Introduction- Escape and Capture
Piett stood there, startled awe painted on his face, as he watched
the A-wing spiral toward the bridge. For a single, brief second he
locked eyes with the pilot of the Rebel fightercraft.
Then, without any concious effort, any thought at all, he was
moving. Running for the turbolift.
As he did so, he registered the scene around him, and though it
seemed vague while he was living through it, these few seconds
were forever etched on his memory afterwards, clearer than his
first kiss, more real than reality.
With a deafening, indescribable sound the A-Wing flew into the
bridge. Engines roaring, glass shattering, officers screaming: all
these were a part of it.
The fightercraft cut straight through a cluster of bridge officers as
they stood paralyzed by fear.
The debris scattering across the bridge reversed directions, and
sped toward the darkness of space.
Winds roared and pulled at Piett, but he fought them, overwhelmed
them, kept on running. He grabbed onto the opening turbolift
doors, held himself there against the overwhelming suction of
space.Then there was no air, no wind, and silence.
the A-wing smashed into the back of the bridge and bloomed into
an incandescent fireball as the turbolift doors shut with Piett inside,
the last sight of the Executor's bridge that he would ever have. A
magnificent ship, and a magnificent crew.
There was no air in the turbolift, and black spots danced before his
eyes. The descent, normally smooth, was rocked by explosions
throughout the ship.
Then the doors opened, and air rushed in. Piett threw himself from
the turbolift and toward the escape pod bay, gasping and sucking
in air.
An impact like a massive hammer sent him sprawling onto the
ground, and the ship shook and rumbled behind him.
he crawled toward the pods. The screaming rumble of thunder
behind him crescendoed.
the Executor was dying.
the pod door opened, and Piett pulled himself in.
It ejected amid gouts of flame from the dying ship, and Piett saw
with horror that he was not headed for deep space, but instead for
the surface of the Death Star, skimming perilously close to the
roiling explosions caused by the Executor's death throes.
he wrested the controls of the pod out of autopilot, sending him in
a corkscrewing spiral toward the moon of Endor, but watching the
battle he left behind.
And so, as he watched the once-proud Empire half-vanquished or
more by the scum of the galaxy, he vowed to renew all that had
been lost at Endor.
he would bring back the Empire.
And he would avenge its death.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Piett glanced around the forest.
It brought back memories, that was for sure. Not all pleasant ones.
Memories of the days he had spent as a commando. The forests
on Chiyfar 3 had looked a lot like this.
He brushed away the unpleasant flashbacks that threatened to
surface. Now was not the time.
Something rustled in the brush behind him, and he spun, drawing
his blaster as he did so. It had been years, but commando training
stuck with you. Just like the memories. There was a patch of
white visible among the foliage.
The white stirred, and a human voice moaned from inside the
bushes. It was a strained, painful sound, like the person moaning
couldn't draw breath easily.
Piett holstered the blaster, and confidently approached the
shrubbery.A stormtrooper lay sheltered in the bushes, helmet off, armor
charred and blackened all along the right side.
The trooper looked up at Piett, eyes glazed over with pain, shock,
and recognition.
"Admiral Piett, sir." the man managed to gasp. "Lt. Comd. Talaer
Shivon Andleton reporting for duty. Apologies for my current
condition, sir."
He fought to salute with his burned right arm, obviously in agony.
"At ease, Lieutenant."Piett said, amazed at the man's discipline.
Most stormtroopers, despite extensive training, were brainless,
hard-drinking, arrogant fools.
Obviously this trooper wasn't just your average footsoldier.
And then the ignominious happened.
The Ewoks attacked.
Piett redrew his blaster.
There were sixteen of the furry buggers.
Eight with spears, four with slings, and four with axes. A rabid
gleam was in their eyes as they attacked.
Piett fired, wiping out one of the sling-users.
The rest of the hairy devils chittered with fear and rage.
Systematically, Piett fired, five more times, wiping out a sling-user,
three spearsmen, and one of the axewielders.
Realizing that standing around with their collective thumb up their
butt was a pretty stupid thing to do, the Ewoks charged.
A couple sharp rocks hit Piett in the shins as the sling-users
released.
He fried both of the offending Ewoks with a pair of well-aimed
blaster shots. Another two shots wiped out the frontmost spearsmen.
And then Ewoks rained from the trees.
