Into the Chaos Ch. 01

While we were talking, I could see his facial expression change as he suddenly looked much more cheerful. "LC, the nav computer just finished the calculations and the system with the base is located three ideal hyperspace days away."

That meant, that the freighter would take twelve days to get there, while we could do it in eight days. Considering that it had left before we arrived, that still left us with a day of preparations, before we had to take off.

Kiran must have been thinking the same because he continued. "If we leave before eleven hundred tomorrow, we will arrive at the destination before the Heraklon-class freighter." The smile vanished. "Unfortunately, the Phoenix will not be ready for that."

I shrugged slightly. "No worries, Lieutenant. The Mantis and the Fury both have a rank two hyperspace rating and should be enough to stop an old freighter, so I'll just take them."

"Good luck, LC."

"Thanks. Now please excuse me, I'll go make a plan."

"Yes, sir."

I finished my breakfast and walked into the passenger's lounge. Like the rest of the ship, the passenger's lounge looked like something out of a luxury yacht with stylish dark seats, indirect lightning, furniture made of dark wood and with the same wall screens as in the bedroom.

Lieutenant Samko's watch must have been over, because she was relaxing in one of the sofas, while Yaki was sitting in one of the big chairs, reading through something on her datapad. As Yaki noticed me, she looked up with a smile. "Sleeping did you good, sir. You look almost alive now."

"Thank you, Lieutenant and yes, sleeping did good." I answered as I sat down in one of the sofas.

"And I come bringing good news. Unless Captain Doran wakes up and forbids it for some reason, we're going to the rescue." That brought a smile to her face. I continued. "If we leave tomorrow, we can catch the freighter over its destination as it leaves hyperspace."

"Oh, that's good." Said Lieutenant Samko with feeling in her voice. "Nobody should be slaves."

Yaki nodded at that and looked at me. "Sir, I've looking through some of the data from the Hammerhead cruiser and it was quite interesting." She paused for a moment. "This pirate group not only have the ships we know about, but two armed freighters more. The Jackpot and the Dark Maiden." She looked at Lieutenant Samko. "Do you know anything about them?"

The human shook her head. "No. As I said, the ship, along with me and the crew, were bought for this job, and we haven't been on the base yet." She paused and then added. "And I can't thank you enough for rescuing us before that happened."

Not knowing what to say, I just nodded.

"All in a day's work." Said Yaki with a chuckle and looked at me. "The interesting part is that the Jackpot arrived along with the rest of this group but took off earlier and..." She gestured at the datapad. "... this log states that fifty of the young women were moved to the pirate's base."

I felt like cursing but didn't. Until now, it would have been enough to intercept the Last Chance, capture it and bring it back, but with our people on the pirate base, that wasn't enough anymore.

"So, there's four-hundred and fifty on the Last Chance and the other fifty on the Jackpot." I said slowly. "Bringing the total to the five hundred people we're missing."

Yaki nodded. "Yes, sir. But that is all I have at the current time, since the exact class of freighters isn't noted anywhere."

"Do you have the departure time?"

"Not yet, sir." Yaki said. "But the techs are looking through the scanner log as we speak."

"Good," I said. "In the meantime, please examine the rest of the logs and whatever you can get your hands on... See if the techs can't find something in the databases about the missing ships. There must be more information about this base somewhere. The small freighter will most likely arrive before we do, and we might have to take the base to rescue our people."

"Yes, sir."

"I hope you can." Commented Lieutenant Samko. "As far as I know, slavers move their goods fast."

I nodded without commenting. Right now, it wasn't a question about whether we could or couldn't rescue our people. CEDF tradition and regulation both stated that as long as there was a reasonable chance of success, we had to try a rescue of any Chiss taken by foreign powers.

Yaki look at Lieutenant Samko. "By the way, how did you end up as a slave?"

