Strange World • New World by TruView
FanFiction Author's Note: A nearly publicized guilty verdict at a closed-circuit hearing before a Coruscanti Tribunal separated them years ago, but an imminent threat to the armistice between the Republic-Empire, now permanently under the dominion of a lifetime appointed Chancellor Palpatine, and the RWT Alliance of the outer rim territories will bring them back together again–not as allies, but as sworn enemies. From Master and Commander to Sith Lord and Gray Jedi, two of the galaxy's most potent beings come into the fullness of their true selves. Regardless of whoever wins in this duel of the fates, neither side will remain the same.
Star Wars II — Last Rites
[Alliance operatives intercept a Republic Heavy cruiser on a covert first strike mission]
A series of explosions took him by surprise knocking him unconscious for what felt like only seconds. However, judging by his surroundings coming to, it was obvious that much more time had elapsed. Random patches of fire could be seen all around and the ventilation system was having difficulty putting most of them out. Parts of the ceiling had begun to crumble and break off along stress fractures that were snaking their way from one end of the engineering compartment–where he was, in the bowels of the ship–to the other. As if that wasn't bad enough, the ground beneath him was starting to give. He tried to rise but found that he could not; a collapsed overhead beam pinned him to the floor. His throbbing headache and blurred vision made his forte of strategic improvisation an absolute nightmare. Aside from the noxious fumes threatening his lungs with smoke inhalation, the shock of other physical injuries had already begun to prime his body to go into complete shutdown mode offering his anxious mind the sweet surrender of sleep. Severely wounded, struggling for every breathe, and unable to free himself, Hunter could do little more than succumb to its embrace. Try as he might, he simply could not muster up the strength to answer the feral voice calling his name on the other side of the radio transceiver in his ear. For a very brief moment he pushed back with everything he had. Losing consciousness, his sharp tired eyes closed involuntarily.
"-come on you guys! This is Omega. Respond! Anybody! Hunter! Wrecker! Echo, come in!" Too restless and eager for a response that did not come, she stood up from the pilot's chair leaning over the horizontally inclined dashboard, and played with the controls one last time. "I can't seem to pull up an image at all. That's it!" Resolved, she started for the exit but a hand reached out for her clutching onto her forearm.
"Omega, where are you going?" Asked Tech already on his feet. She turned abruptly standing an inch taller than he and spoke in earnest.
"I can't just sit around and do nothing. They're in trouble Tech. You heard the explosions and felt the tremors through the hull. We didn't account for these setbacks. Something else is going on." She turned and tried again but Tech wouldn't release her.
"Wait!" He insisted. "We aren't just any soldiers, Omega. You know that. We're 99, navigating setbacks is what we do. Besides, you heard the sergeant, he specifically wanted you to stay here on the Osprey along with me to help coordinate their efforts and to be their eyes and ears."
"That's no longer possible. The cameras are down and so are COMS. We have no idea what their situation is… whether they're alive or... not."
"Exactly!" Tech broke in, "So going in completely uninformed with no intelligence could make everything worse by giving away our location and compromising this mission entirely. Omega, let me show you something." He finally let her go and refocused his attention on one of the main consoles. Omega sighed and reluctantly took a seat next to him. Lindsy, the tooka, immediately jumped in her lap in a clever effort to keep her there and out of harm's way. Omega began to pet and rub the feline out of habit.
"Okay so, whadduya got?" She said spying a half smile on his partially visible face. Tech's fingers danced over the controls of the Osprey with amazing deftness. He had only been aboard their vessel for less than a day and already he was just as proficient as she was.
"The Osprey's CPU is impressive to say the least. By intuition apparently, it choose to save all the camera footage going back for about an hour. Were you aware of that?"
"No." There was genuine surprise in her voice. "I didn't program it to do that–not that I could program it to do that. You said something about intuition? So the ship itself thought we might need to review the video footage at some point and made a judgment call...on its own? Is the Osprey an AI?"
"All devices are a type of Artificial Intelligence, meaning all inorganic material that can fulfill a purpose; that would be anything from ancient counting devices made of wood to sophisticated electrical equipment; as long as they can be made to perform a set function, they are said to be intelligent or smart. I think the real question is: Whether or not the Osprey is self-aware? And the technical answer to that would be: No, of course not. However, a more precise answer would be: Not yet! The Corellian manufactures took many liberties in bringing your vessel dangerously close to that threshold, making her processing units permanently extensible etc., but I digress. These are the last video clips leading up to where there were none."