Piett hated to admit defeat to anyone, especially short, furry,
stupid aliens with sharp wooden sticks.
But the fact of the matter was, they were surrounding him and Lt.
Andleton, at least sixty of them, and they were trying to poke
spears into his gonads(the highest they could reach.) Obviously,
they wanted to take him alive.
Considering the option, he surrendered.
Of course, escaping from them when the time was right should be
a peice of ryshcate.
Chapter One
Humiliating. That was the word that came back to Piett again and
again as he surveyed his surroundings. Hanging from a
treebranch, in a net of roughly woven fibers, Piett had been stripped
of his equipment belt, his blaster, his rank insignia and cylinders,
and even his boots, for the Ewoks seemed suspicious of how shiny
they were.
The injured stormtrooper enjoyed marginally better treatment.
Stripped of armor and all equipment, he was caged on the ground,
a poultice of some herbal medicine on his injuries.
Still, Piett was certain an opportunity would come. He had not yet
reached the point in his captivity where he might begin to wonder if
his captors actually had the skill to keep him caged.
And so, since he could do nothing else, he observed the Ewoks,
tried to see patterns or habits in their movements, tried to tell the
smart from the stupid, the authorities from the flunkies. He
mentally cataloged the location of every object he saw, as it just
might prove useful.
Then he heard some of their chatter, and instantly became twice
as alert. Had he heard what he thought he heard?
Piett focused on the convering Ewok guards, listening intently for
the sylables he thought he had heard pronounced.
"Ochitakaesjhaeruilakovidrawoshkan." He was unable to discern
one word from the next, listening to the high-speed babbling.
"Kirowakawaejifaehansolomakashd."
There! There those three damning syllables were again.
Coincidence? Some native word or phrase?
"Vakikimbarwakashahansolod'regaronchuvoodatoe."
Again. It was entirely possible that the buggers simply had a like-
sounding, different-meaning word, but Piett was taking no chances.
"Segumbrawahansolokandivura."
"Han Solo."Piett said aloud, adressing the guards. They gave him
evil Ewok grins, and one responded.
"Vakikimbarhansolomakashad ."
Nothing was for certain. "hansolo" might mean "you will be
beheaded" or some such charming thing.
But Piett didn't think so. Rebels had to have reached the moon in
order to disable the shields. And he was nearly certain that some
of the scum still infested this blasted planetoid.
One thought ran through his head.
I have a bad feeling about this.
~~~~~~~~~
Nighttime on Endor was an unpleasant experience. Thousands of
luminous eyes stared out of the abysmal darkness, glowing orbs of
various colors that seemed unconnected to any physical form as
they floated in the solid starless black that came as a result of a
forest canopy hiding any glimpse of the sky.
It was into this nightmarish scenario that Piett meant to make his
escape. He was unable to disassemble the net, but he had
loosened the knots holding the ropes in place. Now he slid them
out of the way and nimbly slipped out in the widened gap.
Hanging twenty feet above the ground, he began to swing back and
forth, his momentum causing the net to move as well. Like the
weight on the end of a pendulum he swung from side to side, each
time getting closer to the trunk of the mammoth tree.
Then, he let go of the net, dropping at an angle until he slammed
against the tree, scraping and abrading his skin in a dozen places.
Gripping the rough bark with both hands, he began to descend,
climbing backwards.
The two Ewoks assigned to guard him overnight were in a rough
wigwam a few yards away, napping. One of them snored. The
sound of his escape had not awakened them.
Inside the wigwam lay all the equipment they had confiscated from
him. Equipment he intended to reclaim. Circling the rough, branch-
woven hut, he spotted at least three structural supports, two of
which had to remain in order for the wigwam not to collapse.
Working his hands under the edge, he lifted the side of the wigwam
he was on nearly a foot off the ground. Letting go with one hand,
he tugged at the support, working it back and forth as he tried to
pull it out of the weave. It slid out after only a minute of effort.
Shoddy work.
The next support was harder. After managing to get it halfway out,
it got caught up on a tangle of the interwoven branches.
Piett yanked on it, and the wigwam promptly fell in on itself,
concussing the Ewoks. Sorting through the ruins of the hut, he
pulled out seven things: both equipment belts, both blaster pistols,
the trooper's blaster rifle, his own rank insignia, and his boots.
Having a pretentious pile of brush collapse on top of them had
scuffed the black demileather. Pity.
