A Left Turn at Albuquerque

Disclaimer: I do not own the characters that I am about to mangle around for my own amusement – sadly all Robotech and Star Wars characters remain the property of Harmony Gold, Disney and Lucasfilm Ltd respectively – I am merely borrowing them and make no profit from their use. As a result, please continue to keep the legal attack dogs, also known as lawyers, firmly muzzled and on a leash as I have no money to give to anyone.

Author's Note: Sorry it's taken me so long to get back to working on this story, and on my other stories as well, but for the better part of the last two months we've been in the process of moving my parents out of their flat and back here into our family home. As a result, there has been a considerable degree of mayhem around here and I just haven't had the time or energy to do anything fanfiction related. Thankfully the move is now complete, and I can get back to working on my fics.

Chapter Six

Bridge

Imperial Star Destroyer Judicator

A Few Minutes Earlier

It was with a very heavy heart that Captain Brandei watched as his superior officer walked over to the primary commander's console near the back of the bridge, preparing to sound the alarm that would tell the surviving crew of the Judicator to proceed to the escape pods and abandon ship. Abruptly a deep, resonating shudder ran through the entire ship and sparks shot out of multiple conduits and junction boxes all around the bridge, the sharp hissing snaps of the blowing out electrical conduits mixing with the crackling of ever intensifying fires. The deck trembled again and this time he heard the distinct sounds of metal bending and tearing apart mixing with the concussive rumbles of more internal explosions.

It was the sound and feel of his command dying. Soon the Judicator, once a mighty symbol of the peace and order the Empire had brought to the galaxy, would break up completely becoming another wreck drifting in a system that had already seen so much death and destruction during the Clone Wars. Something that, if Brandei was honest with himself, he was still having trouble wrapping his head around. Oh, being defeated in battle was always a possibility – it had happened to this very ship before after all though this time it was obvious that the Judicator was mortally wounded instead of being merely disabled – that was not what he was honestly having difficulty coming to terms with.

It was that it happened so fast.

"Five minutes that's all it took," Brandei said softly to himself. Had he not experienced it he would have thought it impossible for a fleet of top of the line Imperial warships to be defeated so quickly, even if faced – as they had been – by superior numbers. There ships were, after all, the most technologically advanced war machines in the entire galaxy powerful enough that even one Imperial-class star destroyer could take on entire fleets of Clone Wars era warships and, between their massive arsenals of high-powered weapons and TIE fighter and bomber wings, tear them to pieces.

Only that hadn't happened.

Instead it had been them who'd been torn to pieces. Two things added insult to injury. First their own weapons hadn't seemed to do much if any real damage to the alien warships. There oddly mobile shields and armour taking all their firepower and only sustaining what appeared to be cosmetic damage at best, quite how that was possible he had no idea as there was no material in existence known to be able to withstand shots from capital grade heavy turbolasers. The other annoying thing was – unknowingly like his superior officer – he couldn't shake the feeling that the enemy had been attempting to hold back in some way that had they wanted to they could have reduced the entire fleet to vapours in moments.

Who are you? he thought as he looked out the bridge viewports at the alien fleet hanging there in space, seemingly ignoring them now that they were no longer a threat. Where do you come from? How can your weapons be so powerful? Why'd you destroy the Kimbala and in the process made an enemy of the Galactic Empire? Are there more of you coming? That last thought gave him serious pause as he wondered if the twenty-two ships here could be the vanguard of an invasion force. It was a real possibility though it didn't explain why they'd boarded – and later seemingly deliberately destroyed – a derelict Republic-era star destroyer.

A cold tidal wave of horror abruptly swept over him as he suddenly realised what these unknowns, if they really were the vanguard of an invasion force, would have been after aboard the derelict ship. It was something that the Imperial Security Bureau would have never thought to remove from any of the ships they used in their little honey trap operations since every ship in the known galaxy – from the lowliest tramp freighter to the mightiest of star destroyers – had a copy kept in their navigational database but which would be invaluable to a hostile force unfamiliar with the wider galaxy.

A map of hyperspace routes.

