Chapter 19: Horror in the Wild
May 30
A month. An entire month looking for answers in the I6 grid. As Iulius had feared, the coordinates given by the Emperor were outdated, because the path toward them that had been first discovered was now impassable. Apparently, Jade had detected a 'Disturbance in the Force' and was now leading the fleet toward a new route.
Iulius still didn't know what to think about this girl being a Force-sensitive. The only ones he had ever encountered were the Jedi among the rebels, not exactly a good opinion modifier in his head. Still, if she was an agent of the Emperor, that meant that the Empire too had some Force-users and that they could be allies, right?
Still, so far all this Mara Jade had done was to bring Iulius and his Task Force on some desolate rocks, toxic planets, almost sent them into a pulsar star and waste a lot of time doing her meditations.
Orders were orders though, and she had indeed proven that she could lead them across the perilous routes of Wild Space, so all Iulius could do was be patient.
He didn't have many expectations when Commander Bolo called him in his office and informed him that they were about to leave hyperspace.
Iulius headed there, finding Qathora as well. Mara was in front of the helmsman's commands, apparently directing the ship with the Force. Her face clearly showed signs of strain that such a task forced on her.
Bolo was checking in the navicomputer and made an announcement.
"We're leaving hyperspace in 3...2...1…"
The Admonitor left hyperspace into an unknown system and in front of an unknown planet.
But, differently from all the others they have met so far, this seemed fit to sustain life. Even from the viewport, Iulius could distinguish several continents with shades of green, sand-yellow ans white around the poles, along with oceans and enclosed seas.
"Well, perhaps you did find something, this time, Mara." Qathora said sarcastically to the young woman.
Jade ignored the Togruta and walked toward the viewport while Iulius gave the orders.
"Contact the rest of the fleet. See if they've managed to track our signal." he said to Bolo.
After a few seconds, the man responded. "Affirmative, sir. They're calculating the jump and will be here in a few minutes."
"Very well, give me a scan of the planet. Let's see if we can find any sign of sentient life."
"Sir, we're detecting three unknown vessels coming our way." one of the operators announced from the pit.
Iulius took a look outside of the viewport, waiting for the projectors to show what the sensors were picking up.
What they showed him was definitely nothing he had ever seen.
There were two smaller vessels and a bigger one, all definitely of an alien design. The biggest seemed to have a giant reactor placed in the middle of the structure, and above that sort of circular base the ship seemed to have a tall, thin wall.
"Are they hostile?" Iulius asked.
"Can't exactly tell, sir. But we detect numerous energy peaks, they might be charging their weapons." Bolo answered.
"Admiral," Mara spoke with a careful tone. "I sense a strong killing instinct coming from them. I advise we stand ready to fight."
"I concur." Iulius said, as even his own intuition was telling him that those ships might be part of the threat that the Emperor sent him to assess. "Raise the deflectors, all hands to battle stations." he ordered, and the crew got to work.
The alarm started to sound all along the ship, fighter and bomber squadrons were being prepared to scramble.
"Try to hail them, let's see if they answer." Iulius added.
The communication officer tried twice, but there was no answer.
"Negative, sir. They are receiving it but they're ignoring us completely."
Then, the battleship in the middle of the alien formation started to flare red lights. The sensors beeped like crazy.
"Sir, missiles incoming!" Bolo reported frantically.
"Evasive maneuvers!" Iulius ordered while he checked their surroundings. When he found something that he believed to be very useful, he turned toward the helmsman. "Colmas, put that asteroid field between us and them."
"Yes, sir." the man responded.
While the minor, automated turrets of the Admonitor fired against the slow missiles, destroying almost half of them, the rest of the warheads hit the ship, but couldn't penetrate the shields. Beside, they seemed fairly primitive: they were just filled with a kind of explosive that could have been useful against a land structure, but not against the armor of a Star Destroyer.
"Report!" Iulius asked while the ship was being brought behind the asteroids.
"Shields at 98%, Admiral." Bolo reported. "They don't seem to be very powerful weapons.
Iulius looked outside again. The two women were still at his side, awaiting orders.
The Admonitor was turning on her left to reach the asteroids, and Iulius noticed that the nearest of the alien ships was detaching from the group and charging at them.
"All right, let's test their mettle. Prepare a broadside on port, target the nearest vessel." he ordered.
The four octuple turrets of the Admonitor pointed toward that vessel.
"Target locked." Bolo announced after a few seconds.
"Fire." Iulius ordered.
