A Left Turn at Albuquerque
Disclaimer: I do not own the universes and characters (well most of them) that I am about to mangle around for my own amusement – sadly all, Star Wars and Robotech canon characters remain the property of Disney, Lucasfilm Ltd and Harmony Gold respectively – I am merely borrowing them and make absolutely no profit from their use. As a result, please 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 Note: A reminder conversation in bold represents Chewie speaking.
Chapter Fourteen
Millennium Falcon
A Few Moments Later
Han stared in a combination of shock and awe at the enormous gash that had been ripped into the surface of the desert by the crashing alien ship. He would have expected a ship that size coming down in such an uncontrolled fashion to have just ploughed straight into the ground creating a single massive impact crater, but it hadn't, instead it looked like it had come down and skidded along the desert floor ripping up the ground as it did so. The impact scar ripped in the ground stretched as far as he could see, in the distance he could faintly see a plume of dark smoke against the heat bleached sky, presumably from where the ship itself had finally come to rest.
The gash was deep too with a river of molten sand in the bottom. Even from here he could see ripples in the air as the heat rose from the molten and semi-molten sides of the trench, on either side of the trench molten sand flowed like lava kicking up tremendous heat as they slowly spread out. Kriffing hell that ship must have hit with immense force to do this kind of damage, he thought as he guided the Falcon along the trench – passing by the burning, half buried in semi-molten sand, remains of a Jawa sandcrawler as he did so. Han couldn't help but wince at the sight, the sandcrawler was lying on its side he could only hope the Jawa clan aboard had been killed or knocked unconscious when the sandcrawler was knocked over disgusting creatures they maybe but not even Jawas deserved to burn to death.
"Hopefully, there is still something left to salvage," he muttered as he finally came to the end of the trench, where the crashing ship had gone over the two-hundred-foot-high granite cliffs that marked the shore of a long since vanished lake. Moving out over the dried basin of the lake Han was even more shocked to see the trench resume from the base of the cliff, where it had crushed what looked like a sand people encampment, to somewhere further out. What the hell is this ship made from, he wondered as he followed the trail of destruction, which was just as impressive down here as it had been over the rest of the desert – though he did notice sticking up out of the ground here and there bits of alien metal that stuck up like icebergs in the sluggish morass of semi-molten sand. Metal that despite having been ripped off the ship and dumped in the hot material showed no signs of melting certainly not in the way durasteel would have started melting by now.
Finally, he came upon the site where the ship had come to rest and got the biggest shock so far. Though its nose was buried deep in the ground the hull seemed to be almost completely intact. Smoke was rising from the thruster ports but from here he could see that the hull in general seemed to be mostly intact with only relatively moderate damage mostly around the central section where the collision with the Purgil had ripped the boxy section off the hull.
"How!" Chewie exclaimed seeing the same thing as he was, "How could that ship have survived so violent a crash landing and not be torn into a million fragments?"
"I don't know Chewie," Han admitted, "I'm not sure I want to know, whatever that ships made from I hope the Imps don't get their grubby little hands on it. They're bad enough as it is without adding near-indestructible warships to their arsenal of tricks."
"Agreed. Are we still going down there?"
"Yeah, we are Chewie, just because the hulls somewhat intact don't mean the crew inside are. If there's anyone alive in there they're going to need our help," Han replied then he gave a roguish, typically Corellian grin before adding, "and if nobodies alive think of what tech we could scavenge from the wreck before the usual desert riffraff or worse the Imperials show up to pick the ship clean."
"It could be quite lucrative," Chewie agreed, "if we rescue survivors of the crew than whoever owns the ship will likely reward us quite handsomely for the help when they arrive as I'm sure that the ship sent out a distress call after it hit the Purgil. And if there is nobody alive aboard well any tech we recover could sell well on the black market."
"My thoughts exactly. Go back and get our salvage stuff ready would you, not to mention our med-kits."
"Sure thing, Han."
