"What happened to the other guys?" Jon asked.
Thayla responded over the ship's comlink, "The Sith Lord running this machine got into their minds. Darson and Mel are fine, just tied up."
"What about the other ARC-99's?"
She had almost forgotten about them. "I don't know. I should have gone looking for them."
"It's not your fault. This Sith Lord knows we're onto them and it knows we're close. I can feel it. That's what we need to focus on."
Jon took the lead, his orange fighter cutting through the yellow haze. The refueling ship, with its arsenal of jerry-rigged guns followed close behind. Thayla was surprised to see that D0-1T was an expert pilot, or at least better than Jon's insults had made her believe.
"It just swerved to the right, about thirty degrees," she told both pilots.
As soon as he finished the maneuver Jon could suddenly feel it as strongly as Thayla could. "It's very afraid. Dolt, lock onto me and stay close."
The droid beeped a quick reply.
"I know what I'm doing, droid. Just follow me."
Jon swerved once again, before Thayla could point out its new direction.
"What the hell is going on?"
She turned back to Darson and Mel, who seemed to be coming to their senses.
Thayla ran to the ship's captain and placed a hand on his forehead. She untied him only once she was sure that the last tendrils of the dark side had ebbed away.
"This space station did something to your mind, but it will be over soon. Whatever is holding this station together, Jon has it in his sights."
Darson returned to his seat as Thayla started to untie Mel.
"Everything looks operational."
His co-pilot sat beside him and took a quick look at the plethora of information on their screens, which all looked like gibberish to Thayla. "I don't see anything, either."
"We've gone way off course though. What exactly…"
His words trailed into nothingness when it finally appeared, the golden ship with bright bat wings that burned like fire as it flew.
It reeked of death, fear and the dark side of the force. Darson may not have been able to feel those, but he could certainly tell that it was important when the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end.
"I'm priming the turbolasers."
A sudden jolt rocked the entire ship.
"Setting deflector shields to double strength on the rear," Mel called out, before anyone else had even realized what was happening. "They finally came for us."
"I'll take care of them."
"No, stay on that forward ship," the captain called out. "They're barely making a dent and you're too inexperienced to dogfight."
Jon stayed where he was, occasionally taking a shot with the cannons mounted on his ARC-99, but the golden vessel was too far away to land a clean hit.
"Did we just fire something?" Mel asked.
"No. Why?"
"Two of the fighters following us broke apart."
Darson looked at the scanners, but quickly turned away. "Focus on getting those guns trained. The turbolasers should only need another minute, even with it swerving like that."
"Yes, sir."
Thayla once again felt rather useless, but instead of huddling in her seat she decided to close her eyes and reach out to the craft following closely behind them.
She quickly found the minds of the pilots, but they were completely impenetrable. All she could feel inside of them was blind rage toward the so-called heroes in the ship before them.
"I'm almost there."
Jon let loose another burst of fire that clipped the wings of the ship, sending it spiralling. All three fighters following them spontaneously disintegrated and the entirety of the Gangrene moaned.
Hunks of metal and assorted debris began to fly past their windshield, not guided by anything, but simply careening off in various directions.
"I've got you!"
This time Jon simply held down the trigger, firing everything he had straight ahead at the mysterious craft.
Another great moan rocked the entire space station as one entire wing was blasted off and the central orb was singed.
"Jon, move!" Darson screamed.
The orange craft swerved and in a single shot the ship's high-powered turbolasers blasted the golden vessel into atoms.
The nerve center of the Blood Battalion, the city of impounded ships and haphazard structures surrounding it, was only hit by one foreign object on the day of the invasion.
The meteorite dropped from the Gangrene and struck the open square at the city center, beside the upturned Mon Calamari cruiser wrapped in crystal.
The few troopers who remained in the city ran to investigate, finding a thick layer of dust kicked up into the air, piles of black metal strewn across the square and a dark figure looming amongst the remains.
It moved with purpose toward the crystal mine, still wrapped in its dark cloak. Bright yellow light still leaked from the vertical slit in its hood, bathing the surrounding troopers in both its luminescence and a deep feeling of unease.
"If only…" it whispered, still moving quickly across the square. "I am so close. Perhaps I can-"
Suddenly, the figure's back arched and a noise unlike anything they had heard before erupted from its frame. It was a mixture of mechanical wailing and a forceful scream that came from every direction at once.
Even the troopers who remained on their feet felt blood seep from their ears and underneath their helmets.
However, the wailing subsided with a dense clang, as the mechanical form unceremoniously collapsed to the ground.
Horror swept among the men and women in the square. Some let out wails of their own, as the sense of purpose and drive that had wormed into their minds was violently ripped out. Others could only stare blankly, having had so much of themselves hollowed out that there was hardly anything left behind. Ten of them simply dropped dead, surrounding the robed figure at the center of the square.
A smaller margin felt the loss deep inside of themselves, but remained in control. Unfortunately for them, all they could do was look upward in shock and grief, as everything came apart.