This story is based on the fact that the Yuuzhan Vong conquer the Star Wars
galaxy, but not every singly corner of it. While we do not know the ending
of the NJO, I doubt very much that this is what it will be. It takes place
100 years after the end of the NJO series. That said...
Legal Disclaimers: I do not own any of the characters mention in this story that have originally been created by the authors employed under the publishing service of Del Rey, Bantam, or any of the original characters created by George Lucas himself and his crew. All my original characters are copyright, and if you ever wish to use them in the future, please ask me first.
For Reference:
After the Yuuzhan Vong decimate all of the Galactic Federation of Free Alliance's military fleets, the Hapes Cluster's military, the Imperial Remnant's military, and the Chiss military, it proceeded to enslave most of the known galaxy. Over a period of a hundred years, most of the planets in the GFFA are transformed into the ideals of the Yuuzhan Vong. There is no trace of machinery, and everything is made of biological elements.
Satisfied with the conquering of their promised galaxy, the Yuuzhan Vong set up their government. While the Overlord remains the dictator of the galaxy, each system has it's own dictator, who answers to the Overlord himself. On a side note, the structure or Yuuzhan Vong society is that the Warrior Caste is ranked at the top (and you most be a warrior to hold governmental office), with the Intendant Caste right below it, then the Shaper Caste, followed by the Worker Caste (which is made of all the Yuuzhan Vong civilians who are not part of any of the above or below), and finally, at the bottom of the sociological food-chain: the Shamed Ones.
During the reign of Overlord Shimrra, all the transformation of the planets took place. Thereafter, each system was inhabited, according to the structure of the castes, creches, and who held favour with who. While some divisions of the priests were able to control whole sectors, other were only allowed a planet or two of their own. This caused internal rivalry between the priests, and this dispute still has not been resolved. The same applies to the Intendant and Shaper castes.
As for the infidel slaves, they have been assimilated in Yuuzhan Vong society, although they have a lesser status than the Shamed Ones. They can never hold their own job; they must always be working for a Yuuzhan Vong. They also have no rights, and the courts and the Yuuzhan Vong Gods look down upon them with scorn. The only reason the Yuuzhan Vong tolerate them is because they are a good work force, which enables the Yuuzhan Vong to colonize more newly discovered planets, and only them to have more recreational time while the infidel slaves do their dirty work.
As for the different infidel species, many more have been added to the list. While marred with despair, the infidels of the galaxy tended to start reproducing with others that were not of their own species. This, coupled with the different climate conditions taking places on numerous worlds, caused new species to arise. Some of them are mutations, adapted better to the new climates, others are new organisms produced, cause by the changing environment on the millions of planets. Not all are sentient, however.
Unfortunately, the Jedi are no more, or as far as the Yuuzhan Vong know. Right after the conquest of the promised galaxy, the Overlorrd Shimrra held a grand ceremony located on the galaxy's capital, Yuuzan'tar, where all the Jedi were sacrificed; the climax of the ceremony was the dual sacrifice of the Solo twins. However, Master Luke Skywalker and his wife were smart enough to hide their only son, Ben Skywalker, with a special task force group that was sent away to the edges of the galaxy to hide from the Yuuzhan Vong.
There were several of these task forces. Sent in all different directions towards the ends of the galaxy, their objectives were to maintain the original traditions of the galaxy before it came under Yuuzhan Vong control. Throughout the generations, they passed down the knowledge of the galaxy's history beforehand to the children of the future. However, with each passing generation, the fear of being discovered by roaming Yuuzhan Vong scouts has increased, causing each task force to start building its own military, albeit a small one. Luckily for them, they had been equipped at the beginning with cloaking devices are sensor guards, so that Yuuzhan Vong ships wouldn't be able to detect them. But of course, there are other ways.
No task force knows where the other two are located in the galaxy. They have knowledge that there are others; but they just don't know where. However, one Jedi accompanied each task force, so that it had a guardian. But over the generations, these Jedi have not come into contact with one another, and therefore cannot sense where the other Jedi are. Each task force also knows this piece of information.
And with all this information, we now start our epic tale of a new hope for the future...
* * * * * * * *
Ruusan Skywalker trudged along the gassy sloped of his family estate. While many believed to be so lucky to be part of a family that owned so much land, he took a different view of the subject. For him, having to help out on a family farm and work in his uncle's mechanic shop half of the time really took the life out of him. Not literally, of course, but sometimes it felt as if his filled-to-the-seams agenda would be the end of him; he wouldn't be surprised if he died at a young age of a type of stress disorder. Although, being twenty years old, he supposed he had already passed that "young age".
As he opened the back door into his family's house, he immediately the sounds of his younger cousins playing in the playroom. While many families lived separate from each other, his family, which included his uncles, aunts and cousins, all lived together under one large, large roof. Smiling to himself, happy to hear that his cousins were content in their games, he made his way down the stairs into the lower level of the house, where his room was located. However, as he walked down the narrow hallways, he passed by his room and went to the refresher first to wash up and get ready for the night time meal.
Back in the family kitchen, with its open window and clean, sandstone walls, Ruusan's mother, Rahi, was busy putting the finishing touches to the dinner along with her two sisters-in law; she only had a brother, no sisters. Meanwhile, the men of the family had already seated themselves around the dining room table, eagerly awaiting the evening meal. Such was the occasion on every night, for these meals were a time for the family to be all together and share the pleasures of their day's events. In fact, by the time Ruusan had arrived in the dining room, in a clean tunic and pants, everyone was already seated at the large dining room table, which was able to seat twenty people, but only sixteen chair were placed there.
"What took you so long?" Rahi asked, scowling at her son. She never appreciated his lateness for dinner. Neither did her husband.
"You should know better, young man," he chided, giving his eldest child a stern look.
Ruusan shrugged his shoulder and sat down in his usual spot, which was right next to his younger sister; she was his one and only sibling, and they had always had a good relationship. She winked at him knowingly as he took his seat, and then ventured forward with a topic to start off the dinner discussion.
"So has anyone heard what Tekk did today?" she asked, knowing that no one hadn't. Immediately, the discussion began, and the dishes of hot food were passed around to eagerly awaiting recipients. Ruusan, who normally enjoyed the dinner talk, was particularly quiet this evening. For him, it had been a troubling day; he had just learned that his best friend, Mogue Fen, had joined the planet's small, but well-trained military.
Ruusan wasn't upset that his best friend had left him; it was quite the contrary. He was delighted that his friend had been able to do what he had dreamed of for years, except, that had been Ruusan's dream too. He wanted to learn to pilot a starfighter, become a flight officer and eventually make his way up the ranks. He wanted to soar through space, not be stuck on the ground like most of the planet's population. Therefore, he envied his friend, and was especially upset with his father for not letting him go along and join.
Ruusan's father, Kamus Skywalker-named after one of his grandfather's guardians, Kam Solusar-noticed his son's sullen face and inquired about it. "What's the krankana is wrong with you?"
Ruusan looked up sharply, having just been startled out of his silent reverie. It took his brain a few moments to register then question, and then formulate an answer. "Oh nothing," he lied, "I'm just tired."
Kamus, who was just as force-sensitive as his grandfather, as was his son, snorted at the obvious falsehood. "Why don't to tell me the truth?"
