"Lieutenant Tar, is everything in working order?" Shrike asked for what must have been the tenth time in the past minute.
"Aye Shipmaster," The Lieutenant said after letting out a muffled groan. "Everything is still in working order, just like the last time you asked me, so just in case you find it necessary to ask me again. The ship is in working order, and as far as I can tell, it will continue to be in working order for the foreseeable future."
"Is that sarcasm Lieutenant?" Shrike asked, her words dripping with venom.
"No Shipmaster, just being proactive, just like Sun always tells us to be." He said, his comment visibly affecting his superior. She'd been struggling over the past couple of days, desperately trying to live up to the expectations set by her incapacitated Captain. He was really the only Shipmaster she'd ever served under, well the only one who actually treated her like a soldier and not just some problem to be dumped and whoever happened to be lower on the food chain. He was the only example she had to go by, unfortunately, Sun wasn't exactly an easy act to follow. He was a good officer, he was loved by his crew, and he always managed to remain calm, three traits she was sorely lacking. Especially, when it came to the crew's opinion of her, of course, that was an issue she'd been struggling with since she'd been assigned to the Corsair, and the worst part was she agreed with them. She didn't deserve her rank, not by a long shot. She'd only graduated from the academy a year ago, she should have been a lieutenant or an ensign, not a Commander. She hadn't even wanted her commission; her father had forced her to take it. Even when she tried to be her own person he always found a way to control her life.
"Shipmaster" Zek called out, snapping her out of her deep self-contemplation "we're got an incoming transmission coming from planetary command."
"Aye lieutenant, patch it through."
"Aye Shipmaster," he responded before pressing a few buttons on his holo-display. Moments later a cold, figureless voice came over the bridge's speakers.
"Hello, Corsair," the voice continued "there is a cargo ship inbound, the Shipmaster said they were experiencing technical difficulties. You are required to monitor the ship as it makes its final approach to make sure it is okay. The Dolum should be making its final approach from bearing 36 29 in exactly thirty-six tics."
"Aye, command we're…"
"Uh, excuse me Shipmaster" Zek interrupted, sheepishly
"What is it Lieutenant?"
"You know this is an automated message right, it doesn't matter if you respond or not. It can't hear you."
"Oh, of course" she responded, desperately trying to hide her blushing face. "Helmsmen, turn the ship towards that heading."
"Aye Shipmaster." And with that, the ship began to rotate, and eventually, it began to move, slowly drifting out of orbit. Delicately floating by the orbital defense platforms guarding the vital planet from attacks. Just as the ship cleared the ring of orbiting death, a bright flash of light signaled the cargo ship's arrival.
The large merchant vessel was nothing like its warring counterpart. Instead of a sleek black obsidian hull it was a basically just a massive gray cube with engines attached to it.
"Lieutenant Tar, I want a status report on that ship, tell me if there's anything wrong with it. Command said the Shipmaster was reporting technical troubles."
"Aye Shipmaster, I know. I was there." Tar responded as he tapped away at his holo-display. A few moments later he responded, "Um, Shipmaster, something does appear to be wrong with that ship." He said his face twisting into a look of pure confusion.
"What is it, Lieutenant?"
"Well, nothing's wrong with the ships technical systems but its crew is, gone."
"What do you mean the crew's gone? How's that possible?" She asked, seemingly just as confused as her subordinate.
"As far as I can tell there are no lifeforms aboard that ship, the crew's gone."
"Then who's driving it?"
"I'm not sure."
"It might be on autopilot," Zek suggested, attempting to alleviate the confusion.
"That's impossible," Vex chimed in "the autopilot can't use the hyper speed."
"Well then, why don't we just call them," Shrike said, finally taking control of the situation. "Lieutenant Zek, hail that vessel."
"Aye, shipmaster. Attention Dolum, this is the Corsair, please respond, I repeat, please respond."
After a few short moments the transmission screen materialized itself in front of the viewing window, and on it, a large metallic figure.