Hearing the Wookie leave the cockpit to go and prepare their stuff Han turned his attention back to the crashed ship. With some surprise he noticed that the amount of smoke coming from the engines had diminished substantially and was now a thin trail of pale grey smoke instead of the thick, black smoke that it had been less than a minute ago. Huh guess that their fire control systems are still working, he thought as he carefully scanned the wreck and the impact site to find both a landing site and make sure that the ship wasn't about to suddenly do an exceptionally good impression of an armed thermal detonator on them. Once again, the crashed ship surprised him as the hull was surprisingly cool for a ship that had just fallen from orbit and skidded along the desert floor for nearly a hundred miles carving out a trench in the process and generating enough heat that it had melted the sand and sandstone bedrock into a sluggish molten lava-like mass. In fact, if it weren't for the evidence all around, and the fading smoke from its aft section, he would have assumed that the ship had just used its repulsors to land here and hadn't crashed at all the hull was so cool.
"What the kriffing hell is this thing made from," he muttered, "not even Mandalorian iron can take this kind of a pounding and still be intact."
Shaking off his shock with effort he located a landing site close by and began to manoeuvre the Falcon into land. After a few seconds, a shudder and a loud clunk echoed through the hull as the somewhat battered YT-1300 freighter landed on the baked, dusty Tatooine surface. Han frowned at the noise even as he began powering down, though he was careful to keep some systems powered up in case they needed to make a quick getaway he hadn't survived this long as a smuggler/pirate/all-round rogue without becoming cautious, the ship. He made a mental note to check the shock absorbers in the landing gear later as it shouldn't make that noise and setting down should be smooth not produce a quite substantial jolt. He hoped it was nothing too serious as the last thing he wanted was to be stuck on this sunblasted dustbowl of a planet for too long while he and Chewie fixed whatever was wrong with the landing gear, especially as it wouldn't take the galaxies criminal underworld long to learn that Jabba the Hutt was dead which would surely cause chaos as his minions tried to carve up Jabba's vast criminal empire among themselves. Not to mention that the Imperials might also show up with more ships and troops to try and take over complete control of the planet themselves instead of keeping to the small garrison of troops that Jabba had allowed them to keep in Tatooine's unofficial capital Bestine.
Calmly he stood up and began making his way back to help Chewie get their stuff ready. He had a slight spring in his step as he walked, not to mention a slight smile on his face, after all one way or another the crashed ship was bound to be profitable.
Governor's Residence
Bestine
That Same Time
Governor Tour Aryon frowned as she read some of the latest reports from the settlements spread around the planet. That damned slug Jabba had increased his water tax again, forcing the moisture farmers to work ever harder for no real reward and he'd done it without consulting her like he was supposed to, something that had been stipulated in the agreement that had allowed the Empire to establish a foothold on this dustbowl.
Tour sighed and prepared to word a strong protest to Jabba about both doing this and doing it without consulting with her first. How was she supposed to keep the people of Tatooine calm and compliant to the Emperors wishes – though personally she didn't see why Sheev Palpatine bothered with this world as it was nothing but a dustbowl and a cesspit of criminal activity like any other world where the Hutt's had major influence – if the overgrown worm kept increasing the water tax? It would probably do no good, and she would inevitably have to send some sand troopers to quell the uprising that was sure to occur when the moisture farmers had enough, but form had to be followed. Plus, it would do Jabba good to learn that he couldn't just do these things without her noticing and protesting as the people here, as uncivilized, and uncouth as they could be, were at the end of the day Imperial citizens and as governor their welfare was her responsibility.
She had just got started on writing the protest when her office door hailed for attention. Now what, she thought looking up with a frown. "Enter," she called wondering what had gone wrong now, or was it just more complaints from the various spacers on the planet about the presence of Purgil in near orbit. The creatures having very unusually arrived a week ago, they'd been milling around as if confused and giving every spacer in the system a heart attack ever since. More than once she'd had to deal with requests from various groups to send TIE fighters from the garrison into orbit to chase the creatures away. Though she had no intention of wasting precious fuel on something so frivolous as shooting up some space whales who would eventually leave on their own.
