Chapter 2: First contact

"Pog, we're approaching the location you gave us, and we haven't seen anything noteworthy. Just some stray asteroids. You sure you picked up something?"

"I'm sure Baran. Just keep your eyes open. There is something weird out there"

Baran rolled his eyes and cut the communication. Beside him, his Twi'Lek co-pilot and girlfriend, Minerva, flew the ship onwards towards the source of the 'readings.' Her purple skin shone slightly in the light of the cockpit. Every few seconds, her Lekku would twitch, a sure sign she was bored. Her clothing consisted of a pair of brown leather pants, an orange "I heart Nunas" T-shirt he had won for her at a carnival a few months ago, and her signature dewback scale vest. At her hip was her DC-17 blaster pistol, and the hilt of a vibro-knife stuck out of her nerfhide boot. She looked over at him and smiled her beautiful, gleaming smile.

What did I ever do to land a woman like this? He thought happily.

It certainly wasn't my looks. He looked down at himself. He was a lanky twenty-four year old man with a scruffy beard and a mildly-handsome face. He wore an old green muscle shirt stained with oil, a pair of kaki cargo pants, and some comfy shoes perfect for running from bouncers, security officers or angry ex-girlfriends.

"How close are we?" asked Minerva, snapping him out of his self reflection.

Baran looked at the sensors. "About ten minutes away from the co-ordinates Pog gave us."

Huh, Pog. The boss's pet tech-wiz had picked up some 'strange readings' out here during his routine scans. And Baran, well, he owed Pog for fixing up his ship after he lost an argument with the captain of a republic Consular-class frigate over the legality of transporting rocket launchers into separatist space and he ran. So, he owed Pog a favor, and if that favor was to chase the hallucinations of a paranoid Quaran, well, there were worse ways to repay a debt.

"Sir would you like a hot beverage?" said a pleasant, cheery, and o-so-annoyingly high pitched voice from behind him. He immediately felt a bad mood rise from the bottom of his chest, quashing the good feelings that had filled him moments before.

Slowly, Baran turned his chair until he was facing a bronze protocol droid.

"No P4O7, I don't want a hot beverage," he said in his most condescending voice, "go back to your closet."

P4 slumped slightly, Baran noticed with slight satisfaction, as he started to shuffle towards his charging station in an alcove just behind the cockpit.

Minerva glared at him as he swiveled his chair back around. Baran just shrugged and began going over the control panel.

Minerva narrowed her eyes. She looked over her shoulder and called "P4! I'll have some tea if it's not too much trouble."

The droid turned around, perking up immediately. "No, mistress! No trouble at all!" He said, and trundled off the small kitchen at the rear of the ship.

She turned back to Baran, anger apparent in her eyes.

"Why are you always so mean to him?" she said.

Baran looked up from the control panel he was studying and said idly, "It's because he is annoying, he always gets in my way and he serves no practical purpose in our line of work."

"You just don't like him because my last boyfriend got him for me!"

He opened his mouth to respond when a flash of movement outside the view screen caught his eye. He turned to look and his mouth dropped open. "Minerva, look…" he began to say.

"Don't change the subject! You always do this…"

Baran had stopped listening, transfixed by the sight before him. Outside, a swarm of…things was gliding through space towards them. There were hundreds of the creatures, in so many shapes and sizes his eyes didn't know what to focus on. The only similarity between one beast and the next was their coloration. They all had leathery skin the color of a clear sky, a brilliant bright blue, and plates of deep red chitinous armor that covered much of their bodies.

Eventually, his attention was fixed on a trio of massive beasts that sat at the centre of the swarm. They resembled enormous squid, with tubular bodies and long tentacles drifting through the vacuum behind them. Smaller, crab-like creatures clung to the tentacles. However, unlike squid, their eyes and mouth were located at the front of their bodies. Their mouths resembled that of a shark, filled with rows of giant, serrated teeth. The flanks of the beasts were riddled with round protrusions, the function of which escaped him.

All the other beasts on the…fleet...clustered around these three monsters like bees swarming around their hive. They dwarfed all the other beasts, measuring in at (he guessed) around six kilometers long, bigger than a separatist dreadnought.