"What the he…" Was all Shrike managed to get out before a massive flash of light filled the cockpit as a shockwave rocked the ship, and then darkness.
...
Pidge winced as she narrowly avoided a head-on collision with the trunk of a massive tree, just one of the countless surrounding the young paladin as she raced along on a small gray speeder bike. The very same speeder Lord Morgan had loaned her this morning, moments before he'd explained to her that their hunting expedition involved reenacting the chase scene from Return of the Jedi. The only difference was, instead of chasing Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher they were hunting something the old noblemen called a Bone Crusher, a name she hoped was a misnomer and not an accurate description. Not that it mattered, based on the fact that she'd nearly crashed six times so far, she'd probably end up dead long before she ever actually saw this thing, whatever it looked like.
"Lady Holt," Lord Morgan said, his voice coming in over the intercom in her helmet. "I believe I've found the Bone Crusher's trail, it should be up ahead on your left."
"Got it," she replied, leaning ever so slightly to her left in order to correct her course. "So, what exactly am I looking for up here?"
"Trust me young one, you'll know it when you see it."
"Okay then," she said, ending the transmission "great, like driving this thing wasn't hard enough. Now I have to keep a look out fo…" just then, the young paladin's speeder came to a sudden stop, her stunted eyes locked on the trail Lord Morgan had been talking about, and what a trail it was.
The forest floor was littered with debris, shards of wood stuck out of the ground like fence posts, chunks of earth and stone were haphazardly tossed about, and a chain of massive footprints the likes of which she'd never seen lead deeper and deeper into the dense wilderness, flanked on either side by the bent and splintered remains of what had once been mighty oaks. Though, these mangled stumps bared little resemblance to the once towering pillars of bark they'd once been. The carnage was enough to make anyone aware of their own mortality, lose their nerve and turn back. Unfortunately, this was not an option for the young paladin, she couldn't turn back, no matter how scared she was. She had to convince Lord Morgan to support her cause and to do that she had to one, show him how brave she really was, and two, make sure he wasn't horribly killed by whatever terrifying hell beast had mangled the foliage in front of her. Which meant she had to catch up with the old men who, hopefully, hadn't already found said hell beast.
"How do I keep getting myself into these situations?" she asked before taking off, following the trail of carnage towards whatever monster awaited her at its end.
...
"Commander! Commander! Wake up, come on. Please don't tell me you're concussed again!" a muffled voice yelled, the barely discernable words ricocheting around the hectic bridge.
Suddenly, Shrike's eyes shot open as the young Commander shot to her feet grumbling to herself as she frantically looked around the room, desperately trying to piece together what exactly was going on. The last thing she remembered was seeing a Galra sentry on the display screen of the cargo ship and then, nothing.
"Commander!" Tar shouted from across the bridge "Are you okay?"
"Yes, yes I'm fine." she replied her voice shaking.
"Good, because we need orders! We've got enemy ships inbound, shields are at seven percent, targeting systems are offline and we have hull breaches on decks three, five, and six." The lieutenant shouted, his eyes glued to the holo-display in front of him. Unfortunately, the words barley registered in Shrikes mind, her head was reeling and the sheer amount of information was too much for her to handle in her current state.
"What, what happened to us?" her voice was still shaky "what happened to Zek?"
"The Dolum exploded," Tar replied, still enthralled by his screen. "it was some kind of Galra trap. Damn thing went up right in our face, shields took the brunt of the blast by the shock wave still jacked us up pretty bad. As for Zek, he's out cold and I can't get him up which means I'm stuck doing both our jobs. Now, am I going to be adding Shipmaster to job description, or are you actually going to start giving bloody orders?" he asked, his tune far harsher than any she'd heard the young man use before.
"Helmsmen Vex, are you still alive?" She asked, finally taking charge.
"Aye Shipmaster, but I'm sure how much help I'm going to be. Maneuvering thrusters are shot, we'll have to reboot the entire system if you're planning on moving anytime soon."
