Chapter Four
Boarding Party
Jerjerrod gulped and felt a shudder run down his spine as the frigate slowly, clumsily, turned, engines whining under the strain. He stared out of the viewports, at the rapidly moving star field ahead of him, shaking with fear. The Sith were coming!
The twelve X-wings broke off and headed left, confused because of their new retreat orders. There were only six bandits inbound, but they were being ordered to retreat? Why?
The pirate vessels, without the proper discipline to regularly check their sensors, knew nothing of the approaching fighters, and seized on the sudden opening as the X-wings retreated. The X-wings were flying in a broad, shallow arc, leaving their rears exposed. The few remaining E-wings darted forward, lacing space with laser blasts. One X-wing's shields stuttered and failed under a heavy barrage, and was then blown apart by seven laser beams. The remaining eleven X-wings tightened their turn, but by then the six Sith fighters had arrived.
The Sith fighters were shaped like horseshoes, with a central cockpit, beneath which were eight concussion missiles, and two laser cannons mounted above the cockpit. The ship was fast and nimble, with minimal shielding. The half dozen fighters had formed up into a line, preparing to charge down the enemy fighters.
The E-wings realised that there were approaching hostiles just seconds too late. The Sith fighters opened fire, swatting the Multirole spacecraft from the sky. The X-wings slowed, and then tightened their turn yet again, coming around to face the incoming Sith fighters.
The enemy fighters fired concussion missiles; space was instantly lit up by azure trails, and pinpricks of light that were trails and missiles.
Five X-wings exploded.
The other six opened fire, blasting the remaining concussion missiles from the sky.
The Sith fighters still continued forward, opening fire with their laser cannons. The X-wings slammed into evasive patterns, attempting to dodge the incoming needles of energy. But it was as if the Sith fighters knew where the X-wings would turn or speed up, slow down or spin. Two X-wings were blasted out of the sky, and the other four were badly hit. One spiralled away towards Korriban, bleeding hyperdrive fluid, whilst the other three turned, engines flaming, and started to limp back towards the Rieekan, which was accelerating away.
The Sith fighters fired another lightning-fast salvo of lasers, and the remaining X-wings were vaporised.
At the same time, the Rieekan was slowing down, its engine nozzles whining and crumpling as if an immense giant was squeezing them between his fists. Its shield flickered, tiny bolts of lightning slivering back and forward across the energy bubble in a chaotic dance.
The lead Sith fighter darted ahead, streams of crimson energy bolts cascading forward. The ship danced and slid from side to side, jinking and manoeuvring, dodging every single blast of retaliatory laser fire.
The man inside the Sith ship was a Twi'lek. He sat, hunched over his controls, his face and lekku head-tails obscured by a large black flight mask. Rage bubbled off him, positively tangible. He was calling on the dark side, floating in its reserves, submerging himself in its powers. He drifted slightly to port, and squeezed the trigger on his fighter's joystick. A short salvo blasted out from his ship's cannons, bursting through a tiny hole in the enemy shields. The lasers, guided by the Force, blasted through an already damaged hull covering and smashed into an engine coolant valve.
An explosion blasted out the aft section of the ship; great orange flames spouted into the vacuum of space, filling the vast, empty vista with billions of tiny pieces of melted durasteel. Bodies tumbled out, some burned horrifically, some flash-frozen by depressurisation, other bleeding heavily, and some still twisting futilely, clutching their throats and gagging as they froze and suffocated. The remains of the long range communications suite floated out into space.
The Sith smiled under his helmet, his pale tongue flicking out to lick his lips as he fed off the pain that emanated through the Force. Then he directed his fighter towards the frigate's hangar, and prepared to board.
Roan's small, inconspicuous shuttle entered Corulag's orbit and descended quickly into the atmosphere of the pleasant, blue and green planet. Roan sat at the controls, trying to fight off a slight sense of nervousness that played at his consciousness. Just as he passed through the mottled layer of white, wispy clouds, and came into full view of Corulag's capital city, a flare of anxiety shot up through the Force so powerful, so sharp and so raw that it was like a loud whine in his ear. He frowned and locked down his presence; hiding himself in the Force. Only someone powerful in the Force could've had their emotions pitched so clearly, and he didn't know exactly who the person was, so it was best to keep his presence secret for the time being.