The sudden wailing of the evacuation alarm jolted him out of his thoughts and back to the immediate problem. They needed to evacuate this ship before she came apart completely. They could only hope that the aliens, if they really were the vanguard of an invasion, didn't destroy or capture their escape pods after they launched. Knowing that he needed to see to his duty as the Judicator's master and ensure the crew escaped before the ship blew he turned around…

…just as two things happened almost simultaneously. First there came another resonating shudder accompanied by a loud boom as something deep within the burning bowls of the ship exploded. Second the primary commanders console – with Admiral Durril right next to it – erupted first with sparks then flames before blowing apart completely. The fireball enveloping the admiral melting his uniform and burning his skin even as the concussion of the blast threw him away from the sudden conflagration. Before the unimaginable pain of the burns could provoke Durril's screams he impacted the opposite bulkhead where he slumped and lay motionless.

Brandei shook off the shock of what he'd just seen and raced over to his superiors – and honestly friends as they'd served together for years both during and after the Clone Wars – side. Squatting down he gazed upon Durril and honestly felt like being sick as he saw the tattered remains of the front of his uniform. The heat of the fire had burned much of it away but had melted the rest fusing it to his flesh, flesh that he could see was badly burned hell here and there he could see right through to the muscle underneath. Yet amazingly he was still alive if mercifully unconscious.

The sudden shriek of massive quantities of metal tearing simultaneously accompanied series of violent shudders in the deck and sprays of sparks from numerous conduits and consoles reminded him that they were running out of time to escape. He could feel it in the way the ship was shaking and in the sounds that Judicator was entering her final death throes as some of her decks, badly weakened or completely consumed by the leaking tibana and clauzon-46 fuelled plasma fires, were beginning to collapse in upon themselves bringing structural bracing and hull fragments with them. Soon the progressing collapses would reach the main reactors hypermatter storage cells setting off an explosion that would completely vaporise what was left of the once proud warship.

A plastoid armour encased hand abruptly touched his shoulder. "Sir we have to go," one of the stormtroopers who guarded the entrance to the bridge said abruptly from behind him.

"I know," Brandei replied. "Help me with him."

"Yes sir," the trooper acknowledged.

Together with a combination of both urgency and tenderness, as neither wanted to make Durril's wounds even worse, the two of them picked up the unconscious admiral. Then they carried him out of the bridge to where the last of the command level escape pods were waiting for them. With as gentle a touch as they could they loaded the badly burned man into the pod and secured him as best as they were able. Brandei immediately went to the small control station at the front of the pod while behind him the stormtrooper first sealed the hatch then broke out an emergency aid kit and began doing what he could for Durril using the knowledge of field medicine that was included in all stormtrooper training.

"Brace yourself launching… now," Brandei ordered pulling the handle that triggered a simple battery-powered magnetic catapult that immediately hurled the pod clear of the dying star destroyer. And not a moment too soon as an explosion from the warship brushed the pod sending them spinning like a top. Cursing furiously under his breath he fought with the pods simple controls to bring the pod back under control before the spinning motion made them both space sick.

Finally, he succeeded and looked up. To find they were now facing the Judicator and he felt his heart seize up as he beheld his command in the throes of death. Explosions and fires – feeding on leaking fuel and oxygen – were everywhere and the ship was clearly breaking up as city block sized chunks of the hull and superstructure were being thrown into space. The biggest explosion yet erupted just forward of amidships and the entire front third of the superstructure broke away from the rest of the blazing wreck. A brilliant whitish-blue light abruptly began to shine from the other half of the ship. Realizing what was about to happen Brandei hurriedly threw up an arm to shield his eyes…

…microseconds before the ruptured hypermatter-fuelled solar ionization reactor detonated. The explosion enveloping both halves of the hull and annihilating them in a storm of all consuming destruction that, for a moment out of time, seemed to rip the very structure of the space-time continuum apart. The brilliant flare of the blast faded and Brandei lowered his arm to see that the Judicator was gone. Where she had once been there was now nothing but a sea of spreading, cooling plasma and a few torn, disintegrating fragments of hull most not much bigger than your average playing card.

Movement out of the corner of his eye caught his attention. He turned his head to look, to see that the pod – no doubt propelled by the concussive force of the explosion – had drifted into the midst of the alien fleet. It was in fact drifting towards the largest of the three star destroyer sized ships in the middle of the fleet. From here he could clearly see the massive numbers of turrets – ranging in size from large rectangular and dome shaped turrets with two to three huge barrels per turret to hundreds of small single-barrel ball shaped turrets that seemed to be slung very low to the hull – lining the vessels flank not to mention a sizeable number of currently-closed launch bays.

