship a curt one hundred and eighty degrees.
It would have left Asmus essentially flying in reverse, facing his opponent. Even if in space velocity was only relative and there was no absolute forwards and backwards. However the Rogues had been pulling similar maneuverers in their TR-20s – which featured bi-directional thrusters – all through the engagement.
The Sith fighter accelerated and pulled to the starboard side of Asmus to avoid his fire. He flew right into the path of Rogue Ten, who cut across them both from that vector, gunning the Sith fighter down.
“This is Rogue One to all Starfighter Wings, I’m seeing no fire from that Sith Flagship?” Several other Squadron Commanders reported the same.
“This is Rogue One to Command. I’m reading nothing from that Battlecruiser. Please Advise.”
Bridge, Unyielding-class Command Cruiser ANS Rebel's Hope Polis Massa System, Subterrel Sector, Outer Rim Responding to Mass Distress Signal
From the moment they had torn their way through the skin of the universe and back into realspace Captain Pulsar had known something was very wrong.
For one thing, he wouldn't have even believed such a leviathan could even exist and that his ship's sensors weren't malfunctioning if it weren't for the massive shadow of its bulk framed in front of the system's star. For another, the place was crawling with Mandalorians! As well traveled as the Captain was, Zark had never had much contact with the clans, having left Dubrillion before the curtain of their empire fell over his homeworld and having operated primarily on the other side of the galaxy since. He had had just enough experiences with their culture to know that their reputation as extremely proficient warriors was in no way embellished, as unlikely as it had seemed before. He had lost a few teeth in an Outback bar for the privilege of even that much knowledge.
And yet, unlikely as it sounded, it was not the Mandalorians that filled him with dread. There was something deeply wrong inside the ancient ship before him, and he felt the ripple of those disturbances in the Force even from his cosmically extreme vantage point. The first communications the bridge received from their fighter squadrons seemed to confirm those dark suspicions, as even Rogue Squadron couldn't find a way through the vessel's unnaturally prescient point defense fire. Ordering helm to bring them into formation on the flank of the Corellian task force and Omega Pyre detachment, he was forced to watch helplessly as the last of the Mandalorian boarding craft either made it through the uncannily accurate barrage or met a grim end. As soon as they were clear, Zark ordered his gunners to open fire with precision strikes targeting their weapons batteries and anything that may look like shield generators. The Captain doubted he could do enough overall damage alone to scuttle the great ship, but an ill fated mass driver or mini-javeling shot that breached the ship's shields could potentially penetrate very deeply, and he knew there were, if not friendlies, people not actively trying to kill him or everyone in this solar system on board.
Of course, it wasn't long before they had a new threat to contend with. The arrival of so much more support and attack craft must have triggered something in the ancient vessel, or there really was a crew of some sort on board, for no sooner had the Rogues finally begun to have good effect when a swarm of strange and foreboding looking starfighters swarmed out of the leviathan's wake and were on the Galactic Alliance starfighters in moments. Fully recognizing the irony as a Jedi Knight himself, Zark marveled at his pilot's ability. On calls like these, when the alert went out and they were scrambled to their craft, they never really knew if they would end up launching at all. This time, the order to launch had come within seconds of hyperspatial reversion, and before any of them knew it they were engaged in a fight for their very lives. React or die, every second, it wasn't like the bridge. The bridge was long stretches of helplessness briefly punctuated by moments of sheer adrenaline as the next decision you make, the next words you say will decide the fate of thousands of lives, not just your own or your wing man. He wasn't sure which job was worse, all things considered.
"This is Rogue One to Command. I’m reading nothing from that Battlecruiser. Please Advise." the limitations of the X-Wing communications package meant a robotically neutral tone, but Zark didn't need to look at the readouts to know the voice of Asmus Janes.
He had just been about to order a withdrawal, the combined fire from the capital ship and the starfighters stretching both the Hope and its attack craft to their limits, but with the quieting of the ancient vessel's guns the flow of the battle began to sway quickly back into their favor. The Hope's point defense flak kept booming away, cutting off swathes of enemy starfighters from their allies and thinning out the swarm into pockets of more manageable numbers for the X-Wings to begin picking apart rather than just evading.
"We read you, Rogue Leader. Our sensors show the same," Captain Pulsar replied himself, "Mop up the rest of those fighters and then prepare to escort boarding craft. Do not board the enemy vessel yourself."
"Are you sure this is a good idea?" his third officer, Arix asked, standing beside him, "And do you really think the Rogues will listen?"
"Of course they won't, especially after I told them not to," Zark replied, shrugging helplessly, "But we may not get another window like this, and I like our odds of taking that thing apart from the inside better than I do from out here."
As soon as there was a window through the enemy attack craft, the order was given for their eight M47 dropships to launch, filled to capacity with a mixture of Alliance troopers, special forces and Outback Irregulars.