Ruusan looked down at his plate for a few quiet moments, then looked his father in the eye. "Fine. You want to know?"
"Yes, very much," his father answered, as if the tone in his son's voice hadn't disturbed him at all. But it had disturbed everyone else at the table, and they were now looking at the obvious confrontation that was about to happen between the father and the son.
Ruusan took in a deep breath, poked his food a bit with his fork, then said, "You're just rotten." He looked up again at his father, and exclaimed, "Why won't you let me go join?"
Now this rattled Kamus. In a baritone voice, he boomed, "Don't question my judgement, young man!"
"Well I will!" Ruusan yelled back. "It's not right-or fair! I'm just as good a pilot as anyone in this city-even better than most!"
Kamus pointed a shaking finger at his son. "It's too dangerous, and I won't let you go."
"Why?" Ruusan shouted back.
"Because it goes against everything the Jedi stand for!"
"The Jedi are dead!"
"No!" Kamus now shouted back, his face as red as the konyota beets that grew in one of their fields. "We are the remainder of the Jedi! We uphold the Jedi traditions!"
Ruusan shook his head at this. "That's where you're wrong," he said a bit more calmly. "The Jedi are there to protect those they've sworn to. If they Yuuzhan Vong find us and attack us, then we'll have to protect them. And the only is way is by joining the military."
Kamus, infuriated with his son, tightened his hands into fists, and pounded one on the table. It took some of the stress out of him, and he inhaled deeply to wash the rest of his anger away. He would not drop to the level of bickering.
"Son, by joining the military you are becoming the aggressor. Jedi are not aggressors; they only attack back after they have been attacked themselves," he explained, attempting to use the Force to soothe his son's own anger and resentment.
But Ruusan already had his mental wall up, stopping his father from bringing about any immediate emotional change. "By not joining the military, I'm not taking any steps towards defending my people, which is of the Dark Side itself. If-"
"Why do you even worry?" his father interrupted. "The Yuuzhan Vong are nowhere near to discovering Nalom IV! It's best you stay where you are and pass on your knowledge to the Force to your heirs, who might face the Vong threat in their time."
"The scouts that just came back had a close encounter with the Vong, Dad. I'd be very surprised if the Vong don't send another scout out to double- check the incident," Ruusand replied firmly, knowing that he was right.
Kamus just shook his head, knowing that no matter what logical argument he presented, his son would remain hot-headed and disagreeable for a while; it was his son's nature. Why me? he moaned silently to himself. Why did I get stuck with the impulsive and adventurous one? But he knew that complaining to the Force would do no good.
Riha, who had watched this exchange in silence, as had most of the family, then abruptly started the family dinner conversation again. Within five minutes, everyone had forgotten about the heated argument and was merrily chatting away. That was, all except Ruusan. Picking up a jacket on the way out the door, he ran down the driveway and made his way towards his uncle's garage.
Ruusan picked up the pace a bit as the road took a sharp turn downwards, heading further deeper into the valley in which the capital city of Nalom IV flourished. He inhaled and exhaled the rhythm of his breathing matching the landing footsteps as he accelerated into a jog, then a run. Whenever stress came crashing down on him, he found that any sort of exercise could calm him down. There was that, and the fact that running tended to get him faster to his destinations due to the fact his father rarely let him borrow the speedcar, or the speeder bike, a fact which continually annoyed and aggravated Ruusan.
Within twenty minutes the young Skywalker had made it into the edges of the city, where a small industrial and commercial section was located. Not too far north of it sat Nalom IV's military command headquarters, with its many facilities, hangars, landing pads and docks, storage warehouses, and few residential buildings spreading out from the command centre in each direction to form a radius of a mile.
Ruusan looked longingly towards the military section of the city before he flew down a short path to his uncle's garage. Knocking on the back entrance's door, he waited until Hay'il Gom, once of his uncle's employees, opened it for him. The near-human gave the young man a smile; Ruusan visited the garage almost everyday and therefore all the employees there knew him well.
"How's your uncle?" Hay'il asked cheerily, wiping some greased on his dirty, smudged uniform.
Ruusan shrugged indifferently. "Eating dinner with the family."
"Oh? And why aren't you?" questioned Hay'il as he let the young Skywalker brush past him into the dim hallways with impatience.
"I don't feel like it," was Ruusan's simple but firm response as his voice trailed off as he moved farther away from the back entrance.
When Ruusan came into the man bay where all the employees were working away at damaged vehicles and starships, he scanned the large, domed room for his friend Tekk. Sometimes his friend would come down around dinnertime to bring the evening meal to his father who worked at the Skywalker garage.
Seeing his friend leaning against a relatively old heater, relaxing and holding his father's dinner as the man continued to patch up a speeder bike, Ruusan made his way over. Catching his friend's eye before he reached the speeder bike, Ruusan grinned, and received the same reaction from Tekk before he gave him a pat on the back.
"Hey! I haven't seen you in a couple of days!" Tekk exclaimed with a wide grin. "Were you've been?"
Ruusan's eyes twinkled, and motioned for his friend to follow him out of Tekk's father's earshot. Tekk's father was acquaintances with Ruusan's father, and Ruusan didn't want to risk the escape of his secret.
"I've been flying some tests for the military," he whispered to his friend once they reached the other end of the bay.
"Oh? How did you do?" Tekk asked with obvious interest. He had known Ruusan since they were toddlers, and knew that although he wasn't great at flying, his friend was amazing in any cockpit.
Ruusan smiled. "Top scores."
"So they're going to let you in?"
Ruusan sighed. "Not yet. You know that anyone under twenty-one needs parental consent, and my old man...."
"Will never let you go," Tekk finished for him, shaking his head knowingly. "Boy, you're old man is tough. Can't he see how much you enjoy flying?"
Ruusan shifted his weight to his right leg, pondering the question; it was the same question he had been asking himself for months. "I guess not," was his lame response.
Tekk gave him a slap on the back, then said, "It'll be all right. At least Mogue got in."
Ruusan's eyes met Tekk's. "You heard about that already?"
"Yup. News travels fast among our friends."
Ruusan just shook his head with amusement, knowing his friends all too well.
"I say we head to the Pit and take back a few with the boys," Tekk suggested after a comfortable silence.
"Sure."
Tekk nodded, went over to give his father his dinner, then made his way with Ruusan deeper into the city a bit, to the location of a famous bar that attracted masses of the capital's young adults.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
At the Pit, Ruusan and Tekk met up with several of their friends, including Sari, a young woman of about Ruusan's age who he liked. Not only was she pretty, with her dirty blond hair and brown eyes, but she was a decent pilot and extremely mischievous, a personality which complimented Ruusan's. Naturally, they got along quite well.
When Mogue entered in a rush about half an hour later, a big cheer went up for the newly recruited starfighter pilot. Ignoring all the praise he was receiving, Mogue quickly made his way over to Ruusan, Tekk, and Sari, prepared with a great proposition.
"Hey guys," he said to them over ht round table filled with drinks, "Wanna come along while I play patrol guard?"
Ruusan's forehead creased. "Uh, I don't think we'd all be able to fit in a E-wing."
Mogue laguhed. "Naw, I meant you'd all get your own starfighters!"
