Jim turned away
from the monitor and walked toward the tactical station on the bride
of the Corellia.
"Give the departure clearance as needed.
I'll be going now."
He took one last look at the bridge, and
then took the turbolift down. He began double checking his equipment,
starting with his modified Mjolnir armor. His armor, based on the
armor or the Spartan project, was tough, but light. It emitted a
shield that could take a slight pounding, but his lack of a helmet
didn't provide the heads up display that the Spartans were accostomed
to using. He monitored his shield on his right arm, which was part
cybernetic due to an accident on Mobius yerars earlier. He lost his
arm from the elbow down, and his prosthetic one was used for a
variety of technical enhancements.
He made sure his custom made
blaster pistol was armed and the safety was on. He called it a DCX-15
Assualt Pistol, which was capable of arming bullet based weaponry,
powercells for blasterbolts or plasma, and beam based projectiles. He
holstered it, and pushed a button on his right wrist. The bottom of
his right forarm opened, revealing hollow chamber where he stored his
lightsaber.
His arm's technology functions, however, were limited
to a power supply. In the event that his arm lost power, he could
only use it as a conventional prosthetic arm. To prevent this, a
power cell chamber was implanted on the inside of his palm, which
opens with an electrical impulse from the brain.
He checked his
power cell status (green across the board) and stepped off the
turbolift. As he stepped off, he was greeted by several fimiliar
faces.
"You arnt coming with me," he said sternly.
Han
Solo rolled his eyes and picked up his bag. "We're taking the
Falcon. Load up."
Jim smiled slightly as Chewbacca picked up
all of his bags for him and began walking toward the Millenium
Falcon. He saw Jacen and Jaina in the cockpit, prepping for
launch.
"You've got to learn to trust people," Han said
over his shoulder. "You don't always have to be alone, you
know."
"Some things I must do alone"
"Not
this," Han said, as they walked up the ramp. "Don't think I
don't know where you are heading. Leia filled me in. First we are
going to Earth, where we are picking up her and a old friend of
yours."
"What?" Jim said with surprise. "Who
is it?"
"Marcus Brenxor, he's supposed to be taking the
role of some sort of tactical specialist at Mobius, our first
stop."
Jim shrugged. Marcus was a good fighter, no doubts
there. He was the sole survivor at the GDI installation on Mars when
the supposed "gate to hell" opened.
They walked into the
lounge where Jim found the protocol droid C-3P0 scuttling about.
"Ah!
Master George," he said in his usual witty tone, "so good
to see you fully functional."
"How's it hanging,
Threepio?" Jim replied, with a chuckle. The driod had a tendency
to be excentric.
"I am as functional a I can be, I suppose,
although I havn't had an oil bath in weeks, and I think my
circu-"
"Spare us the technical readouts, Goldenrod,"
Han inturrupted, "Head to the cockpit and tell Jacen to take us
to the docking sector in the South City."
"Well!"
Threepio said with disgust as he took off toward the bridge.
"What's
in the South City?" Jim asked as he organized his things.
"There
is one more passenger we need to pick up before we leave for your
home."
"Who is that?"
"Lando
Calrissian."
"We have been recalled back to the
wormhole," John Lorenz explained to the command staff of the
Corellia. "With Commander George gone, Admiral Shims gave me
Command of the task force."
The Chief Security Oficer,
Captain Frost, spoke up, saying "What can we do at the wormhole?
I thought it was suicide trying to return to J'P'Tan."
"It
is, but we believe another portal has been found by the Empire and
must lie on te galactic fringe."
"The Corellia is
equiped with strong censors," explained Laforge, "We should
be able to detect any subspace activity on the fringe."
"Then
let's get moving. Helm, set a course for Deep Space 15, and lets get
this show on the road."
As soon as the command was issued,
the large violet ship begab to lumber away from the Deneb debris
field. The other rescue ships flew out of its way, and the blue hot
hyperdrive of the Corellia began to heat up. Within seconds, the ship
was lightyears away from the Deneb disaster.
Suddenly, the
Corellia was pulled out of hyperspace. The ship came to a violent
stop, throwing most of the bridge crew out of their seats, and caused
several areas of the onbridge computer system to erupt in a shower of
sparks and flames.
Lorenz was so startled by the emergence that he
immediately entered a red alert status.