Roan walked quickly and inconspicuously through the canyons beneath the towering granite buildings of Corulag, just another visitor to the city, heading to one of the seedy bars that dotted Corulag's Secondary Entertainment District, probably to spend the night in a house of ill repute and then get bottled after his little escapade. At least, that was what he was meant to look like. He was instead going to retrace the steps to every location the young Jedi Padawan who'd went missing had visited. . The buildings of the large capital city, though tall, were nothing compared to Coruscant's massive skyscrapers. At least sunlight filtered through the gaps in the skyline high above him.
Roan was fairly good at moving casually through crowds. He was wearing a grey jumpsuit, common enough among visiting traders. His lightsaber was concealed in one of the suit's deep pockets, easy to access but hidden.
The street was filled with bustling, chatting commuters, making their way to and from work. A few speeders flew overhead, their engines distant drones. One speeder, however, was getting closer, its engine getting louder. Roan looked up, his eyes scanning the sky above him, just in time to see a blue, wedge-shaped speeder diving down towards him at a steep angle. All around him, people were noticing, pointing at the rapidly accelerating vehicle. Someone screamed, and then chaos erupted. Someone jostled someone else, and, in what had been just seconds before a fairly ordinary, calm street of workers making their way to their livelihoods suddenly became a stampede of shrieking, bawling people trying desperately to get away from the speeder. People were being trampled on all sides, screaming in pain…
Roan's danger sense tingled, and he knew he speeder wasn't about to stop.
Roan threw all caution to the wind, and opened himself to the Force, letting its cool, calm energy flow into him filling his every being with a sense of purpose. He raised his arms, determined only to stop that speeder from ploughing into the tarmac ground he stood on and killing hundreds.
Instantly, the diving speeder slowed and then stopped. Roan concentrated a little, and slowly the speeder started to rise…
But his danger sense still didn't subside. In fact, it suddenly grew more acute. In fact, it grew insistent.
Roan barely had enough time to create a Force-wave, pushing the civilians all around him away to safety before an ugly, compact, repeating blaster cannon rose from its concealed cranny in the speeder's nose, and started spewing bolts of red plasma down on the street below.
Roan drew his sabre in a blindingly quick sweep, batting away the first attack and then hurling himself to the side as more blasts pounded down into the street, melting the ground beneath him. He broke into a sideways run, dodging and deflecting the continued barrage of laser bolts as whoever was firing at him corrected their aim.
The last vestiges of calm in the crowd disappeared, and surges of pain spiked through the Force as people were trampled by the chaotic stampede of fleeing civilians. Roan ignored it and allowed a tiny vestige of anger to creep into his temperament, and then leapt fifty feet in the air, somersaulting onto a passing speeder which was swerving and climbing wildly to escape from the firestorm of blaster bolts streaming down from high above.
Roan landed on the speeder, a large, boxy grey model, and was almost instantly thrown back off by the intense winds generated by moving so fast. But he secured his feet to the speeder with the Force for a few seconds, ignoring the sudden swerving as the speeder's driver, a tall Aqualish, desperately tried to shrug off his unwelcome passenger. But then Roan released his grip, leaping up again.
The wind rushed by, roaring in his ears as he landed atop another speeder. But he didn't have the time to secure himself; the small, lightweight speeder bucked under his weight, throwing him backwards and into empty space, two hundred feet above the ground.
Roan fell, a tangle of arms and legs. His lightsaber deactivated and fell from his hands, tumbling away as he desperately scrabbled for a non-existent handhold. He was still devoting some of his concentration to hold the hostile speeder in the air, and stopping it from plunging into the crowd below, so it took him dangerously long to start to control his fall.
His fall slowed marginally, but not enough. Roan cursed and then screamed as another speeder clipped his back as it whipped past. His concentration evaporated as white-hot streaks of agony shot up and down his back, turning his semi-controlled fall into a frenzied tumble. All around him, other speeders were crashing and colliding with each other, trying to dodge the laser bolts, and the Force was filled with death as twisted, burning remains of airspeeders crashed into the street, massacring civilians, whilst other, intact speeders swerved into buildings, exploding inside and shaking the granite structures to their foundations, as well as sending hundreds of chunks of broken stone into tumbling plummets onto the street, killing yetn more civilians.
Roan gritted his teeth against the pain and again summoned the Force, only using not his calmness of selflessness as the conductor for the Force's powerful energies, but his anger and pain. He created a cushion of Force-energy between himself and the ground, and his fall abruptly slowed to a gentle descent. He landed gently, on his feet, to stunned stares from the suddenly silent and immobile crowd around him.