Lieutenant Samko sighed. "As I've said before, I'm a freighter pilot turned smuggler, but a few months ago I got caught and my ship seized." She frowned. "Since I couldn't pay their ridiculous fine, they sold me into slavery to 'cover their expenses' and then suddenly I found myself being forced to transport other slaves. I'm glad that you guys showed up and ruined Lord Mahaw's plans."

"All credit for that goes to Lieutenant Commander Thalen here." Said Yaki as she nodded in my direction. "I'm just a trooper."

"Please, no titles while we're having dinner." I glanced at Lieutenant Samko. "It's an old tradition."

"Oh... in that case, please call me Elise." She pondered for a moment. "What may I call you?"

Considering how much trouble Master Brin had with the Chiss names, I doubted she would fare much better, but I was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt. "I'm Mitth'ale'nuruodo and Lieutenant is Kadasy'ak'ishalla." I watched her face and chuckled. "You'll most likely find the shorter version of our names easier, so just say Thalen and Yaki."

Lieutenant Samko considered that for a moment, and I had no doubt, that she was trying to pronounce our full names in her head, but eventually she nodded. "Thank you, Thalen and Yaki."

"You're welcome." Yaki looked at me. "Sir, any thoughts on how we're going to pull this rescue mission off?" She held up a hand. "Not the space part, but if it's an old Imperial base, it's going to be well defended and an assault on it is going to be tricky."

"First things first, Lieutenant." I said as I leaned back in the seat. "And in this case, we need to take Heraklon freighter first."

"That shouldn't be a problem with the ships we have." Inserted Lieutenant Samko.

"No, but bases tend to have good sensors and if we go after the freighter with lasers discharging, they'll know that something is up." I said slowly and then fell silent, as I thought it over.

First, there's was the question of the safety of our personnel here, but with both the Phoenix and Dark Light here, it wasn't really a problem. Neither of the two capital ships were in a condition to go into hyperspace, but they could chase off any armed freighters that might return here.

Second, the secret base was defended by droid fighters and while they might not be the best fighters in the universe, according to the database on the Fury, they were more agile than Hunter's Gambit and Rising Star and hard to hit, meaning that they could do a lot of damage on our ships.

The base might also have shields and turbolaser cannons, as most Imperial bases usually have those. Those two factors made a frontal assault out of the question. Along the same lines, we couldn't let them know we were Chiss, because if they knew that, they could hold our people hostages. As it were now, the mere presence of our people limited the amount of force we could use, but hopefully, we could work around that.

Third and final factor was the unknown. We didn't know if there were more ships there. There might be customers or rival pirates, that arrived in a cruiser or even bigger ship.

The relatively easy victory over the Hammerhead didn't blind me to the fact that if the Hammerhead had been a real Navy capital ship, crewed by competent people, we would either have lost a few ships or the entire battle.

I could feel my brain speed up as various options and plans ran through my head, and while some corner of my mind acknowledged that Lieutenant Samko opened her mouth to say something and was stopped by Yaki, I didn't pay any attention to the intermezzo.

Leaving would solve the problem of keeping the planet safe.

The third problem could be minimized by simply jumping back out in case we found something we couldn't handle.

That left only the second problem, but that might be solved with deception and looking at the two others at the table, I slowly said. "I'm going to need the intact Sith armor from the planet cleaned and adjusted to my size, a Sith-like helmet, and a cape. The Black Dragons also need to look as grim and Sith-like as possible..." Pausing for a moment, I looked at Lieutenant Samko, I added "Oh... And you need to come along, Lieutenant Samko."

Knowing me, Yaki grinned. "You got a plan, sir?"

I nodded. "I have."

She pumped a fist in the air. "Yes!"

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Despite the short list I had made for Yaki, it wasn't the only things we needed to pull a rescue mission off.

The Heraklon freighter wasn't really a problem, as I planned on taking it intact as soon as it dropped into realspace and simply send it back to Alpha Viga right away. However, for us to get into the base and our people out of it, there was plenty of things that had to be in order, starting with crewing the captured ships.