"Fine then, forget the thrusters" Shrike replied as she locked herself in place. There was no way in hell she was being knocked down a third time. "Vex, man Zek's console divert power away from the engines and into the shields and weapons, Tar I want all of our weapons systems online now, including the ion cannon. Ensign, how many hostiles are there."
"Eight hostile ships ma'am, six destroyers and two cruisers. Four of the destroyers and a cruiser are engaging the orbital defense platforms, the other ships appear to be focused on us."
"Wait a tick," Tar yelled, his voice filled with frustration "why the hell aren't we trying to get the thrusters back online? We're dead in space without them."
"It'll take too long to bring them back on line, we'd be easy targets ether way," Shrike yelled, her voice filled with a confidence she didn't know she had. "at least this way we can shot back. Besides, we're a battleship, we can take it." And indeed they could. Even now purple beams impacted off what was left of the Corsair's forward facing shields as the two destroyers charged forward, followed closely by their much larger comrade.
"But ma'am" the ensign chimed in "even with the weapons online we're only have manual targeting…"
"Don't worry ensign, aiming won't be an issue. Tar where are we on that ion canon?"
"two more ticks until we're ready to fire but, we don't have anything to shoot at."
"We will." She replied as she glared at the three ships bearing down on them. The two destroyer where coming in different angles, just beyond the ion canon's currently limited firing arc, which meant they were safe from the Corsair's wrath, for now at least. "Prepare to fire the ion canon on my signal." Shrike said, crossing her arms.
From there the two ships continued on their path, hurtling towards their prey at breakneck speeds, growing every closer to not only the Corsair, but each other. Finally, their paths cross one another, the two ships passing with in meters of each other straight off the Corsair's bow. They were planning on criss crossing in front of the massive vessel before beginning to circle their seemingly disabled target, like a pair of sharks preparing to go in for the kill. From there they'd chip away at the ship's already diminished shields and armor. Unfortunately for them, they never got that chance to enact this plan. The instant one of the destroyers crossed in front of the other the Corsair's ion canon fired, sending a shining blue beam hurtling towards the unsuspecting ships.
The lead ship was absolutely demolished by the blast, the massive beam bisecting the destroy along its beam. Causing the vessel to split into two nearly equal halves, almost as if it had been cut by a massive sword. Unfortunately, the second destroyer's wounds weren't nearly as debilitating. The beam did go shooting out the aft of the lead ship, but it only managed to graze the second ship. Carving a destructive path across the ship's bow, melting away the outer armor but only dealing superficial damage. The ship continued along its course, coming alongside the Corsair and laying into its starboard flank with every weapon it could bring to bear. Luckily, the battleship's own starboard armaments where able to return fire, damaging, but not destroying, the smaller ship. Then, the enemy cruiser finally began to overtake the Corsair, the daunting enemy vessel approaching form just above its prey, just above the Corsair's field of fire. Soon, the Galra ship released dozens of fighters, along with score upon score of small metallic pods, all of which impacted against the Corsair's hull lodging themselves in the thick armor plates.
"God damn it!" Shrike yelled, infuriated by the fact that her plan had failed to eliminate the second enemy destroyer as she'd originally intended. Now she had to find another way to take out that ship before it slowly drained the life out of them, inflicting dozens of small wounds until finally, the mighty ship succumbed to its injuries. And now they had to deal with that cruiser before it completely obliterated them.
"Shipmaster we have a problem!" Tar screamed, a look of horror plastered on his normally smiling face.
"I know lieutenant, I know, we have to take out that cruiser before…"
"It's not that, the Galra, they've launched boarding craft. We've got enemy sentries moving throughout the ship as we speak."
"Shit!" she yelled, losing her recently obtained composer "Ensign, sound the alarm! Have the crew ready to repel all boarders, send a security team to the hanger, med bay' and bridge now!"