"Thule, get them on the comms and handle this situation."
Clearing my throat, I open a channel. "Rebel's Hope, this is Second Lieutenant Raph Thule, Galactic Alliance Space Operations. We may have a peaceful solution to the situation on board the unidentified battlecruiser the Mandalorians are engaging. We received new intel from a prisoner we captured in Velok's Maw. Transmitting that data now. Captain of the ANS Angler can confirm."
Officially, the Angler did not exist, but I am pretty sure this counted as an exigent circumstance for revealing the presence of one of our black ops stealth corvettes.
The data package contained the full transcript of the Sith's interrogation.
Location: ANS Rebel's Hope
Polis Massa System, Subterrel Sector, Outer Rim
Responding to Mass Distress Signal
Hearing the call he jumped out of bed and into his flight suit, struggling to get his boots on grunting a little with effort. After he finally slipped them on when he started running down the ship to where his ship was located. Shoving some people out of the way the clanging of his feet on the corridors made note to the rest of the crew to move out of the way as he trampled through the people running in all different directions. Finally reaching the hanger he glanced around the room to see his ship, the Hunter on a launch pad already fueled up. Jogging his way to the ship he looked at his engineering team nodding as he slapped his pin-up art and climbed the ladder getting into it. Sitting down in the cockpit he looked at the picture of his crush for a second before turning on the ignition and start flipping the switched on the console and closing the lid of the X-Wing fully encasing him in its protection. Getting his radio turned on he waited a few seconds.
"This is Rogue Three, preparing to launch, all systems ready, permission for take off?"
Before he knew it he got the all clear and he was pulling out of the hangar into space looking towards the sith ship near the Rebel's Hope. He saw the boarding craft and moved his way below them tipping his wing slightly as he was pulling up.
"Rogue Three to Rogue Squad, Rogue Three to Rogue Squad, pulling up next to the Landing craft, preparing to take them all the way in, let's give em hell boys."
He accelerated the X-Wing moving past the boarding craft and tracked the movement of the enemy fighters in front of him as they slowly began to creep closer and closer as he moved further and further away from his friendly landing ship and the Rebel's Hope. This Is going to be one hell of a fight. He thought quickly as he turned on his firing system.
"Captain, incoming message from...from the vicinity of a nearby asteroid," one of the Hope's communications officer reported.
"Velok's Maw..." Zark muttered to himself, "Put it through."
"Rebel's Hope, this is Second Lieutenant Raph Thule, Galactic Alliance Space Operations. We may have a peaceful solution to the situation on board the unidentified battlecruiser the Mandalorians are engaging. We received new intel from a prisoner we captured in Velok's Maw. Transmitting that data now. Captain of the ANS Angler can confirm."
"What's Alliance special forces doing on Velok's Maw?" Arix wondered aloud.
"Kicking ass, apparently," Zark replied.
"Sir! We have no data on an ANS Angler in GADF records," one of his junior officers said after approaching tentatively.
"The Angler is one of ours," the gravelly voice of Mazik Stazi, his duros executive officer, pierced the bubble of the conversation, "Lieutenant Thule checks out."
"Commander?" Captain Pulsar asked, but the expression on the duros's face told him that such questions were best saved for a more private occasion, "Very well then. Pass along our compliments over the same channel and ask Mister Thule if he is in need of transportation."
"Aye, sir!"
"You know what to do?" Zark said, turning to the cyborg Jedi Padawan once they had evaluated the commando's provided intelligence, who nodded, "I'll have engineering spit out some portable holoprojectors and have them ready for you on the flight deck."
With that, the Padawan headed for the turbolift. Below, in the belly of the carrier, one of the last drop ship received word to hold for the third officer, who would now be leading the boarding party, hopefully with the key to the ancient leviathan in his hands.
"This is Rogue One to Rogue Squadron. I see several hostile adjusting to intercept transports. Choli, Orunell, form up on me to try and head them off. Endriss, Carlin, stick on these shuttles all the way through. You're the last line."
It wasn't as if the dropship were unarmed. The M47s each sported a pair of concussion missile launchers to ward off fighters. However, they lacked turrets to truly engage interceptors.
Asmus broke off from the convoy and accelerated. A few touches of soft buttons chose his target and started to actively get a lock. The beeps changed pitch and his thumb came down on the firing control.
"Firing Torpedo."
The orange flare cut across space and caught the Sith fighter right on the nose. Very little detritus survived the explosion. Asmus pulled hard on his flight stick as they reached close range engagement. He pulled down on the trigger, firing his lasers in sequential mode to try and catch the nimble fighters.
Several slipped through the screen to bear down on the shuttles.
I don't need to see Dallows' face to know what he's feeling right now, staring at Kiens' body. They all feel it.
