A Left Turn at Albuquerque
Disclaimer: I do not own the characters and universes that I am about to mangle around and mash together for my own amusement – sadly all Robotech and Star Wars characters and settings remain the property of Harmony Gold, Lucasfilm Ltd and Disney 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 or attorneys – firmly muzzle and on a leash as I have no money to give to anyone.
Authors Note: I am aware from a few reviews that the last chapter fell somewhat flat, that I spent far too much time getting the investigation team inside the hidden CIS base and not enough time actually exploring or showing what was inside there, for that I apologise I hope that this next chapter will redress the issue. Though I will say this that this hidden asteroid base is just one piece of a much larger puzzle, one conceived by Count Dooku as part of a contingency plan that he was working on alongside the likes of Admiral Trench and General Grievous a plan that outside the three of them nobody knew about especially not Darth Sidious, so I ask you my readers to bare that in mind and have patience as you will not get all the answers in this chapter and probably not for quite a few yet.
Okay now that that's cleared up let's crack on with the new chapter.
Chapter Sixteen
Colonel Dana Sterling would, if asked, admit to being somewhat creeped out as she and her investigation team slowly, vigilantly as none of them wanted a repeat performance of what had happened to Colonel Dante's team a few days earlier, made their way through the darkened corridors of the asteroid base heading for what they believed to be the hangar bays main control room. This place is eerie, Dana thought as their footsteps – heavy as they were due to them all being clad in armour mode Cyclones – echoed off the sheet metal walls and floor. Coupled with only faint illumination from the stations, slowly dying, emergency lights and the way their own lights pierced the darkness making motes of dust gleam like platinum dust in the beams it gave her very strong vibes of a haunted house on Halloween. Hell, if it weren't for the fact that the walls were made of metal and the absence of a howling wind she could almost be back on Earth at that old Edwardian-era mansion – that had somehow managed to survive the Rain of Death and its cataclysmic aftermath – that Bowie and a few others had dragged her to on Halloween when she was twelve right before she'd entered the ASC officer training school.
Dana allowed herself a small smile at the memories that came to her. Yeah, that old mansion, filled as it was with dusty decaying furniture from bygone eras and far too many cobwebs and spiders to count, had been really creepy. Especially as it had been a windy Halloween night, which had rattled the old stone walls and Welsh slate roof tiles, but they had had a great time there. Well until that was Nathaniel Turner decided to pull a disappearing act on them all, only to jump out at them ten minutes later dressed in a very realistic werewolf costume scaring the crap out of them. She vaguely remembered wanting to punch his lights out after that – the fiery temper she'd inherited from her normally sedate Terran father, who knew Maximillian Sterling had Irish roots, well and truly roused by the scare – though she'd held back. Instead, she'd plotted and gotten her vengeance on him another way.
"Colonel?" one of her squad called bringing Dana out of her thoughts. Mentally she kicked herself for getting distracted like that as she should know better than that. Letting yourself get distracted could be fatal especially in unknown, potentially dangerous situations, like the one they were in.
"Yes?" she asked, hoping nobody had caught her getting lost in memory or if they had wouldn't report it. The last thing she wanted was a lecture from Captain Leeds about the dangers of letting herself get distracted.
"You should come and look at this ma'am," the marine in question – who she now recognised as Sergeant Bradly McKenzie – answered from his position at the front of their column. Dana raised an eyebrow but decided to humour him, so she carefully made her way to the front of the column, fellow Cyclone-clad marines stepping aside to allow her to pass, where McKenzie was waiting.
"What is it sergeant," she asked. In answer the younger marine pointed ahead of them. Dana followed his gesture and saw lying on the floor on either side of the door that presumably led to the bay control room two tall mechanical men. Had they been standing and powered up each would have stood approximately two meters tall and were made from a strong looking, metallic blue alloy. Each wore a grey cloak and, discarded next to each was a staff-like weapon that had fallen from their hands when they'd been deactivated.
"Check them," she ordered, "I will cover you just in case."
"Yes ma'am," McKenzie acknowledged moving forward and squatting down to thoroughly examine the two disabled droids with both his eyes and the sensors built into the chest of his Cyclone. "Sensors confirm that they're completely inert, Colonel. However, their power cores do still read as having a sufficient stored charge to function, it looks like something, or someone just shut them down and left them here to rot."
"Just like the base itself not to mention the ships outside," Dana commented with a shake of her head, appalled by the blatant waste of such assets. It seemed incomprehensible as not even the Robotech Masters, even at the height of their power before the original Zor had sent the SDF-1 and the first protoculture matrix away, had been that wasteful. Mentally she shook off those reflections and turned her attention back to the here and now. "Check the weapons."