The door opened and her very harassed aide – who'd been doing his fair share of fielding the calls from the pilots complaining about the Purgil – came in. "Yes, what is it?" she asked, "more complaints from freighter captains about the Purgil?"
"Thankfully not governor though the Purgil do have something to do with what I have to report."
Tour raised a manicured eyebrow. "Explain," she said.
"Ten minutes ago, our sensors detected a gravitational-spatial disturbance in orbit of the planet that didn't match anything in our database, we even checked the holonet data uplink to Coruscant we had no match. A ship appeared and immediately collided with multiple Purgil."
"Ouch," Tour replied with a wince as colliding with even one Purgil could really mess up a ship crews' day, more than one ship had been destroyed in such collisions. She hated to think what multiple collisions with the creatures would do to a ship.
"Yes ma'am. Amazingly the ship survived the collisions though it was obviously damaged as it has crashed onto the surface in the vicinity of the jundland wastes, specifically near the dried lakebed that marks the eastern edge."
"It's survived the impact!"
"According to our orbital satellites yes. And it gets even more interesting the ship's configuration matches some of the ships that were with the unknown fleet that destroyed Admiral Durills a hundred and third task force. The satellites also detected a large explosion at the location of Jabba's palace, it appears to have been levelled by something possibly debris that broke off the ship as it came down."
"Interesting," Tour said thoughtfully as she leaned back in her chair and considered how to respond to this development. She had seen the footage of the hundred and thirds destruction – all the governors in the Outer Rim territories had – and read Grand Admiral Thrawn's analysis of the battle and it was frightening. Seeing an entire fleet of top-of-the-line Imperial warships being torn apart with casual ease while seeming to do no damage to the enemy was terrifying. What made it even worse was the fact that Thrawn had noted that the unknowns hadn't been aiming to kill but had been trying to disable only for their beam weapons to massively over penetrate and kill the ships regardless. Thrawn had also pointed out that a few large cannons hadn't been fired by the unknowns only what appeared to be their standard turrets.
And now one of those ships was here, crashed onto the surface of Tatooine, though she had to wonder what had brought it here. The crashed ship presented an opportunity to learn more about who the newcomers were and if she could get that information the Emperor might allow her to transfer off this dustbowl. It carried great risk though especially as the unknowns were bound to send some ships to recover the crashed vessel or at least its crew and would not react well to any Imperial interference with them.
"Mobilize the garrison," she ordered after a few moments of accessing the pros and cons of acting. "Send a few squads with AT-DP support to the crash site. They are to attempt to take any survivors prisoner both for medical attention if needed and later interrogation. Advise them to be careful though as these unknowns are powerful, I don't want them to take unnecessary risks.
"Also send another squad along with a hazmat team to Jabba's palace they're to both look for survivors and make sure that the places reactor has scrammed properly. The last thing we need is that thing to be damaged and leaking radiation into either the air or the ground. If it is leaking, they're to do whatever they have to, to secure it."
"Yes, governor I will see to it at once."
"Keep me informed. Dismissed."
"Yes governor," the aide replied turning and leaving the room. As the door closed Tour reached out a pressed a control on her desk console opening a channel to the main holonet comms room. "Communications put me through to both Grand Admiral Thrawn and Grand Moff Tarkin."
"Yes, governor stand by."
Tour nodded, though she knew she couldn't be seen, and sat up straight to reflect the authority of her position. For a few moments nothing more happened then two holograms blinked into existence one being her immediate political superior Grand Moff Tarkin and the other being Grand Admiral Thrawn himself. Both the Eriadu native and the Chiss admiral looked at her curiously.
"Governor Aryon what is the reason for this summons," Tarkin asked.
"Grand Moff Tarkin, Grand Admiral Thrawn I have important information to relay to you that could greatly affect the future of the Empire."