Abruptly light flared and for a moment Brandei thought that the aliens had fired at the pod only to miss. Blinking away the after image he frowned when he saw that they had seemingly been enveloped by a whirling energy field that resembled a gyroscope of all things. What in the Emperor's name, he thought a moment before the gyroscope turned into another type of energy that resembled a ball of frosted glass. Abruptly he began to feel more than a little weird, there was a strange feeling of tingling tension through his whole frame as if the organic matter that made up his body was being put under strain. His stomach abruptly felt like it was suddenly doing flipflops and the world seemed to both begin phasing in and out as well as distort with odd colours.

A filtered groan of discomfort from the stormtrooper behind him let him know that he was not the only one feeling so strange. Ugh what the kriffing hell is happening, he thought as the feeling of tension and the optical distortions got worse. Moments later he was thrown back hard against the seat as the pod abruptly shook before pitching hard to port with such violence and suddenness that he was almost thrown out of the chair. The pod jerked back steady before violently pitching forward. Unable to stop himself Brandei was carried forward by the motion, there was a sudden flash of blinding pain as his forehead violently encountered the console…

…then he knew no more.

Hoth

Hoth System

Thirty Minutes Later

Space above the frozen world of Hoth was, for one of the few times a year when the planets orbit around its parent star took it out of the firing lane of the systems extremely dense and chaotic asteroid belt, calm and quiet. Not that there was anyone here to notice as while technically habitable, and despite a strategic position along one of the Outer Rims busiest hyperspace routes, virtually nobody ever came to this ice bound planet. Thus, there was no one to notice when at twenty-two different points near the planets orbit points of space the size of quarks abruptly warped as the barrier between normal space and hyperspace abruptly came under attack from within.

In a space of time measured in fractions of seconds the space-time warps grew and intensified, sending out rippling waves of distorted gravity that made space itself seem to shiver with a heat haze like distortion. The folds of space-time parted and in the centre of each distortion field appeared a tiny ball of coruscating, eldritch light. The gravitational distortions began to fade as within the space of half a second each tiny sphere expanded into what would look to an outsider like a whirling ball of frosted glass, albeit frosted glass flickering and glowing with various exotic energies, up to fifteen kilometres in diameter. Within each sphere shapes began to appear, blurred and indistinct at first but rapidly becoming coherent and solid till with a gyroscopic flicker the spheres vanished.

The SDF-3 and her battlegroup had arrived in the Hoth system.

Bridge

SDF-3

"Defold operation complete, sir."

"Very good. Lieutenant Pren scan the area I want to know if there are any unforeseen surprises in this system," Admiral Rick Hunter ordered from the command chair.

"Aye sir."

At Lieutenant Pren's acknowledgement of his order Rick leaned back in the command chair. He hoped there wouldn't be any surprises in this system, as that would only lead to more drama and they had already had quite enough of that for one day. What they needed now was time, time to finish the repairs from all the damage the disastrous neutron-s missile test had inflicted upon their ships not to mention the strain getting catapulted into another galaxy had placed on the engines. Then they needed to sit down, get their bearings and start trying to figure out a way to get back home to the Milky Way – if such a way existed.

"Admiral our short-range scans have been completed. They indicate that a number of small metallic objects drifting between our ships," Lieutenant Pren reported. "They appear to be escape pods from some of the Imperial ships, they must have drifted close enough to us after the battle to become caught in our fold spheres."

Rick resisted, just, the impulse to groan. There goes the rest of the day being quiet, he thought before snapping into action. "How many are there?" he asked. "And are we picking up any lifeform readings from them?"

"Four sir," Pren replied, "we are picking up lifeform readings from all the pods but most are pretty weak. My guess is they're either injured or unconscious or both." Not surprising as getting caught too close to the event horizon of a fold sphere can be very bumpy, Rick thought knowing from experience the kind of turbulence you could experience if you were in a small ship and got caught just inside a fold sphere. Plus, any survivors on those pods would likely have injuries from the battle and the breaking up of their ships in the aftermath of their unintended destruction. Which reminded him he needed to have a word with the commander in charge of the gunnery control crews on drawing up new disabling settings for their standard anti-ship beam cannons as the current ones – designed as they were for use against highly durable robotech warships – were obviously still too powerful and killed the weaker ships the people of this galaxy seemed to use regardless of the gunner's intentions.

