Title: Shadowhawk
Author: Brin Londo5
Email: ogreblood@hotmail.com
Rating: PG-13, due to violence and language
Summary: After the Battle of Yavin, a group of smugglers make an interesting discovery Authors Note: This story is based on my old gaming group's Star Wars RPG exploits, so information from the old West End Games version of the SW RPG will be in here, as well as side references to the old Traveller RPG from Game Designers Workshop, as well as a few new pieces from the Prequel Trilogy and Rebellion Era sourcebooks from TSR's new D20 Star Wars RPG, especially the Dark Side sourcebook and Rebellion Era and Living Force supplements, and material from the Star Wars Gamer magazine and Star Wars journal.
This story is dedicated to Marty Wiseman, my pal Steve Lowe, who urged me to start writing again about our old gaming sessions, and to SithVixen, who's Website was the direct inspiration for one character in the story. Salutations and thanks to Kristen, Vaderpainter, and all the rest of the Georgia 501st Stormtrooper Garrison.
Disclaimer: I own nothing here except for those persons, places and things not already owned by George Lucas, Lucasfilm Ltd., TSR, whoever owns Traveller at the moment, or West End Games. Marty Wiseman owns Tyler Dare and the ShadowHawk. Jeffrey Parks owns ParkSabers, LTD., and the Fury, Echelon, and Malestrom/M2 Saber prop designs. No money is being made off of this piece of Fan Fiction.
Prologue:
The tall female strode arrogantly into the medical bay of the Dreadnaught- class ship, the Sideous, to glare at the male figure that sat consulting with a 2-1B class medical droid.
"Why is.he.not in an energy cage?" The woman seethed.
"Because you injured him somewhat severely in his capture, Vixen."
The short-haired blond woman snarled and snapped out a .65-meter cylinder, and twin blades of crimson energy erupted from the ends.
"You would do well to remember your place, acolyte. My tile is Darth Vixen, not Vixen. As a Sith Warrior to a mere acolyte, I outrank you!"
"Yes, but however, both Emperor Palpatine and Lord Darth Vader wanted him healed before he is to be brought to High Inquisitor Tremayne, on Byss." The man said with a faint smile, idly rolling a 30 cm long cylinder back and forth on the table top.
"You've been in communication with Vader?!? Why wasn't I informed?"
"You were, just now." He used one finger to spin the cylinder in a lazy circle, giving her that almost mocking faint smile. "He may not be worthy of being taught the Sith secrets, as he will not turn willingly to the Dark side, but he will make a powerful Dark Jedi."
"At least put his lightsaber* away, if he wakens in that tank, he could summon it to him!" She growled out, shutting off the double-saber with a quiet snap-hiss.
"You hurt him quite severely, Darth Vixen, he had to be placed in the Bacta tank despite placing himself into a Jedi healing trance. But do not worry, anesthetics are being administered while he is in there to prevent such a thing from happening."
"Do it anyway. Take no chances, even if he is still a Padawan, he fought like a full-fledged Jedi Knight. If I hadn't already killed his master, I might have ended up like Darth Maul did." She gave a brief glimpse down at the saber she wielded, a near-duplicate of Darth Mauls own double-bladed Sith lightsaber, which in turn was a longer version of Darth Bane's ancient double-bladed saber. "I daresay, he would have been ready for the trials, if he and his master weren't already running from the Purge." With that, she turned and left the medical bay.
The Sith acolyte, Pedrec Vhu chuckled and lifted the lightsaber from the tabletop. He considered it's gleaming finish and the glow of the gravatic induction coils seen through a small section of transparisteel in the upper portion of the cylinder, near the emitter, and chuckled again. With a wet plop, the saber sank down the length of the Bacta tank tube, to settle in the bottom. The transparisteel window seal was cracked, so even if the Jedi within the tank could summon enough sense to summon the saber to his hand, the device wouldn't activate, the bacta would short it out temporarily.
Pedrec knew he and Darth Vixen had to increase their efforts in hunting down the Jedi stragglers. only a few dozen were left unaccounted for, out of over a thousand at the start of the Clone War. "Lord' Jerec and his apprentice, Boc were assembling a team to hunt down Jedi Master Qu Rahn, who bore information Palpatine desperately wanted, information that may just lead to ending Palpatine's rumored reliance on clone bodies. If the rumors were true about that, Pedrec never wanted to reach Palpatine's level of mastery over the Dark Side; having the wild energies eat away at one's body so that you aged a decade per year was too great a cost, even if one can transfer ones essence to a new cloned body.