A spotty image of Sergeant Hunter going about furtively in the engineering section attaching timed explosives to crucial areas throughout the interior came and went. It's display of static lines was overbearing at times but did not totally obscure the real video feed they were receiving vs the recycled version that was going into the servers of the Republic.
"Here it is." Prompted the technical genius. Several explosions occurred in rapid succession but initiating from places other than where Hunter planted his timed switches. Tech's index finger pointed this out pausing the moving imagines long enough for Omega not to miss a thing.
"But that would mean that the hidden explosives are still set to go off."
"Yes, in about another 27 min… No, 26 minutes now."
"So what caused the explosions then?"
"Not sure. But just before the video goes out, this piece right here… See it? That slab of granite comes down right on top of him." Omega gasped.
"He could be trapped. I have to go!"
"Not so fast." He warned. "Although the cameras go dark, there is still movement toward his location."
"How can you tell?" Omega added leaning into the screen. She examined the last still image with the tenacity of a noir detective on a cold case in the undercities of Coruscant.
"Well, the heavy cruiser–very much like this ship–is state of the art. Much of the ground is equipped with a pressure sensitive mesh just beneath the flooring."
"It's all still intact, then?"
"No, huge portions of the floor are littered with fallen debris from the ceiling. And fires everywhere are shorting out the technology. However, we can still pull up a holographic image extrapolation based on the very last video clips and follow what pressure pads remain. We'll need your robot friend for that. AZI?!"
The droid appeared almost instantly from around the corner. "Oh Hello Tech, hello again Omega."
"Hello again yourself AZI." Omega suppressed a giggle.
"Patch into the Osprey and generate a holographic display of this two-dimensional image." Tech instructed while modifying code to facilitate its upload and integration. "Excellent. Now, I need you to extrapolate a real time image from that still to the present."
AZI had no problems in producing very smooth and easily interpolated visuals.
"Whoa," Omega's mouth widened, "is that accurate? So communications are back up then?"
"No, actually. But, various sensors throughout the hull are still active apparently. You see these two impressions moving toward Engineering?"
"-That's gotta be Echo and Wrecker!"
"That would be my guess too. We can't get a prefect read because of the damage caused by the fires but based on the amount of weight and the steady advance toward the sarge, I'd say so."
"They must've decided to go in after him when he failed to respond. Initially, they were supposed to rendezvous up in navigation where echo was suppose to work his magic hacking into flight systems to glean any worthy intelligence."
"Well, yeah. Close enough. Wrecker was suppose to create a suitable distraction while Hunter and Echo were supposed to extract Republic intelligence and continue planting explosives."
AZI chimmed in. "This is as far as I can extrapolate." It's optical beams pausing the 3D display.
"Why? Have they stopped moving or…" Asked Omega.
"The sensor pads are too heavily damaged for me to make any reliable estimations." The robot informed. The image its lens produced grew more translucent until it vanished altogether.
"Spotty sensor pads." Tech said to no one in particular while rubbing his chin thoughtfully.
"Any ideas?" The younger woman prodded.
"Not really. Just ruminating is all. The good thing is that at least those two are on the move."
"And in the right direction." She added. "How much time before the rest of the explosives go off?"
Tech reviewed the console,"21 minutes and counting."
AZI's metallic head quickly swiveled a full 360º twice in alarm.
"Whoa. Is everything okay with your robot?" Tech asked looking at Omega and then back at AZI.
"AZI, are you okay?" She placed a comforting hand on one of the robot's chrome plated shoulders.
"I am operating within acceptable parameters but we've just gotten a visitor or maybe we've just become aware of their presence."
"What do you mean?" Tech pressed.
"A ship has just landed in the hangar bay." AZI's optical nodes lit up again focusing on the ground.
"Is it one of ours? And how come we got no warning that it was coming out of warp?" She regarded Tech after pondering out loud and he mirrored her concern.
Meanwhile, AZI via the Osprey's uplink to the Republic Heavy Cruiser was able to harvest notable facts and figures about their unknown visitor. After about two minutes, it created a partial holographic blue image of a specialized twin-cabin TIE fighter.
"Tech, what is it?" Omega asked.
"That's Skywalker's personal transport. I'd recognize that thing anywhere. It's possible that Skywalker's TIE fighter has been outfitted with special stealth technology for which even we have not yet designed counter measures. You know the more that I think of it, the more I believe it was, he, who fired on the heavy cruiser from outside causing those random explosions."