McKenzie nodded and carefully picked up one of the staffs which appeared to be almost as tall as the droids would have been if active and which had a wider section at each end. "Colonel scans indicate that the staffs are made from a tylinium-titanium alloy quite a decent weight on them and there are a set of controls on the middle," as McKenzie spoke, he inadvertently touched one of said controls causing both the controls and the ends of the staff to light up and for the ends to start glowing with a crackling purple-white energy. "Whoa sensors show that that energy is electromagnetic in nature, looks like the strength of the charge can be varied."
"Make a good melee weapon then," Dana commented before speaking a bit more sternly as she wasn't amused by the sergeant inadvertently activating the weapon, "now turn it off."
"One second ma'am I'm not quite sure how I turned it on in the first place," the younger marine answered as he moved the staff to get a better look at the controls – in the process producing a sound that sounded almost like an electronic fart making a few of the investigation team chuckle – before finding the one he thought he wanted. He pressed it and the purple-white energy disappeared – only for a red bolt of energy to shoot out the one end of the staff and impact the wall with a spray of smoke and sparks. "Okay not that one," he muttered as he touched another control which made all the controls on the staff go dark. "Got it Colonel."
"Good secure the weapons and take them back to the transport," Dana ordered, she could readily imagine the fun that Doctor Lang and the other robotechnologists in the fleet would have with weapons like those. Who knew it might give them a few ideas for new robotechnology weapons that destroids and other battle mecha could wield against the Invid or any other future enemy. Hell, I would have loved for my Spartas to have had a staff-like weapon like that back during the war with the Masters, she thought, it would have made battling bioroids much easier.
"Yes ma'am," McKenzie acknowledged before carefully picking up the other staff, being careful not to activate either of them a second time and leaving to return to the Horizon-T with them. While he did that Dana turned to the rest of her investigation team.
"Stevens get up here and see if you can get this door open," she ordered, "if you can't we'll laser it open."
"Understood colonel," the young combat engineer replied as he walked up, removed some tools from specialized storage slots on his Cyclone armour and began to try to work some of the techno-magic that combat engineers had become renowned for among the Expeditionary Force on the door.
Surprisingly, given that it had been guarded by the two inactive droids, the door was easy to open. The locking mechanism wasn't engaged, and it was only being held closed by magnetic strips set into the inner frame of the door. With a few quick taps with a suitable tool, he reversed the magnetic field polarity, so the door shot open with a faint whirring hiss letting them access the room beyond. However, Stevens didn't immediately get out of the way instead he produced a small drone the size of your average tennis ball from another compartment on his armour tapped in a few commands and released it. The drone floating away from his hand and moving into the room where it lit up the room with powerful lights.
"Okay let's move," Dana said, "Stevens how long will that drone last?"
"The power cell will last about five minutes ma'am," Stevens replied, "based on Sergeant Shepard's report on the Republic vessels systems I should be able to wire in a micro-fusion generator before the light goes out."
"I see," Dana replied before leading the way into the bay control room.
Somewhat to her surprise it was a rather drab and ordinary looking room, not really that different to any of the numerous other docking bay control rooms that she had been in over the last few years. There was a bank of workstations beneath an expansive window that looked out upon the mostly dark landing bay they'd been in a few minutes earlier; a second bank of consoles was against the back wall. At the stations sat a number of slender looking droids that were made of a sand-coloured metal, and which looked incredibly flimsy for something that – if the briefing they'd been given aboard the Agamemnon before beginning this mission – was supposed to be designed for combat. All of them were – like the two more imposing door guards – sitting there inert as though they had simply stopped what they were doing all at the same time and shut down.
"Alright Stevens get to it," Dana ordered, "everyone else be on your guard just in case powering this place up brings these droids back online."
"Yes ma'am," everyone acknowledged before getting to work.
Dana watched calmly as her team went about their tasks. While some of the marines set about removing the disabled droids from their seats – and in the process confiscated the plasma rifle that each one seemed to have issued to them – others, these ones IT specialists began hooking their own equipment into the consoles hoping that the programs that had been developed, with the invaluable assistance of Janice, would let them gain control of the stations computer system once they restored some power. Though Dana doubted that they would be able to restore power to the whole station at once, while micro-fusion generators were powerful and highly portable they had their limits after all and this place was far too big for one to provide more than a small amount of power to the grid, and would just have to be content with powering up individual sections until they could either hook in more generators or bring in more potent power sources like protoculture energizers.