The rest of the escape was less subtle. After blasting through the
bars of Andleton's cage, he handed the man a blaster pistol (he
couldn't really fire a rifle without using his injured arm), fastened
both equipment belts around his own waist, put his rank insignia
into his pockets, and set out into the depthless deep forest night,
Andleton covering both their backs.
Whatever 'hansolo' meant, whether it was phonetic coincidence or
precisely what it seemed, Piett wasn't sticking around to find out.
~~~~~~~~~~
The Endor night closed in around them, a threatening curtain of
darkness attempting to smother their hope. Now and then, a large,
sinuous shape would detatch itself from the shadows and slink off
the 'path' they were taking. The 'path' was actually more of a vague
direction, one which they hoped they were keeping to. Winding
around foliage in the inky, tangible darkness, it would have been
quite possible to get fully turned around and never realize it.
However, that was one problem they didn't encounter. Perhaps
whatever capricious gods of fate ruling over MIAs decided that
briars, quickmud, grasper vines, rockrat burrows to trip them up,
and the occasional tree snake were enough, at least for the near
future.
Of course, once they showed that they could handle these minor
hassles, those same deities would indubitably send more at them.
A lot more.
Chapter Two
The sun rose over the forest moon of Endor to look down upon an
acutely frustrated Piett. He and Andleton weren't doing too well.
The part of the forest they were trying to travel through was
infested by so many thornbushes of so many species that Piett had
begun to wonder if some lifeform on this force-forsaken moon
hadn't taken to farming, and now he and Andleton were marching
through the unknown farmer's crop fields.
And inadvertently doing a lot of harvesting. A two hours' march
later, they finally reached the end of the thornbushes. The trees
ahead were sparser, but the foliage nearer the ground was thicker
and nettlesome-looking. The ground was wetter. Pools of murky
water and stretches of mud dotted the landscape.
But there were no thornbushes whatsoever.
They went forward eagerly.
In their elation, the joy of escaping the thornbushes, the confusion
of the ordeal of the last few days, both of them forgot to be
cautious. This was a strange forest, and one full of dangers.
A fact Piett realized when he found himself wading _in_ the ground
and not walking _on_ it.
Mud. Deep, thick mud. He stopped walking forward, prepared to
turn around and get out of this mudhole.
At which point he realized he was sinking deeper. Not just mud,
then. Quickmud.
He turned as well as he could to face Andleton.
The stormtrooper was nearly up to his waist in another patch of the
stuff.
Well. This was bad. He'd faced worse situations, like the Karmiklic
back on Ladures Prime, or the ambush on the marshes of Haelagoh.
Of course, he'd had Javis, Cirtaine, and Ziulic to help deal with the
Karmiklic, and there had been twelve full teams with him on the
marshes. Even if the ambush had been horrific enough to convince
him to transfer to the Navy.
Always before, when he had encountered danger, he had had
subordinates to do the dirty work, comrades to aid him in what he
had to do, or a superior officer clearly defining his objective. For
the first time, he faced death with only a wounded stormtrooper
who might be able to help, a stormtrooper concerned with saving
his own life at the moment.
Piett unslung the blast rifle from his shoulder, searching for
someone or something to attach the blame to, and shoot.
All he saw were the trees surrounding him, thickly hung with
grey-green vines.
Say.....
A burst of blasterfire severed one of the vines on one end, and the
broken end hung down.
Just out of reach. Piett fired again, scything the red bolts back and
forth. A curtain of broken vines swung down all around, the ends
flaming. Piett grabbed hold of the nearest, and saw Andleton catch
hold of another. It took ten minutes to pull himself free of the
clinging mud, and the burning vines had scorched his uniform in
half a dozen places.
Here, he was faced with two options: go on, and risk death at the
hands of quickmud, or go back into the endless sprawl of forest
floor packed with briars.
Really, there was no choice at all. He tried to tell himself it was a
rational decision- re-entering the thornbushes meant heading back
in the direction of the Ewoks. But really, it was just that he couldn't
bear the ordeal of a million stabbing, scratching thorns another
time.
And so, once Andleton was freed, they carefully went deeper into
the swamp.
Chapter Three
The forest stretched onward, as far as Piett could see, and for one less than sane moment, he almost believed that it would have no end. Of course, he'd believed that of the bog-ridden swamp a few hours ago, before it agve way to more hospitable woodlands.