"Wouldn't your superior officer have a problem with that?" Tekk pointed out.
"What he doesn't know won't hurt him," explained Mogue.
"Besides, its Fey'lya Day and all Bothans will be at home celebrating," added Sari with a mischievous smirk. Ruusan loved that smirk.
The fact was that in the Nalom system, especially on Nalom IV, the military was mostly made up of Bothans and other non-human species; many humans nowadays didn't have the quick reflexes the ancestors had. With the major holiday of the late Borsk Fey'lya, who was a role model to all Bothans and the epitome of Bothan culture, about half the military had taken a leave for a week or so. That meant that there was hardly anyone around the military's headquarters in the city, except for those on duty. And of course, if the trio of Mogue's friends pulled of a good charade, they would easily fit in and no one would find anything suspicious. It wasn't like any starfighter pilot of commanding officer who was overburdened with work was going to go out of their way to double-check every person entering the hangars.
Ruusan merely smiled at his friends and gave Mouge a thumbs-up.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
"Red, uh, four, I've got one on my tail!" shrieked Tekk with obvious delight as the four friends were staging a fake battle.
Sari was following Tekk wherever he went, relentlessly annoying his shields with false shots.
"Oh no!" moaned Ruusan with laughter evident in his voice, "I think I have to go EV!" He laughed once more as Mogue did a loop around his still starfighter. Then he grabbed the control stick a executed a perfect loop around and over Mogue's moving starfighter, without hitting or grazing anything.
"Oh my! I hope you don't get busted for this, Mogue!" exclaimed Sari, who was giggling incessantly.
"Me too!" added Mogue, who was now in convulsions of laughter.
The young adults found the situation to be all too hilarious. Then suddenly, a few red blips appeared on Tekk's screen. There were located on the edges of his sensor's range of array sweep. Nevertheless, he still found them unusual...and strangely suspicious.
"Uh, hey," Tekk called out over the comm unit, "does anyone else have red blips on the array?"
Mogue squinted at the screen then frowned with confusion. "Yeah, I do...but red blips indicate non-Nalom military vessels and starships."
Ruusan felt something sink in his stomach. "So what does that mean?"
"What do you think it means, nerf-head!" yelled Sari over the comm, now agitated by the sudden appearance of enemy blips.
Ruusan ignored her hostility and looked out at the empty space surrounding his starfighter, in the direction of the blips. Seeing nothing, he flew forwards, trying to get closer to the location of the unusual blips. But he still couldn't see anything.
"Guys, I'm going to check it out," he announced over the comm.
"No, wait!" exclaimed Mogue. "If you go out of range, that'll get headquarters attention!"
Ruusan was about to argue back, but he didn't need to. Suddenly, ships of unrecognisable sorts suddenly appeared all around him. Cloaking devices! Whoever was piloting these starships had used visual cloaking devices. But it was odd that their scanners had picked up on them then.
Relieved that he could now see who the newcomers were, Ruusan now opened a frequency to them. "Greetings, strange, and far out of the way wanderers!" he boomed. "How may we help you get out of our system?"
At first there was no response, except for Mogue's fury with Ruusan's outburst. I'm definitely going to get kicked out for this now he silently moaned. But then he, and his three other companions jumped in their seats when they heard the response to Ruusan's welcome.
"Do-rik vong pratte!"
Shivers ran down Ruusan's back when he heard those merciless, cold words. Perhaps they didn't have as strong of an effect on his friends, judging by their reactions via the comm system, but the harsh words awakened some buried, distant memory inside his subconscious. Although he couldn't figure out any specifics from his re-awakened memories, he could make out the cold, fearful emotions radiating from them. It sent chills all over his body.
Peering out the starfighter's viewport, Ruusan inspected the newly arrived starships to see if he recognized anything about them. They were not sleek like Nalom's vehicles, but rather bumpy and....lifelike. Some had tendrils snaking out from the center of their bodies and....That's when it him. Bodies. These starships were living creatures! And while that would surprise almost anyone on Nalom, it only reawakened some other long- forgotten memories inside of him.
While everyone on Nalom IV was educated about the Yuuzhan Vong, it's military, culture, and religion, no one, except some scouts, had even seen a Yuuzhan Vong ship. But now that Ruusan glimpsed that living vessel with his own eyes, he knew what it was. The Yuuzhan Vong had come.
"Hello? Hellllooooooo..." came Tekk's voice over the comm. While Ruusan had slipped into a short reverie, he had barely registered the conversation, or the attempts at conversation made by his friends in an effort to communicate with the newcomers.
"Maybe they don't speak Basic," Sari suggested.
"Maybe they're other survivors from the other outposts!" exclaimed Tekk in return, getting very excited at the thought.
Only Ruusan and Mogue remained silent. Each of them had their own ideas about the newcomers, and they both reached the same conclusion; the Yuuzhan Vong had found the Nalom system.
Ruusan was quick to open a private channel to Mogue once he cleared his thoughts. "What should we do?" he inquired.
"Uh....I'm not sure," Mogue responded dumbly. "I'm simply a pilot." After a few more seconds of silence, he added, "Perhaps I should contact ground headquarters."
"That'd be a good idea," Ruusan put in, obviously annoyed with his friend's lack of quick-minded intelligence.
While Mogue tried to make contact with headquarters, Ruusan examined the new arrivals from his viewpoint. They were certainly alike as to how they appeared in his nightmares. The pulsing veins, barely visible from the distance, the voids racing all over the bodies....
Dor-ik vong pratte. What did it mean? As much as Ruusan knew that somewhere, tucked away in the farthest corner of his subconscious lay the meaning of those words, he still couldn't recall it.
Sighing, he let his eyelids drop slightly, when he suddenly saw something slip out from the living vessel closest to him. Quickly opening his eyes, he followed the small-what should he call it?-scout's path. After a minute or so, he quickly realised that the scout ship was heading straight towards him and his friends.
Widening his eyes, he quickly commed his friends. "Guys, we've got company coming our way."
The other three saw the scout ship, and having fear injected into their hearts at the unfamiliar sight, they started rambling and yelling over the comm about what they should do.
"Just run!" suggested Tekk with annoyance. But Ruusan distinctly heard the fear in his voice. Shaking his head, he quickly analysed his options. One, stay and risk being attacked or simply making a good welcoming party. Two, run and risk getting blown to bits from behind, or making it back safely to Nalom IV. However, the problem with the later was that if these newcomers were enemies, then Ruusan and his friends' retreat would simply lead them straight to the outpost. Ruusan knew that he could not let that happen.
"Ruusan man! Come one! We've got to get out of here!" shouted Tekk over the comm.
"No," he replied evenly. The calm in his voice surprised him. It wasn't like him at all to remain calm. Quite the opposite actually; he would always get nervous, or impatient, or energetic. But now Ruusan found that while a part of him wanted to flee out of fear, and another part wanted to stay due to his curiousity, another, larger part of him, that could not be identified, was simply calm, forcing him to be calm, sending calm, soothing thoughts to every part of his brain and body. While he couldn't explain it, he accepted it.
"Ruusan are you crazy! Those things probably want to tear us to bits!" shrieked Tekk. He was going over the top now.