"Oh! Please explain," Tarkin replied.
Tour nodded and explained everything that had just happened with the unknown alien ship that had first crashed into the Purgil that had appeared unexpectedly over Tatooine last week and its crashlanding on the planet. The two males listened intently both looking more and more interested in what she was telling them, Tarkin even starting to look a little excited at the thought that there was now a chance for them to get a good and detailed look at the technology of the newcomers. Newcomers whose weapons technology he was deeply envious of; those particle beams they fired put their best turbolasers to shame in terms of sheer damage output.
Finally, the governor finished with the report that she was sending some people to both the crash site and the remains of Jabba's palace – though the latter was no concern to Tarkin though Thrawn was nodding in approval at her thoroughness.
"You did the right thing in calling us Governor Aryon," Tarkin said at last. "These newcomers have been a great mystery to us for too long, not to mention the threat that there power represents to the safety and security of the Empire, now we finally have a chance to learn more about them."
"Indeed, I will dispatch a few of my ships to assist in the securing of the wreck and to take any survivors off your hands as I know you will not have the proper facilities there to hold them long term," Thrawn added, "though due to the distance between Lothal and Tatooine it will take quite some time for them to arrive."
"There are some other ships a bit closer Thrawn," Tarkin pointed out, "given that more of the newcomers ships are bound to arrive, assuming the ship sent a distress signal in the time between colliding with the Purgil and entering Tatooine's atmosphere, sooner rather than later it would be better to divert them to the area rather than wait for your own ships to arrive."
"Good point I will draft the orders."
"Excellent in the meantime Governor Aryon continue with what you are doing. Contact me immediately if anything changes," Tarkin ordered.
"As you wish Grand Moff Tarkin," Aryon replied with a nod. The middle aged grand moff nodded back before closing the signal from his end making his hologram flicker and disappear. A moment later Thrawn also disappeared leaving her once again alone in her office. A moment later however the peace was once again disturbed as the comm unit went off again.
"Yes," she asked while tapping the control.
"Governor we're receiving reports of significant structural damage being sustained in the town of Anchorhead, the cause seems to be from very powerful atmospheric shockwaves," the near emotionless voice of one of the operations centre staff reported. Tour winced slightly she hated it when she had to speak to them as the cybernetic implants, they wore made them sound and act more like droids than people. "Town authorities are requesting assistance."
"Very well send them what assistance we can also begin calling all the towns and commercial outposts in the area, check all of them for damage and dispatch appropriate support where there is damage."
"Yes governor."
Bridge
UES Windermere
A Short Time Later
Captain Johannes Somerville groaned as he picked himself up off the deck next to the command chair where he had been flung in the last few moments of the crashlanding, the magnetic locks on the soles of his Cyclone boots not being quite strong enough to keep him anchored to the floor as the chaos of the crash swept over the bridge. Ugh that was a roller coaster ride I won't want to go on again anytime soon, he thought as he got his wits back and looked around at the bridge…
…to a scene from hell.
The once bright and immaculate bridge – whose silver and grey tones had made it feel so spacious even though the Garfish-class was the smallest capital warship in the Robotech Expeditionary Force – was lit in a smouldering semi-darkness. Thick, acrid smoke that stunk of burned plastic and scorched metal filled the air and every so often he could see sparks spraying from broken cables. Two consoles were burning merrily adding to the thick smoke. Yet amazingly, though also quite thankfully, the bridge crew seemed to have all survived climbing back to their feet – some swaying quite drunkenly – and all still, like himself, clad in their Cyclones.
"Is everyone alright?" he called out and was relieved beyond words when everyone called back that they were fine as the armour-mode Cyclones had cushioned them as they'd been thrown around like toys during the most violent phase of the Windermere's crashlanding. "Alright operations try and give me a ships status report, and someone try to get the doors to the bridge open."