But he couldn't afford to stand idle. Already the speeder, free from Roan's Force-grip, was turning its dive into a shallow, but fast, climb. It flew upwards and away until it was no more than a distant pinprick in the sky, then turned around and nosed over into a steep, accelerating dive; a strafing run. Laser bolts spat from the blaster cannon mounted in its nose, and Roan was thrown backwards from the hard, hot shockwave caused by a blaster bolt landing just metres away from where he'd landed. He reached into the Force, searching for his lightsaber, and sensed it about thirty metres down the street. He could just distantly see a scruffy looking man standing with it in his grubby hands, looking over it to see if it was worth anything. Roan smiled a little and ignited the sabre remotely. The stunned man dropped the weapon in fright, leaping away from the scorching blade as the handgrip jerked into Roan's outstretched hand.
The brief period of sheer, stunned silence that had descended over the crowd ended. The chaos resumed, with mountains of people desperately trying to squeeze down alleys and enter buildings as a hailstorm of lasers filled the centre of the street. Roan stood his ground, parrying every bolt that came his way as the speeder neared its quarry, its strafing run growing ever faster.
When the speeder was just a kilometre away, and plunging down into the street at twice the speed of sound, Roan used the Force to flick the speeder's nose skyward.
The speeder continued forward in its suicidal plunge, flipping nose over tail, until a Force-push tossed it backwards and into the air. It spun away, tumbling, its pilot's anger and distress radiating throughout the Force…
And then Roan realised that whoever was flying the speeder was Force-sensitive. The sheer, raw fear pouring off the pilot was as clear as crystal, even though the speeder was almost ten kilometres away, and such powerful emotion-projection pointed towards the fact that the speeder pilot was a Force-sensitive.
A Dark Jedi? Possibly. A mercenary with untrained but powerful Force abilities? Probably. Roan reached into the Force again to get a feel of the pilot, but a second later a tremendous roar reached his ears, and a massive fireball became visible in the distance. The pilot's presence disappeared instantly, suggesting either death, or that the pilot had hid his presence. Roan, naturally suspicious, opted for the latter option.
Roan suddenly became aware of the hundreds of terrified civilian eyes on him, and his still ignited lightsaber. He knew what flimsy cover he'd had to start with was gone. He hadn't even been on the planet for twenty minutes and he was standing in a street filled with crashed speeders, dead and maimed civilians, as well as hundreds of witnesses who would blame the Jedi's presence as the cause of the attack.
Roan shuddered as more pain rolled through the Force, and shut down his lightsaber. He moved quickly over to the biggest concentration of wounded people, prompting the civilians nearest them to move quickly away, casting suspicious glances over at the Jedi as he bent down and started pouring the healing energies of the Light Side into the wounded people. Several of the most seriously wounded had been convulsing and bleeding heavily, but they eventually fell still and their bleeding subsided as Roan put them into healing trances. He moved around the square, doing the same to everyone who was wounded, and then set off at a Force-aided run towards the crash site, his lightsaber still in his hand.
Roan's skin had nettled uncomfortably from over-using the Force when he arrived, fifteen minutes later, at the crash site. The air speeder had crashed just outside the city, and lay, smouldering, in the side of a small grassy hill, that was covered sparsely by tall evergreen trees. Roan knew straight away that the pilot of the speeder hadn't died in the crash; there was no hint of the bitter aftertaste left by death in the Force, only a hint of anger and disappointment.
Roan picked his way towards the smouldering wreck of the speeder, stepping over lumps and mounds of rubble and wreckage. He reached the vessel, and noted that the driver-side door had been blasted off by what appeared to be blaster shots; the door mechanism was pocked with deep, burning furrows. A discarded blaster carbine lay on the passenger seat, and the rest of the speeder's interior was hidden beneath the crumpled roof.
Roan stepped out of the vehicle and reached into the Force, but found no hint of any Force-user's presence on the planet; not his attacker's, or the apprentice he'd been sent to look for. Just the auras of twenty Corulag Security Officers racing towards the crash site in their patrol speeders. Roan decided that, for the sake of his mission, it would not do to be taken into custody. So he moved out of the speeder and set off at a run, back towards the city.
