Into the Chaos Ch. 03

A few meters to my right the corridor took a turn and there were a few Dark Angels carefully observing the corridor, while the rest of the Angels were waiting here, along with a squad of marines under the command of Lieutenant Yaki.

"Alright, Yaki." I said over the comm. "What's the situation?"

"Sorry, sir, but they have a couple of blaster repeaters sat up behind a barricade." She said, sounding both irritated and embarrassed at the same time, "I can't think of a way to get past that without losing so many people that we can't take the rest of the ship. At least not with the equipment we have here now."

I accepted that with a nod. "You're quite right, lieutenant, but let's get moving." I looked around. "Squads at ready position, we move at my word only."

"Yes, sir."

The troops took their positions and I walked to the corner, picking a smoke grenade from my belt and threw it into the corridor.

Immediately, several blasters started to shoot, but after a few minutes, the fire lessened when the Zygerrians realised that nothing was coming through, so I threw a new one and leaned back as blaster fire hit the end wall.

I raised a shield around me and used the next minute forming a ball of concentrated Force energy and when the blaster fire died down, I took a quick step into corridor and fired off a Force Burst. The blue and green ball of Force energy flew down the hall with impossible speed expanding until it filled the corridor, blasting barriers, opponents and mounted weapons out of the way, flinging them through the air like leaves in a storm.

Igniting my lightfoil, I followed the blast, shouting "Now! Go!"

The Force Burst had also cleared the corridor from smoke and the only trace of a barricade I could see was a few mangled bodies and the remains of several smashed weapons. A pattern that repeated itself several times down the corridor as the blast had carried the metal barricade with it, adding to the carnage of the blast, leaving battered and mostly unconscious Zygerrians in its wake.

The few conscious Zygerrians were swiftly overpowered, disarmed, put in handcuffs, and left for the support squads as we quickly moved on, going through the levels of the ship like a tornado, nearing the bridge with every turn and staircase.

The next obstacle we met was a closed blast-door, but one of the techs disabled to lock in under two minutes and when she was done, I used the force to open it.

I just had time to see eight Zygerrians in their light armors crouching behind a makeshift wall and the barrel of a repeating blaster, before the weapon opened fire. I managed to parry many of the shots while my shield took most of the rest, but a few glancing blows still hit me, smashing the left shoulder plate.

Hurriedly, I stepped to the side to get into cover like the rest of the marines. The repeating blaster simply shot faster than I could parry and staying in the hallway would get me killed. Reaching out with the Force, I took hold of two dead pirates, lifted them up in an upright position and moved them into the hallway.

The repeating blaster opened up again, but as the two floating corpses too most of the hits, I peeked around the corner just long enough to locate the blaster, before I threw the two dead Zygerrians against it. The bodies crashed into the tripod at full speed, making both the blaster and the person operating it topple over.

Still using the Force, I took hold of a Zygerrian and slammed it into the blaster hard enough to break it and knock him out.

A second before I asked for their surrender, a person jumped out from the side, swinging a staff at me. Instinctively, I parried it and then dodged to the side, as the other end of the staff poked at my legs. It gave me a good look at the staff, and both ends glittered with electricity, meaning that it was a shock staff, which was one of the few weapons Master Brin had warned me about.

Developed as an anti-lightsaber weapon, shock staves were often covered in a lightsaber, and therefore also lightfoil, resistant material, allowing the wielder to parry without the weapon taking damage. The energy at the ends of the staff would discharge on a hit, delivering a charge strong enough to stun even the largest fighter, while a prolonged exposure at ten seconds or more could paralyse or kill people.

The shock staff whirled in the air as he went the attack, forcing me to parry again and again, pressing on and not giving me time to use any Force powers.

That was a smart way of fighting a force-user, and it didn't take me long to realize that the staff-wielder was better with a staff than I was with a lightfoil. Not that sheer technical skill always meant that you won a combat, but at least it gave you a better chance.