Del Korrot and Aura Sing both were following leads on the whereabouts of Vima Da-Boda, and another group of bounty hunters and Dark Jedi were trailing Quinlan Vos. Jorus C'boath's clone was assigned to guard the Mount Tantis storage facility, and contact with Gettrem Zho had been lost after he had reportedly found the hiding place of former Jedi Council member, Master Yoda. Vader himself was hunting down the Dark Lady, while Vohn Keldath claimed to have heard rumors on the hiding place of Obi-Wan Kenobi.
Leaving the Medlab behind, Pedrec strode down the corridors to return to his personal quarters. Stormtroopers saluted as he walked past. Pedrec suppressed another chuckle; while recruitment into the Stormtrooper legions was rising, a good 79% were still cloned from the template of the deceased Jango Fett. And a good percentage would always be, the genetic alterations of the clones ensured loyalty to the New Order, and blind obedience to following orders.
Hours later, Darth Vixen was startled out of her meditation by being slammed forcibly against the inner wall of her meditation pod. Opening the chamber, she staggered over to the comm. Unit on the wall, as she struggled to maintain her footing and dress at the same time; while cursing at the blaring of emergency sirens and the dull red glow of hazard lighting.
"Bridge, what in the deep core is going on up there???" Silence, and static- filled hissing. "Bridge, answer! Captain Chen, reply immediately!" More static-filled silence. "Engineering, what's going on in this ship?"
"Lady Vixen, something yanked us out of Hyperspace, some kind of derelect gravatic mine or something, left over from the war! We re-entered realspace in the middle of a shower of asteroids and meteoroids, traveling at near- relativistic speeds! Shields are gone, and the bridge is destroyed! We have multiple hull breaches, and our Drive core is spiraling dangerously out of control!"
"Where are we, engineer?"
"A few light-days from the Torgan system, it's a binary star system, but one of them is a black hole; milady, even if the ship's power core doesn't blow, in less than one standard week, it'll be pulled in by the singularity's gravity well and destroyed!"
"Is there a clear path to and from the medlab, at present?"
"Checking internal sensors; no milady, the lab itself is intact for now, but both access corridors are open to space."
Vixen cursed to herself. She wanted to turn the prisoner over to Inquisitor Tremayne, by herself. But, even though that opportunity was now lost, the Jedi's inevitable death in the singularity's event horizon was an acceptable alternative. "Is the hangar bay still intact?"
"Yes, milady, at the moment."
"Then begin the evacuation alert, and alert ISB command that the crew's escape-pods will need rescue before you all get sucked in." She turned the comm.-unit off before the officer had a chance to acknowledge.
Quickly, she raced to her gear locker, and began calmly but rapidly selecting items. She put on an emergency skin-suit, identical to the ones worn by Stormtroopers, and grabbed an emergency breathmask. It held a two- hour air supply, more than enough to reach the hangar bay. She grabbed her double lightsaber, and almost as an afterthought, she grabbed another lightsaber.the lightsaber she had taken from the padawan's master.
The lightsaber** was indeed a work of art. The outer casing was a strange silvery alloy with golden tints to it, beautifully designed with cutouts that gave it a sweeping, oceanic look, with diagonally angled strips connecting the lower, middle, and upper sections. The grip was black, ribbed lengthways, and placed at the bottom half of the saber. The top half, visible underneath the outer casing, was of a brilliant blue alloy, and the emitter assembly was decorated with the gripper-claws of some kind of droid, possibly a combat or maintenance model of some kind, judging by the fact that the saber blade would appear through a small port located directly between the three opposable claws.
Not that the Sith Warrior spent any such time gazing at the lightsaber during this emergency, she just clipped it to her belt as she suited up, her black Sith robes over the skin-suit. Stumbling as the dreadnaught lurched from repeated meteor impacts, she sealed her gloves and boots, attached the breathmask, and then stepped into the corridor. Troopers and naval personnel scurried like vermin-beetles with the lights suddenly turned on, and Vixen had to shove a few out of her way as she headed to the hangar bay.
Pedrec Vhu had similar ideas, but unfortunately for him, a meteoroid punched through the hull in the corridor he had chosen as his escape route to the hangar bay. His scream echoed inside his breathmask as the void sucked him into space.