As he ran (and occasionally hid to escape passing Security patrol speeders) he pondered who had attacked him, and why. As far as he knew, he'd entered the planet with perfect cover, not arousing any suspicion at all. And he'd obviously been followed; how else would his attacker have found him in the many streets of Corulag's capital? And why would anyone have wanted to attack him in the first place? Nothing made sense, but Roan knew he would have to investigate the whole situation after he completed his primary objective.
The hangar crew aboard the Riekan screamed as the lead Sith fighter flew through the magnetic shield that held the hangar's atmosphere in place, and fired a concussion missile into a shuttle parked at the opposite end on the broad bay.
The missile streaked out and hit the shuttle square in the cockpit. The shuttle exploded grandly, filling half the hangar with a ferocious fireball that scorched the metal walls, ceiling and floor.
The explosion also lit the many puddles of fuel that lay on the floor of the hangar, filling the place with more, smaller explosions. The hangar maintenance crew raced back in forward, some screaming as their blue jumpsuits caught fire, others trying to dodge the streams of laser cannon fire that flew from the Sith fighter's cannons.
A squad of sixteen grey-armoured marines raced through the hangar's bulkhead and opened fire on the Sith ship, blasting away with their assault rifles. The Sith fighter shuddered buts its shields held and it swung around to open fire on its new assailants. Seven troops were evaporated by the first salvo, and another two were killed by a concussion missile's blast. The remaining seven troops sprinted off in different directions, heading for the cover provided by the destroyed shuttle's debris.
The Sith fighter darted forward on its repulsorlifts, flying over a few hangar techs who knelt, bent and stooped, clutching wounds in their torsos that belched blood and guts into horrible, rancid crimson pools. The pilot of the Sith ship smiled as the Force was filled with their pain; the pain that powered the dark side.
The remaining hangar security troops opened fire again, and crimson needles of light and plasma smashed against the Sith fighter with little effect, until two of the security troops managed to set up an E-Web Repeating Blaster Cannon mounting it on a tripod. It opened fire, causing heavy, powerful blasts to smash against the fighter's shields, depleting them until the fighter pilot waved his hand dismissively, causing the E-Web and its two operators to smash into the hangar's wall with a bone shattering crunch. The E-Web shattered and the two soldiers hung, suspended in a Force-grip, their bodies sagging because of broken and cracked bones. The Sith pilot grinned, revealing gleaming, sharp teeth, and tightened the fist he held out, causing the hanging soldiers to twitch and convulse as they were crushed by the Force. The other soldiers broke off their firing, and turned to stare, amazed and repulsed, as their comrades were crushed into tiny chunks of squashed plastoid armour and flesh.
The Sith pilot took the momentary distraction to swivel his craft around to face the hangar exit, target the hangar's magnetic shield generator, and fire.
The shield generator exploded, and the blue haze that had once filled the hangar bay's entrance disappeared. Instantly the remaining soldiers were plucked up and pulled into the air by the escaping atmosphere, their eyes bulging and bursting as explosive decompression settled in and they were sucked into deep, cold space. Other pieces of wreckage and the bodies of the dead hangar techs and soldiers were also jerked out into space, followed by the lumbering mass of the wrecked shuttle. A second later the blast shield, implemented to save the crew by slamming shut should the magnetic shield fail, engaged. The large metal door swung shut with a clang, and the atmosphere restored itself.
The Sith fighter settled onto its landing struts, and its canopy opened with a hiss. A blur in dark robes leapt straight up, flipping in mid-air and landing twenty metres in front of the fighter, an un-ignited lightsaber hilt in its hands.
The blur was in fact a male Twi'lek, with long lekku head-tails, pale skin, a pronounced cranium, and red eyes that surveyed the devastation with amusement.
The sound of running, booted feet echoed from the hangar's bulkhead, and the Twi'lek turned to face twenty Galactic Alliance Army soldiers racing into the hangar, raising their BlasTech A700 assault rifles and shouting commands to the Twi'lek, ordering him to surrender.
The Twi'lek obliged them by smiling revealing his needle teeth, and igniting his lightsaber, bathing the area around him in crimson light.
The soldiers opened fire straight away, but the Sith wasn't where he'd been standing a second before.
He was leaping forward, somersaulting in mid-air, before coming to land in front of the squad's commander, a young Lieutenant. The Sith's lightsaber flashed brightly, and the hangar was filled with the stench of burned flesh as the lieutenant's legs and arms, severed at the knees and elbows, fell to the deck, followed by the Lieutenant's head.