Moving with purpose, I sidestepped another attack, which made his follow-up attack hit the bulkhead before it reached me. The staff was guarding the chest area, so with a quick slash I hit him in the thigh with the lightfoil, cutting through the armor and opening a wound that made him stumble just a little. The moment was just enough for me to flick the lightfoil upwards, cutting into the fingers of his right hand and making him lose the grip on the staff with that hand.

Seeing my opening, I ran him through with the foil, but he managed to strike me at the same time, the point of his staff hitting my already damaged shoulder plate, sending it flying as a searing pain shot through my body from the electricity.

I staggered to keep my balance as two more staff wielding Zygerrians moved towards me, only to be cut down by blaster fire from Lieutenant Yaki and the marines.

"Are you hurt, sir?" She asked worriedly, as she hurried to my side.

"Just jolted by electricity. I'll be fine in a moment."

"Good. The bridge is right over there, sir." She pointed to a blast door, where a tech marine was already working on the lock.

With a nod, I stretched a few times to get the stiffness from the electric jolt out of the body, and walked over to the tech. "Just tell me when you're done."

"Yes, sir."

Thankfully, disengaging the lock took a good deal of time and by the time the tech stepped away, I couldn't feel the jolt anymore.

When everybody was in cover, I used the force to open the blast door and activated the speakers in my suit. "Surrender and you will be treated fairly. Resist and you will die."

The answer was a spread salvo of blaster fire coming our way without hitting anything.

With a sigh, I threw a smoke grenade into the bridge and waited a little before I followed it with another Force blast. This time I used a much smaller blast as I didn't want to damage the equipment on the bridge.

Then I ignited the lightfoil and stepped into view of the bridge.

A Zygerrian quickly lifted his weapon towards me, but before he could pull the trigger, I caught him with the force and threw him into a bulkhead, knocking him out and letting him fall to the floor.

"Surrender or die." I repeated.

The assembled Zygerrians looked from me to the now unconscious crew member and back again, and one threw down his weapon. That was followed by one more and before long all the Zygerrians had surrendered.

----------------------------------------------

"Remember to duck." Shakka said with humour in her voice half an hour later, when I was sitting bare-chested on a chair in the infirmary on the Duchess where she could treat my shoulder.

"Trust me, I was trying." I said with a chuckle, but that was cut off by me grimacing as a healing-pack was pressed against my shoulder. It stung for a few seconds, but then a soothing feeling spread in my shoulder and subsequently to the rest of my body.

"Try harder next time." She said shortly and looked around at the other patients before she gave me a quick kiss on the top of my head, whispering. "I know I'll have to share, but I don't want to lose you."

Surprised, I looked up, but she just sent me a wink and said, "There's nothing seriously wrong with your shoulder, so you can go again, sir."

"Thank you, Doctor Shakka." I said as I stood from the chair and took the shirt on again. "How're the wounded marines doing?"

"They'll live." She replied. "No lost limbs, so it'll only take time before they're well again. They're sleeping right now."

"Good to hear. I'll come back when they're awake."

"Do that, sir."

I nodded and walked to the bridge so I could use the comm to get an update on the situation.

True to form, Yaki had a verbal report ready for me when I reached the bridge. Of course, having led the attack on the other Kiltirin-class ship, she had first-hand knowledge of the task and her report was short and to the point.

They hadn't been able to talk with any of the prisoners or slaves yet as the internal security systems on the ships had gassed them with a knock-out gas as soon as the ship was attacked, and the medics best guess was that they would be out for at least two days. Strangely it seemed that the two thousand three hundred prisoners were all humans or near-humans.

Another problem was that the crew or the security system had wiped the computers for any navigational data and locked the information about the prisoners.

"Thank you, Lieutenant." I said when she was finished. "Could you please find out how much food there is on board?"

"Hold one, sir. I'll ask the prize crew." She did and a moment later she said. "It's a guess, but about three weeks."

That meant that we needed to restock on food before we could even think of transporting them anywhere. In other words, we needed to go to Alpha Viga as soon as possible, unless the Asteroid Base have food for at least some weeks.