"What the hell just
happened? Get me a visual on screen!"
The bridge power took a
few seconds to restore itself, thanks to the emergency power reroute
initiated by LaForge. The crew recovered, some of them being taken to
the medical deck. The main viewscreen booted back up, showing the
logo of the Alliance, then switched to the default forward
view.
"Scanners online now, Commander Lorenz."
The
view showed a large group of Imperial Star Destroyers emerging from
Hyperspace, led by a lone Interdictor crusier.
"An Imperial
task force...its happening now..." John's expression changed
from alert to stern worry.
"Get Captain Sika's ship out now!
The Imperial invasion of the galaxy has begun!"
The Imperial
task force continued to grow. As the Corellia began to engage the
lead Star Destroyers, many other Imperial ships were warping in.
Within ten minutes, there were nearly a thousand Imperial capital
ships, including Imperial Star Destroyers, Victory Star Destroyers,
Nova class warships, as well as other smaller dreadnaughts.
The
invasion had indeed begun.
"Get our engines online,
reroute all non-essential power to the shield and weapon
systems."
Ben Sika began to start the Pennsylvania's
departure, and John Matheews issued the Red Alert command. Galbraith
and Goodwin ran to the nearest gun stations, gearing up to battle
their way out of the system.
"Damn," said Brenton, "We
will never make it to Vulcan if this invasion has started. Command is
going to reroute us to the front instead."
"I alread
took the liberty of sending a message to your master, Ignatious,"
Sika commed him, "She will meet us at Ross 128, if we get out of
here alive."
"Ross 128?" Max asked, almost paniced,
"That system has been abondoned since the Shivan Incursion.
Surely we won't go out of our way to get her there?"
"If
you have a safer place at this time, Commander Goodwin, tell me
now."
"Never mind that, Captain," Brenton
inturrupted, "Get us off this ship and into hyperspace"
Brenton
saw out his window the view of hundreds of people running around the
Corellia's docking bay, preparing for battle again. As the ship took
off, it slowly began to slide out the bay clearing. Suddenly, a large
turbolaser volly hit the bay, vaporizing it instatly.
"Holy
shit!" a gunner next to him commed, "The whole bay is gone.
That could have been us!"
Brenton, pausing to mourn the loss
of the entire bay staff, put on his headset.
The battle had
completely surrounded the Corellia, which was fighting strong, but
still getting overwhelmed by the sheer amount of Imperial
ships.
"Captain," Matheews said, "The outsystem
vector we have is blocked. The Interdictor was taken out, but we
won't get past that brigade of Novas. I recommend we head toward
Mobius, which would need us to take a path through the city to the
other side of the ship."
"Acknowledged, take us in."
The
city was also littered with Star Destroyers, shooting anything trying
to take off and leveling buildings. Galbraith gave the firing order,
"Hammer down!" and the battle began.
"Damn I'm
good," Max said as he shot down another fighter. "How many
you at Brenton"
Brenton smiled at Max's initiative at beating
him. "I'm at seven. You are too slow Max!"
"I don't
think so, I've gotten sixteen."
Max was unleashing his quad
laser onto the battlefield as the Pennslvania swirved in and out of
the bulidings. Soon, the ship had taken out a Star Destroyer and
reached the otherside of the Corellia.
"Get us out of here,
Sika!" Goodwin yelled as he took down another fighter.
And as
if Sika was one step ahead of him, the starstreak of hyperspace
surrounded the ship.
"Damn, every time we try to do
something nice, we get attacked"
Lando Calrissian spoke hap
hazzardly as the Millenium Falcon took off from the South City. Jim,
who asked to fly the ship, took off toward the outer system and began
the hyperspace jump coodinates. Suddenly, an Alliance ship roared
overtop of them, entering hyperspace nearly two clicks in front of
them.
Chewbacca howled in fright as Jim spun the Falcon out of the
ships slipstream. "Who was that?" Han asked as he entered
the bridge.
"It was the Pennsylvania," Jim said with
wonder. "I don't know why it was heading out that way, the only
system out there is Mobius."
"Can't worry about it now,
set course for Alpha Centuari. We can't let ourselves be traced."
Jim
hit the nav computer's engage button, sending the Falcon into
hyperspace.