Moments later there came a whirring of power and the rooms lights flickered fitfully for a moment before coming back on at full brightness. Even though she had kind of expected that to happen, from Angelo's report, Dana was still momentarily dazzled by the sudden deluge of photons. Simultaneously consoles and monitors' around the room hummed back to life - the screens running through lines of computer coding as the systems went through their start up sequence – alongside the return of full illumination to the room for the first time in decades.
As her eyes recovered from the sudden increased illumination Dana turned her attention to her information technology specialists. To see that they were already working at their specialist portable terminals as they worked to gain access to the stations computer system. Mentally she crossed her fingers that the programs that Janice had created for them would work as quickly as the part-Haydonite android said they would. She need not have worried as one of the specialists gave a cry of triumph.
"Colonel Sterling, we have successfully gained access to the computer system," the lieutenant in charge of the IT techs reported.
"Very good. Is there any sign that restoring power to this section of the station has tripped any security protocols," Dana asked, instantly concerned about the prospect of facing security droids of unknown numbers and capabilities, experience with the Invid had taught them all well that superior numbers of hostile forces could overcome even their generally far superior – well going what they had seen so far in this galaxy at any rate - firepower.
"Negative colonel though we only have power to local computer stations," the lieutenant replied, "which has let us get access to everything that runs off the servers that run this part of the stations computer network. The vast majority of the network, especially the primary computer core, remains offline."
"Damn," Dana muttered though she supposed she shouldn't be surprised given how big this place was and how limited the power output of a micro-fusion generator – only a hundred megawatts – was, especially when compared to some of their other power sources. "Okay what have we got on the nature of this station?"
"Not a huge amount," the lieutenant admitted as he checked the system, "mostly just a docked ship inventory, weapons stocks stored in the nearest magazine as well as an inventory of battle droids stored, waiting to be loaded aboard the docked ships. We have also located both where the station's main control facilities are as well as the location of the main computer core."
"What kind of weapons and droids are we looking at?" Dana asked.
"According to this the nearest magazine contains twenty thousand capital-class tibana gas cartridges, five thousand proton shells, three thousand anti-ship proton torpedoes and a thousand anti-ship concussion missiles," the lieutenant answered with an impressed whistle as he rattled off the inventory. Dana didn't blame him as that was a large magazine even by anyone's standards. "Droids we're looking at a hundred thousand B1 battle droids, same number of B2 super-battle droids, a thousand BX-series commando droids, several hundred destroyer droids – whatever that means –, a hundred IG-100 magna guards and twelve T-1 strategic analysis and tactics droids."
"Holy crap that's a sizeable army," Dana exclaimed.
"It is and colonel I don't think that's the full extent of the sleeping droid army here," the lieutenant replied, "according to this inventory this is just the contents of the nearest storage bay. Which if our translation is right is bay number three meaning…."
"…meaning that there are at least two more bays just like that one with likely similar compliments of droids and weapons," Dana finished for him. My god what the hell have we stumbled across here? she thought staggered by the sheer amount of firepower that was potentially here though again she was somewhat disgusted by the waste with both her Terran and Zentraedi halves decrying the abandonment of so much military hardware for no obvious reason. "You said you've located the station's main control centre and the computer core?"
"Yes, ma'am we have," the lieutenant confirmed before entering a series of commands into his terminal. Within a few moments a previously unnoticed – by Dana anyway – trapezoidal screen powered up and showed a simplified schematic of the station's interior. Dana blinked at the green frame graphics as they were far lower in quality than what she would have expected, in fact they looked somewhat like what you would expect to see on a nineteen eighties computer screen. But then the technology in this galaxy does seem to be an extremely odd mix of advanced and surprisingly primitive, she thought with a mental shrug as she began to examine the image noting the two flashing locations. One was deep within the very core of the station, not to mention several levels above, with a translated tag showing it was the location of the computer core. The other location, which was obviously the main control room, was also in the core but over two dozen levels up from them.
"Are the internal lifts working now," she asked mentally crossing her fingers that they were as it would be quite a trek to get to either location via the stairwells. Though they could always, if necessary, force open the doors to the life shafts and use the flight capabilities of their Cyclones to reach either destination.
"Negative colonel the turbolift system is apparently a low priority system," the lieutenant answered, "what power we've been able to provide so far is being automatically directed to the stations life support and artificial gravity systems. We'd either need to plug in quite a few more micro-fusion generators – or a protoculture energizer – to get those and other systems back online and until we can gain control of both the core and the main operations centre…"
"…that would be potentially dangerous as it could trip a revival protocol and the last thing, we need is to battle our way through a swarm of homicidal droids," Dana finished for him. That would really suck, not to mention bring up too many visions of battling the seemingly endless hordes of the thrice damned Invid, she thought with a mental shiver, she bloody hated battling those foul protoplasmic creatures. It was one of the few things both her Terran and Zentraedi halves universally agreed upon. "Alright I am open to suggestions on how to proceed."
