Command Bridge, Imperial I-class SD Insertion, Asteroid Belt

"She's handling just fine Captain." Bridge Commander Volt reported from the helm. He ran his hands over the new controls that had been reinstalled, and hoped he never saw the old ones again. "The new nav computer is working out just as fine as the old one did." The best thing about the new equipment, was that there wasn't a trace of the sabotaging Mauler Virus he had implanted in the old one.

"Don't forget the old one dumped us here in the middle of unknown space and then blew itself up. Come around three five five degrees and avoid that larger rock up ahead." Captain Halser ordered from his place by the main viewport. He stood with his arms crossed behind him gazing out of the forward viewport, issuing occasional orders over his shoulder. The ISB spy was amazed at how the elderly Naval Officer spotted incoming asteroids with his naked eyes.

"Roger that, turning to three five five." Volt responded. It had been a frustrating week for the crew. They had to wait for repairs to be completed on the Insertion while they watched their sister starships the Flood and the Slash go through their own shake down cruises. The ISB man had felt impotent as he had watched the progress of the flagships of Moff Kuat and Moff Seco go through their paces. They would have had to wait on Culter's Tector-class star destroyer the Trapped, but the Moff had been gracious enough to let them back into the rotation ahead of them. As Major Eritech of the ISB he had heard the Moff had other things on his mind besides starship operations. An odd trait for a Moff in command of a sector fleet to have, he thought.

"We have a likely candidate at two o'clock high Captain. Registering it at three meters with a speed of 634 kilometers an hour." A subspace radarman reported from the crewpit.

"Full power to starboard deflector shields." Halser turned and yelled into the crew pit. "Where's it going to strike?"

"Two hundred meters in front of the Turret Aurek on starboard hull." Volt answered, "ETA fifteen seconds."

The crew was silent as they waited for the impact, and Volt stepped alongside the Captain to get a better view of it himself. The asteroid and the Insertion were traveling towards each other too fast for him to pick out the rock's approach, when suddenly there was a splattering of debris on the right side of the ship. Large concentric green circles spread out from the point of impact as the shields held. More of them blossomed in front of the Command Bridge as the debris was swept over the hull and crashed into the superstructure of the star destroyer, before being left in the wake of the Insertion.

"Status report." Halser bellowed again.

"Starboard shield at sixty five percent and climbing." A technician from the pit reported.

"No known hull impact Sir." The deck officer added. "Starboard shield should be back to one hundred percent in two point five minutes."

"Excellent. Well done crew." Captain Halser turned and congratulated his men. "That should do for a deflector shield test." He turned to Eritech, "For the rest of our trip let's avoid anymore collisions like that. I don't want to think about what would happen if we hit anything bigger than that."

"I agree Sir. I must say, I'd rather be ramming rebel fighters than lifeless asteroids." He fought down the bile in his thoat as he thought of what he'd rather be doing to his traitorous Captain as well.

"As would I. Have you come across these mysterious rebels the Emperor keeps yammering about?" Halser leaned against the viewport and kept his voice low so their conversation wouldn't be shared with the rest of the crew. Eritech took everything Palpatine said as law, and couldn't believe someone could believe that Palpatine 'yammered'. His spy training kicked in, and he immersed himself in the character of Bridge Commander Volt.

"Not yet Captain, but if the Emperor says they're a threat I'm apt to believe him. I mean look how much damage the Jedi did at the end of the Clone War." Eritech thought this was as good a time as any to further feel out where his captain's sympathies lay.

"Yes I served with a few of them during the war. I never did see the revolution that everyone says they were planning. I thought a couple of them were rather honorable men and women." Eritech wanted to pull out his sidearm and place a blast right between the traitor's eyes. By the Emperor he wished it wasn't empty of tibana.

"That just goes to show you never can tell. That's why we must stay ever vigilant." Eritech quoted doctrine he had learned at the secret training center on Imperial Center. "I bet when they figure out what happened during the big jump they'll trace it back to some sort of rebel cell within the fleet."