"But why would he do that to his own ship?"
"Maybe because he knew, by way of the Force–I'm assuming, that it had already been compromised by 99, by us! It's the only thing that fits. There is just one thing I can't figure out?" Tech looked over at Omega with a raised eyebrow. And to his surprise, Omega answered correctly.
"Why did he land and what is he after?"
At very high decibels, white noise rang out, breaking the immense quiet that had been the result of this dire revelation. But the voice that immediately followed did much to relieve the weary spirits of those who heard it.
"He's here for me." Ahsoka's unique sounding soprano lifted buoyantly up into the air so melodious and yet full of fire.
"Ahsoka? Ahsoka! It's Ahsoka!" Omega was beaming, "Where are you?"
"Just coming out of warp. I'll be pulling into the hangar of that cruiser short of five minutes."
"Ahsoka, you mustn't. Hunter and the others have already set explosives. That ship will be atomized to stardust in just under 20 minutes. There's no time."
"Then radio our friends and tell them you'll pick them up in Navigation. Have the Osprey detach from the belly of the cruiser and go, now!"
"We can't! COMs are down." Tech informed.
"Which is why I'm landing in the hangar bay." She insisted.
"We don't know where they are Ahsoka!"
"Don't worry I can sense them, all three." She added good-naturedly. "They're headed up to Navigation and will try and return to the hangar once Echo finishes pilfering their data banks. You must find a way to communicate with them and prevent them from returning to the hangar. If they run into Anakin, he will kill them."
"What about you?" Omega asked in all sincerity.
"I'll have to stop Anakin." Her ship had just touched down in the hangar.
"You're in no condition to take on Skywalker alone." A worried expression unfixed Omega's thin lips. "You'll have to face him, outmaneuver him, and be off that ship in less than 18 minutes."
"So may the Force be with me." She sounded facetiously cheerful.
Omega was only getting audio but she knew Ahsoka was all smiles. That woman was an older sister to her and at times, very much like a mother. Omega did not know if she'd be able to stomach her loss if ever something did go wrong.
"Very well," Omega ultimately conceded, "We'll swing around front and pick up the boys. Tech will help me work out the logistics of that gambit. Meanwhile, you two stay alive. We'll be close by in case you need us. So, keep your radio handy. Omega out!"
"Good girl." Ahsoka whispered into a radio that was no longer transmitting. She exited the space cutter and the moment her foot connected with the floor, Skywalker instantly felt her presence in the Force.. located one whole level below where he was. The knocking sound his boots made as he leisurely strode down the corridor came to silence while he quietly considered his options.
Whatever these ill-fated commandos were hoping to achieve was of no consequence because he was going to kill them and undo everything. Even if they did manage to slip past him somehow, he had already destroyed their vessel in the hangar. There was no escape for them. Ahsoka on the other hand, was just as much of a wild card as he was, more perhaps–given that he had once been her master.
What I know, she knows.
He took a deep breathe and continued on reluctantly before coming to another complete stop. He made an about face and started back for the hangar.
I should deal with her first. He realized.
[Back In the Cruiser Hangar Bay]
Anakin stepped through the wide doors and found himself in utter blackness with only the emergency light overhead washing his features in red.
"Whoa. This is dark Ahsoka… even for a gray Jedi. You really have changed."
"So have you, Skywalker." Her voice was rich like liquid silk stirring notions of nostalgia. Only Togrutan females could produce that tonal quality, so distinct.
"I am a Sith Lord now." He took another step into the hangar and the doors closed shut behind him.
He could hear something happening to the controls, causing sparks to fly.
Ahsoka! He thought.
"So, what do I call ya?" That silky soprano voice came across too casually for his liking.
"Whatever you have to say Ahsoka, say it now, because you will not be leaving this ship alive." Anakin expanded his use of the Force to maximum reaching out into the blackness but could not sense her whereabouts at all. A very impressive use of the Force, he admitted. Lighting up his crimson-colored saber and holding it high enough to illuminate as much of the area as possible, he scanned the interior but could see nothing other than the random ships that occupied the bay. Confidently continuing his search, he took a few cautious steps forward waving the saber from here to there. She repeated the question again, except this time, he heard her voice in his mind. In response, Anakin used the Force to amplify his own basso voice audibly to a menacing whisper that could also be heard from within.
"You may address me as, Lord Vader."