STAR WARS:
LOST GALAXY
After two centuries, it is a period of unprecedented peace and prosperity in the Galactic Alliance Triumvirate. Having all but eliminated the ONE SITH, the known galaxy is a haven of tolerance and scientific advancement
K'KRUHK, Grandmaster of the Jedi order has ruled benevolently alongside the imperial order and alliance remnant. Promoting order, they have united even the Yuzan Vong with the rest of the galaxy and restored the New Jedi Order to number in the thousands. All is well.
Now, young Jedi padawan TEL'KURT KORR and his master KATRON VELL are completing a mission of mercy, delivering supplies to a colony at the edge of known space...
Prologue
The pieces of his light saber swirled around his head in a bronze blur. Tel'Kurt allowed his mind to be free of all distraction. He was one with the force, and the force was one with him. Saccharine Visions danced through his head; the temple on Ossus, the flowers of his boyhood home on Naboo, and the foliage of a distant forest swaying in an autumnal breeze.
The crystal is the heart of the blade.
He began the meditation exercise.
The heart is the crystal of the Jedi.
More Visions, this time of crystal formations, humming and glowing in a cave frigid with shadows.
The Jedi is the crystal of the Force.
He continued as the visions began to accelerate: His mother smiling at him. Master Katron's many arms moving as she picked up the young force sensitive, for the first time.
The Force is the blade of the heart.
The Ossus temple again, this time the inside halls streaking past him as the rate of his visions once more increased. His first training saber dancing awkwardly through the air until suddenly it was his first real blade, locked with a swordsman on his first true mission.
All are intertwined.
Now the visions became barely perceptible, the speed had increased so. Blaster bolts, outlaws, politicians, grateful citizens and pain of wounds long healed became an impenetrable cacophony around him.
The crystal…
The blade…
The Jedi….
We…
Are…
Agony filled his mind. He poured every last ounce of strength he had into ending the exercise. Yet no matter how he drove himself he could not complete the chant. It was then he began to fear he'd never awaken. Acutely, he became aware a sullen grey face was visible at the periphery of his perception. It mocked Tel'kurt with its eyes, such unfeeling eyes.
"PADAWAN!"
One.
The pieces of his blade launched themselves around the cargo hold as his concentration was mercifully destroyed. Master Katron had at last joined him in the hold and was staring at him with an intense worry visible in her many eyes.
"My apprentice, what vexes you so? Your pain was tangible in the force."
Tel'Kurt's eyes fell to his boots, and then to the scrambled components of his weapon that lay strewn amongst the cargo hold.
"There were visions master" he answered after a long moment "More powerful than any I've ever experienced. I was merely trying to complete the basic meditation exercise, when they seized hold!"
Katron regarded him critically for a brief second, when becoming aware of her Padawan's chagrin, she offered comfort. "Well, try to put such things behind you young one. We are in transit through an old system, older than even the temple records can describe. Such places often capture the imagination. It is important that we remain aware of such fears, so that we may better combat them."
Tel'Kurt was not convinced. Willing the pieces of his fallen weapon back into an operational form he considered his master's motives. It was a fairly oft occurrence for Master Katron to offer him such consoling in matters of fear, but this was a different story. He sensed his master was not letting on all that she knew.
"But master" he replied "The visions were not brought on by my imagination; they were delivered by the force!"
Katron let out a disarming chuckle as she sat her withered body down on a durasteel crate. "Oh young one, you are not the first to confuse the machinations of the mind as the will of the force, and you certainly won't be the last. I can tell you however with the utmost confidence that there is nothing the force would deliver you here that is worthy of your fear. Now come, eat."
With that she beckoned the young padawan towards her and offered him a ration pack, the last meal they would ever enjoy together.
…
Fel's hammer chugged through the darkness of space at a labored pace. The great big bird had fallen a far way from grace, and it had fallen hard. Once considered the crown jewel of imperial industry, the hammer and its fellow Recreant class star cruisers were the faithful personal transports of bureaucrats and admirals alike. Now they were collector's items. One in mint condition was valued at seven hundred and fifty five thousand credits.