The sky above was overcast with greyblue thunderheads, a rising storm that would, in all likelihood, break overhead far too soon for comfort.
Seventeen hundred hours. Two days since the Executor had plunged into the side of the Death Star like a rusty dagger into a duranium shield, shattering in a rush of flame. Two days since the Death Star had blazed in the sky like a second sun going supernova. Two days since the Empire Piett had known and loved had been destroyed.
Who would take over now? The Grand Admirals would attempt to hold their own territories, jealously guarding against any authority, or so he thought. They had been loyal to the ideals of the Empire, but most had also been fierce rivals, acknowledging only Palpatine as superior to them. Any alliance between them would become a struggle for power and leadership, a civil war with both sides claiming to be in charge of the one true Empire. Intelligence would probably strike out on its own under Isard's ruthless control. Piett had never trusted that woman.
If he ever escaped this Force-cursed world, he would take it upon himself to ensure the survival of a fleet that would hold true to the ideals of justice and order that the Empire stood for.
Now, he just wanted to be free of this blasted swamp.
With Andleton's arm in its present condition, Piett had decided that they had traveled far enough for the day. Now, the man was setting up a makeshift camp a mile or so back, while Piett scouted out the terrain, and hunted for dinner. He and Andleton each had a comlink, so they could keep one another appraised of any problem that reared its ugly head, or so that Piett could get back to the campsite if he became disoriented.
So far, the swamp seemed devoid of animal life large enough for a decent meal. The only creatures he'd seen were small enough that one bolt from a blaster rifle would char them far beyond ' well done.'
But he knew their had to be more. Somewhere in this forest, there had to be some kind of animal, a predator maybe, that was
good-sized, big enough to provide a meal or three.
A shadow passed overhead, and he heard the rustling of leaves.
Of course! In a world of forests, arboreal creatures would thrive. They'd rise up the food chain.
Swiftly, he glanced up, shifting his rifle's aim as well.
Nothing. But whatever it was, it had been big. It had been quick. And the streamlined sillohuette he saw hadn't belonged to any herbivore.
"Lunch," he said, quietly, sounding very satisfied. The creature's presence would explain why there didn't seem to be much else in the surrounding area. A predator that size would certainly strike fear into any smaller animals around, inspiring them to hide.
Piett felt a tingling on the back of his neck, and it suddenly occured to him that maybe, just maybe, there was a logic to the behavior of the animals lower on the food chain. He coupled this thought with another realization- maybe he wasn't the only hunter here. And maybe he was the prey.
No time to turn and face it, to make a stand. Piett threw himself forward, diving under the rapier-like claw that stabbed through the airspace he'd vacated. Painfully, he landed on the unforgiving forest ground, and rolled off his stomach into a crouch.
What he saw was unlike anything he'd expected.
The beast was something like a spider-centaur, covered in slick black fur. On the lower half, the more spidery half, were six legs, each of which divided in three at the knee. Beyond that point, they were covered in small, grasping, spiny protrusions that waved as if they had a life of their own.
Above each leg was a cluster of three thick, muscled tentacles.
Where a tail might be were a trio of whiplike, slender tentacles, longer than the rest, barbed with curved hooks.
On the upper half were three pairs of arms. The highest pair were each tipped in a straight, swordlike claw, one of which had nearly impaled him only minutes before.
The next terminated in chitin-covered, taloned hands, each with six fingers, and three opposable thumbs.
The last two were six-parted pincers, opening and closing with a rather disturbing amount of force.
Piett's gaze drifted upward.
This creature definitely had a thing for multiples of three.
Three heads. Each with long, powerful necks, three eyes centered over three nostrils on the wedge-shaped head. Three curving antlers arced above those.
Each head sported a wide beak, opened to reveal triple serrated rows of teeth, and a tri-forked tongue.
Gigantic surprise.
He stepped back, bringing his blaster to bear... then tripped, his foot stuck in the burrow of some small, probably rodentlike creature.
The shot went wild as he fell backward, scorching one of the nearby trees, and starting the leaves ablaze.
Peachy. Just peachy. He should have stayed in the damn Ewok net to wait and see if 'hansolo' was a rebel general or a bizzare variety of Ewok torture involing pimitive wooden anal probes.
Hey, at least his life expectancy would probably be a little better.
The creature began to charge...
(To be continued)