I weighted the pros and cons of taking the Asteroid Base for some time and decided that it was worth a try. Especially, if we could use the same tactics as with the moon base on Centauri 21.

I don't like using the same tactics repeatedly as sooner or later people would come up with a counter to it, but in this case, it was doable as we held all the advantages and I could use the Sith ruse, which tended to scare the crap out of the pirates.

"All right," I told her. "That means that we need to take the asteroid base and get some food there. Get ready, Lieutenant. We're going to use the same ruse as on Centauri 21. Let's hope they get fooled again."

She nodded with a smile. "That was fast, sir."

"I know, but apparently, the Empire has the route to this system and the Lictor might not have been waiting for the two Kiltirins. It might as well have been waiting for an Imperial task force, so the faster we get it done the better."

The smile disappeared as she became all business. "Right, sir. I'll brief the troops."

"Thank you."

She saluted and walked out.

--------------------------

The next six hours were filled with hectic activity. The two Kiltirin-class dungeon ships had been crewed with the Aurek pilots, an astrogator and some spacehands, to go along with a half-squad of marines on each.

The Sith ruse had worked just as well on the Asteroid Base as it had on the Moon Base, which I attributed to the Sith's reputation of ruthlessness, and we had taken the asteroid without any problems. Unfortunately, beside fuel and food, and four large hyper-capable shuttles, there wasn't much to come for at the base and the crew consisted of only forty people along with one hundred-and-twenty slaves.

So, we refuelled and restocked with food, leaving enough for the crew to survive at least five months and transferred the captured Zygerrians to the base's holding cells. I didn't want them on the ships, and they didn't have any of the codes to the ship's computers, so that was the best solution I could come up with.

I also spent some time talking with the freed slaves, determining that all except four were ordinary people caught by the pirates, while the remaining four were hard-core criminals convicted into slavery for various crimes, so they got a prison cell next to the Zygerrians.

Despite claiming otherwise, none of the pirates had been pressed into service, so we locked them into a room along with some rations and set the time lock so it would automatically open a couple of days later.

The last problem of the day was also the most serious. I had offered the freed slaves a ship, so they could go home or come along with us as they pleased, but they all elected to come with us, instead of facing the danger of space travel in the Chaos alone.

That made me look up the four shuttles in the database and I discovered that they were Star-class shuttles, though it would be more correct to call them passenger freighters. Originally built by Hoersch-Kessel Driveworks, the 44-meter-long ships were solidly built, could transport 40 passengers along with 700 metric tons of cargo, had a Rank 2 Hyperdrive and came equipped with two turreted auto-blasters for self-defence, though the pirates had swapped them with quad lasers. On the downside, they were slow in real space and flew like a brick in the atmosphere.

With their combination of passenger and cargo transport, they were almost perfect shuttles for the pirates, which was why they were here, as the pirates used them to ferry goods and slaves to their destination.

Now they were like a gift to us. With the number of people we had freed, our ships were almost filled to what the life support could sustain and one-hundred-and-fifteen additional people would take us over that limit by twenty-six persons.

After thinking it through, I decided to leave the D-5 Mantis here and take the four shuttles with us instead. With one of its foils gone from the combat damage in Alpha Viga along with the missile launcher, it was a lot less useful than it used to be and it might as well stay here for the pirates, while we took off with the four shuttles.

Consequently, I had Keller disable the remaining Turbo Laser on the Mantis, while others wiped the log, so nobody could discover where we had been.

The Star-class only needed a crew of four, with two extra gunners, and with the people we had, finding sixteen spacers and eight gunners weren't really a problem, so after placing the freed slaves in the new ships, along with some marines just in case anybody got funny ideas, we took off towards Centauri 21, so we could get back on track to the Debra system and the pirate base there.

*********************************

Gravity ripple

Duchess, Hyperspace

It is strange, but true, that the most important turning-points of life

often come at the most unexpected times and in the most unexpected ways.

Vice Admiral Zedais, CEDF

Two days later, I was sitting in the commander's chair, quietly talking with Lieutenant Samko, when a feeling of dread washed over me.