"Scramble a squadron of veritechs," Rick ordered turning back to the issue at hand. "Tell them to bring the pods aboard. Have medical personnel standing by, also tell Colonel Dante to have security teams standing by." After what happened the last time they'd brought an Imperial escape pod aboard he wasn't going to take chances that some trigger happy Imperial soldier killing one of the unarmed and unarmoured medical teams coming to help them.

"Aye sir," one of the other bridge crew acknowledged.

"Lieutenant Pren anything on our long-range scans?"

"Negative sir. Aside from the escape pods we appear to be all alone here."

We thought that in the other system too and look what happened there, he thought before deciding he didn't want to take any chances of someone else sneaking up on them. Especially as he fully intended to keep the fleet here for some time while they figured out what to do to get out of the predicament that they'd found themselves in. If they could get out of it that was as to the best of his knowledge nobody had ever had a hyperspace fold operation go this badly wrong before. But then most people didn't have to do emergency space folds to escape a fledgling black hole created by a weapons test going horribly wrong.

"Set the system to run continuous scans lieutenant," he ordered. "If we do have any more uninvited guests show up I want to know about it immediately. Lieutenant Englewood work with your counterparts on the other ships to ensure a continuous rotating CAP around the fleet."

"Aye sir," Lieutenants Pren and Englewood acknowledged from their respective stations. As the lieutenants set about their work Rick leaned back in the command chair again and found himself wishing, not for the first time, that he could go back to the simpler days when he'd just been a veritech pilot. Back then his only concern had been surviving his next mission while sending the enemy packing with combat boot printed backsides. He certainly hadn't had to worry about the things he was going to have to worry about now, such as how in God's name he was going to get the hundreds of thousands of people under his overall command in this fleet back home or at least find them somewhere safe where they could build a new colony if that turned out not to be possible.

A petite hand gently touching his right shoulder jolted him out of the melancholy thoughts on their predicament before they could begin praying on his mind. Looking over he found himself gazing up into an extremely familiar pair of emerald green eyes. The sympathetic look on Lisa's face telling him that she knew full well what was bothering him and that she was there to support him every step of the way regardless of the challenges they faced going forward. He felt a simple pull at his lips as he realized, once again, how much he really loved her. Reaching up he gently gave Lisa's hand a squeeze silently communicating how much he appreciated his beloved wife's support in all this.

The sudden bleep of the command station phone brought an end to the quiet moment. With a mental sigh of resignation Rick put the loving husband of a still beautiful – to him anyway – back in his box and became the admiral again. Lisa withdrew her hand and even from here he could see her shoulders – even covered as they were by the red and black robes of a member of the Sentinel Alliance Council – shaking with an odd combination of mirth and anger at their private moment being disturbed.

Pushing down his own irritation Rick picked up the phone and brought it to his ear. "Yes?" he asked.

"Exedore here, Admiral," Exedore replied and in the Zentraedi's voice Rick clearly heard notes of both puzzlement and concern. "We've made a few more interesting – and somewhat concerning – discoveries could you please come down."

"Of course, Exedore, I'll be right there," Rick answered knowing that Exedore would never summon him down to the lab sections again so soon after his last visit unless it was something of either great importance, great concern or both.

"Thank you, Admiral. We'll be waiting in secure lab three."

"Secure lab three. I'll see you there in a couple of minutes."

"Thank you, Admiral. Exedore out." The phone went dead in his hand and Rick put it back on the console cradle

"What did Exedore want," Lisa asked immediately.

"He needs me to come and see something probably relating to what they told me about just before that Imperial fleet appeared," Rick replied the look in his eyes telling Lisa that he would give her the full story later in the privacy of their quarters. "He sounded both puzzled and concerned on the phone just now."

Lisa frowned. "That doesn't sound good," she commented knowing from experience that Exedore was not by nature an alarmist. If he was concerned about something, then she knew it was potentially something extremely serious. "Mind if I accompany you?"

"No, it doesn't and not at all," Rick agreed as he stood up and moved away from the command station. "Lieutenant Pren call Captain Bintowski to the bridge, until he gets here you have the conn."

"Aye sir," Pren acknowledged.

"Shall we," Rick suggested to Lisa gesturing to the entrance to the bridge. Lisa smiled and nodded before slipping one arm through the loop that Rick promptly formed with his right arm. Then the two of them turned in unison and left the bridge, both wondering just what it was that Exedore had discovered now though both already realised that it probably wasn't good…

…not good at all.