He tore his eyes away from the spectacle to look at Minerva, who had also noticed the swarm. She leaned forward in her chair, eyes wide, mouth open in the shape of an O, staring at the creatures. The shock and excitement was written all over her face.

"What are they?" she quietly asked.

"I have no idea." He said. "I have never seen anything remotely like this before."

"So they're a new species?" Minerva said excitedly. "This is incredible! We have to notify someone…" she trailed off as four creatures accelerated away from the group towards the ship.

The creatures were menacing looking. They had armored, cone shaped bodies with three long, sickle-looking claws at the wide end of the body, circling a round mouth lined with numberless teeth. Each of them had a pair of glowing green eyes that glared at them, and the two could almost feel the malice emanating from the beasts.

"I do not like the look of them." Minerva said.

Baran grabbed the controls. "I'm getting us out of here." He hit the thrusters and pulled the ship into a tight right turn away from the swarm and the approaching creatures.

"Give me that." Minerva grabbed the controls. "I'm a better pilot than you."

Suddenly, they heard the screech of tearing metal and were thrown from their seats as the ship decelerated rapidly. From the kitchen they heard the crash of glass shattering and a clang as P4 fell over with a loud "oh my!"

"What happened?" groaned Baran.

Minerva got up and flipped on the monitor for the camera at the back of the ship. Baran pulled himself up and looked over her shoulder at the monitor. What he saw sent a chill down his spine.

One of the beasts had harpooned the ship with a pair of long, fleshy tendrils that attached to the inside of the monsters mouth. The tendrils ended in boney spikes, which were firmly lodged in the hull of the ship, and as they watched, the tendrils began to retract into its mouth, slowly pulling the ship towards the predators.

"Minerva! Try to shake them loose. I'll man the gun." Baran cried, turning to run from the cockpit.

"P4!" He called. The droid's head emerged from the kitchen "Strap yourself in. This is this is going to get rough."

"Not necessary, sir. My feet can be magnetized, so I can withstand any turbulence we may encounter."

Baran wasn't listening, he had already yanked open a floor hatch and was climbing down a ladder to the belly gun of his ship. He strapped himself into the gunner chair, put on his headset and powered up the guns that sat on either side of him.

The guns were two quad-barreled laser cannons hooked up to a single trigger and targeting system. They could put out a punishing 400 shots a minute, shredding whatever had the misfortune of being caught in their crosshairs. Baran had taken to calling them 'the punishers', due to what they did to any vessel stupid enough to attack his ship.

He hoped they would teach the same lesson to these creatures.

He swiveled the guns to face the coming monsters. He could only see one of them, but that was enough. He centered the beast in his sights and pulled the trigger. A wave of green light blasted through space. The lasers hit, scorching the armor of the creature and burning its flesh, but not doing any real damage.

Baran started to panic a bit, firing again, pressing the trigger harder to try to coax a bit more fire from the guns.

Finally, one of the armor plates on the creature's head cracked and broke away. Laser bolts punched into the soft flesh underneath, causing immense internal damage. The beast thrashed in pain, black ichor spraying into space, then froze, finally succumbing to its injuries.

Baran allowed himself a moment to savor his victory, and then called into his headset "Minerva, I got one, but I can't see any of the others. Can you give me a better view?"

"Got it." Came the reply.

The ship went into a steep climb, trying to gain height on the monsters. Two of the creatures came into view, and Baran unloaded into the creatures. The one creature died the same way as the first, with an armor plate shattering and lasers tore its insides apart. The second creature took a lucky shot through the eye, killing it instantly.

"Two more down, but I can't see the last one!"

Minerva was jerking and twisting the ship in every maneuver she could think of, but no matter what she did she could neither shake the creature that had attached itself to the ship or bring it into Baran's line of sight long enough for him to kill it.

Glancing at the view screen for the rear camera, she saw that the monster was only a few dozen meters away from the ship. The rest of the swarm was still there, in the distance, getting steadily closer.

"I can't get a shot!" yelled Baran through the headset.

"I'm working on it!" she yelled back.

"Mistress?"

"Not now, P4," she called, pulling the ship into a spinning dive.