Ruusan tried to gather those calm emotions inside of him and radiate them to his friends. While he didn't have that much experience with the Force, and would barely qualify as an apprentice in the elder days of the New Jedi Order, he still had some skill. However, while he was able to calm Sari and Mogue down, or so he felt from their emotions radiating in the Force, Tekk was simply untouchable. His presence wasn't accepting anything directed at it.
"Guys, listen to me," Ruusan said, "We can't lead these newcomers back home. Who knows what their intentions are."
"Yeah, but if we reach home in time, we could get more forces back up here," Mogue pointed out.
"No, we don't know what kind of forces these people have, nor what speed their ships travel at, nor what type of resistance they can put up," interjected Sari, very suddenly.
Ruusan was a bit taken aback by her input. He had never known she knew that much about military tactics, strategics, and statistics. He was impressed, for he thought that she was simply...well...a ditz.
Smirking a bit at that thought, then blushing in shame, he cleared his throat. "Tekk are you listening?" But his friend didn't reply, and during the brief minutes they spent talking, the scout ship had closed almost three-quarters of the distance between their starfighters and the unidentified fleet.
"I'm getting nervous," Sari announced. Ruusan felt that Mogue was starting to get that way too.
Then suddenly Tekk spun his starfighter around and made an attempt to flee back home. Immediately in response, six pink blops emerged from one of the living vessels and gave chase. From the form the small pinks were flying, Ruusan guessed them to be a squadron.
Which most likely means this is a military convoy, he realised. But then his attention was diverted when Sari and Mogue made a break towards the other end of the system, away from Nalom IV.
"What are you guys doing?" Ruusan yelled.
"They're going to definitely get Tekk!" Mogue yelled back. "We're not waiting to get vaporized into atoms!"
Realizing the logical sense in his friend's words, Ruusan turned his starfighter around on its foils and followed. Putting more power to his rear thrusters and shields, Ruusan glanced at his sensor console to see the fleet's reaction. Without any hesitation, twelve red blips appeared on his screen, heading away from the fleet's position.
"Sithspit," he muttered, then tried to contact his friends over the comm again. But this time all he got was static. Fumbling with the knobs frantically, he tried to adjust the frequency, but he just received more static. And then his starfighter shuddered.
Looking at his ship's readouts, he saw that his rear shields had been hit. "Damn!" he cursed, then tried to push the starfighter to the redlines. He had to outrun these....enemies. He wasn't about to get vaporised.
But then another shot hit his shields and the starfighter shuddered again. Swallowing hard, Ruusan realised that speed alone wasn't going to get him out of this situation. Inhaling deeply, he closed his eyes and found a bit of inner peace.
Snapping his eyes open, he rolled his starfighter to the side, just narrowly missing another enemy shot. From glancing at his sensor console, he saw the three of the red blips broke off from the pursuing squadron to give chase. He pushed his starfighter into a dive, then brought it up sharply, hoping to shake his enemies off. It was all in vain; his pursuers were good pilots, better pilots than himself, or so he supposed. But he didn't give up; pulling the throttle back, he sent his wonderful flying machine up into a tight curve and quickly came back down behind the three living ships. Having already turned his weapons system on, he fired a round of lasers at the enemies' rears. However, the black voids-which were once lying still-now went into a frenzy, absorbing all his shots.
"Gortal!" he hissed, cursing his bad luck, and repeated another round of shots. However, the enemy ships had already pulled some evasive maneuvers of their own and had broken off. One went off to the left while the other two went right. They all were coming quickly around in a sharp arc, hoping to entrap their prey in a quick web of plasma.
Luckily Ruusan's Jedi reflexes prevented that from happening-yet. He sent his starfighter into a spiraling dive, hoping that all enemy shots would miss. Pulling back on the throttle, he came out of the dive and headed back up. However, while the sudden change in direction had shaken one enemy ship off his tail, it only wrecked havoc with his human body, which could not cope with such a quick change of direction. Trying to shake his dizziness off, and fighting back the darkness threatening to engulf his vision, Ruusan suddenly heard Tekk's voice come over the comm.
"Help! HELP! They've got my shields down to five percent! No, they're...ahhhhhhhhhh-"
Suddnely his voice was cut off, and having his vision now restored to normal, Ruusan saw that one friendly blip dissapeared from the screen. Unfortunately, tears replaced the darkness, and he could barely keep piloting his craft properly with all the sniffles emerging from him.
Tekk, he mourned silently. Why did you have to go? Why?
But another enemy shot landing on his side shields awoke Ruusan from his mourning. If he didn't get his act together, he wouldn't be around to mourn Tekk any longer.
Wiping his eyes while putting the starfighter into another spin, Ruusan realized that he had somehow approached Nalom III's smallest moon. Conveniently, it also had a small asteroid belt running inbetween it and another one of Nalom III's moons. Smirking to himself, Ruusan just realized how he was going to have fun with his enemies.
Just before entering the asteroid belt, he heard Sari call out to him over the comm system, but he lost her as soon as asteroids started to surround him. Realizing that thinking about her would only distract him, and lessen his chancs of survival, he pushed her out of his mind and focused on the task at hand. Using quick, evasive maneuvers, those which only seasoned pilots could pull, Ruusan ducked, lobbed over, and squeezed in between asteroids. Yet while his enemies were able to do the same, the asteroid belt showed the one advantage he had over them: his starfighter was smaller and lighter, and therefore more flexible and maneuverable.
"Yeah!" Ruusan hollered in joy when he saw one enemy ship crash into an asteroid. It had been attempting to force Ruusan into a crash by pushing him into an asteroid, but a quick dive and squeeze through a narrow space in between two soon-to-be colliding asteroids got rid of that threat. Now they're were only two to deal with.
Ruusan pushed his throttle forward, increasing his speed while forming a plan. The asteroid just ahead providing him with the perfect oppurtunity to try a trick that he had come up with when he was a young boy. Rushing towards it with great speed, he slowly released the starship's repulsorlifts. Then, when he was less than a hundred feet from the asteroids surface, he came to a swift stop, and used the repulsorlifts to bounce back against the asteroids thin atmosphere. As his ship was propelled backwards, Ruusan watched with glee as another enemy crashed into another asteroid. However, the last one was quick enough to avoid a crash; this brought a frown to Ruusan's visage.
But the dissapointment didn't hinder him. Immediately getting on the enemy's tail, Ruusan released several rounds of laser shots. While most of it was absorbed the the ship's voids, some got through, and after a fifteen seconds or so of intense battering, the enemy ship broke apart. Not wanting to get hit by any of the remains, Ruusan pulled the starfighter to his starboard, and made his way quickly out of the asteroid belt, thanking the Force for his quick reflexes and good piloting skills.
Coming out of the asteroid belt, Ruusan heard Mogue and Sari's voices panicking over the comm.
"Got one!"
"It's on my tail!"
"Get it! Get it!"
"Oh no-sithspit!"
Ruusan smirked, then realized that the situation was not that amusing at all. He friends were in great peril.
Once again, he put the majority of the remaining power left in the starfighter into his rear thrusters, hoping to make it back to his friends in time. He wouldn't let them perish like Tekk.
Then, suddenly, more enemy ships appeared from the sunny side of Nalom III's near moon, heading straight into Ruusan's path. Quickly reversing directions, Ruusan tried to make his way around the planet in the other directions, but on his sensor console, he saw more red blips coming from the other side. Gasping, he counted two dozen in total. There was no way he could take on that many alone.