"Actually I was just thinking about that, when we got our orders to take the Insertion to the other side of the belt to do some recon, we also received notice that we're to turn over the remains of our old nav computer to Fleet Intelligence aboard the Quill." The captain's eyes narrowed, as if he was studying Volt's reactions.

Eritech thought his heart stopped for a second, but his training as a spy kept him from revealing anything to the captain. "I think most of it went into the trash compacters Sir, but I'm sure we can get some men in there to retrieve it. I'll see to it myself."

"Actually Major Whirl in Starship Supply has already gotten most of it. I ordered him into the garbage this morning. He's got some troopers guarding it in an undisclosed location somewhere onboard. I don't even know where he's got it stashed away, but those were the orders from Commander Yutu on the Quill."

"The new Chief of Intelligence? I haven't got to work with him yet." Eritech tried to look for an opening.

"Neither have I, but I hear Tarkin trusted him explicably, and Yos seems to be fond of him. So I guess we'll just have to get used to the man's methods. There's probably nothing to worry about. I heard there were several starships that suffered the same type of damage as us when we came out of the big jump." Eritech hoped that was true. Any chance to throw intelligence off of his trial till he was able to report to the ISB, he would gladly cling to.

"Captain we are exiting the belt." The helmsman reported. Volt could see the debris ahead clearing up. The local sun was almost twice as bright as it had been when they had departed the fifth planet's orbit, and he wondered when the opaqueness of the viewport would start to dim to protect the crew's eyes from being damaged. A glimmering red planet shined like a precious gem in the distance.

Eritech checked the helm himself. "We should be free of the asteroid belt in eight minutes at present speed, Captain." He informed Halser.

"Good, ready the two TIE/rc starfighters for launch. I want to get them underway as soon as possible." The captain walked over to the port crewpit, until he was standing over the crewman from Flight Control to ensure that his orders we're being carried out. When he was satisfied he turned and walked back over to where Volt was standing.

"I don't envy those two pilots." Eritech suggested. It was a twelve hour trip to get to their destination, followed by a planned five hour recon, and then another twelve hours back to the Insertion. The star destroyer couldn't even help them out and close the distance any because of fuel concerns that were still haunting the fleet. As it was they barely had enough to return to Tarkin's Fist and still keep their reactors running. Fleet Admiral Yos had promised them first in line at the Carbon when they returned.

"Nor do I, almost thirty hours without a refresher. That's got to be rough." Halser agreed. Volt remembered the man came from fleet operations and had never been a pilot himself. "At least we gave them plenty of stim sticks and MPETs to chow on during their trip. I guess they'll have some way of dealing with other issues as they arise." The warship's Captain pondered. Volt had heard about what it was the recon pilots did in case of emergency during long flights, but he didn't think it polite to bring it up to a superior.

They passed the short interval discussing the mission at hand. Evidently over a dozen starship signal interception stations had begun to pick up small short-wave transmissions from the fourth planet in the system just as the Insertion had started her shakedown cruise. As the closest ship to the new find the star destroyer had been ordered by the Fleet Admiral to take a closer look. Volt wished the two recon TIEs were also full up on blaster gas in case they did run into any of this strange group of beings that inhabited this system. If they were indeed unfamiliar with the Empire they would get a quick education in who was the true power in the galaxy.

"TIE/rc Eopie one and Eopie two are go for launch." Flight Control reported.

"Proceed." Halser responded as the last of the asteroids passed behind the Insertion.

Volt and Halser watched as the two starfighters shot out from beneath the hull and raced ahead. Eritech thought it must have been less than a minute before they were too distant to pick out with the naked eye, but he could still follow their progress on the map reader Holoprojector on the bridge. It changed several times to switch between an overview of the system and the various positions of ships in the fleet. The Insertion was easy to pick out due to its separation from the rest of Tarkin's Fist still in orbit around the gaseous fifth planet of the system.

Twenty minutes later Bridge Commander Volt was relieved, and excused himself from the Command Bridge. As Major Eritech he spent most of his time off, searching every inch of the massive warship looking for wherever the crafty supply officer had stowed away the remains of the ruined nav computer, but to no avail. Dejected and exhausted he reported to duty the next morning gloomier than ever.