"But, Mistress…"

"NOT NOW!"

P4 huffed, then turned and started walking towards the rear of the ship. No one ever listens to me. He thought. He walked past his alcove, past the dining area, over the hatch to the turret (he could hear the cannons firing), past the airlock and the weapons locker, which contained Minerva's blaster rifle and Baran's trandoshan shotgun. He walked past the bunks and the main hatch to the cargo bay.

Then, he reached his destination, a small control panel set beside a head sized, round viewport. Through the viewport, he could see the creature pulling itself closer to the ship, and Baran's desperate shots flying off into space.

P4 entered several commands into the panel and hit the confirmation. He heard a clunk and saw a metal cylinder float away from the ship towards the creature.

If he had a mouth, P4 would have smiled.

The drone flexed its claws, eager to grab this silver-green prey, latch on, and feast on its insides. Dimly, it noticed the prey-thing release a cone-like object that was floating towards the drone. On impulse, it snapped at the object, caught, and swallowed it. Returning its attention to the prey, it continued to retract its flesh hooks, pulling itself to this meal.

Three seconds later, it exploded.

Minerva stared at the view screen, where only moments before a monster had been anchored to her ship with the intention of eating it. Now, there was only a cloud of blood, bone, and shreds of flesh falling into the distance behind the ship.

Baran's voice came over the com, "Uh…Minerva...did you…?"

"No, I…I don't…what?" she stuttered.

"It was a concussion mine."

Minerva turned to see P4 walk into the cockpit. Through the hatch, she could see Baran climbing out of the gun turret, looking just as confused by the spontaneous explosion of the creature as she was.

"What?" he asked.

The droid turned to Baran. "I concluded that the Mistress would be unable to dislodge the organism with her maneuvers, and you would be unable to kill it before it reached the ship, so I released a concussion mine on a five second timer in an attempt to kill it. Of course, I did not think the beast would swallow the mine…" he trailed off, looking back and forth between the two incredulous organics. "Did I do something wrong?"

Minerva broke out into a wide grin and caught the stunned droid in a hug. Baran even cracked a smirk, saying "Not bad, P4, not bad at all."

"I appreciate your gratitude," said P4-07, "but the rest of the swarm is still approaching."

He pointed over Minerva's shoulder at the rear view screen. The Twi'Lek and the human turned and saw the rest of the swarm, in the distance, but approaching swiftly.

The two of them jumped back into their seats and grabbed the controls. Their hands flew over the instruments, checking the ships systems.

"Can we outrun them?" Minerva asked.

"No, the creature's tendrils damaged a fuel line. We've only got 55% speed." Baran replied.

"Then…we can call for help!"

"No, the communication array was damaged too. Anyway, there is no ship in the vicinity with enough firepower to take on that swarm."

"Then what do you suggest we do!"

He looked at her. "We can get to lightspeed. We have just enough power to reach Carok III."

Minerva wheeled on him, an incredulous look on her face. "Carok III? Are you crazy! That is a republic base! If we go there, we'll be found, and we will get arrested. Or did you forget the price the republic has on our head?!"

"It's a better option than staying here to be eaten, or…whatever these things will do."

"Then, if we can go to lightspeed, why not go back to the station?"

"Minerva, there is no safe rout back to the station from here." Baran said. "This is our only hope."

Minerva slouched back into her seat. "Do it," she muttered.

Baran hurriedly punched in the co-ordinates and hit the switch. A deep, undulating whine filled the ship as the hyperdrive powered up. Outside the cockpit, the stars started to stretch and flash by, and with a deep WHUMP, the ship entered hyperspace.

"Sir?"

"What is it?" Baran said, turning to the protocol droid. His appreciation for the droid was already fading, already replaced by his usual distain for the robot.

"This has been a very taxing event. If you don't mind, I will return to my alcove to recharge." The droid turned to leave the cockpit, but stopped at the door. He looked back, as if he remembered something. "Sir, I did a calculation of the swarm's trajectory, and there is an 83% chance that, if the follow their current course, they will discover the station."

Minerva jerked in her chair. "No! Pog! Yanax! We have to warn them!" she said to Baran.

