Title: Future's Sacrifice
Author: ProofThatThisIsReal
Genre: Adventure, Action, some humor, some other stuff
Timeframe: 129 years after Return of the Jedi, 9 years after the cataclysmic Ravager Wars took place… (All will be explained concerning this)
Main Characters: Everyone is an Original Character except for Threepio and Artoo… But they're good Original Characters, if that counts for something…
Summary: 129 years after Return of the Jedi, nine years after the cataclysmic Ravager Wars against the Jedi; a group of Jedi Masters for the Universal Alliance are returning from their search for a disturbance that they have sensed in the force. (Oh, that's original, isn't it?) A wandering Jedi Master with his padwan, their pilot, and, of course, Artoo and Threepio, go out to meet the group of Jedi. But past secrets are revealed, and an enemy rises to power who is ready to take on the entire Universal Alliance, the Jedi Order, and Coruscant itself if need be.
Disclaimer: By the way, in case anyone didn't notice, my user name is ProofThatThisIsReal, not George Lucas, and guess what that means? Ironically enough, it means that I do not own the Star Wars universe, though this story is completely my imagination.
Future's Sacrifice – Chapter I
"Oh, my!" C-3PO cried out in his usual prissy voice, his metallic droid hands clamped firmly around a pipe lining the ship's interior decking. "We're doomed!"
Darrik Fate twisted his head around in his seat and shot the droid a bemused grin. "Come on, Threepio," he said mock-seriously, his eyebrows slanting as he tried to imitate an innocent expression. "Have I ever let you down before?"
"But, sir! You don't understand!" Threepio cried out in desperation. The droid's photoreceptors seemed to widen as he stared out the transparisteel of the ship's bridge at the approaching asteroid. "The odds of successfully navigating through an asteroid field this tightly clustered together at these speeds while simultaneously outmaneuvering the majority of a very adept pirate gang that have been greatly angered by your recent destruction of their main base of operations are approximately eight-"
The screech of the ship's proximity alarm, alerting to an approaching asteroid, cut him off, and Darrik quickly shot his gaze back to the panel of instruments settled beneath him. His hands played across them with practiced ease as he carefully diverted his attention between the ship's sensors and the oncoming asteroid.
"Brenden?" he called out without turning his head from the viewscreen, "get ready to fire at these coordinates on the asteroid that I'm about to send you, okay?"
A few seconds went by, and then another voice echoed from the back of the ship, "Okay, got it!"
"Okay, let's see if we can get this right, Threepio," Darrik muttered to the droid, his eyes still locked between the sensors and viewscreen.
"Oh my."
The ship, Daybreaker, a small starcruiser resembling something like an oversized A-wing from the outside, shot straight toward the rocky surface of the asteroid. Its twin ion engines glowing a bright blue, the Daybreaker expertly began its decent so that it lined up perfectly with the asteroid's center. Then, right before the Daybreaker seemed to be engulfed by the asteroid's mass, the starcruiser rapidly pulled up into a half spin and swung around behind another closer asteroid. A pirate vessel then came into view from behind them, and a vicious stream of laser fire arched from the vessel into the first asteroid where the Daybreaker had just been.
"Okay, Brenden; now!" Darrik shouted, still keeping his eyes fixed on the instruments.
Another arch of laser fire was Brenden's reply as it impacted against the deep gash in the asteroid's side where the pirate vessel had shot. A cloud of dust erupted from the spot, and a crack began splitting the asteroid in half as Brenden's continued fire impacted against it. Another large crack spiked off sporadically from the point of impact on the asteroid, followed by other tiny fractures that laced themselves around the entire mass. Then, in what seemed like only a heartbeat, the asteroid was completely torn apart by the excessive cracking that had laced its surface. Chunks of the asteroid scattered out into the empty space with a blanket of dust following.
The pirate vessel that had been trailing the Daybreaker paused briefly at the unexpected sight, and then raced around the side of the dispersing dust mass, trying desperately to avoid the large chunks of rock floating away from the remains of the asteroid. However, one of these chunks, hidden in the dust from both sensors and visuals, careened awkwardly toward the small pirate vessel and struck the cockpit blatantly. A small explosion marked the pirate's grave as the chunk of rock smashed the vessel even further against another asteroid, creating another cloud of dust to add to the bigger one.
"Nice shooting, Brenden," Darrik called into the back of the ship, risking a glance away from the controls. "That dust cloud should give us a blanket cover on their scanners for a few seconds."