"Aye sir," came the report from the operations officer who turned to his periodically, sparking console though the rate it was sparking was diminishing as were the sprays of sparks from damaged cables as the ships automatic repair protocols – damaged though they were by the impact – did their best to address the damage the ship had sustained. While the officer operated the damaged console the marines who guarded the entrance to the bridge started to try and open the doors to the rest of the ship.
A faint whirring suddenly ran through the ship as the ventilators started back up and began to clear the smoke from the bridge, simultaneously the fire suppression system came back online prompting nozzles on the ceiling to swivel round and begin squirting fire retardant at the burning consoles. It never ceases to surprise me how robotechnology can take an incredible amount of pounding and still work, Johannes thought with a slight smile, though he knew that even with repair programs the Windermere was probably down for good as even automatic repair systems and hull repair systems had their limits. Despite what it could sometimes seem like robotechnology was not all powerful, not by a long shot.
"Captain we cannot get the bridge doors open, the sensor is dead, and the manual override is ineffective," one of the marines called from the closed bridge doors, "it looks like the door has warped on its running track."
"Damn. Alright one of you use a Scorpion to take it down."
"Aye sir," the marines acknowledged backing up from the door, then one of them raised an arm and pointed the two Scorpion micro-missile tubes attached to his forearm armour plate there at the door. A moment later a single missile exploded from one of the tubes, crossed the short distance in the literal blink of an eye and impacted the door the four-kilogram plasma warhead detonating immediately the intense heat of the plasma slicing through material of the door instantly causing the door to explode into the passage beyond in a blaze of smoke, hot yellow plasma flame and shattered fragments.
Within seconds the smoke and flame cleared revealing the devastated corridor beyond. The previously pristine silver, white and grey walls were scorched and blackened, and a palpable wave of heat came into the bridge from the corridor. Support girders lay at odd angles along with broken, half-destroyed ceiling panels. Johannes couldn't help but wince as he beheld the legacy of a flash fire that had to have swept through the Windermere's upper deck during the crash consuming everything in its path, only the security door having presented it breaking into the bridge. My crew, he thought sadly knowing that even Cyclones wouldn't help someone survive in such an environment as the very air around them was briefly superheated by the intense heat and turbulence of a flash fire. If there were any other survivors besides the bridge crew, they would surely be on the ships other two decks.
"Sir I have the status report you wanted," operations called out.
"How bad is it," Johannes asked.
"Pretty bad sir."
"Okay tell me."
"Sir we have sustained massive internal damage on all decks," operations reported, "we have now lost auxiliary power, all the power we've got left is coming from tertiary battery backups and it's not going to last much longer. We have multiple additional hull breaches on the lower deck and one on the main deck in the mess hall, its partially flooded with semi-molten sand. Internal bulkheads have closed off the affected areas. Integrity scanners show dangerous structural weakening amidships on all decks, we also have some instances of structural collapse on the lower deck. Frankly, sir it's amazing that the ship didn't break apart as we skidded along the ground."
"What about the crew lieutenant? Are there anymore survivors?"
"Yes, sir there are. Life scanners show clusters of survivors throughout the ships main deck. They are making their way towards emergency escape hatches. There are no survivors on the lower deck and none besides us here on the bridge on the upper deck, so including us here there are thirty-five members of the crew still alive."
Damn, Johannes thought momentarily closing his eyes in pain. The standard crew compliment of a Garfish-class scout cruiser was, between operational crew and the air wing, seventy. The collision with those space whale things – whatever they were called – and the following crash onto the surface of this desert planet – what its name was he had no idea as this system had only been meant to be a pitstop while the fold drive went through a cool down/repower cycle – had killed a full half of his crew. No time to grieve now Johannes, he thought, you can do that later. Right now, you must keep the surviving half of the crew alive until the Sumatra arrives to rescue us and take us back to the fleet.
Forcing himself to open his eyes again he snapped to do his duty. "There will be time to mourn later," he said at last, "everyone, secure your stations and then proceed to the nearest emergency escape hatch."