Fel's hammer was not in mint condition. Rusted, and hobbled, the old hawk had balancing issues. The navigation thrusters around the main engine were faulty and would occasionally fire starboard, bumping the course portside. It was driving her crazy.
Kero coaxed a bit more power to the sublight engines, hoping to smooth their approach a bit. Navigating the edges of known space was enough to make even the most seasoned pilots a little uneasy, and Kero was anxious to feel her feet on firm ground again. She offered a few glances at her instruments, and being satisfied with her adjustments turned her focus to her communicator.
With one hand lightly grasping the steering yoke, she used the other to activate her communicator and open a channel to the Jedi.
"Master Vell?" her voice probed through the transceiver.
"Yes Captain?" buzzed the response from the Jedi.
"I wanted to inform you that we'll be reaching our destination shortly. Once we clear the Crell arm and its surrounding nebula we'll be only a short hyperspace jump from Trelvan."
"Very good captain, keep us posted." The line then went dead.
Kero raised an eyebrow. She'd never understood Jedi and their habits of solitude. Over the course of their three day journey she had only seen the Jedi "diplomats" in the flesh once. Since then they had confined themselves to the cargo hold and other lower areas of the ship, doing who knows what.
The sensor indicator flashed crimson, momentarily drawing her thoughts away from the reclusive Jedi. She hit the switch quickly, having anticipated that the notification would activate once they hit the nebula. She leaned back and once again focused herself on the Jedi. The master intrigued her. She was of a species that Kero had never encountered, Hysalrian. She had no legs, rather a gangly serpentine form with which she slithered quite quickly about. Also, she had four arms, and four large black eyes affixed to a relatively tiny head.
Kero had to wonder if the Trelvaniancolonists would be off put from the negotiations due to the Jed's appearance. Not that they had much of a choice in the matter either way. Their settlement was quickly becoming a hemorrhage of credits and the triumvirate was beginning to question the validity of such a remote colony.
The colonists argued that the colony would one day be a vital stepping stone for expansion of humanoid life into unknown space and the Jedi council for the most part agreed, seeing the expansion of the known galaxy as a chance to finally put 400 years of turmoil and shifting regimes behind them. Therefore it was the Jedi who had financed this supply run, and the Jedi who would work with the colonists to establish terms that would allow them to remain on Trelvan.
She couldn't understand why the colonists would want to even remain on Trelvan; it was a dessert waste and only hospitable far from the equatorial regions. Her mind drifted back to childhood lessons on planetary mechanics and she tried to summon the word for such planets but it wouldn't come. The sensor indicator flashed again, and she was quickly pulled out of her reminiscences and shifted into crisis mode. The sensor indicated another ship dangerously close. That couldn't be right…
A barrage of sparks exploded from the command panel. She covered her face with her arms, feeling the stinging flares biting into her exposed skin. The Shower concluded almost as suddenly as it began. She glanced about the nebula around her seeing no clear indication of what had caused the outburst. Only a still starfield.
She was knocked from her feet by another explosion, this one rattling the entire ship. Acrid smoke was filling the cabin, and it stung at her throat like poison. The high pitched shrieking of the emergency claxon was not helping matters.
She grasped wildly at the back of her command chair, desperately attempting to regain some semblance of control.
She was too tired. It seemed time to resign herself to the inevitably painful death that was about to occur. A moment passed. Then another. Shockingly enough, she wasn't a sticky puddle of sublimated fluids and charred limbs. Not yet.
Hurriedly, the relieved star pilot crawled low along the floor out of the cockpit. She didn't know why she was alive, but she wasn't going to waste too much time questioning it. Sheltered in the relative safety of the main hallway, she wrestled the communicator off her belt. She attempted to reach the Jedi, only to meet static.
Hoisting herself up with the help of some couplings knocked from the wall she was struck by an acute and shooting sting in her abdomen. Gingerly moving aside the fabric of her flight jacket she discovered a thick sliver of shrapnel had nestled itself cozily about 4 centimeters into the edge of her belly. The tips of her fingers were numb with fear and her breath was coming only in short raspy bursts.