Me? I am... They don't consider me one of them.
Not yet.
The thought hollows out the human part of my rybcoarse heart and it hurts; caught in the tight grip of melancholia.
"Thule to Rebel's Hope, we'll take that shuttle offer, but you need to look at our intel. Those Massassi onboard the warship don't have to be our enemies. Our prisoner is saying if we flash them a hologram of a Lord Protector they'll be willing to comply."
"This is Rogue One to Rogue Squadron. I see several hostile adjusting to intercept transports. Choli, Orunell, form up on me to try and head them off. Endriss, Carlin, stick on these shuttles all the way through. You're the last line."
[ Copy that Rogue One. ] Choli adjusted her trajectory, zooming on by with Orunell to form up along Rogue One and try to head off those transports. In the wake of the torpedo fired, more Sith Interceptors came in.
[ Rogue One this is Rogue Seven -- we got bogey's coming at us from 1300. ] Adjusting her HUD, the Tatooine native brought up her weapons display. Even while flying, her heightened senses through the Force allowed her to get just a little bit of a heads up to which direction danger was heading towards her. However, Rogue Squadron had no clue what was going down inside of the ship, or that Thule was sending a comm wave to the Rebel's Hope about the Massassi aboard.
"Rogue Three copies, coming back to support the transports, give 'em one hell of a fight out there."
He said nodding as he decelerated and come back up next to the landing ships tipping his wing again as he pulled up alongside them. He checked his scanners while he moved his head around making sure that his scanners didn't miss anything. Flipping the switch for his missiles he kept his eyes on the enemy and the scanners. He glanced over at his left at the landing ship and saw a pin-up on it and laughed a little bit, A Mon Calamari Girl, Oh my lord I wonder who's flying that baby. He shook his head smiling before he regained his focus and looked backed towards the interceptors in front of him.
*Vance stood on the flight deck of the Rebel's Hope, daring any one of his crew to be slacking off when so many of their comrades were out barreling through space at mach-3, tearing apart Sith fighters. He had received word from on high to prepare several portable holoprojectors, as well as to hold the final transport for the ship's Third Officer. Apparently, Arix was to lead the boarding party for the massive vessel they had come across. Vance was tempted to ask if he could tag along, if only for the benefit of having a lead engineer on-site. However, he knew that he was far from combat-proficient, and thus would remain with the vessel unless ordered to tag along. Things were a bit wild on the flight deck. Crews scrambled from bay to bay, starboard to port, transporting everything from arms and armaments to med-kits. Troops were arriving in droves, assembling into their squads and securing shuttles. Vance was doing his part, coordinating between moving supplies and helping pilots with their final flight checks. He had all but finally kicked his habitual "space-sickness", hardly even considering the artificial gravity or the slight queasiness he used to feel. So long as he kept his mind occupied, he felt like he could finally be of some decent help to the Rogues.*
"Ozere, give me a hand with this rig!"*He called out to the rather-imposing Codru-ji. The quad-armed male nodded in response and grabbed one of the holoprojectors by himself.*"Hey, quit showin' off!" *He chuckled, hauling up one of the machines onto a repulsor-sled as he grabbed the rail and activated the lifts. In a few moments, he was following behind Ozere with a quickness to his step.*
"Kihalla, be sure to secure that webbing on those supplies. They'll be flying in hot!"*Passing by the Chalactan female, he gave her a nod as she did what he asked.*
*It wouldn't be too much longer now. Vance would need to be ready for the pilots who were returning.*
The next warrior came at Jacen with a heavy overhead strike. Keeping his shield at an angle he managed to deflect the blow without having his shoulder ripped from his socket. Taking a step in he stabbed low several times in quick succession and ended the fight.
With no enemies in sight Jacen leaned over his knees. His shield slipped from his grip and clattered to the deck. Fighting a few of the massassi had been taxing. Stopping each blow from something that weighed twice as much as him drained his reserves further. There wasn't much left in the tank now.
"Sir, why are we heading to communications?"
Jacen drew himself back up and decided to stick to his sonic carbine for now to clear the corridors. "We've got some footage of Sarge Potteiger as Lord Commander giving a public talk after the herglic rebellions. Lots of talk about ending the violence and so forth. We need the internal comms back on across the ship so the Alliance and project it and get this lot to settle down."
The soldiers looked a bit bemused by this but accepted it. Jacen looked down at the shield on the deck beside him. It looked awfully far away.