"Aye sir," chorused the entire bridge crew before those with intact or still partially functional stations turned to their consoles and began working to power them down and secure them. Johannes for his part returned to the commander's station, opened a panel, and began throwing a series of switches there activating several fail safes built into certain key systems on the ship. Fail safes that, if someone other than themselves or another of the Sentinels – who all knew how to disarm them – attempted to salvage the ship then certain vital technologies and with them certain robotechnology secrets that they couldn't afford to fall into the hands of a potential enemy would be destroyed. In seconds he was done, and a series of green lights glowed on the console showing that the fail-safe charges had all armed successfully as had the system to prevent someone just flipping the arming switches back to the disarmed position.
"Sir all stations secured," his first officer reported. "We're also getting reports from those crew who have already disembarked that a small ship has landed next to. Two individuals one a human the other a member of an unknown species have emerged and are offering assistance, they apparently saw our ship come down, we did have to give the human a translator patch for him to wear."
"Of course, since nobody in this galaxy speaks our language," Johannes commented, "accept the offer of help, though we're not going to let a stranger on the ship. Operations how long until our reinforcements arrive?"
"At least another thirty minutes sir," operations reported, "and that's assuming that all three ships are taking the shortest possible time for cool down/repower cycles between folds."
"They will be neither Admiral Hunter nor Captain Zendril will want to leave us without reinforcements and evacuation from here longer than is necessary," Johannes replied, "but enough with lingering here on the bridge, there's nothing else we can do here after all, it's time to get out."
"Aye sir," chorused the bridge crew.
Not waiting any longer Johannes turned and began leading the way off the bridge. The sound of heavy boots walking on the deck letting him know that the whole bridge crew were following along behind him. In no time at all they came to a turnoff in the corridor, turning the corner they came to a hatch set into the wall. Immediately Johannes worked to operate the controls, arming the emergency charges, and gesturing for everyone to step back – while their Cyclone armour would protect them from any blowback, he wasn't about to risk any of the surviving crew being injured – once everyone had done so, flattening themselves against the bulkheads as much as their Cyclones would allow, he fired.
A deep, rumbling boom echoed through the ship and the deck beneath them shivered as in a blaze of smoke and sparks the emergency hatch blew outwards. Within a few seconds the smoke cleared allowing them to begin making their way along a tunnel between the inner pressure hull and the heavily armoured outer hull and the world beyond. The tunnel was tight, just big enough for them to get through while wearing their Cyclones – it had been deliberately designed that way to make it difficult for any hostile mecha, especially Invid mecha as they were the only enemy fanatical and stupid enough to attempt to break through the dense fields of anti-fighter and anti-missile laser fire they routinely put up in battle to defend themselves, to use the emergency escape hatches to board the ship when they were engaged in battle – but still passible.
After a few moments Johannes was the first to step out into the heat bleached sunlight of Tatooine. Climbing out onto the upper hull of the Windermere he immediately stepped clear and turned to help the next member of the crew up onto the deck. Over the next two minutes he helped every member of the bridge crew onto the hull.
"Everyone, stay close," he said to them as they began cautiously making their way across the hull to the side of the ship. Despite what it might look like from a distance the hull of no ship was completely smooth, instead there were small projections and depressions in the hull caused by various pieces of hull mounted equipment such as sensor pallets, manoeuvring thruster nozzles, communications arrays and range finders which made walking on the hull quite hazardous at any time, but which was even worse now because the ship was at a quite steep angle with her bows buried in a mass of hot sand.
Finally, though they came to the edge of the hull giving them all a view out across the hot, twin sun blasted expanse of desert sand that stretched from horizon-to-horizon. A few hundred meters from the side of their ship Johannes and the bridge crew could see a beat up vaguely saucer shaped ship parked on the desert floor. What a hunk of junk, Johannes thought, even by the standard of ships we've seen in this galaxy so far that ship looks like a flying wreck, clearly, it's had a hard life.