The 32 heavy turbolasers opened fire at the same time and a wave of green bolts headed toward that vessel, which was more or less as big as an Acclamator-class cruiser.
To the surprise of the Imperials, the bolts hit the vessel and found no shields. The alien ship simply blew up in pieces, leaving almost nothing.
Still baffled at how easy it was, Bolo reported another thing. "Uh...sir, the other two ships are trying to retreat."
"Send two fighter squadrons against the smaller one and a bomber squadron to hit the engines of the bigger one. I want to know who is aboard those ships." Iulius calmly instructed.
Bolo relayed the orders and, not long after, the TIEs took off. Surprisingly, those alien ships didn't seem to have small crafts of their own. The ships fired at the TIEs with some small turrets that did take out a few TIEs, but they were eventually overrun by the imperial numerical superiority. The small vessel was quickly destroyed, while the battleship (at least Iulius had decided to call it like that even if that thing didn't seem to be equipped to fight another ship), after the scanners indicated where the thrusters were, was immobilized by the proton torpedoes of the bombers.
"Admiral, the ship has stopped moving. We're jamming communications, but it doesn't look like they are transmitting anything." Bolo reported.
"So how do they communicate if they don't use a comlink?" Iulius asked.
"I...I don't know, sir."
"Maybe we will find out once we get them and study them." Jade coldly suggested.
"You're right about that." Iulius conceded.
"Sir, the rest of the fleet has arrived." one of the operators reported.
Soon after, from the same point the Admonitor had come from, the rest of Iulius' Task Force finally came out. Since that area was not charted, thus the navicomputer couldn't calculate a way for every ship to come out at the same time without crashing into each other, they had to come out at intervals of three minutes, and the first ship to come out was the Star Destroyer Allecto.
The captain of that ship evidently saw what was happening and called the Admonitor.
"Allecto to Admiral Tanis. Did you want to cut us off from the fun?" he asked sarcastically.
"Save the jokes for later, Captain. Prepare a boarding party of your stormtroopers, I'm coming in with my own."
"Yes, sir, right away." the officer responded with discipline.
Bolo, however waved a hand negatively. "Wow, wow, wow...you can't go in there, sir." he opposed.
"And why not, Commander?"
"What if the guys aboard that ship decide to blow it up with you on board? What if there are other kind of traps? You can't risk your life until we know who we're up against."
"He's right, my lord." Qathora added. "Jade and I can lead the boarding party. But if anything happens to you, then we're all doomed."
Iulius had to concede to the logic and sighed in resignation.
"Very well. You are in charge, Qathora. Get to the hangar, you two."
"Yes, sir." the Togruta replied simply and walked out of the bridge, followed by Mara.
Five minutes later, Qathora and Mara were aboard the Sentinel transport that was going to bring them and 20 stormtroopers on the alien battleships. Mara was also assigned Iulius' Death Trooper escort of six soldiers in black armor. Since she was the personal agent of the Emperor, the Admiral didn't want to take risks of her being hurt either.
The shuttle took off and headed toward the battleship. The TIE fighters had spotted two different points that the boarding parties could have used to land. Though they had been obtained by bombing the ship's weapons.
Qathora got into the cockpit to get a view of the hull of the battleship while the pilots were approaching the shuttle to it.
"Does that thing have any radiation shield?" she asked, since otherwise getting out of the shuttle in a damaged section of the ship, where the radiations of the nearest star could cook them up, would have been a bad idea.
"From the scanners, it looks that way, ma'am. We are also detecting artificial gravity being created on the inside." the co-pilot answered.
She looked again at the hull until she finally spotted the landing zone that Iulius had chosen for them. The Togruta got back into the cargo bay and went to pick up her life support mask.
"Get ready, boys. We land in 60 seconds." she announced.
The troopers checked their weapons or their armors one last time and then stood up, aligning themselves either toward the frontal or rear door of the cargo bay. They had been divided into two teams of 10 each. While both of them had a stormtrooper officer to lead them, their general direction and objective were to be decided by Qathora and Jade, who acted on behalf of the Admiral.
They had also an unusual scheme of color: the veterans had some orange motives on the armor that were reminiscent of an old clone battalion, the 212th. Nobody exactly knew why Iulius allowed them to customize their armors only with that color, and most of all how he got away with such a breach of Imperial rule, but those who had followed him in the last year since he became Captain of the Admonitor had started to use them. The recruits were still wearing their white armor (and the breathing units for this mission), while the Death Troopers were still in their black armors.