"Aye Shipmaster," he responded as he smashed a large red button on his console causing a bright red light to flash as a siren began to blare. "security teams are on rou…" before he could finish his sentence, a massive explosion erupted in the back of the bridge causing thick black smoke to fill the room. Then all hell broke loose, purple blasts of energy poured into the room, sending the entire command staff diving for cover, everyone except for Shrike that is. She stayed right where she was, drawing her pistol before sending round after round through the smoke filled doorway, refusing to surrender. Then a purple cable came souring out of the smoke and wrapped itself around her wrist, luckily Lieutenant Tar rushed up and grabbed hold of her other hand, preventing her from being pulled through the mangled doorway towards the Galra sentries waiting beyond.
"You're not getting her you bloody bastards!" he screamed, using his pistol to gun down a pair of sentries as they rushed through the door towards the platform. Apparently, the Galra took this as a challenge because they soon focused all their fire on the young office. Unfortunately, this tactic worked, three rounds slammed Tar right in the shoulder, causing him to release his grip on his superior. Now with nothing to hold her back, Shrike was quickly dragged through the door, moments before a grenade came hurtling into the room.
"Everybody hit the deck." Was the last thing any of them heard before yet another explosion rocked the bridge, incapacitating the crew."
...
"Don't worry I'm on my way!" Pidge shouted as she floored the accelerator on her speeder bike, throwing cation to the wind as she raced through the dense wood, hell-bent on rescuing her companion from whatever deadly situation he'd gotten himself into. She'd just finished a conversation with Lord Morgan and needless to say, it hadn't ended very peacefully. The old noble had called to inform her that he'd located their prey and that he was about to engage the beast. Pidge, after following the beast's path of destruction for the better part of an hour, believed this to be an absolutely horrible idea and was about to share this opinion with the nobleman when the signal suddenly went dead. A clear cut sign that something had gone wrong and that Pidge now had to rescue the old noble from whatever trouble he'd gotten himself into.
Unfortunately, as the creature came into view, she began to doubt whether or not she'd really be able to do much against the towering behemoth. The monster stood well over ten feet tall, had short back legs and long arms which it used to balance, was also covered in armor, and had two massive tusks. If Pidge had to describe it, she would have said it looked like some unholy hell spawn of an armadillo, a gorilla, and an elephant, and worst of all, this hell spawn was about to crush Lord Morgan.
The old man was pinned under the remnants of his own speeder, desperately trying to free himself as the monster bared down on him. Unfortunately, he seemed unable too free himself, meaning Pidge had to find some way to distract the Bone Crusher, which meant she'd probably have to attack it. A plan she defiantly didn't feel confident about.
She aimed the nose of her bike right at the beast and squeezed the trigger, sending two bursts of blue laser fire hurtling towards her target, only to impact harmlessly off the beast's thick hide.
"What the hell?" she screamed as still charging head first at the monster, despite the seeming futility of her attack. "If the blasters don't work on this thing, then what was our pl…" before she could finish her sentence the Bone Crusher spun around and grabbed Pidge as she tried to race by on her speeder, which without its piolet went crashing into a tree and exploded. Panicking, the young paladin grabbed her Bayard and soon began slashing at the beast's arm, to little effect. It seemed that just like its back, its arms were also covered in think armor meaning she'd need a new plan of attack, and quick. Luckily, she managed to come up with one moments before the Bone Crusher was about to smash her head first into a rock. She noticed that its under belly appeared unarmored and thus vulnerable. Seizing her opportunity, she fired her grappling hook into the monster's belly and began to electrocute it, causing the beast to roar in pain. Realizing that the small green and white thing it had in its hand was the cause of its pain the Bone Crusher hurled the paladin into a nearby tree, the young girl's momentum dislodging the grappling hook from the beast's soft belly and thus ending his pain. Having seemingly dealt with that problem, the Bone Crusher turned its attention back towards its initial target, Lord Morgan, who was still pinned under his bike. Recognizing an easy meal, the beast slowly approached, preparing to finish off the elderly man. Unfortunately, he seemed to still have some fight left in him. As the creature came closer the trapped noblemen drew his pistol and began to fire at the beast's face. Most of his shots simply impacted off the beast's armor but one lucky blast hit the creature square in the eye, blinding him and once again causing him to roar in agony. Unfortunately, the creature's suffering had not yet ended. Suddenly dozens of tree branches began to fall on his head worsening its already intense pain. Franticly, searching for the cause of this offense, the creature soon spotted Pidge, standing twenty feet away, firing her grappling hook into the canopy and pulling down tree branch after tree branch smack dab onto his head. Infuriated that his lunch was putting up so much of a fight, the Bone Crusher charged head first at Pidge, preparing to either gore her with his tusks or smash her against the tree behind her. Unfortunately for him, his now diminished vision had prevented him from noticing that the tree Pidge was standing in front of was located at the precipice of a rather large crevice, roughly twenty feet wide and sixty feet deep. More than big enough to fit the massive beast, not that he'd survive the fall. So, blissfully unaware of the danger, the Bone Crusher continued to charged forward until he'd finally closed the distance and was about to crush the paladin. But before he could, she fired off her armorer's jet pack, leaped over his head and watched as he plowed right through the massive tree trunk and plummeted head first to his death, almost as if he was the villain in some old cartoon.