"Thanks," Brenden replied with a mix of terror and adrenaline coloring his voice, "but I do have some bad new. The pirates have about eight or nine other ships behind us still, four of which are corvettes, with a few frigates and some other stuff I can't identify yet."
"I feel so honored," Darrik responded with a roll of his eyes.
"Well, we did blow up their base, didn't we? Anyway, I seriously doubt we have enough firepower to take them on. If you have any Jedi tricks left that you'd like to show off; now's the time."
"Yeah, one second," Darrik said, his face turning sober. He turned his head to stare out the transparisteel of the Daybreaker, and his eyes glazed over as if he was looking at something far away.
He sat like that for a few seconds before Threepio interrupted him and asked nervously, "Sir, are you sure that you're-"
"Okay, got it!" Darrik suddenly responded, jumping back to reality. "Brenden, how long do we have until the pirates are in range to attack?"
"Um, we should have about fifteen or twenty more seconds before their sensors can penetrate that dust cloud back there. After that, though, they'll be on us in seconds."
"Okay," Darrik replied thoughtfully as he tilted the ship toward the edge of the asteroid belt. "Here, you see those two huge asteroids on the edge of this belt?"
"Yeah."
"Well, at the rate that they're drifting, they should both collide with each other in about two minutes. Now, there is a third asteroid orbiting around one of the bigger ones. It should be coming around and colliding with the other two at about the same time so a three-way collision will be going on. Our goal is to try and get between the two bigger ones before they collide. Then, if the pirates are close enough behind us, they should be pinned between that third asteroid and the impending collision of the other two asteroids. They won't have enough time to get out of the way before the asteroids collide. If we're lucky, that should solve our little pirate problem."
A moment scathed by without sound, and then Brenden asked, "But won't they be able to see that third asteroid orbiting around the larger ones on their sensors? I know they're pirates and everything, but I would think that they'd be smart enough to know that running blindly into an asteroid collision course is a bad idea."
"Normally, yes; but the mass from the bigger asteroid is great enough to hide the smaller one orbiting around it. If you look, it doesn't even appear on our sensors."
A second of silence followed, and then Brenden's voice came back with, "Wait, so then how did you know-…" Brenden caught himself mid-sentence, and then said, "Right, one of those force things."
"Exactly."
Darrik suddenly felt a tingling in the back of his mind, and he jerked the yoke of the Daybreaker upward in a violent motion. This was directly followed by a warning alarm that announced a turbolaser blast flying by beneath their stern.
"Talk about an alarm being completely useless," Darrik muttered under his breath. "Okay, Brenden; have they cleared the dust cloud yet?"
"Yeah…" Brenden's voice responded sullenly. "Oh, this doesn't look good. More turbolaser fire coming up, Darrik!"
"Got it," Darrik said as another turbolaser blast struck a nearby asteroid and sent it careening into oblivion. "Okay, I've got the rear shields to maximum. Have they started firing missiles yet?"
"Just started to; want me to take them out?"
"Yeah, and be prepared for some jerky maneuvering."
Darrik heard Brenden let loose with the laser cannon that was mounted on the starboard side of the Daybreaker and saw a few of the blips on his radar that marked missiles disappear. At that moment, however, the fleet of pirate vessels seemed to have finally come into a formation where they could unload everything they had against the smaller Daybreaker. A barrage of laser cannon fire, missiles, and turbolaser blasts followed as the pirate vessels began to close in on their prey.
"They really don't like us, do they, Threepio?" Darrik said in a deceptively calm voice as he sent the Daybreaker into spins and climbs around asteroids that would have made hardened smugglers cringe. Threepio babbled something about the odds being below zero for their survival and impending doom upon all of them, but Darrik was too preoccupied with not being vaporized to note exactly what it was the droid was saying.
Skillfully, Darrik swerved through a particularly tricky cluster of asteroids, dodging left and right through the small openings between them. He then came back out on the other side of them, leaving the cluster of asteroids between the Daybreaker and the fleet of pirate vessels.
His sensor alarms suddenly erupt into a frenzied static. He glanced down at the sensors at the same time that Brenden called out, "Darrik, the corvettes are concentrating their turbola-"
His voice was cut short by the sudden rattling of the ship as four turbolaser blasts shredded the asteroids behind them. One of the turbolaser blasts had made it through the asteroid cluster without detonating, and Darrik was thrown forward in his seat as the blast impacted against the Daybreaker's rear shields; rocketing the starcruiser sideways into an uncontrolled spin.