"Right let's go people," Johannes said leaping into the air and engaging his Cyclones jets using them to carry him away from the hull of his fallen ship. Once he was far enough away, he manoeuvred down to a landing on the dusty surface of this planet. Immediately he caught sight of the local ship captain who had landed to help them. He was a relatively tall, middle-aged man in rough civil spacer clothing with a weapon bolted to his right thigh, nearby a hairy being with a bandolier across its chest – that vaguely reminded him of a Karbarran – squatted as though tending to someone.
Both were busy helping those crew who'd escaped through the main deck escape hatches. Johannes could see at least one spacer who had taken off his Cyclone and was lying on the floor being tended to by the tall hairy being who was applying some form of gel patch to a nasty cut on his forehead.
"Captain, captain over here," one of the crew called as they saw him, Johannes recognized him after a moment as being Lieutenant John Anderson the assistant chief engineer who would have been off duty when they defolded over this planet and ran straight into that pod of space whales. Johannes immediately headed over.
"Report lieutenant," he ordered as he arrived, "how are the surviving crew?"
"Aside from some bumps and bruises they're okay sir," Anderson replied, "the worst injury is Crewman Tenalda whose got a nasty cut on his head and a probable concussion. He was thrown into the bulkhead hard enough that he cut his head on a light fixture in his cabin. We had to help him into his Cyclone. Thankfully, Chewbacca – the hairy alien whose apparently called a Wookie – had something with him to deal with it."
"Ouch," Johannes said with a wince, "introduce me to the captain of that ship," he gestured over his shoulder to the landed beat-up saucer-like ship, "would you."
"Of course, sir this way." Johannes followed Anderson as the other man led him past Teralda – the former triumvirate clone offering a thumbs up as he passed which he returned – and the Wookie who was tending to his wounds with impressive gentleness for such a large humanoid, to the middle-aged human who was standing nearby. "Captain Solo."
"Yes," the man said turning around.
"Allow me to introduce you to my superior officer Captain Sommerville. Captain Sommerville meet Captain Solo of the Millennium Falcon."
"Pleased to meet you," Johannes said offering his hand. Han took it gingerly, having already learned to be careful when shaking these people's hands when they were wearing this strange armour that made them as tall as Wookie's and much broader the first time, he'd done it he'd nearly dislocated his shoulder, and they shook. Han was surprised by the fact that the shake was gentle this time. "Thank you for coming to help us."
"It's the least I can do me, and Chewie saw you collide with the Purgil – who've been giving every spacer around here a heart attack for the last week, kriffing flying menaces – I tried to stop you crashing with my tractor beam, but I couldn't get in range before you got to deep into the atmosphere. Once I saw you down, I decided to see what I could do to help anyone who survived the crash."
"Still thank you."
"You're welcome. I should advise you though that you may have maid a dangerous enemy due to something that happened when you were coming down."
"Oh?" Johannes asked a moment before a proximity alarm sounded in his ear and his HUD showed seven red dots approaching at high speed from the west. He turned to see what it was to see four fighters that looked like eyeballs sandwiched between two vertical panels and a transport with two destroids attached to its underside, and what looked like a pair of gunships approaching them.
Beside him Han groaned in annoyance as he also saw them. "You know how they are," Johannes asked.
"Unfortunately," Han replied. "I was hoping we would have more time before they showed up since Bestine is quite away around the planet from here. You people should brace themselves captain we're about to be attacked."
"We can look after ourselves don't worry about that these Cyclones aren't just for show," Johannes answered, "tell me who are these guys."
"The Empire."
Authors Note: Well, another chapter bites the metaphorical dust. Nasty cliff hanger there at the end isn't it? Next time we will see the Imperial troops dispatched by Governor Aryon clash with Han, Chewie, and the survivors of the UES Windermere. Should be an interesting battle and I might have someone else appear to intervene on his way to see a certain farm boy in response to a summons from Owen and Beru in the next chapter I haven't decided yet. That's it for now though so until next time stay safe everyone.