Legal Disclaimers: I do not own any of the characters mention in this story that have originally been created by the authors employed under the publishing service of Del Rey, Bantam, or any of the original characters created by George Lucas himself and his crew. All my original characters are copyright, and if you ever wish to use them in the future, please ask me first.
For Reference:
After the Yuuzhan Vong decimate all of the Galactic Federation of Free Alliance's military fleets, the Hapes Cluster's military, the Imperial Remnant's military, and the Chiss military, it proceeded to enslave most of the known galaxy. Over a period of a hundred years, most of the planets in the GFFA are transformed into the ideals of the Yuuzhan Vong. There is no trace of machinery, and everything is made of biological elements.
Satisfied with the conquering of their promised galaxy, the Yuuzhan Vong set up their government. While the Overlord remains the dictator of the galaxy, each system has it's own dictator, who answers to the Overlord himself. On a side note, the structure or Yuuzhan Vong society is that the Warrior Caste is ranked at the top (and you most be a warrior to hold governmental office), with the Intendant Caste right below it, then the Shaper Caste, followed by the Worker Caste (which is made of all the Yuuzhan Vong civilians who are not part of any of the above or below), and finally, at the bottom of the sociological food-chain: the Shamed Ones.
During the reign of Overlord Shimrra, all the transformation of the planets took place. Thereafter, each system was inhabited, according to the structure of the castes, creches, and who held favour with who. While some divisions of the priests were able to control whole sectors, other were only allowed a planet or two of their own. This caused internal rivalry between the priests, and this dispute still has not been resolved. The same applies to the Intendant and Shaper castes.
As for the infidel slaves, they have been assimilated in Yuuzhan Vong society, although they have a lesser status than the Shamed Ones. They can never hold their own job; they must always be working for a Yuuzhan Vong. They also have no rights, and the courts and the Yuuzhan Vong Gods look down upon them with scorn. The only reason the Yuuzhan Vong tolerate them is because they are a good work force, which enables the Yuuzhan Vong to colonize more newly discovered planets, and only them to have more recreational time while the infidel slaves do their dirty work.
As for the different infidel species, many more have been added to the list. While marred with despair, the infidels of the galaxy tended to start reproducing with others that were not of their own species. This, coupled with the different climate conditions taking places on numerous worlds, caused new species to arise. Some of them are mutations, adapted better to the new climates, others are new organisms produced, cause by the changing environment on the millions of planets. Not all are sentient, however.
Unfortunately, the Jedi are no more, or as far as the Yuuzhan Vong know. Right after the conquest of the promised galaxy, the Overlorrd Shimrra held a grand ceremony located on the galaxy's capital, Yuuzan'tar, where all the Jedi were sacrificed; the climax of the ceremony was the dual sacrifice of the Solo twins. However, Master Luke Skywalker and his wife were smart enough to hide their only son, Ben Skywalker, with a special task force group that was sent away to the edges of the galaxy to hide from the Yuuzhan Vong.
There were several of these task forces. Sent in all different directions towards the ends of the galaxy, their objectives were to maintain the original traditions of the galaxy before it came under Yuuzhan Vong control. Throughout the generations, they passed down the knowledge of the galaxy's history beforehand to the children of the future. However, with each passing generation, the fear of being discovered by roaming Yuuzhan Vong scouts has increased, causing each task force to start building its own military, albeit a small one. Luckily for them, they had been equipped at the beginning with cloaking devices are sensor guards, so that Yuuzhan Vong ships wouldn't be able to detect them. But of course, there are other ways.
No task force knows where the other two are located in the galaxy. They have knowledge that there are others; but they just don't know where. However, one Jedi accompanied each task force, so that it had a guardian. But over the generations, these Jedi have not come into contact with one another, and therefore cannot sense where the other Jedi are. Each task force also knows this piece of information.
And with all this information, we now start our epic tale of a new hope for the future...
* * * * * * * *
Ruusan Skywalker trudged along the gassy sloped of his family estate. While many believed to be so lucky to be part of a family that owned so much land, he took a different view of the subject. For him, having to help out on a family farm and work in his uncle's mechanic shop half of the time really took the life out of him. Not literally, of course, but sometimes it felt as if his filled-to-the-seams agenda would be the end of him; he wouldn't be surprised if he died at a young age of a type of stress disorder. Although, being twenty years old, he supposed he had already passed that "young age".
As he opened the back door into his family's house, he immediately the sounds of his younger cousins playing in the playroom. While many families lived separate from each other, his family, which included his uncles, aunts and cousins, all lived together under one large, large roof. Smiling to himself, happy to hear that his cousins were content in their games, he made his way down the stairs into the lower level of the house, where his room was located. However, as he walked down the narrow hallways, he passed by his room and went to the refresher first to wash up and get ready for the night time meal.
Back in the family kitchen, with its open window and clean, sandstone walls, Ruusan's mother, Rahi, was busy putting the finishing touches to the dinner along with her two sisters-in law; she only had a brother, no sisters. Meanwhile, the men of the family had already seated themselves around the dining room table, eagerly awaiting the evening meal. Such was the occasion on every night, for these meals were a time for the family to be all together and share the pleasures of their day's events. In fact, by the time Ruusan had arrived in the dining room, in a clean tunic and pants, everyone was already seated at the large dining room table, which was able to seat twenty people, but only sixteen chair were placed there.
"What took you so long?" Rahi asked, scowling at her son. She never appreciated his lateness for dinner. Neither did her husband.
"You should know better, young man," he chided, giving his eldest child a stern look.
Ruusan shrugged his shoulder and sat down in his usual spot, which was right next to his younger sister; she was his one and only sibling, and they had always had a good relationship. She winked at him knowingly as he took his seat, and then ventured forward with a topic to start off the dinner discussion.
"So has anyone heard what Tekk did today?" she asked, knowing that no one hadn't. Immediately, the discussion began, and the dishes of hot food were passed around to eagerly awaiting recipients. Ruusan, who normally enjoyed the dinner talk, was particularly quiet this evening. For him, it had been a troubling day; he had just learned that his best friend, Mogue Fen, had joined the planet's small, but well-trained military.
Ruusan wasn't upset that his best friend had left him; it was quite the contrary. He was delighted that his friend had been able to do what he had dreamed of for years, except, that had been Ruusan's dream too. He wanted to learn to pilot a starfighter, become a flight officer and eventually make his way up the ranks. He wanted to soar through space, not be stuck on the ground like most of the planet's population. Therefore, he envied his friend, and was especially upset with his father for not letting him go along and join.
Ruusan's father, Kamus Skywalker-named after one of his grandfather's guardians, Kam Solusar-noticed his son's sullen face and inquired about it. "What's the krankana is wrong with you?"
Ruusan looked up sharply, having just been startled out of his silent reverie. It took his brain a few moments to register then question, and then formulate an answer. "Oh nothing," he lied, "I'm just tired."
Kamus, who was just as force-sensitive as his grandfather, as was his son, snorted at the obvious falsehood. "Why don't to tell me the truth?"
Ruusan looked down at his plate for a few quiet moments, then looked his father in the eye. "Fine. You want to know?"