Darrik heard Threepio scream the word "dooooom" out from somewhere as he fought back desperately for control of the ship. Then, without any kind of warning, a chunk of one of those asteroids that the turbolasers had shattered suddenly collided with the starboard side of the Daybreaker.
The Daybreaker abruptly stopped spiraling, and Darrik's head was jerked sideways in his seat. His pilot's harness had been the only thing that had kept him from flying across the bridge. He dazedly raised his head saw Threepio's golden, metallic head lodged between two pipes in the back of the bridge and wondered dimly in the back of his mind how in the world the droid had managed that one.
"Uhh…," Darrik groaned, turning his attention away from Threepio. He turned around in his seat and shouted into the back of ship, "Brenden, you okay?"
"Um, yeah; kinda," Brenden's answer came back, his voice sounding hoarse and ragged. "But the turret isn't. That asteroid completely knocked out all targeting sensors for this thing, and in a few seconds I think the cracked transparisteel for it is going to give. I'm sealing the compartment off now."
"Okay, good. When you're done come on up here; I could use your help," Darrik turned back around to the controls of the Daybreaker. Slowly, he tested it's responsiveness by tilting it first left, and then right. After checking the maneuverability of the starcruiser, he fired up the engines again and sped off toward the three asteroids near the edge of the belt that were on a collision course for each other.
"What level are the shields?" Brenden asked weakly as he stepped up onto the bridge of the Daybreaker. He had a slight limp as he sat down in the copilot's seat, and he was rubbing his neck where he had apparently been jostled harshly during the collision.
"Um, they're at thirty-seven percent," Darrik responded with a shrug. "Not too bad for colliding directly with an asteroid, but still… Anyway, are you sure you're alright?"
"Yeah, 'm fine, I was just kind of knocked around a bit," Brenden grinned slightly. "Anyway, how are the engines?"
"Yeah, that's the bad thing." Darrik answered with a grimace as he turned back to the controls. "The port side's working just fine right now, but the starboard side where that asteroid struck is working at only about fifteen percent power. We'll still be able to maneuver with it, but that's about all."
The Daybreaker jostled slightly as an arch of laser fire hit the rear deflector shields and discharged against them in a haze of green static on the ship's monitor.
"And I thought they had forgotten about us," Brenden said sarcastically.
Darrik dropped the Daybreaker a few meters as a few stray shots roared past them and the rest of the pirate fleet moved into firing position behind them.
"Okay, those two big asteroids on the edge of the belt are right in front of us," Darrik pointed out through the transparisteel, sweat beginning to bead down his cheek. "Only… we're not going fast enough right now to be able to make it before they collide."
"You can't get any more speed out of her?" Brenden asked, anxiety beginning to color his tone.
"Nope," Darrik shook his head. "Well, the only way to go any faster is to divert all available energy to those ion engines, and that would mean suicide for us because we would have to drop the rear deflector shields." He brushed his hands across his face and cupped them in front of his mouth for a second, his gaze fixing on some random point on the bridge. Suddenly, his eyes lit up and he exclaimed, "Wait a second… Brenden, get the computer to calculate a microjump between the two asteroids right before they collide."
Brenden nodded tersely and turned back around in his seat. His fingers began racing across the control panels as he locked in a course for a microjump.
"Um, sir!" Threepio announced worriedly as he made his way to the two pilots, apparently having finally gotten himself free of the pipes that he had been lodged between earlier. "Sir, to try any kind of jump to hyperspace within the boundaries of an asteroid belt would be practically impossible. The gravity interference from the asteroids alone would rip the hull to pieces the moment we started the jump, not to mention the complication of the pirates that are closing in behind us."
Brenden's voice cut back in before Darrik could respond. "The course is set, Darrik, but Threepio's right. Unless we can go into some kind of barrel roll right before we jump, the asteroids' own gravity will throw us straight into the biggest one if we try to jump between them."
"Hmm," Darrik's mouth twitched slightly, "I'm guessing we want to avoid that, right?"
"Well, I personally don't feel like being vaporized today. But whatever; it's your call."
A grin spread across Darrik's face and he asked, "Okay, Threepio; where's Artoo?"
"Um, I think he's still trying to keep the rear deflector shield's power boosted as high as possible, but if you need me to-"
"Okay, tell him to try and boost the power of the port ion engine,"
"Um, yes sir, but… If I may say so; wouldn't you want him to repair the starboard ion engine, since it's the one most heavily damaged?"