Having finished off her prey, the young paladin rushed over to her trapped companion and began to help him up.
"Lucky you invited my huh, you were almost Bone Crusher chow." Pidge joked attempting to lighten the mood. Based on the Lords expression, she'd failed. "What's the matter, you look like you've seen a Ghost?"
"I'm afraid a have some bad news young one, the attack was not the reason our call was cut short. While I was speaking with you I received a transmission from planetary defense command. Ticks before the Bone Crusher ambushed me, they told me Galra ships are attacking the orbital defenses. I'm afraid your friend Sun Vac and his crew are in terrible, terrible danger." His words hit Pidge like a hammer. She stood there for a few moments, her face frozen into a look of stunted confusion until finally, she spoke.
"I need to get up there, now."
...
The Corsair floated throw space, seemingly derelict, its guns having fallen silent several minutes' prior. Now it simply sat there, dead in space as the two Galra vessels loomed over it, almost as if they were holding the Corsair hostage. A description which, in realty, wasn't that far off. The two ships where simply waiting until there boarding craft could return home with their prize. Unfortunately, for them, they were going to be leaving early. The four destroyers sent to distract the orbital defenses had already been taken out and the Cruiser was in bad shape, once it was gone, all of the planet's defenses would soon be turned against them.
Suddenly, a blue beam impacted the destroyer just in front of its engines, causing the ship to erupt as its internal systems combusted, turning the whole ship into a singular, massive fire ball twice the size of the ship itself. That's when the beams origin point came into view, a massive white warship leading a formation of similarly colored destroyers. Realizing that the situation had quickly turned against it, the Cruiser quickly turned away from the Corsair, its countless boarding craft rushing to return to their mothership before it frantically jumped to hyper speed and escaped. As this was going on, a small squad of Lincar soldier was moving through the Corsair's interior, seemingly unaware of the exodus their enemies were undertaking.
After wandering through the vast corridors of the massive capital ship for a few minutes the group reached their destination, the ship's medical bay. There, two of the soldiers quickly began to pry open the scorched double doors blocking their entrance to vital room. As they did this, the other three members of their squad leveled their rifles and prepared to open fire at whatever was waiting for them on the other side of the door. Once it was open however, all they could do was stare in stunted amazement.
The remnants of four destroyed Galra sentries were scattered about, the walls were covered in blaster marks, and a dead Galra soldier was lying on the floor in a heap, blood still flowing from his neck. And standing over him, breathing heavily, wearing a blood-soaked medical smock and grasping a knife, was their commanding officer, Sun Vac. The young Shipmaster was the only person still standing, the med bays staff had all either taken cover or been wounded in whatever horrible maelstrom had resulted in the scene before them. Slowly, Sun looked up from his victim, his eyes filled with an icy cruelness more befitting an animal than a sentient creature. Then he spoke, his voice little more than a whisper and yet, each word sent a chill running down the spines of his men.
"What the hell, did they do to my ship?"