"Yes, very much," his father answered, as if the tone in his son's voice hadn't disturbed him at all. But it had disturbed everyone else at the table, and they were now looking at the obvious confrontation that was about to happen between the father and the son.
Ruusan took in a deep breath, poked his food a bit with his fork, then said, "You're just rotten." He looked up again at his father, and exclaimed, "Why won't you let me go join?"
Now this rattled Kamus. In a baritone voice, he boomed, "Don't question my judgement, young man!"
"Well I will!" Ruusan yelled back. "It's not right-or fair! I'm just as good a pilot as anyone in this city-even better than most!"
Kamus pointed a shaking finger at his son. "It's too dangerous, and I won't let you go."
"Why?" Ruusan shouted back.
"Because it goes against everything the Jedi stand for!"
"The Jedi are dead!"
"No!" Kamus now shouted back, his face as red as the konyota beets that grew in one of their fields. "We are the remainder of the Jedi! We uphold the Jedi traditions!"
Ruusan shook his head at this. "That's where you're wrong," he said a bit more calmly. "The Jedi are there to protect those they've sworn to. If they Yuuzhan Vong find us and attack us, then we'll have to protect them. And the only is way is by joining the military."
Kamus, infuriated with his son, tightened his hands into fists, and pounded one on the table. It took some of the stress out of him, and he inhaled deeply to wash the rest of his anger away. He would not drop to the level of bickering.
"Son, by joining the military you are becoming the aggressor. Jedi are not aggressors; they only attack back after they have been attacked themselves," he explained, attempting to use the Force to soothe his son's own anger and resentment.
But Ruusan already had his mental wall up, stopping his father from bringing about any immediate emotional change. "By not joining the military, I'm not taking any steps towards defending my people, which is of the Dark Side itself. If-"
"Why do you even worry?" his father interrupted. "The Yuuzhan Vong are nowhere near to discovering Nalom IV! It's best you stay where you are and pass on your knowledge to the Force to your heirs, who might face the Vong threat in their time."
"The scouts that just came back had a close encounter with the Vong, Dad. I'd be very surprised if the Vong don't send another scout out to double- check the incident," Ruusand replied firmly, knowing that he was right.
Kamus just shook his head, knowing that no matter what logical argument he presented, his son would remain hot-headed and disagreeable for a while; it was his son's nature. Why me? he moaned silently to himself. Why did I get stuck with the impulsive and adventurous one? But he knew that complaining to the Force would do no good.
Riha, who had watched this exchange in silence, as had most of the family, then abruptly started the family dinner conversation again. Within five minutes, everyone had forgotten about the heated argument and was merrily chatting away. That was, all except Ruusan. Picking up a jacket on the way out the door, he ran down the driveway and made his way towards his uncle's garage.
Ruusan picked up the pace a bit as the road took a sharp turn downwards, heading further deeper into the valley in which the capital city of Nalom IV flourished. He inhaled and exhaled the rhythm of his breathing matching the landing footsteps as he accelerated into a jog, then a run. Whenever stress came crashing down on him, he found that any sort of exercise could calm him down. There was that, and the fact that running tended to get him faster to his destinations due to the fact his father rarely let him borrow the speedcar, or the speeder bike, a fact which continually annoyed and aggravated Ruusan.
Within twenty minutes the young Skywalker had made it into the edges of the city, where a small industrial and commercial section was located. Not too far north of it sat Nalom IV's military command headquarters, with its many facilities, hangars, landing pads and docks, storage warehouses, and few residential buildings spreading out from the command centre in each direction to form a radius of a mile.
Ruusan looked longingly towards the military section of the city before he flew down a short path to his uncle's garage. Knocking on the back entrance's door, he waited until Hay'il Gom, once of his uncle's employees, opened it for him. The near-human gave the young man a smile; Ruusan visited the garage almost everyday and therefore all the employees there knew him well.
"How's your uncle?" Hay'il asked cheerily, wiping some greased on his dirty, smudged uniform.
Ruusan shrugged indifferently. "Eating dinner with the family."
"Oh? And why aren't you?" questioned Hay'il as he let the young Skywalker brush past him into the dim hallways with impatience.
"I don't feel like it," was Ruusan's simple but firm response as his voice trailed off as he moved farther away from the back entrance.
When Ruusan came into the man bay where all the employees were working away at damaged vehicles and starships, he scanned the large, domed room for his friend Tekk. Sometimes his friend would come down around dinnertime to bring the evening meal to his father who worked at the Skywalker garage.
Seeing his friend leaning against a relatively old heater, relaxing and holding his father's dinner as the man continued to patch up a speeder bike, Ruusan made his way over. Catching his friend's eye before he reached the speeder bike, Ruusan grinned, and received the same reaction from Tekk before he gave him a pat on the back.
"Hey! I haven't seen you in a couple of days!" Tekk exclaimed with a wide grin. "Were you've been?"
Ruusan's eyes twinkled, and motioned for his friend to follow him out of Tekk's father's earshot. Tekk's father was acquaintances with Ruusan's father, and Ruusan didn't want to risk the escape of his secret.
"I've been flying some tests for the military," he whispered to his friend once they reached the other end of the bay.
"Oh? How did you do?" Tekk asked with obvious interest. He had known Ruusan since they were toddlers, and knew that although he wasn't great at flying, his friend was amazing in any cockpit.
Ruusan smiled. "Top scores."
"So they're going to let you in?"
Ruusan sighed. "Not yet. You know that anyone under twenty-one needs parental consent, and my old man...."
"Will never let you go," Tekk finished for him, shaking his head knowingly. "Boy, you're old man is tough. Can't he see how much you enjoy flying?"
Ruusan shifted his weight to his right leg, pondering the question; it was the same question he had been asking himself for months. "I guess not," was his lame response.
Tekk gave him a slap on the back, then said, "It'll be all right. At least Mogue got in."
Ruusan's eyes met Tekk's. "You heard about that already?"
"Yup. News travels fast among our friends."
Ruusan just shook his head with amusement, knowing his friends all too well.
"I say we head to the Pit and take back a few with the boys," Tekk suggested after a comfortable silence.
"Sure."
Tekk nodded, went over to give his father his dinner, then made his way with Ruusan deeper into the city a bit, to the location of a famous bar that attracted masses of the capital's young adults.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
At the Pit, Ruusan and Tekk met up with several of their friends, including Sari, a young woman of about Ruusan's age who he liked. Not only was she pretty, with her dirty blond hair and brown eyes, but she was a decent pilot and extremely mischievous, a personality which complimented Ruusan's. Naturally, they got along quite well.
When Mogue entered in a rush about half an hour later, a big cheer went up for the newly recruited starfighter pilot. Ignoring all the praise he was receiving, Mogue quickly made his way over to Ruusan, Tekk, and Sari, prepared with a great proposition.
"Hey guys," he said to them over ht round table filled with drinks, "Wanna come along while I play patrol guard?"
Ruusan's forehead creased. "Uh, I don't think we'd all be able to fit in a E-wing."
Mogue laguhed. "Naw, I meant you'd all get your own starfighters!"
"Wouldn't your superior officer have a problem with that?" Tekk pointed out.
"What he doesn't know won't hurt him," explained Mogue.