Looking up, I studied the starfield outside the window. Unlike most people, I liked to watch the stars whip past the ship in hyperspace, finding the kaleidoscopic and swirling patterns of light strangely soothing. This time I saw something different in the pattern, as there was a concentration of swirls in front of the ship, coming rapidly closer.

I hurriedly pressed the all-ship comm switch.

"Emergency exit! Gravity ripple!" I ordered, thankful that all the ships had hyper-transceivers, enabling us to talk while in hyperspace as long as we were following the same route at the same speed.

Stars explode in supernova's, planets and entire solar systems collide, while rogue planets zip through space. All events, that sent material through the universe, resulting in a potential deadly gravity wave in hyperspace.

In the pilot seat, Lieutenant Samko opened a quick release cover and pressed a red button, but in the few fractions of a second that took, the wave hit us, throwing the ship through hyperspace like a leaf to the wind.

Then the emergency exit kicked in and with a suddenness that made the whole world lurch, we were thrown back into realspace as our reactor shut down, plunging the ship into darkness. The emergency light switched on automatically, but a moment later that too went out, leaving only the luminescent paint to light the bridge.

"Fuck!" Cursed Keller and ran out of the open door, shouting "I'll try to restart the reactor."

Nodding to myself, I looked out of the viewscreen, but there was only darkness. I almost accepted that until I realised that there were no clear stars, just blurred points of light against a pitch darkness.

That was so unusual that I couldn't even remember hearing about it before. Pushing the thought away, I turned to more practical matters.

"Anybody hurt?"

There was a chorus of negatives and in the dim light of the luminescent paint I could see that everybody was at their station and moving... except one. Resa was slumped in the chair like an unconscious person or a droid that had suddenly and unexpectedly been shut down.

"Lieutenant Samko." I said, picking the one most familiar with the tech. "See if you can do anything for Resa."

"Yes, sir." The pilot answered and rushed to the slumped droid.

To my irritation, there wasn't much else I could do and I used the time to talk with Tavune, who seemed more than a little flustered by the situation. Considering his young age and lack of military training, that wasn't surprising and talking with him seemed to calm him.

Eventually, Keller came walking back. "The reactor is up and running, sir." He told us immediately, as he walked over to his console and pressed a key. A moment later the bridge it up as al the consoles came online. "There!"

There was silence on the bridge as everybody checked their control panels and Lieutenant Samko threw herself back into the pilots seat to do the same, before doing a course change, turning the ship. Then her voice broke the silence. "Maximum Zoom!"

I looked up at the screen just in time to see one of our Military Transports ram a much larger ship, exploding at impact, instantly killing everybody inside it.

"Oh my god!" Tavune exclaimed horrified.

I agreed, but the living always had priority and the large ship that had made the Imperial Military transport explode was potentially a big problem. "Zoom out." I ordered.

The ship that the Imperial Military Transport had rammed, was a massive battlecruiser, much larger than even the Chariot and while it had the command tower and wedge-shaped hull of most imperial ships, the front half of the ship was divided horizontally into two main sections, with a central gap separating the dorsal and ventral parts.

I recognized it from the history classes at the Naval Academy as an old Imperial Interdictor-class battlecruiser, as it was the only large warship, I could think off that used that particular over and under split of the main hull.

It had also taken a lot of damage, as it had gaping holes in the armor and several of the laser towers had been blown away, all clear signs of combat damage.

The screen kept zooming out, bringing more ships into view. Most of them showing signs of combat damage and none of them had lights of any kind on their surface. That made me look on the tactical hologram in front of the commander's chair and while it did show the ships, the drive signatures were missing and only the mass had been detected. It dawned on me, that it was a massive collection of dead ships, lit by the distant light of a small, planet less star. Besides the group just in front of us, there were many other ships, creating a ring as they orbited the star.

"What is that?!" wondered Tavune, causing me to look away from the hologram. "That, Mister Tavune, looks like the remains of a once proud Imperial Battlegroup, but our people are more important. Get hold of the ships that don't have a drive signature and hear if they're okay."