"Good morning Commander." The deck officer greeted him with a steaming cup of caf. Halser was absent, but he didn't usually come onto the bridge until later in the working day, as he liked to check with different stations throughout the starship before starting his command every day. Volt was sure the superior officer was somewhere checking with a certain officer who had eluded Volt for the entire overnight shift.

"Anything to report this morning?" Volt asked.

"The two TIE/rc fighters are due back in eight hours Sir. They had a pretty busy time of it a few hours ago." The other man informed him.

"Oh yeah. Did they find out anything interesting?" Volt asked, still trying to wake up from the hour nap that had been all he had been able to manage. Maybe he'll get a hold of stim sticks later in his shift, he thought.

"Yes Sir. It seems the enemy has some kind of outpost on the fourth planet."

North Martian Polar Orbit, Orion II-class Shuttle Enterprise, Unknown Space

The Shuttle Commander had been going into space for NASA for almost twenty years, and had been flying Raptors for the Navy for over twenty years before that, but he had never been plagued with as many problems as he had been for the past month.

His only companions aboard the giant long-range shuttle were his two other astronauts, the payload specialist and his stressed out communication expert. They had been the support element for the fourth and so far the longest Martian landing in human history. The three missions before them had been cake-walks, but two days after this mission had landed four other astronauts on the surface, as well as the components for a large inflatable shelters, greenhouses, and construction equipment, the commo has completely crapped out on them.

He floated over to the shuttle's radio gear and put his hand on the shoulder of the young woman manning the commo station. "Getting anything today?" he asked hopefully.

"It's frustratingly sporadic, just like every day for the past month. I've already done another diagnostic test and the computer keeps saying it's the same outside interference."

"What's Houston saying?"

"They're still not scrubbing the remainder of the mission. I think we've spent too much dinero on getting that runway built down there for us to turn back now. We did get a clear channel with them for about forty five minutes while you were sleeping, and that was about it. Spent the entire time uploading data back to them." She explained. "I got a hold of Martinez and the boys on the ground. They're doing ok. She still thinks we're getting interference from the sun."

"That would mean she and her guys down there would be getting major doses of radiation though and we haven't picked up any of that in over three months." They both floated at the station silently searching for new angles to the same problem when the Shuttle Commander swore he felt his shuttle shudder a little.

'What was that?" The communication expert asked worriedly. He hoped it wasn't something with the engines as he didn't want to undergo a spacewalk without Houston's guidance.

"Hey Boss, get up here you need to see this." The payload specialist's voice came across the intercom, and the two of them rushed towards the crew cockpit area of the shuttle. When they entered the other crew member had his face pressed against the window, trying to get a view of something that was off to the left of the shuttle.

"They're coming back around." He informed them.

"What are?" The Shuttle Commander barely had time to ask when two 'H' shaped craft shot past the window before banking to the right to make another pass. "What the heck are those things? Are they hostile?"

"I can't tell. They haven't shot at us, and they're barely showing up on the FOD radar." The payload specialist responded.

"They look like bow-ties." The female astronaut observed. One of the alein craft came right back at the shuttle and seemed to be slowing down. The other UFO flew to a superior position and was obviously having a look over the shuttle, while the first one slowed its speed to match the Enterprise, until both craft were virtually nose-to-nose.

The shuttle commander squinted and tried to get as good a look as he could. He was staring at a black suited alien with huge black eyes and hoses coming out of its face. It was a sight that would stay with him for the rest of his life, which only seemed to be a only few seconds longer if they're hostile, he thought. The creature shockingly seemed to perform the German salute from World War II.

There was a sudden pop and the radio in the shuttle emitted a cloud of smoke. "I think they're trying to communicate." The female member of their crew stated. "Their radio just fried ours."

"Get it back up!" he yelled. He turned back to the window and the two craft were gone.

"Over there." The other crewmember pointed at the pair as they entered the Martian atmosphere heading in the direction of the Surface Lander team on the surface. He wished he could have chased after them, but the two craft were capable of speeds faster than anything he had ever seen. "What do you think just happened Colonel?"

"I think we just got felt up a bit."