"Besides, its Fey'lya Day and all Bothans will be at home celebrating," added Sari with a mischievous smirk. Ruusan loved that smirk.
The fact was that in the Nalom system, especially on Nalom IV, the military was mostly made up of Bothans and other non-human species; many humans nowadays didn't have the quick reflexes the ancestors had. With the major holiday of the late Borsk Fey'lya, who was a role model to all Bothans and the epitome of Bothan culture, about half the military had taken a leave for a week or so. That meant that there was hardly anyone around the military's headquarters in the city, except for those on duty. And of course, if the trio of Mogue's friends pulled of a good charade, they would easily fit in and no one would find anything suspicious. It wasn't like any starfighter pilot of commanding officer who was overburdened with work was going to go out of their way to double-check every person entering the hangars.
Ruusan merely smiled at his friends and gave Mouge a thumbs-up.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
"Red, uh, four, I've got one on my tail!" shrieked Tekk with obvious delight as the four friends were staging a fake battle.
Sari was following Tekk wherever he went, relentlessly annoying his shields with false shots.
"Oh no!" moaned Ruusan with laughter evident in his voice, "I think I have to go EV!" He laughed once more as Mogue did a loop around his still starfighter. Then he grabbed the control stick a executed a perfect loop around and over Mogue's moving starfighter, without hitting or grazing anything.
"Oh my! I hope you don't get busted for this, Mogue!" exclaimed Sari, who was giggling incessantly.
"Me too!" added Mogue, who was now in convulsions of laughter.
The young adults found the situation to be all too hilarious. Then suddenly, a few red blips appeared on Tekk's screen. There were located on the edges of his sensor's range of array sweep. Nevertheless, he still found them unusual...and strangely suspicious.
"Uh, hey," Tekk called out over the comm unit, "does anyone else have red blips on the array?"
Mogue squinted at the screen then frowned with confusion. "Yeah, I do...but red blips indicate non-Nalom military vessels and starships."
Ruusan felt something sink in his stomach. "So what does that mean?"
"What do you think it means, nerf-head!" yelled Sari over the comm, now agitated by the sudden appearance of enemy blips.
Ruusan ignored her hostility and looked out at the empty space surrounding his starfighter, in the direction of the blips. Seeing nothing, he flew forwards, trying to get closer to the location of the unusual blips. But he still couldn't see anything.
"Guys, I'm going to check it out," he announced over the comm.
"No, wait!" exclaimed Mogue. "If you go out of range, that'll get headquarters attention!"
Ruusan was about to argue back, but he didn't need to. Suddenly, ships of unrecognisable sorts suddenly appeared all around him. Cloaking devices! Whoever was piloting these starships had used visual cloaking devices. But it was odd that their scanners had picked up on them then.
Relieved that he could now see who the newcomers were, Ruusan now opened a frequency to them. "Greetings, strange, and far out of the way wanderers!" he boomed. "How may we help you get out of our system?"
At first there was no response, except for Mogue's fury with Ruusan's outburst. I'm definitely going to get kicked out for this now he silently moaned. But then he, and his three other companions jumped in their seats when they heard the response to Ruusan's welcome.
"Do-rik vong pratte!"
Shivers ran down Ruusan's back when he heard those merciless, cold words. Perhaps they didn't have as strong of an effect on his friends, judging by their reactions via the comm system, but the harsh words awakened some buried, distant memory inside his subconscious. Although he couldn't figure out any specifics from his re-awakened memories, he could make out the cold, fearful emotions radiating from them. It sent chills all over his body.
Peering out the starfighter's viewport, Ruusan inspected the newly arrived starships to see if he recognized anything about them. They were not sleek like Nalom's vehicles, but rather bumpy and....lifelike. Some had tendrils snaking out from the center of their bodies and....That's when it him. Bodies. These starships were living creatures! And while that would surprise almost anyone on Nalom, it only reawakened some other long- forgotten memories inside of him.
While everyone on Nalom IV was educated about the Yuuzhan Vong, it's military, culture, and religion, no one, except some scouts, had even seen a Yuuzhan Vong ship. But now that Ruusan glimpsed that living vessel with his own eyes, he knew what it was. The Yuuzhan Vong had come.
"Hello? Hellllooooooo..." came Tekk's voice over the comm. While Ruusan had slipped into a short reverie, he had barely registered the conversation, or the attempts at conversation made by his friends in an effort to communicate with the newcomers.
"Maybe they don't speak Basic," Sari suggested.
"Maybe they're other survivors from the other outposts!" exclaimed Tekk in return, getting very excited at the thought.
Only Ruusan and Mogue remained silent. Each of them had their own ideas about the newcomers, and they both reached the same conclusion; the Yuuzhan Vong had found the Nalom system.
Ruusan was quick to open a private channel to Mogue once he cleared his thoughts. "What should we do?" he inquired.
"Uh....I'm not sure," Mogue responded dumbly. "I'm simply a pilot." After a few more seconds of silence, he added, "Perhaps I should contact ground headquarters."
"That'd be a good idea," Ruusan put in, obviously annoyed with his friend's lack of quick-minded intelligence.
While Mogue tried to make contact with headquarters, Ruusan examined the new arrivals from his viewpoint. They were certainly alike as to how they appeared in his nightmares. The pulsing veins, barely visible from the distance, the voids racing all over the bodies....
Dor-ik vong pratte. What did it mean? As much as Ruusan knew that somewhere, tucked away in the farthest corner of his subconscious lay the meaning of those words, he still couldn't recall it.
Sighing, he let his eyelids drop slightly, when he suddenly saw something slip out from the living vessel closest to him. Quickly opening his eyes, he followed the small-what should he call it?-scout's path. After a minute or so, he quickly realised that the scout ship was heading straight towards him and his friends.
Widening his eyes, he quickly commed his friends. "Guys, we've got company coming our way."
The other three saw the scout ship, and having fear injected into their hearts at the unfamiliar sight, they started rambling and yelling over the comm about what they should do.
"Just run!" suggested Tekk with annoyance. But Ruusan distinctly heard the fear in his voice. Shaking his head, he quickly analysed his options. One, stay and risk being attacked or simply making a good welcoming party. Two, run and risk getting blown to bits from behind, or making it back safely to Nalom IV. However, the problem with the later was that if these newcomers were enemies, then Ruusan and his friends' retreat would simply lead them straight to the outpost. Ruusan knew that he could not let that happen.
"Ruusan man! Come one! We've got to get out of here!" shouted Tekk over the comm.
"No," he replied evenly. The calm in his voice surprised him. It wasn't like him at all to remain calm. Quite the opposite actually; he would always get nervous, or impatient, or energetic. But now Ruusan found that while a part of him wanted to flee out of fear, and another part wanted to stay due to his curiousity, another, larger part of him, that could not be identified, was simply calm, forcing him to be calm, sending calm, soothing thoughts to every part of his brain and body. While he couldn't explain it, he accepted it.
"Ruusan are you crazy! Those things probably want to tear us to bits!" shrieked Tekk. He was going over the top now.
Ruusan tried to gather those calm emotions inside of him and radiate them to his friends. While he didn't have that much experience with the Force, and would barely qualify as an apprentice in the elder days of the New Jedi Order, he still had some skill. However, while he was able to calm Sari and Mogue down, or so he felt from their emotions radiating in the Force, Tekk was simply untouchable. His presence wasn't accepting anything directed at it.
