Journey through the stars, Chapter 7 The Aurions

This is the 7th Chapter of my Star Wars prequeal tale. After a long and exhausting journey through intractable space the crew of the Adventurer have had a terrifying encounter with a space-spider and are now captured by the Aurions who have an unfortunate memory of Dwarves and of Sam and so are thrown into jail as trespassers apart from Jack who can use his glove to be invisible.

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So, Jack was free. But there was little he thought he could do at the moment. All of his friends were jailed. Jack did manage to find out were they were been kept in two-person cells. This boosted morale as well as causing a few scratched heads as how Jack had managed this but was also mixed with the knowledge that there was little that Jack could do on his own. After a while, Jack took to leading a fleeting life invisible most of the time and thinking that, 'This must be the most wretched part of this entire wretched adventure.' He thought.

Jack was able to spend some time studying the Aurions, also known as Sindar to themselves. At least were interesting people. Although politically and perhaps diplomatically cut of there were a wide number of traders and other contact with this world, so there was quite a variety of creatures on this planet. Some of rather strange shapes and sizes. Some of the Aurions were green, some blue, some yellow, some black, some brown. The Aurions did speak basic, after a fashion, but many spoke a strange, local and ancient tongue of their own.

The Aurions base was a small part of the Planet. Most of it was dense, intractable forest and Jack could see the trees sometimes when he felt the urge to leave the base for a while just to take a look around. He thought he could see some dangerous creatures amongst the trees, Spiders maybe, so he didn't linger. The thought of his recent fight still haunted him and he could fell were one of the Spiders had bitten him. The wound was swelling and Jack didn't even know if it was poisonous or not.

Jack also found out were the Adventurer was been kept, but the Aurions did not do much space travel at the moment and their ships were plentiful. The poor old girl did have a battered look after all she had been through, but Jack was able at least to carry out some engine repairs so it could fly if necessary, though of course, Jack couldn't fly her by himself.

Jack wished there was some better way he could help his friends. He thought and thought, but no idea would come. He might be invisible, but there was no way all of his companions could open the locks on their cells and walk to the Adventurer unnoticed so that wasn't much help. None, save possibly Obi-Wan and he was in a very small minority felt like negotiating at least from their position of weakness.

Then one day there was a meteor alert. Oh, the chaos! The meteor alarm was pressed, and the entire base was put on red alert and all of the personnel had to report to the command center or stay indoors and everything was shut down and deserted as the problem was dealt with. It was hours before the base was back to normal and everyone was very jumpy in the meantime.

Jack looked at an alert sign which said, 'Only press in the case of an Emergency, 500 credits fine for improper use!' Now was he getting the beginnings of an idea? Yes, he thought he was. Jack carefully measured out the route between the cells and the Adventurer. Then he came to Obi-Wan's cells and told him his plan. Though at first he heard Obi-Wan talking to the guard and the guard replying,

'Look, I'm not going to open this door, so why suggest this to me in that persuasive manner, Jedi?'

Obi-Wan thought his plan risky, but went along with it.

Then at day when the base was quiet, these folk tended to prefer the night, and at a time agreed by everyone, Jack took a large hammer and smashed at the meteor alert alarm causing it to blare across the base. Jack almost smiled at the chaos he had created there was a small part of him that rather enjoyed doing this type of thing.

As before, the base's personnel all took cover. For a while, the cells were relatively unguarded. Therefore, Jack took out his blaster and shot at the locks holding his friends, releasing them. This took a few minutes as the cells were not all totally together. But everyone was free. 'We must be quick to get to our ship. It won't take these people too long to realise the alarm was false. And I don't have 500 credits to pay the fine!' joked he.

Obi-Wan did remember to do one thing. On the way, he came to one of the base's little computer plugins and spend a few moments making an adjustment. 'Knocked out the shields!' he explained which would give the Adventurer a clear journey on take off. The Base was relatively small compared to the rest of the planet so it didn't take long to get to the friendly familiar ship.

But there was one final but important obsticle. Some of the Aurions did manage to gather themselves to find them. A large patrol stood in the way. Obi-Wan could use his force powers to knock back a couple of them, but generally there was too many men in front. Jack was going to have to help once again. Also he was going to have to explain his Glove to his friends. Jack was a bit saddened by this, but there was no help for it.

'Look, I am going to disappear. I will draw those fighters of, with the minimum of casualties and you had better make for the ship. I will follow you if I can!' His friends were surprised, but Sam at least had some idea of what Jack was trying to do. Jack lead the Aurions a merry dance whilst the others headed for the ship. Jack made himself invisible and fired at the Aurions, gaining their attention.

They were jumpy already and someone they couldn't see firing at them was enough to cause a panic! Occasionally Jack would take his glove and wave at the Aurions crying, 'Your mothers can't bake apple pie!' or words to that effect! Although did take far more care on one matter than someone such as say Sam would have done. He was careful never to actually hit any of the Aurions with his shots. Jack knew that the Aurions weren't actually bad people so he didn't want to do something which would make this misunderstanding worse than it already was.

The Aurion guards were not been too wise in this situation, in fact they were behaving a little like some stupid Policemen! But this was an unusual situation for them. Once Jack was convinced that he had drawn enough of them off he slipped his glove back on and returned to the Adventurer which then took off into the Aurion sky. Seemingly having fooled the entire Aurion base.

Someone in the Aurion control room called their lord over. 'Look what we have here. It is that ship which we captured has taken off. Clearly our shields have been knocked out for the moment, but they do make a nice tempting shot for our planetary gunners. One hit could take it out. Shall I order to fire my lord?' The Adventurer was travelling in sight of the cross of one of the Aurions defence guns.

'Tempting, isn't it?' sighed the Lord of the Aurions. But he considered. There did seem to be slightly more to these people than had met the eye at first sight. Shooting them out of space might create more of an incident than was desirable. 'No, let them go if they are so desperate to leave! But there is little out there in that direction. Mostly the wilderness of Erebor. So, if they ever do try to come back in this direction, I might well have a word! Let them go!' and with that the Adventurer disappeared into lightspeed.

Obi-Wan jerked up from his chair as the Adventurer made the jump. 'Are you all right?' asked Sam.

'I just felt something. I'm not sure what it was.' he replied. 'But we are now on our way properly. Away from those really wild Sectors and know we now were we are finally not far from Erebor. Jack has managed to stock us up for which I am sure we are all grateful for and his freeing us. That glove was a bit of a surprise however, I think there is more to his lad than meets the eye!' and he gave Jack a strange look.

'Just one more stop I think to a colony of Bushey's in fact and then we are there.'

Jack expressed surprise that there were people from Bushey nearby.

'Yes there does seem to be a little colony. Perhaps they knew of some route through that Sector we weren't aware of. Still, one more hop and we are there! Finally after all of our trials. I think that is almost worth a little celebration!' grinned Obi-Wan. Erebor could now clearly be seen from the Adventurer. It was a yellow planet mostly of rock but with some vegetation and life-forms and two small moons.

'Yes, well don't go too far we might have more struggles yet!' growled Sam and he was right.

However after one stop at Bushey, the Adventurer journeyed over in less than a day to their final destination the former Dwarf world of Erebor. 'There we are!' said Dwalin waving to the screen and Jack saw it, a rocky world with two moons seemingly deserted but there were life-signs. But he found the sight nervy and foreboding more than comforting as the ship approached.