Twice, Darth Vixen had to adjust her escape route, and at one point had to space-walk through a ruptured corridor adjacent to the outer hull. Occasional jolts ran through the ship when a meteoroid with enough mass or velocity managed to penetrate the hull of the dreadnaught, which had lost much of its own speed from the friction of the meteor storm. From time to time the ship shuddered as escape pods were fired, although if the imperial rescue ships failed to arrive, the escape pods would suffer the same fate destined for the ship itself. Finally, she reached the hangar bay, watching for a brief moment as panicked crewmen and pilots hoisted themselves into imperial Tie-fighters, seeking a short-sighted escape from the doomed vessel. Fools, she thought; Tie's lacked hyperdrives, so they couldn't escape the system even if they had enough of a charge in the fuel cells, and no shields. Most of them wouldn't survive more than a few minutes out in the meteor shower. Two other vessels shared the hangar bay with the Tie's, a Seinar Fleet Systems Lone Scout-A scout ship, similar to the smaller Tie's, with bent-wing ion-panels and a bubble cockpit in front of the vessels mass, and a Villani Star-Drive's S/TL-15 Scout/Courier, of the Type J Seeker model, an older ship, designed with the triangular shape popular in the decade right before the Clone War, like the Jedi Delta-7 Starfighter and the Victory-class Star Destroyers. She ran to the Seeker, keyed open the airlocks entry-pad, and ran to the small one-man bridge. Quickly running through the warm-up and activation phases, Vixen piloted the ship out of the bay, thrusting out into the cold void of space. Using the body of the dreadnaught as a shield, she sped off through the larger vessels shadow, striving to exit the binary star's gravity well sufficiently to jump to hyperspace.
(Next: Chapter one)
Authors Notes 2: The asterix (*) used in the Prologue concerning Dirk's lightsaber, and the (admittedly poor) description thereof is based off of the Parksabers Echelon saber prop. The double asterix (**) and description of his master Dogo's lightsaber are based off of the Parksabers Malestrom M2 saber prop. No copyright infringement is intended in their use in this work of fan-fiction, and all rights concerning these Ignited Parksabers products belong to Jeffrey Parks, of Parksabers, Inc.
Author: Brin Londo5
Email: ogreblood@hotmail.com
Rating: PG-13, due to violence and language
Summary: After the Battle of Yavin, a group of smugglers make an interesting discovery Authors Note: This story is based on my old gaming group's Star Wars RPG exploits, so information from the old West End Games version of the SW RPG will be in here, as well as side references to the old Traveller RPG from Game Designers Workshop, as well as a few new pieces from the Prequel Trilogy and Rebellion Era sourcebooks from TSR's new D20 Star Wars RPG, especially the Dark Side sourcebook and Rebellion Era and Living Force supplements, and material from the Star Wars Gamer magazine and Star Wars journal.
This story is dedicated to Marty Wiseman, my pal Steve Lowe, who urged me to start writing again about our old gaming sessions, and to SithVixen, who's Website was the direct inspiration for one character in the story. Salutations and thanks to Kristen, Vaderpainter, and all the rest of the Georgia 501st Stormtrooper Garrison.
Disclaimer: I own nothing here except for those persons, places and things not already owned by George Lucas, Lucasfilm Ltd., TSR, whoever owns Traveller at the moment, or West End Games. Marty Wiseman owns Tyler Dare and the ShadowHawk. Jeffrey Parks owns ParkSabers, LTD., and the Fury, Echelon, and Malestrom/M2 Saber prop designs. No money is being made off of this piece of Fan Fiction.
Prologue:
The tall female strode arrogantly into the medical bay of the Dreadnaught- class ship, the Sideous, to glare at the male figure that sat consulting with a 2-1B class medical droid.
"Why is.he.not in an energy cage?" The woman seethed.
"Because you injured him somewhat severely in his capture, Vixen."
The short-haired blond woman snarled and snapped out a .65-meter cylinder, and twin blades of crimson energy erupted from the ends.
"You would do well to remember your place, acolyte. My tile is Darth Vixen, not Vixen. As a Sith Warrior to a mere acolyte, I outrank you!"
"Yes, but however, both Emperor Palpatine and Lord Darth Vader wanted him healed before he is to be brought to High Inquisitor Tremayne, on Byss." The man said with a faint smile, idly rolling a 30 cm long cylinder back and forth on the table top.