She hobbled down the hallway anticipating another explosion that never came. It had to be raiders. They would most likely board. Her first priority was reaching a medkit, the next to reach the hyper drive and attempt manual jump to Trelvan. She snatched her snub nose from the recesses of her jacket and smacked the lift command with the butt.
Stepping into the lift, she punched the button corresponding to the engine room, and took a deep breath as it catapulted downwards, feeling a terrible ache in her side.
…
Whoever they were, they had obviously planned the assault meticulously. Their very first shot had disabled artificial gravity in the cargo hold and knocked Tel'Kurt unconscious. The next two had most likely killed the pilot. It wasn't another moment before they had boarded. Katron called to the force and let it augment her strength. Rejuvenating energy flowed freely through her body. Pausing for the briefest moment, she allowed her mind to be still.
She had assumed they were pirates. The dirty cloak and maintenance mask seemed to suggest such as much. Then he lit a scarlet blade. Katron didn't fear Sith, and doubted this unknown even was Sith. Their order had been extinguished. Most likely this was a simple dark acolyte. Still, she was on guard. The attack was too well orchestrated to act otherwise.
SNAP! She uncoiled her tail against the ceiling of the hold, flying towards her attacker as a grayish green blur.
She ignited her emerald saber, twisting her powerful core muscles to add spin to her flight towards the assailant. She managed to lock blades with enough momentum to knock her opponent across the room off balance. Gracefully, she drifted back toward the center of the room, having used the force of her collision to steer herself. She decided to press the advantage and once more called upon the force, this time willing several large plasteel cylinders at him.
Her opponent was not as dazed as she had planned. He knocked away one cylinder with the force, and dispatched the other two efficiently with his light saber, spilling their contents into the open air of the hold.
Remounting the offensive with vicious enthusiasm, the unknown attacker compelled the various supplies he had unwittingly unleashed toward the aged Jedi master all at once. It was a hailstorm of tools, data pads, and ration packs that bombarded Katron with unrelenting force. Her right arms took the brunt of the onslaught, each collision punctuated by a sickening snap.
With a chuckle, the dark assassin leapt trough the air, raising his weapon above him and preparing for a powerful vertical slice.
Labouredly, the wounded master assumed a defensive position. It was obvious she had underestimated him. He was younger, and fighting with a passion the likes of which Katron had never faced before.
She knew it was only her many years of experience that protected her now, and she planned to capitalize on his over-zealous nature.
As he came within striking distance, she retracted her blade and rolled hard right, pushing off from her uninjured side and narrowly avoiding the kiss of his searing blade. THWIP! She cracked her tail like a whip, aiming for a solid blow to his sternum.
Instead, he anticipated the move, grabbing at the scaly tip of her tail and flinging her with careless abandon hard into the bulkhead.
Lumpy globules drifted across the entire scope of her vision. Her head was abuzz. She had only one chance left, and elected to take it. Wrapping herself inside of the thick muscled armor of her serpentine form, she wrangled the will of the force to her side once more. Desperately she flung every object she could see towards the dark man, an omni-directional assault that included her own body.
Crates and barrels whizzed past each other, yet the assassin had no trouble. With remarkable agility, he flipped and contorted between the projectiles that scarcely posed a problem. As the withered Jedi flew past, she dispensed one last pitiful offensive, dispersing the contents of her belt.
It was perhaps only the smallness of the action that saved them, as the wide defensive swing of the crimson blade did not catch the Master's communicator, allowing it to whiz straight, where it sunk into the helpless dark Jedi's eye with a wet thud.
It was in that moment that young Tel'Kurt sprung his trap, having feigned unconsciousness long enough to drift towards the cloaked figure and eventually behind him.
The blue blade of his light saber swung a wide arc through the air, swiftly severing the assailant's legs and sending them tumbling through the suddenly still air of the cabin. A final hard force push toward the floor finished Tel'Kurt's surprise offensive. Frankly, he was shocked it had worked. If their attacker had survived, he was certainly a very good actor.
...