Imperial Star Destroyer Chimera

Lothal Orbit, Lothal System

That Same Time

Grand Admiral Thrawn accepted a data pad from one of the many junior officers passing through the bridge of his flagship with a polite nod of dismissal. As the younger Imperial walked away he began carefully reading the contents of the pad, and felt a slight smile appear on his face. The latest version of the TIE Defender the Elite was almost ready to begin the first phase of flight testing. Commander Skerris's report indicated that if everything went well with the stress tests on the latest improvements to the ion exhaust vectoring system then flight tests would be able to begin within a month.

And it was coming just in time especially as the threat of the rebellion hadn't gone away and was in fact beginning to grow now that the renegade Senator Mon Mothma was starting to unify the disparate cells into a potentially powerful alliance. Especially as not all the cells had lighter warships like the Phoenix Squadron and Massasi Group had had, but had some powerful ex-Separatist vessels like the Munificent-class star frigate and – if the intelligence reports were right – even a few Providence-class dreadnoughts. Ships that while weaker than a modern Imperial-class star destroyer individually, collectively gave the rebels a powerful striking force that could cause serious problems for your average Imperial garrison.

If that wasn't enough there was the new potential threat growing somewhere here in the Outer Rim that the Emperor himself had warned them about. A threat that could be far more dangerous to the Empire than the rebellion was. His majesty obviously hadn't been able to give many details on the nature of the threat, only that he knew that there was a new threat out here and that he wanted it identified and eliminated as soon as possible. Even finding this elusive threat would be a challenge given just how vast the Outer Rim territories were and how thinly spread the Imperial Fleet was out here.

"Grand Admiral," one of the crew abruptly called out from the work pits. Immediately Thrawn turned away from the holotable where he was standing and moved up onto the walkway between the pits. To see that the section of the pits that dealt with communications and sensors was suddenly turning into a beehive of activity.

"What is it?" Thrawn asked.

"Sir the star destroyer Oath Sworn, and two Interdictor cruisers have just come out of hyperspace," the lieutenant commander who acted as the foreman for the work pit reported. "Comm scan indicates that the Oath Sworn is very badly damaged. We are unable to establish communications with her however her automated distress beacons are active."

Thrawn couldn't help the look of surprise that flashed across his face at that piece of news. A star destroyer being so badly damaged that her only method of summoning aide was the emergency beacons was practically unheard of. And then there was the fact that the Oath Sworn was supposedly attached to Admiral Durril's 103rd Task Force based on the opposite side of the Lothal Sector. What was she doing here a dozen parsecs from where she was supposed to be and how had she possibly come to be so badly damaged?

"Scramble medical ships and emergency crews," he ordered. "And relay the sensor scans of the Oath Sworn to the main holotable. Also, alert Governor Pryce that we may have to send wounded down to Imperial Medical facilities in the Lothalan capital."

"Yes sir."

Leaving the lower ranked officer to his task Thrawn turned and walked back to the holotable just as a holographic image of the wounded star destroyer appeared. Despite his legendary coolness and self-control – a well cultivated trait of the Chiss – he couldn't stop himself emitting a slight gasp of shock and astonishment at the sight that greeted him.

The damage to the Oath Sworn wasn't just bad it was catastrophic.

The star destroyer was listing badly to starboard indicating a near complete loss of attitude control. Great deep gashes had been ripped deep into the hull of the vessel, gashes that were both oddly long and from he saw had very smooth edges. In several places entire sections of the hull and superstructure were simply gone, not melted or reduced to be shattered ruins as would be the case if they'd been hit by heavy turbolaser bolts. It was like something had just disintegrated huge sections of the hull titanium reinforced durasteel armour simply being vaporised by whatever weapons had hit the ship. It was frankly a miracle that the ship hadn't come apart.

What could do damage like this to a star destroyer, Thrawn thought gazing upon the damage to the Oath Sworn. One thing he knew immediately though was whoever or whatever had done this they hadn't engaged the vessel with turbolasers but with something else, something new. He made a mental note to have the damage to the vessel examined more thoroughly as soon as any survivors were taken off the battered, half-destroyed star destroyer as a horrible suspicion was growing in his mind…

…a suspicion that whoever the new threat were they'd already begun striking against the Empire.

Authors Note: Well another chapter bites the dust, I know not a great deal happened in this chapter but it was important to the future direction of the story that the events seen here took place. Hopefully the next chapter will not take as long a time to come out as this one has it shouldn't as there is no major home moving around to do now. Until next time.