"You've been in communication with Vader?!? Why wasn't I informed?"
"You were, just now." He used one finger to spin the cylinder in a lazy circle, giving her that almost mocking faint smile. "He may not be worthy of being taught the Sith secrets, as he will not turn willingly to the Dark side, but he will make a powerful Dark Jedi."
"At least put his lightsaber* away, if he wakens in that tank, he could summon it to him!" She growled out, shutting off the double-saber with a quiet snap-hiss.
"You hurt him quite severely, Darth Vixen, he had to be placed in the Bacta tank despite placing himself into a Jedi healing trance. But do not worry, anesthetics are being administered while he is in there to prevent such a thing from happening."
"Do it anyway. Take no chances, even if he is still a Padawan, he fought like a full-fledged Jedi Knight. If I hadn't already killed his master, I might have ended up like Darth Maul did." She gave a brief glimpse down at the saber she wielded, a near-duplicate of Darth Mauls own double-bladed Sith lightsaber, which in turn was a longer version of Darth Bane's ancient double-bladed saber. "I daresay, he would have been ready for the trials, if he and his master weren't already running from the Purge." With that, she turned and left the medical bay.
The Sith acolyte, Pedrec Vhu chuckled and lifted the lightsaber from the tabletop. He considered it's gleaming finish and the glow of the gravatic induction coils seen through a small section of transparisteel in the upper portion of the cylinder, near the emitter, and chuckled again. With a wet plop, the saber sank down the length of the Bacta tank tube, to settle in the bottom. The transparisteel window seal was cracked, so even if the Jedi within the tank could summon enough sense to summon the saber to his hand, the device wouldn't activate, the bacta would short it out temporarily.
Pedrec knew he and Darth Vixen had to increase their efforts in hunting down the Jedi stragglers. only a few dozen were left unaccounted for, out of over a thousand at the start of the Clone War. "Lord' Jerec and his apprentice, Boc were assembling a team to hunt down Jedi Master Qu Rahn, who bore information Palpatine desperately wanted, information that may just lead to ending Palpatine's rumored reliance on clone bodies. If the rumors were true about that, Pedrec never wanted to reach Palpatine's level of mastery over the Dark Side; having the wild energies eat away at one's body so that you aged a decade per year was too great a cost, even if one can transfer ones essence to a new cloned body.
Del Korrot and Aura Sing both were following leads on the whereabouts of Vima Da-Boda, and another group of bounty hunters and Dark Jedi were trailing Quinlan Vos. Jorus C'boath's clone was assigned to guard the Mount Tantis storage facility, and contact with Gettrem Zho had been lost after he had reportedly found the hiding place of former Jedi Council member, Master Yoda. Vader himself was hunting down the Dark Lady, while Vohn Keldath claimed to have heard rumors on the hiding place of Obi-Wan Kenobi.
Leaving the Medlab behind, Pedrec strode down the corridors to return to his personal quarters. Stormtroopers saluted as he walked past. Pedrec suppressed another chuckle; while recruitment into the Stormtrooper legions was rising, a good 79% were still cloned from the template of the deceased Jango Fett. And a good percentage would always be, the genetic alterations of the clones ensured loyalty to the New Order, and blind obedience to following orders.
Hours later, Darth Vixen was startled out of her meditation by being slammed forcibly against the inner wall of her meditation pod. Opening the chamber, she staggered over to the comm. Unit on the wall, as she struggled to maintain her footing and dress at the same time; while cursing at the blaring of emergency sirens and the dull red glow of hazard lighting.
"Bridge, what in the deep core is going on up there???" Silence, and static- filled hissing. "Bridge, answer! Captain Chen, reply immediately!" More static-filled silence. "Engineering, what's going on in this ship?"
"Lady Vixen, something yanked us out of Hyperspace, some kind of derelect gravatic mine or something, left over from the war! We re-entered realspace in the middle of a shower of asteroids and meteoroids, traveling at near- relativistic speeds! Shields are gone, and the bridge is destroyed! We have multiple hull breaches, and our Drive core is spiraling dangerously out of control!"
"Where are we, engineer?"
"A few light-days from the Torgan system, it's a binary star system, but one of them is a black hole; milady, even if the ship's power core doesn't blow, in less than one standard week, it'll be pulled in by the singularity's gravity well and destroyed!"
"Is there a clear path to and from the medlab, at present?"
