Dramatis Personae
Allana Solo; Jedi Knight (female human)
Ben Skywalker; Jedi Knight (male human)
Darth Blight; Sith Lord (male Barabel)
Darth Krayt; Sith Lord (male human)
Darth Plagueis; Sith Lord (male dark side manifestation)
Dif Scaur; Galactic Alliance Chief of State and Director of Intelligence (male human)
Han Solo; Captain, Millennium Falcon (male human)
Hiroyuki Niathal; Galactic Alliance General (male Mon Calamari)
Leia Organa Solo; Jedi Knight (female human)
Luke Skywalker; Jedi Grand Master (male human)
Nek Bwua'tu; Galactic Alliance Admiral (male Bothan)
Seff Hellin; Jedi Knight (male human)
Tahiri Veila; Jedi Knight (female human)
Thrace Solusar; Jedi Knight (male Chiss)
Vestara Khai; Sith Lord (female human)
Yantahar Bwua'tu; Jedi Knight (male Bothan)
56 ABY: Location Unknown
The gravitational disturbances detected by the advanced sensor systems were the only evidence that their ship was inside a cloud of dark matter.
"You'd expect dark matter to be dark wouldn't you?"
"They only call it that because they don't know what to call it."
"How 'bout 'Mystery Matter'?" suggested the first.
"Oy, we've got something," interrupted a third. "But it's not dark matter. It's something solid."
"I think we just found the location of Senator Harken's tax records!" exclaimed the first.
"Shut… Whoa. We just got a massive energy spike."
Unrecognizable, clearly malicious code began blurring by on one of the terminals. "We're being sliced!"
A number of stars seemed to suddenly vanish. Something had moved to blot out their light. A beam of silvery light slammed into the ship's deflector shield. After another hit the ship detonated.
Kuat Cyber Defense
The firewall had been breached. Armedius Krey'tnarov's fingers flew over the keyboard as he sought to repair his assigned section of the firewall. No sooner had he fixed it than two new breaches appeared.
The Bothan slicer typed in a command to view the offending code. Unrecognizable symbols flashed by so fast he could scarcely recognize that he could not recognize them. The slicer droids couldn't even keep up, let alone his fingers. The poor droids couldn't even decipher the Void-derived thing.
Armedius reflected, as the whole system began to crash, that it was fortunate that the mysterious code had been recorded. So at least people could try to decipher it, and at a reasonable speed.
Chiss Ascendency
"Commander Sgovt, you need to see this."
Kres'gov'tin walked over to the officer's station. He pointed at the visual display. "There's something blotting out the stars. But it is not appearing on our sensors."
"Stealth technology," Commander Sgovt said with a frown. A shiver went down her spine as she looked at the ship. It appeared to be slightly smaller than the standard Star Destroyer. And she spotted another such ship. "Go to high alert," she instructed her fleet, via her comlink. "We have an unknown number of potentially hostile, stealth equipped capital vessels."
The Dagger of Csilla shuddered as its deflector shield was hit by a silvery beam of energy. Commander Sgovt kept her eyes on the visual display. The light from the explosion partially outlined one of the enemy vessels. The hull was a matte black in color, and was very sleek.
"Shields down to eighty nine percent," called one of the officers.
The commander activated her comlink again. "Stealth ships are hostile."
Two of these enemy vessels were illuminated, and revealed to be seed shaped, as the Dagger of Csilla returned fire.
The Dagger of Csilla's bridge shook as the Chiss Star Destroyer took on more fire. A brief alarm tone sounded to indicate that the vessel had sustained serious damage. "Shields down to fifty three percent," reported the same officer who'd reported the earlier drop in shield strength. "I do not believe we are going to survive this.
The Dagger of Csilla leapt forward, slamming into one of its attackers. The two vessels joined in an enormous fireball.
Errant Venture
Things had been awfully quite of late. Too quite, as far as Luke Skywalker was concerned. Like the water level dropping drastically before a monsoon.
The fleet Moff Gatterweld had brought to the Hapes Consortium had quickly ended the conflict with the Hapan Freedom Federation. But, Luke was slightly alarmed at how expediently this had been accomplished. He and some of the other Jedi had voiced concerns that Darth Plagueis was involved. And if that was the case, then the end of the Hapan civil war was actually a bad thing.
And the recent actions of the Galactic Alliance's new Chief of State were no comfort, either. Only months ago, Dif Scaur had approved trials for an experimental drug called Midichlore. The substance caused increased production of midichlorians which, in large enough numbers, allowed one to tap into the Force. It would only be given to military personnel. Scaur felt that in such an environment the use of the Force could be 'properly governed'.
Luke was deeply concerned over the repercussions of this. Dif Scaur would be giving the Force to people who weren't meant to have it. How would these people handle suddenly being able to use the Force? And what if they could only use the dark side? The Chief of State could wind up creating an army of Sith.
And despite continual denial, Luke knew that the Chief of State and Director of Intelligence was running surveillance on the Jedi. Monitoring their communications and their whereabouts, to the best of his ability. And this, of course, this would only make it harder for the Jedi to defend the Galactic Alliance when things got ugly again.
Luke brought his attention back to the sparring match. Very little was happening. Thrace made another attempt at a feint, only for it to be anticipated by Allana, again. Allana shifted position slightly, and Thrace adjusted his position accordingly.
Luke felt a touch of annoyance from Allana. The two Jedi Knights continued to anticipate each other's actions, so it was highly unlikely that the battle would be going anywhere. Luke shook his head in amusement. Through the Force the Jedi Master could tell that his son Ben and sister Leia found the spectacle just as amusing.
"I must be missing something, here," commented Han. "If this is supposed to be funny, then I really don't understand Jedi humor."
"Because of the strength of their Force bond, it's almost as if they share one mind," Leia explained.
"It would be like trying to play dejarik against yourself," Ben said. "You know exactly what your opponent is planning."
"So are they trying to… shield their minds from each other?" Han asked.
"Exactly," Luke said.
Thrace suddenly deactivated his lightsaber as he swung it toward Allana's neck. The Chiss Jedi shook his head when he saw that she had her lightsaber's emitter nozzle pointed toward his heart.
"They gave up trying to block their thoughts from each other and just went for it," Ben said.
"So if this had been a real fight, they would have just killed each other," Han said.
Luke nodded absently. The other four Jedi seemed concerned as well. His comlink suddenly beeped and he put it up to his ear. "Ops room, now," the Jedi Master said as he replaced his comlink. "All of us."
A life-sized holographic likeness of Admiral Nek Bwua'tu sat at the head of the table. To his right sat a grim faced Corran Horn and his wife Mirrax, captain of the Errant Venture. Han and the Jedi took seats to their right.
To Admiral Bwua'tu's left were holograms of Chief of State and Director of Intelligence Dif Scaur and Imperial Head of State Zedekiah Gatterweld.
"Commander Kres'gov'tin was killed in the attack," the admiral was saying. "According to the transmission, the attacking fleet was using stealth tech."
"These were capital ships," Chief of State Scaur clarified. He suddenly turned to someone out of view. Scaur muttered something and turned back to the others. "Duro was just attacked. Admiral Darklighter's fleet just entered the system. We're assuming the enemy ships use technology similar to that of the StealthX. Advances in sensor technology have allowed us to better detect them." Dif Scaur took on a somewhat reluctant tone for that last sentence.