Qathora's team got the front door, Mara's the other.
Once the green light appeared into the bay, the doors lowered and the teams ran out. There was a few meters before entering the ship where there was no air to propagate sound and all Qathora could hear was her breathing into the mask.
On her right, Mara was also sprinting toward the ship. She had removed her yellow cape and she was wearing a mask for the oxygen as well, while she also donned a special undersuit to protect the rest of her body from the cold and the pressure of the void. In her hands there was an SE-14 blaster pistol.
Followed by the stormtroopers and Death Troopers, the two women finally entered into the corridors of the ship via a breach in the hull which was still partially on fire.
"This is Team A." the Togruta said in the comlink. "We reached the entry point."
"Copy that." Iulius answered. "Team B, are you in position?"
"Affirmative, Admonitor," a stormtrooper replied. "we're waiting for your order."
"Proceed into the enemy ship. See if you can make contact with the hostiles."
The two squads proceeded, with Qathora's at the head. They soon entered into a corridor and walked down to it, in the hope of finding a terminal or anything that could indicate them where the command bridge was.
Instead they found a corpse, laying on the floor, probably killed by one of the explosions that hit the ship before.
Whatever creature that was, it had an implant on its back with four metal protrusions that seemed to emit a refrigerant gas. Qathora motioned for two stormtroopers to go check it.
While one of them kept his blaster rifle pointed at the creature's head, the second knelt down and, after taking the courage, turned it around with a hand.
"What the kriff is...this?" the stormtrooper asked with a chill running down his spine. Qathora took a look of it and felt very uncomfortable as well.
That creature had two pair of limbs like any humanoid, but its torso was incredibly skinny, gaunt, with a skin of what seemed a pale green. Its legs were covered in some kind of armor that only left uncovered the toes, which had horrid claws, just like the nails on the hands.
And the head. That cranium was stocky, the alien had four glowing yellow eyes, apparently no ears and the mouth had no lips, only sharp, terrifying teeth that had nothing human or the like.
The mouth was wide open, and probably they would have found it like that on living specimen, because it seemed impossible to close it without the teeth piercing the opposite mandible.
"I don't know." Qathora answered. "But I doubt they might want to talk. Let's keep moving, and keep your weapons ready."
They proceeded to the end of the hallway.
"This is Team B. We are under fire from the unidentified hostiles." the leader of the other boarding party suddenly spoke up.
"Do you need backup?" Iulius asked.
"Negative...hand…" the sound of statics took over.
"Admonitor. Admiral, do you read us?" Qathora asked in the comlink, but there were only statics. "They're jamming long-range transmissions. Looks like we're on our own, gentlemen."
"Uh, great. In a creepy ship surrounded by monsters." the stormtrooper called Mickey commented.
"Stay focused, trooper." his officer reprimanded him as they all entered a giant room with various bridges, strange masts and the roof which went upward for hundreds of meters. They all realized that they must have been in the middle of the ship.
As they checked their surroundings, the Imperials suddenly heard the faint sound of blaster rifles and some unknown weapons.
"Must be Team B." the stormtrooper officer noted.
"Then we're going that way." Qathora said. Then turned toward Mara. "Jade, you and your squad get up there and cover us." she ordered, indicating some stairs that led to a gangplank overlooking their route.
Mara nodded and led her troopers up there.
The squads proceeded toward the direction where they heard the shots coming. They noticed that the sounds of blaster was becoming more intense, while the unknown weapons were shooting less, perhaps a sign that their comrades were winning. Still, Qathora jogged in front of the formation. Then, Mara's team was forced to stop, as the gangplank only led them so far into the room, so they settled with providing cover fire until they could see their comrades, then they would rejoin them.
But as Qathora and her squad turned the corner of one of the many elevated platforms that sprinkled all over that section, they found themselves in front of an ugly surprise.
At least a dozen of aliens like the one they found dead shortly before. They had various dimensions, weapons and armors, but the appearance was the same.
The taller of those aliens roared and pointed at the imperials. Immediately, those who seemed to be his underlings pointed their weapons.
"Fire! Fire!" Qathora ordered and she shot with her E-11.
A firefight quickly ensued. The aliens had what seemed to be energy weapons, but good for the imperials, the small, round bolts that their rifles fired were not powerful enough to cause excessive damage to their armors. They noticed that when one of the stormtroopers was hit in the chest, Qathora knelt down to help him while the others covered her, but aside from a small burn on the armor and some little pain, the man was still able to fight.