"Checking internal sensors; no milady, the lab itself is intact for now, but both access corridors are open to space."
Vixen cursed to herself. She wanted to turn the prisoner over to Inquisitor Tremayne, by herself. But, even though that opportunity was now lost, the Jedi's inevitable death in the singularity's event horizon was an acceptable alternative. "Is the hangar bay still intact?"
"Yes, milady, at the moment."
"Then begin the evacuation alert, and alert ISB command that the crew's escape-pods will need rescue before you all get sucked in." She turned the comm.-unit off before the officer had a chance to acknowledge.
Quickly, she raced to her gear locker, and began calmly but rapidly selecting items. She put on an emergency skin-suit, identical to the ones worn by Stormtroopers, and grabbed an emergency breathmask. It held a two- hour air supply, more than enough to reach the hangar bay. She grabbed her double lightsaber, and almost as an afterthought, she grabbed another lightsaber.the lightsaber she had taken from the padawan's master.
The lightsaber** was indeed a work of art. The outer casing was a strange silvery alloy with golden tints to it, beautifully designed with cutouts that gave it a sweeping, oceanic look, with diagonally angled strips connecting the lower, middle, and upper sections. The grip was black, ribbed lengthways, and placed at the bottom half of the saber. The top half, visible underneath the outer casing, was of a brilliant blue alloy, and the emitter assembly was decorated with the gripper-claws of some kind of droid, possibly a combat or maintenance model of some kind, judging by the fact that the saber blade would appear through a small port located directly between the three opposable claws.
Not that the Sith Warrior spent any such time gazing at the lightsaber during this emergency, she just clipped it to her belt as she suited up, her black Sith robes over the skin-suit. Stumbling as the dreadnaught lurched from repeated meteor impacts, she sealed her gloves and boots, attached the breathmask, and then stepped into the corridor. Troopers and naval personnel scurried like vermin-beetles with the lights suddenly turned on, and Vixen had to shove a few out of her way as she headed to the hangar bay.
Pedrec Vhu had similar ideas, but unfortunately for him, a meteoroid punched through the hull in the corridor he had chosen as his escape route to the hangar bay. His scream echoed inside his breathmask as the void sucked him into space.
Twice, Darth Vixen had to adjust her escape route, and at one point had to space-walk through a ruptured corridor adjacent to the outer hull. Occasional jolts ran through the ship when a meteoroid with enough mass or velocity managed to penetrate the hull of the dreadnaught, which had lost much of its own speed from the friction of the meteor storm. From time to time the ship shuddered as escape pods were fired, although if the imperial rescue ships failed to arrive, the escape pods would suffer the same fate destined for the ship itself. Finally, she reached the hangar bay, watching for a brief moment as panicked crewmen and pilots hoisted themselves into imperial Tie-fighters, seeking a short-sighted escape from the doomed vessel. Fools, she thought; Tie's lacked hyperdrives, so they couldn't escape the system even if they had enough of a charge in the fuel cells, and no shields. Most of them wouldn't survive more than a few minutes out in the meteor shower. Two other vessels shared the hangar bay with the Tie's, a Seinar Fleet Systems Lone Scout-A scout ship, similar to the smaller Tie's, with bent-wing ion-panels and a bubble cockpit in front of the vessels mass, and a Villani Star-Drive's S/TL-15 Scout/Courier, of the Type J Seeker model, an older ship, designed with the triangular shape popular in the decade right before the Clone War, like the Jedi Delta-7 Starfighter and the Victory-class Star Destroyers. She ran to the Seeker, keyed open the airlocks entry-pad, and ran to the small one-man bridge. Quickly running through the warm-up and activation phases, Vixen piloted the ship out of the bay, thrusting out into the cold void of space. Using the body of the dreadnaught as a shield, she sped off through the larger vessels shadow, striving to exit the binary star's gravity well sufficiently to jump to hyperspace.
(Next: Chapter one)
Authors Notes 2: The asterix (*) used in the Prologue concerning Dirk's lightsaber, and the (admittedly poor) description thereof is based off of the Parksabers Echelon saber prop. The double asterix (**) and description of his master Dogo's lightsaber are based off of the Parksabers Malestrom M2 saber prop. No copyright infringement is intended in their use in this work of fan-fiction, and all rights concerning these Ignited Parksabers products belong to Jeffrey Parks, of Parksabers, Inc.