"Trust me, Threepio; just tell him to max out the port side ion engine as much as possible."
"Um, yes, sir," Threepio announced obediently, and began walking off into the back of the ship where the astromech droid R2-D2 was stationed.
"Hard to imagine Luke Skywalker and Han Solo with these droids, isn't it?" Brenden chuckled.
"Yeah, and from what I've heard, they've always been like this," Darrik grinned.
His grin turned into a sort of troubled smile as the ship was jostled again by another laser cannon hit to their rapidly diminishing rear deflector shields.
"So, what exactly are you going to try and do with the asteroids?" Brenden asked.
"I'm going to send the ship into a sideways spin right before we jump, like you said, using our one good engine to go into the spin. That way, the gravity from the two asteroids won't be able to take hold of the ship too much as it goes into the microjump, though we will probably come out spinning… Of course, that is if I can get the angle and speed of the spin correct before we jump."
"If?" Brenden replied doubtfully. "And if you don't, what happens?"
Darrik grinned a nervous smile, then asked, "So, how many more seconds until we jump?"
Brenden rolled his eyes and shook his head slightly, then looked to the control panel. "Um, … about fifteen and counting."
"Sir?!" Threepio blurted out as he reentered the room, apparently having relayed his command to Artoo already. "Sir, are you still attempting to try and-"
The ship lurched forward slightly as another barrage of laser cannons slammed into their starboard side. The Daybreaker wavered slightly as if it was about to plummet into a spin, but Darrik expertly leveled it out and continued on toward the rapidly approaching asteroids.
"We jump in ten," Brenden's voice echoed throughout the cabin, his hands griped tightly to his seat.
"But, sir!" Threepio's call was the panic of a droid that thought it was about to be incinerated. "Sir, the odds of successfully calculating both the correct angle to turn at and the precise speed at which you must be traveling to safely jump to hyperspace between two larger bodies of mass that have their own gravitational fields around them are approximately-"
"Never tell me the odds," Darrik quoted the famous Corellian smuggler Han Solo, a smile playing across his face at the irony of telling this to Threepio.
"Five seconds," Brenden voiced.
"Oh, my!"
"Four seconds,"
"Let's hope this works," Darrik muttered, his hands tight on the controls, his knuckles white.
"Three seconds,"
"Oh dear, I can't look!" shrilled Threepio, his metallic hands held up to his face in terror.
"Two seconds,"
"Okay, hold on!" Darrik announced as he began to swerve the Daybreaker to his left, taking off all power to the shields as he did so in order to transfer as much power as he could to the port engine. Com'n, Artoo! Give the port engine as much power as you can…
"One Second," Brenden murmured in a very nervous voice as the ship began spinning sideways.
In that brief instant, Darrik pushed forward a key on the controls in a short, quick stab. The stars became streaks for a split second before melding back into bright white dots as the Daybreaker hurtled out into the open space outside of the asteroid belt, spinning wildly.
All three of the occupants on the bridge crashed forward. Darrik's face collided with his elbow as he tried to cushion his blow against the control panels. Brenden came out better, as he had turned sideways right before the microjump and therefore was only slammed against the side of his chair as the Daybreaker came out of hyperspace. Threepio, on the other hand, went flying across the room because of his lack to hold on to anything and was, again, lodged into the pipes that lined the interior decking.
"Oh my!" cried Threepio from the tangle of pipes.
"And to think that you ever doubted me, Threepio," Darrik said nonchalantly as he raised his head from the control board, a grin spreading across his face yet again. He clumsily wiped away the blood from the cut on his head where he had hit the controls, and turned to Brenden who was stretching his arms out where they had bruised against the chair.
"So," Darrik began as he grasped the Daybreaker's controls and slowly stopped the ship's radical spinning, halting it before the distant asteroid field that they had just microjumped from. "What exactly happened to our pirate friends?"
"Um," Brenden frowned as he checked the ship's sensors, "it appears that they…"
A bright red and blue explosion erupted in front of their viewscreen, and the two men both jerked their heads up in unison to look at the distant asteroid field in front of them. The three asteroids had finally collided, and judging by the streaks of red and blue, they had also found their targets, which were now nothing more than fireworks in the distant expanse of space.
"They blew up," Brenden finished the sentence, his face indifferent.