Kero Fey was thoroughly confused. Not just confused as to why she had been attacked, but how. Both of her service staff were dead, mercilessly hacked to pieces and discarded like trash in the bowels of the hyper drive.
The computer core's connection to auxiliary systems had been cleanly severed and the emergency power generator had been severed from the power distribution, meaning they were running only on reserve power. It just made no sense.
Raiders wouldn't have sabotaged a claim like this, and they surely would have kept hostages once they discovered it was a Jedi vehicle.
No, whoever was behind this assault was showing no mercy, no regard for property.
The only option left would involve interfacing directly with the hyper drive's brain. It would take time. Far too much time.
Someone had gone to great lengths to make sure that no one would leave this ship alive. So Kero decided on the only reasonable course of action. She was going to blow up the damn ship. Give the bastards what they came for.
Escape pod access was two decks down at the aft section of the ship. She had a precariously small margin for error. She would loop the main power manifold into the disabled emergency generator.
By looping the power to a destination which no longer contained any output she could cause an overload, the scope of which would tear Fel's hammer in two.
She estimated six minutes until critical capacity. Factoring the time it would take to vector in a course to the escape pod and reach minimum safe distance, she would want to reach her target within three minutes, and launch within four. It was going to be tight.
She sprung her trap, making sure to seal the door behind her. Then, she ran.
…
Master Vell was in bad shape. While they had been able to splint her arms, she suspected there was internal bleeding still to be dealt with. That was, if they were t even make it out alive.
The thought had occurred to Tel'Kurt that this may be his final mission. He shook those doubts as best he could. Besides being a Jedi, who was to be focused on the living force, he was still young, and above all a living being. The part of his brain that craved survival did not like his dwelling on mortality anymore than the tenets of the force did.
So he pressed onward, carrying his battered master. At every corner he anticipated the arrival of another darksider, who would surely spell his doom.
The goal they strove for was the hyper drive. No doubt the orchestrator, or orchestrators of the attack, had sabotaged command control. The only slim hope ahead of them was to make the jump manually.
At last reaching the engine room, Tel'Kurt was awash with relief. Perhaps there was hope yet.
The blast door rolled aside, filling the air with a hydraulic hiss. Standing squarely between the Jedi and the core was another cloaked figure, a maintenance mask affixed to his hooded head.
With a calm grace, the masked man unclipped a light saber from his belt. He then paused, a slight hitch in his arm as he refrained from activating his weapon.
Tel'Kurt took his meaning. Lowering to one knee, he placed master Vell gingerly at his feet. Rising quickly, he stepped over her and retrieved his own light saber.
He was prepared to die.
…
Kero fumbled to secure her restraints around herself, knowing she was quickly running out of time. With one hand she activated the power in the pod, while the other furiously punched in vector code.
There was a series of beeps from the escape pod's small navicomputer, confirming the course was valid. Kero gulped and activated the boosters.
Surging forward far more quickly than she had expected, her head snapped against the back of her seat. Tongue met tooth and blood filled her mouth.
There was scarcely time to notice the pain, as the pod rocketed past the ship that had so easily crippled the hammer. It was an imperial TIE. An old one, by the looks of it, docked right up with the hammer.
Kero quickly realized how the assault had played out. The TIE no doubt had old imperial transceiver codes, old enough that the hammer's senile computer had labeled them an ally, and not dispensed a warning until it was too late. At such close range even a flimsy tie could cripple them.
The codes must have also been responsible for their ability to dock with the hammer. If they could get through one airlock though… a macabre thought crossed her aching mind.
They could get through another.
…
Tel'Kurt's aching feet followed the dance of battle raptly, snapping on the durasteel floor as he drove forward and fell back.
His blows were quickly becoming nothing more than a show. The skill of his opponent was evident, as he parried every strike in due course, opening up opportunities for the kill many times. He was toying with the padawan, simply pacing the perimeter of the hyper drive, denying his opponent any chance at inching closer.
Tel'Kurt knew it was all to end here. He backed off hard and fell to his knees, resigning himself to whatever fate lay ahead of him.
He shut his eyes tight and awaited becoming one with the force. It didn't happen quite as he expected it to.