I had used the crew of the freighter and the dropships to crew them during the battle with the Hammerhead cruiser, but we needed room to transport troops enough to take the base and we also needed room for our people in case we were successful.

It was a tricky problem, as there was a limit to the number of people any life support system could handle, restricting the number of troops we could take along and still have life support left for fifty additional people on the way back. Not an easy feat with only three small ships.

I struggled with that problem for a while, until I remembered that the pirates had used a couple of Rendaran-class shuttles to leave the cruiser. Granted, their version of the shuttle was a civilian version of the military Assault Shuttle, meaning that their original twin laser cannons had been replaced with light laser cannons, but they could still hold thirty people each and make hyperspace jumps at a respectable speed. Something our own dropships wasn't capable off. The passengers might not be comfortable, but they would get there.

With the D5-Mantis capable of taking sixteen passengers for a limited time, ten passengers on the Fury, and thirty on the Dynamic-class freighter, we had room for hundred passengers. Since we needed to transport fifty passengers home, that left room for fifty troops or five squads of troopers. More than enough to take the base unless we messed up, so I decided to take three Black Dragon squads with me, along with the two Space marine squads that had been with me at the start.

That led me back to the crewing problem, as we needed more pilots and gunners, but I decided that our own dropships didn't need them once the troops were gone, so I drafted them into flying the Rendaran-class shuttles. Both secondary pilots from the Phoenix were needed to pilot the Dark Maiden, but if I assigned a Talon Interceptor pilot to fly the Mantis, Lieutenant Samko could pilot the Fury, with Lieutenant Zwul as a secondary pilot and Georgina Writ could go back to pilot the Dynamic-class freighter.

That left us short of secondary pilots, so I drafted eight of the Talon Interceptor pilots, leaving the Phoenix with only two functional Talon Interceptors, but with two capital ships in the system, that should be enough. That was all the pilots available, except me that is.

As a naval officer, I had learned to pilot a spaceship as part of my training, but I preferred not to be at the helm, as it made it harder to use the Force and I needed to be able to use it freely if my plan were to succeed.

With the pilots sorted, I went on to the rest of the crew.

Fortunately, most military ships are over-crewed in case people die, so I shamelessly picked those not absolutely necessary to crew the Phoenix and the Dark Light and put them on the three former pirate ships, adding a few extra technicians from the refinery to various places where they were needed.

While picking out people from the Phoenix, Junior Lieutenant Meistrin asked to join the rescue party since there were two other junior Lieutenants on the Phoenix who could do her job. I happily accepted, as she had the training to command a spaceship, making her the ideal captain of the Mantis.

Since part of my plan was to pretend to be a Sith, I had changed ship to the Fury, as the Fury-class Interceptor was a typical Sith ship. Along the same line, the Black Dragons needed to look more Sith-like than they did now, and all personnel had to be warned, that they couldn't take of their helmets. While there was plenty of species in the universe with blue skin, I couldn't recall any other race with the glowing red eyes of the Chiss.

Fortunately, there was plenty of non-Chiss equipment on the Hammerhead, so I had the troopers equip themselves with new armors and weapons, while the rest was being arranged.

I tested the Sith armor, but that had been infused with dark energy, so instead, I had had the engineers do a rush job on my own armor and helmet, making it look like a Sith armor. With the limited time we had it would only be cosmetic changes, but that was fine with me. It wasn't like I was going to join the Sith Empire anyway. I just needed to be able to scare some pirates.

Even moving as fast as possible, getting it all in order took the better part of a day and as soon as we were done, we set course towards the pirate base.

A trip that would take several days. Not that I minded. I could use a few days of research and relaxation, and with the ship in hyperspace, there wasn't much else to do.

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I hope you have enjoyed this first chapter of Into the Chaos. There're more chapters on the way, as four of them are almost done, while the outline four others are waiting for me to get to them. I plan on uploading them, while I'm working on ALTFH II 😊