Baran looked back at her, his eyes filled with sadness and regret. "We can't." He turned and looked out into the endless expanse of hyperspace. "They're on their own".

He loved this.

This feeling. This…freedom he got. A freedom from all the stresses he had to deal with, the petty squabbling of all the little people with their little plans. Listening to Alamog go on and on about how unfair it was for him to be stuck out in the middle of nowhere watching his uncle's station. So, whenever he got the chance, he would retreat to his chamber, and just…drift.

His mind was disconnected from his body, floating along through the station. He looked behind him, and saw his body, cross-legged on the floor of his chamber, a serene look on his face.

He turned and flew through the station, watching all the beings going about their business. He could see everything. Here, Pog sat in the scanner array, pouring over the screens, apparently worried about something. But then, Pog was always worried, so he moved on.

There, Zek eyed Morag, one of his rivals, and fingered at the grip of his blaster. Maybe today he would get the courage to try to end him. Hm, not likely, he thought

And, oh, he saw that Pam was "breaking in" a new boyfriend.

All of the sudden, he felt something brush against his mind. On reflex, he recoiled, surprised by the contact. Another force user? He reached out with his mind, and found the foreign entity. It was unlike any mind he had ever encountered. It seemed like there where millions of thoughts coming from this one strand of consciousness.

Curious, he followed the trail of thoughts away from the station, out into the surrounding asteroid field. He flew through space, tracking the thoughts through space, until, to his surprise, he came across a ship.

What is a ship doing out here in the middle of nowhere? He soared into the ship and, to his surprise, found Baran and Minerva arguing. What where these two doing out here?

Then, pain. Excruciating pain. He recoiled from it and flew outside the ship.

The pain came in the form of screams. They reverberated inside his skull, threatening to rip his sanity asunder. With a desperate mental shove, he was able to escape the noise for a moment, just long enough for him to locate the source of the screaming.

Before him loomed a vast swarm, hundreds of alien creatures swimming through space. But that was not all.

In his spiritual form, he could see the black tendrils of thought that reached out from the creatures and probed the surrounding space. Several tendrils that had reached out for him had been dislodged by his panicked shove. Now, they attacked with renewed vigor.

The tendrils wrapped around his spirit and again, the pain assailed him. But this time, it was less, and he could feel that someone was rummaging around in his memories. Angered at this violation, he struck at the foreign mind with a lance of furry and willpower.

For a brief moment, he was in the enemy mind. He only got a glimpse, but in that glimpse, he saw a dark chamber filled with a vast creature and a floor covered in squirming, gooey eggs. He also got saw the mind of his opponent, and it was a vast, incomprehensible, alien, mind. It possessed a vast, iron-willed intelligence, and behind that, something else.

It was a deep, unrelenting, insatiable, hunger.

Filled with a sudden, irrational fear, he tore himself away from the contact, just in time to see Baran's ship jump into hyperspace.

And then he fled, as fast as he could, back to the station, all the while pursued by the tendrils and their screams.

The man awoke with a start, jerking out of his trance-like state violently. He tried to stand but was immediately hit with unrelenting waves of nausea and pain. He fell to his knees and vomited onto the floor of the small room. After several minutes of reaching, he curled up on his side and hugged his knees to his chest, shaking, waiting for the pain to subside.

He didn't know how long he remained like that, but eventually he awoke from a troubled sleep and uncurled his stiff muscles. He sat up and opened his eyes. He looked around his spartan quarters, seeing his desk, chair and thin cot exactly where he left them when he started his meditation. The only difference was the puddle of vomit that sat in front of him.

He grimaced at the smell and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. It came away streaked with vomit…and blood. Shocked, he touched his nose. More blood.

That attack-it must have hurt my body as well as my mind. He thought.

In the silence, he noticed that he could hear a faint scratching, and…screams? But, he realized, they were not coming from anywhere around him. They were in his mind. The creatures had followed him.

Grimly, he stood up and extended his right hand. A metal object floated of the floor where he left it.

Attaching his lightsaber to his belt, Jedi Master Yanax Helon strode from his room to talk to Alamog.

Something was coming. Something terrible.

And, given the chance, it would consume them all.