Anxiety hummed through the Jedi Padawan's body of the turbolift plummeted through the belly of the Alliance carrier, and he knew it would do no good to suppress it. Instead focusing on centering himself mentally, Arix lapsed back into a mild meditative trance as he listened in on the bridge comm traffic through the communications package in his life support suit still tethered to the ship's systems. His former master, Captain Pulsar, was and a frequency with Lieutenant Thule assuring him that they had their best minds evaluating the intelligence even now, and that the boarding parties were being apprised. In his hands he gripped one of the portable holoprojectors had grabbed from engineering, which they would use to minimize any chance of a fight on their way to the alien ship's communications hub, if it even had one.
The Hope's hangar was a flurry of activity, as by the time his turbolift landed half the dropships had already lifted off and were in the void, headed for the assigned ingress point. Troopers and marines in a mixture of the newer model standard armor and special forces gear triple were triple timing it to their dropships, and technicians swarmed like an angry beehive over those few craft still not ready to go. In the thick of it all was Chief Caydence himself, who at first had seemed an uncertain addition but, now that he had finally begun to acquire his space legs, Arix couldn't imagine the ship operating without him. Bringing to bare the experience and technical acumen of a man used to managing whole shipyards, Caydence's flight deck was a well oiled machine.
"Pack em up! Pack em up!" Arix shouted over the din as he strode towards his dropship, turning to speak to the Chief as he passed by, "Make sure these troopers are diverted onto other craft, one of these dropships is headed over to that asteroid first to pick up our friends from Space Ops!"
In too much of a hurry to wait for the Chief's response, the cyborg Padawan veered off towards one of the shuttles still being packed to its flight limits with Alliance soldiers. Jogging up the boarding ramp and squeezing his way through a throng of bodies, Arix made his way to the cockpit where, as he suspected, the captain had ensured a vacancy in the pilot's seat. While he was still training in the sim pods to earn his starfighter ratings, a personal secret for the moment, he was without a doubt one of the best dropship pilots on the ship. They weren't all too different to handle than the freighters and bulk transports he had grown up on. A few moments later, shouts from the marines relayed from the rear of the ship up to his ears that they were all full, and he lifted the boarding ramp, sealing them airtight, before lifting off once he received clearance and headed out towards space.
While not quite as hairy as Castameer had been, it was still calculated chaos outside the relative safety of the Rebel's Hope, with the last of the alien starfighters still aggressively attempting to keep any more vessels from breaching the leviathan's hull. Grateful as he was to the Force for enhancing his natural piloting ability, he was equally grateful for Rogue Squadron, as they escorted him and the dropships around him into the proverbial belly of the beast. The enemy fire finally died away, replace by the dark and quiet foreboding of an apparently empty hangar. With their trailing foes diverted by the Rogues for now, Arix was able to finesse a much more graceful landing than he had expected, and with a deft flick of his gauntleted hand he rose from his seat as he triggered the boarding ramp and following the Alliance soldiers pouring out of the dropship. All but one of the others had made it, he just hoped it had been forced to turn back and not destroyed outright.
"Any Alliance forces in the area," the cyborg naval officer commed on a friendly frequency, "Rendezvous at communications."
It was a good speech, Jacen reflected as it rang out across the ship. The massassi didn't need to know - at least not yet - that it wasn't for them. The Lord Protector calling for calm in the wake of the herglic rebellions. Nothing to do with this ship, quite old now in fact.
Silence followed.
It almost shocked him to realise just how loud the din of battle had been until it fell away. The occupants of the ship seemed to have ceased their internal struggle for now.
"[member="Arix Askrima"] this is Marshal Voidstalker. We've got communications, head for the bridge. We're going to engineering to get power back online. It's time to get this thing out of here."
"Command this is Rogue One. I'm getting readings from that ship again. I'm pulling my fighters back away from potential defensive weapon solutions," Asmus called. He prepared to relay the Order to his Rogues and fall back.
"Negative Rogue One. Enemy ship is now being marked as friendly. Boarding parties have subdued the crew and are preparing to jump."
Asmus took a moment to let that sink in. "Understood command."
"We are sending hyperspace routes to your nav comp now. There's no time for a landing sequence so have your men power up hyperdrives."
"Understood command."
"Good job Rogues. Let's get out of here."
Asmus took his hand from the flight stick once he'd fallen into formation with Rogue Squadron and collapsed his s-foils. The computers finished the precise alignments for the jump to hyperspace. The behemoth of a destroyer seemed to be following suit.
[ Roger that Rogue One. ] Choli's voice would pipe in through the Squadron comm. It was good to hear that they would not need to escalate matters. That was a win in Choli's book. Through the Force, there didn't seem to be any sign of warning or forebearing. Maybe this was it? It was done?
Truth be told, the girl was anxious to get back into the hanger and get some food in her belly. Up ahead, she caught sight of the destroyer going through the motions of preparing for hyperspace. The rest of the Galactic Alliance and their affiliates prepped as well. Within a few moments, the Destroyer followed the Alliances forces back towards Alliance space. Choli confirmed her vector and she too followed suit.