The soldiers corrected their aiming, firing at the Sith once more. The Twi'lek raised a long-fingered, pale hand, its dirty, grubby talons crackling with dark energy. A second later, bolts of twisting and crackling blue Force-lightning surged forward, hitting ten of the nearest troopers and hurling their convulsing forms backwards, to land perhaps twenty metres away. Their flesh smoked and steamed as life departed their bodies. The remaining troopers fell back, two of them lobbing thermal detonators at the Sith.
The Sith gestured calmly, and the thermal detonators reversed direction and exploded, engulfing seven troops in a brilliant flash of crimson energy.
The Sith started forward again, raising his blade to parry a blaster bolt sent in his direction back at its firer, who fell, smoke rising from the hole where his heart had once been.
The Sith reached the last soldiers, who was backed against the hangar wall, clutching his jammed blaster in a futile attempt to fire. The Sith closed his fist, and the blaster crumpled into a ball of twisted black durasteel. He then summoned a thermal detonator of the soldier's belt. The Sith snatched the silver sphere out of the air, and kicked the soldier with the power of the Force. The soldier slumped, his pelvis shattered, his mouth open in a scream. The Sith promptly stopped the scream by activating the thermal detonator and popping it in the soldier's mouth.
The Twi'lek backflipped away as the grenade exploded, evaporating the soldier's body and much of the hangar wall behind it. He then smiled; with every person he killed, more power flooded into his veins.
It was… Intoxicating.
Ten minutes later, the Twi'lek stepped onto the frigate's bridge. The nine bridge security guards stepped forward, but a salvo of Force-lightning tossed them, unconscious into a corner.
The captain of the ship, Jerjerrod, stood, pale faced but still, in front of his command console. The Twi'lek strode towards Jerjerrod, using the Force to throw aside any crewmember who bravely but foolishly tried to stop the Sith from reaching Jerjerrod.
"Captain," The Twi'lek inclined his head, and his head-tail twitched with delight and enjoyment at his mock courtesy, "A pleasure to meet you."
"I wish I could say likewise, but I cannot," The captain replied; to his credit, his voice did not waver or crack.
"These past few minutes have been a shame," The Twi'lek sighed theatrically, "The Sith do not attack unless threatened," The captain shivered, his worst fears confirmed; the Sith had returned, and were aboard his vessel, "But when we do attack, we attack ferociously."
"The Sith do not attack unless threatened?" echoed a voice from behind the Twi'lek, "Tell that to the historians!"
The Twi'lek turned and waved a hand, and the officer who'd been speaking suddenly clutched his throat, unable to speak or draw breath.
"Perhaps I was unclear," The Twi'lek said with a grin, "We also attack those who ally with the few who threaten the Sith."
"So, basically everyone in the galaxy?" Jerjerrod said, raising an eyebrow.
"At times in our history, yes. But, in this day and age, it is only the Galactic Alliance military personnel, and the Jedi Order. Although we would not have attacked even you had you not entered Korriban's orbit. We've been in hiding for the past eighty-odd years, simply practicing our traditions in peace, whilst the Jedi wreak havoc on the galaxy with war after war after war."
A few members of the crew nodded slightly; many believed that the Jedi were at the root of every war. The Clone Wars, the Galactic Civil War, the Yuuzhan Vong War, the Dark Nest Crisis, and the Corellian Insurrection.
But Jerjerrod did not agree with those people, "Jacen Solo was a Sith during the time of you supposed peace. He almost created a new Empire."
The Twi'lek shook his head, as if expecting that argument, "He was not a True Sith. He was trained by Lumiya, who was never part of our order. She was trained by Darth Vader and Emperor Palpatine, who were not members of the New Sith Order that my masters have created."
"Your masters? There are more of you?" Jerjerrod sounded surprised, and his Force aura radiated terror.
"Approximately seven hundred."
Jerjerrod's mouth worked futilely, but no words came out.
The Twi'lek took advantage of the situation to fully introduce himself, "I am Darth Correbra. I claim this ship in the name of the Sith. And your punishment for your unprovoked intrusion into Korriban space is death."
Jerjerrod simply stared, stunned, as Correbra's lightning struck him in the chest and threw his suddenly lifeless body across the bridge…