"Guys, listen to me," Ruusan said, "We can't lead these newcomers back home. Who knows what their intentions are."
"Yeah, but if we reach home in time, we could get more forces back up here," Mogue pointed out.
"No, we don't know what kind of forces these people have, nor what speed their ships travel at, nor what type of resistance they can put up," interjected Sari, very suddenly.
Ruusan was a bit taken aback by her input. He had never known she knew that much about military tactics, strategics, and statistics. He was impressed, for he thought that she was simply...well...a ditz.
Smirking a bit at that thought, then blushing in shame, he cleared his throat. "Tekk are you listening?" But his friend didn't reply, and during the brief minutes they spent talking, the scout ship had closed almost three-quarters of the distance between their starfighters and the unidentified fleet.
"I'm getting nervous," Sari announced. Ruusan felt that Mogue was starting to get that way too.
Then suddenly Tekk spun his starfighter around and made an attempt to flee back home. Immediately in response, six pink blops emerged from one of the living vessels and gave chase. From the form the small pinks were flying, Ruusan guessed them to be a squadron.
Which most likely means this is a military convoy, he realised. But then his attention was diverted when Sari and Mogue made a break towards the other end of the system, away from Nalom IV.
"What are you guys doing?" Ruusan yelled.
"They're going to definitely get Tekk!" Mogue yelled back. "We're not waiting to get vaporized into atoms!"
Realizing the logical sense in his friend's words, Ruusan turned his starfighter around on its foils and followed. Putting more power to his rear thrusters and shields, Ruusan glanced at his sensor console to see the fleet's reaction. Without any hesitation, twelve red blips appeared on his screen, heading away from the fleet's position.
"Sithspit," he muttered, then tried to contact his friends over the comm again. But this time all he got was static. Fumbling with the knobs frantically, he tried to adjust the frequency, but he just received more static. And then his starfighter shuddered.
Looking at his ship's readouts, he saw that his rear shields had been hit. "Damn!" he cursed, then tried to push the starfighter to the redlines. He had to outrun these....enemies. He wasn't about to get vaporised.
But then another shot hit his shields and the starfighter shuddered again. Swallowing hard, Ruusan realised that speed alone wasn't going to get him out of this situation. Inhaling deeply, he closed his eyes and found a bit of inner peace.
Snapping his eyes open, he rolled his starfighter to the side, just narrowly missing another enemy shot. From glancing at his sensor console, he saw the three of the red blips broke off from the pursuing squadron to give chase. He pushed his starfighter into a dive, then brought it up sharply, hoping to shake his enemies off. It was all in vain; his pursuers were good pilots, better pilots than himself, or so he supposed. But he didn't give up; pulling the throttle back, he sent his wonderful flying machine up into a tight curve and quickly came back down behind the three living ships. Having already turned his weapons system on, he fired a round of lasers at the enemies' rears. However, the black voids-which were once lying still-now went into a frenzy, absorbing all his shots.
"Gortal!" he hissed, cursing his bad luck, and repeated another round of shots. However, the enemy ships had already pulled some evasive maneuvers of their own and had broken off. One went off to the left while the other two went right. They all were coming quickly around in a sharp arc, hoping to entrap their prey in a quick web of plasma.
Luckily Ruusan's Jedi reflexes prevented that from happening-yet. He sent his starfighter into a spiraling dive, hoping that all enemy shots would miss. Pulling back on the throttle, he came out of the dive and headed back up. However, while the sudden change in direction had shaken one enemy ship off his tail, it only wrecked havoc with his human body, which could not cope with such a quick change of direction. Trying to shake his dizziness off, and fighting back the darkness threatening to engulf his vision, Ruusan suddenly heard Tekk's voice come over the comm.
"Help! HELP! They've got my shields down to five percent! No, they're...ahhhhhhhhhh-"
Suddnely his voice was cut off, and having his vision now restored to normal, Ruusan saw that one friendly blip dissapeared from the screen. Unfortunately, tears replaced the darkness, and he could barely keep piloting his craft properly with all the sniffles emerging from him.
Tekk, he mourned silently. Why did you have to go? Why?
But another enemy shot landing on his side shields awoke Ruusan from his mourning. If he didn't get his act together, he wouldn't be around to mourn Tekk any longer.
Wiping his eyes while putting the starfighter into another spin, Ruusan realized that he had somehow approached Nalom III's smallest moon. Conveniently, it also had a small asteroid belt running inbetween it and another one of Nalom III's moons. Smirking to himself, Ruusan just realized how he was going to have fun with his enemies.
Just before entering the asteroid belt, he heard Sari call out to him over the comm system, but he lost her as soon as asteroids started to surround him. Realizing that thinking about her would only distract him, and lessen his chancs of survival, he pushed her out of his mind and focused on the task at hand. Using quick, evasive maneuvers, those which only seasoned pilots could pull, Ruusan ducked, lobbed over, and squeezed in between asteroids. Yet while his enemies were able to do the same, the asteroid belt showed the one advantage he had over them: his starfighter was smaller and lighter, and therefore more flexible and maneuverable.
"Yeah!" Ruusan hollered in joy when he saw one enemy ship crash into an asteroid. It had been attempting to force Ruusan into a crash by pushing him into an asteroid, but a quick dive and squeeze through a narrow space in between two soon-to-be colliding asteroids got rid of that threat. Now they're were only two to deal with.
Ruusan pushed his throttle forward, increasing his speed while forming a plan. The asteroid just ahead providing him with the perfect oppurtunity to try a trick that he had come up with when he was a young boy. Rushing towards it with great speed, he slowly released the starship's repulsorlifts. Then, when he was less than a hundred feet from the asteroids surface, he came to a swift stop, and used the repulsorlifts to bounce back against the asteroids thin atmosphere. As his ship was propelled backwards, Ruusan watched with glee as another enemy crashed into another asteroid. However, the last one was quick enough to avoid a crash; this brought a frown to Ruusan's visage.
But the dissapointment didn't hinder him. Immediately getting on the enemy's tail, Ruusan released several rounds of laser shots. While most of it was absorbed the the ship's voids, some got through, and after a fifteen seconds or so of intense battering, the enemy ship broke apart. Not wanting to get hit by any of the remains, Ruusan pulled the starfighter to his starboard, and made his way quickly out of the asteroid belt, thanking the Force for his quick reflexes and good piloting skills.
Coming out of the asteroid belt, Ruusan heard Mogue and Sari's voices panicking over the comm.
"Got one!"
"It's on my tail!"
"Get it! Get it!"
"Oh no-sithspit!"
Ruusan smirked, then realized that the situation was not that amusing at all. He friends were in great peril.
Once again, he put the majority of the remaining power left in the starfighter into his rear thrusters, hoping to make it back to his friends in time. He wouldn't let them perish like Tekk.
Then, suddenly, more enemy ships appeared from the sunny side of Nalom III's near moon, heading straight into Ruusan's path. Quickly reversing directions, Ruusan tried to make his way around the planet in the other directions, but on his sensor console, he saw more red blips coming from the other side. Gasping, he counted two dozen in total. There was no way he could take on that many alone.