The aliens were quickly dispatched, especially with the help of Mara's team covering from the distance, only the bigger one became a problem. Aside from the fact that he seemed to be a sponge for blaster bolts, his weapon suddenly rose a green kinetic barrier in front of him. The troopers stopped firing and tried to flank him, but the alien shot with his weapon, from behind said barrier.
Those bolts had a strange gaseous form and it could bypass the barrier, which surprised the imperials. One of the stormtroopers avoided the burst only by a margin. They went for cover, only to find out that those bullets didn't just bypass that specific barrier...they were going through any material!
The Death Trooper accompanying Qathora found it out the hard way as one of the bolts from the alien literally passed across the metallic boulder he was using for cover and got him. The Trooper went down with a painful groan, but he was still moving while on the ground.
Qathora decided to take the matter into her own hands and charged forward. As she did that, the kinetic barrier finally ran its life out and the alien was caught with its guard down when Qathora made a slide and ended up behind the creature.
"Aim at the back!" Qathora ordered.
She fired a couple of bolts against the machinery on that part of the alien, who turned around to shoot her, but the stormtroopers were quicker and they bombarded the creature's back with precision, making its mechanical components explode and finally killing it.
"Find where the jammer is." Iulius ordered as soon as the communications between him and the boarding parties were cut off.
He stared back outside of the viewport. The Admonitor was now flying very close to the alien battleship, which was surrounded by the Allecto and other ships of the imperial flotilla.
After waiting for three minutes, the operator talked to him again.
"Admiral, the source of the jamming seems to be at the top of the enemy ship."
Iulius let a breath of disappointment escape his nostrils. He couldn't shoot at it, because it wasn't an external device. He wanted that ship as intact as possible so he could study it. All he could do was waiting.
"Admiral," Bolo spoke after a few minutes. "the listening cruiser 3451 has intercepted some signals from the surface of the planet.
Deciding that he needed something to take his mind out from the mission of his subordinates, Iulius turned around and headed to the back of the bridge.
"Send them to the holotable." the Admiral replied.
Iulius stepped next to the device and pushed the button to listen at these unidentified transmissions.
He listened, but couldn't understand a single thing. He had never heard that language.
"Call the protocol droid." he ordered, and the machine was brought to him after a few minutes.
"Droid, do you recognize this language?" he asked as the various voices on the speakers of the table kept talking.
The machine listened for a while and elaborated. Then he finally spoke up.
"I'm sorry, Admiral. Some of the voices seem to speak a language that is remotely similar to a dialect of the Mid Rim, but none of them it's in my database."
Iulius hummed. "Thanks. You may go." he replied, and the droid silently went back to the elevator.
Admiral Tanis tried to make sense of what was going on. Why those ships they had met seemed unfit to fight a space battle? Perhaps the planet in front of his fleet was still at a primitive age and those vessels were part of a nation that wanted to overcome its rivals. Yet, they seemed already prepared to fight when they arrived, and just three ships couldn't be enough to guarantee the supremacy on the planet.
Iulius tried, but it was all in vain: this was uncharted space. He had no idea who he was facing, why those ships attacked him or who was manning them. The signal of the stormtroopers' cameras had disappeared almost immediately and the communication died down a few minutes later.
Then, Bolo finally gave him new hope.
"Admiral, we re-established communications with the assault teams."
Iulius pressed the comlink button on the holotable.
"Admiral Tanis to Team A and B. Come in." he ordered.
"Team A, we receive you, Admiral." the voice of Qathora spoke, and Iulius breathed a mental sigh of relief.
"Team B, standing by." the commander of Team B reported.
"Agent Qathora, give me a SIT-REP."
"Sir, we faced an unknown and hostile alien species. They attacked us, but we still managed to join up and conquer what seems to be the command bridge."
"Do you need backup?"
"Team B only lost one man, but we got three wounded who need advanced medical support."
"Copy that, I'll dispatch reinforcements." Iulius replied. "Keep the bridge under control until then."
"Yes, sir."
Iulius turned toward Bolo. "Tell all the Star Destroyers to send in their stormtrooper units. I want that ship."
"Yes, Admiral." the man diligently replied.
Soon, another group of Sentinel-class shuttles flew toward the battleship. Qathora, Jade and the assault teams managed to indicate them where the hangar of the vessel was supposed to be and around and hour later, the Admonitor received an "all-clear" signal from Mara.
Iulius ordered the first two boarding parties to collect three corpses of the aliens for study on the Admonitor and return back on the ISD.
The sight of those creatures unsettled him as much as it unsettled his men, but he managed to hide it. Those creatures seemed bred to be repulsive.
He signaled Qathora, Jade and the Death Troopers to follow him back to the bridge.
"Have you noticed anything?" he asked them.
"Well, they fought like animals. Animals with good instincts, but still, animals." Qathora commented.
"I tried to read them with the Force and...I think they're connected to some sort of hive mind." Mara said.
Iulius stopped in his tracks and turned toward the woman. "A hive mind, you say?"
"I'm quite sure. None of them had autonomous thoughts. Well, perhaps the bigger ones, who seemed to give orders, but they too were subjected to an external presence."
Iulius stroke his chin. "That would explain why they wouldn't talk with us. Like the Geonosians, only a high-ranking specimen would be able to communicate. So who's talking on the surface?" he asked, pointing his eyes at the sky.
The two women exchanged a quick, inquisitive glance. "What do you mean?" Qathora asked.
"While you were away, we intercepted various transmissions coming from the surface of the planet. We don't' know what language that is, but if it was those creatures, they wouldn't talk into a radio, right?" he answered calmly.
"So, these aliens..."Mara started.
"They might not be the only ones on this planet. And we need to find out if there's some other civilization down there...and if they're enemy as well or potential allies."
With that said, Iulius proceeded to the bridge.
"You two have done very well, ladies. Go get some rest." he told them.
"If you insist…" Qathora quipped while cracking her shoulders.
"Admiral, I need to contact the Emperor. He needs to know about this." Mara requested instead.
Admiral Tanis stopped in front of the lifter's door.
"I'll ask the comms officer to try, but out here I doubt we will be able to contact the rest of the galaxy very soon. Besides, wouldn't it be better to wait until we have at least a better picture of the situation in front of us?" he suggested.
Mara thought about it for a moment. Then conceded. "I suppose."
"However you prefer, Miss Jade, you'll be notified as soon as we can reach Coruscant." he concluded as the lifter finally opened and he stepped in.
"Good." Mara concluded before walking away.
Qathora made a quick bow with her head and headed out as well, toward her and Iulius' quarters while the Admiral was brought back to the bridge by the lifter.
As soon as he entered the bridge, Iulius found Bolo waiting for him with a datapad in his right hand.
"Sir, you need to see this." the Commander said and passed the datapad.
Iulius took it and read the report while Bolo started to speak.
"The ships are making a long-range scan, sir. We found destroyed cities but also structures of a design that is reminiscent of the battleship we captured. But this…"
He moved toward the holotable, prompting Iulius to follow. "This is what bogged my mind."
What followed was a holographic record made probably by a probe droid, or maybe one of the more powerful scanners that were able to recreate fairly workable simulations.
Iulius thus saw a squad of those monstrous creatures being ambushed, killed and looted by...Humans!
He almost barred his eyes when he saw them. Some of those seemed to wear a worn-out uniform fit for battlefield, others were civilians. Their clothes were definitely primitive, signs of an industrial society that was still far from achieving space-faring. Their weapons were simple slug-throwers, which seemed to do their work against some of those creatures, but perhaps they were doing only so much to help them.
It was clear that those humans were some kind of resistance group, because their tactic was a classic hit-and-run, and Iulius had seen plenty of those.
A half-grin appeared on the young Admiral's face.
"Commander, see if you can track that group of humans. Perhaps we might have found a potential ally in this forgotten corner of universe."
"Yes, sir." Bolo diligently replied before heading over the pit and give instructions to the operators and other officers.
Per his part, Iulius simply stood there, analyzing the data and watching that record a couple times. Like Thrawn had taught him, he had to get every shred of intel from what little he had, so that when he would have to face another unexpected event, he would be ready to react.
Hi there.
So, yeah. As you might understand, Iulius' story is not over and, in fact, I have his entire career planned out along with that of the Bridgers. I know this Saga is supposed to follow only the family in the title, but Iulius is technically an in-law with one of them, so please don't be mad at me.
Besides, since Thrawn is a prisoner, who better than his last protege to give us a point of view inside the Empire.
Don't worry, Iulius will not stay in Wild Space forever. I intend to have him go back to the galaxy and give his contribution to the war against the Rebellion and the Federation.
I hope you didn't find this chapter too boring, but I needed to give him a bit more of space, this time.
See you in the next chapter,
May the Force be with you.