"Colonel might I suggest we contact the Agamemnon and summon some additional personnel and power sources," the lieutenant suggested, "that will let us send much larger contingents to both locations just in case. Plus, we need more fusion generators than the three more we currently have with us if we want to power this place up properly. I believe I can access one of the station's communications arrays from here and direct a signal to the ship."
It would save us having to walk back to the transport and hoping that its transmitter is powerful enough to punch through the interference from ferrous metals in the rock around us, she thought. "Do it," she ordered.
"Yes ma'am. Keep your eyes on the screen I'll route the transmission there as soon as I have the ship."
Dana nodded and looked back at the trapezoidal screen, which was still displaying the 80'sesque green on black graphics. Louie would really get a kick out of seeing those if he was here, she thought knowing her all round tech-head former squad mate loved all manner of machines and computers. Hell, he had even restored an old Nintendo games console that he kept in his quarters aboard the Icarus where he was now the chief robotechnologist. Though to this day she had no idea where he'd gotten the components as getting your hands on any pre-First Robotech War stuff was extremely difficult bordering on the impossible, Dolza and the Zentraedi Grand Fleet had been unfortunately extremely thorough when they'd bombarded Earth during that war.
She was brought out of her thoughts when the graphics disappeared, and the screen washed with grey and white static. But only for a few moments as within at most two seconds it cleared up to pull in an image of the face and upper torso of Captain Vanessa Leeds. "Colonel Sterling report," Vanessa said, though through the formality Dana could clearly see relief in the older woman's eyes that she was alive and unhurt – so far at least – and thus she wouldn't have to relay any bad news to her parents. "Is everything alright?"
"Everything is fine ma'am," Dana replied, "though we do need some assistance over here."
"Please explain."
Dana nodded and carefully, but concisely, laid out everything that they had discovered here on the station so far. Including the small faction of the sleeping battle droid army that was clearly in storage here that they knew about so far finishing with saying about the computer core and the main operations centre. Not to mention saying that they needed more people if they were to reach both locations safely and ensure that they didn't inadvertently awaken the sleeping mechanical army. All in all, it took five minutes for her to relay their findings so far, at the end of which the older woman was quiet and looked thoughtful. Clearly mulling it all over in her head before coming to a decision.
"Alright I'll send some additional people over to join you," Vanessa said at last. "They should be with you in approximately twenty minutes. I'll also contact the rest of the fleet and appraise them of your findings so far. Sit tight where you are now until the reinforcements arrive."
"Understood ma'am."
"Agamemnon out."
The screen washed with static again then went dark as the communications link with the battleship was broken from the other end. Dana let her shoulders drop, well as much as they could while wearing a Cyclone, before turning to face the rest of her initial investigation team.
"Okay you all heard her, we sit tight here and wait. Anyone bring a deck of cards?"
Imperial Gozanti Transport
UES Windermere Crash Site, Tatooine
That Same Time
Clad in a full suit of armour, sans helmet which he was holding under his right arm, Major Jallo Rafan blinked in shock as he beheld the scene on the monitors before him. The alien ship which had come down after a very nasty orbital collision with the purgill – who had been giving every spacer in the system a heart attack for the last week as the flying menaces ambled around in a lost, somewhat disorientated fashion – was surprisingly intact, it just had its nose buried in a mountain of half-molten sand. It was beyond shocking as on the way here from their small base outside Mos Eisley they had seen evidence of extensive damage to the ground from the crash – with a deep gash ripped in the desert floor that extended out beyond the Dune Sea back towards the moisture farmer homesteads around Toschi Station and Anchorhead – not to mention some of the debris that had broken off during its descent had totalled Jabba's Palace.
Thus, it was quite a shock to see that, in spite of everything, the hull was mostly intact. What the hell is that thing made from, he wondered before scowling as he noticed the battered YT-1300 Corellian light freighter landed next to the wreck. Terrific some local spacer scavengers – who'd probably been in orbit when the collision had taken place and followed the ship down – had gotten here first. It was not a welcome development as he was under orders to acquire the wreckage for the Empire so they could analyse it and hopefully learn more about the unknown but obviously powerful aliens who'd so easily destroyed Admiral Durril's 103rd task force. Some spacer lowlife – who like most of the civilian pilots around here was bound to be a pirate or criminal of some form since Tatooine was one of the biggest hubs for such things in the sector – getting there before them was not the plan.
Thankfully it was a problem that was easily rectified.
"Detach our TIE escort," he ordered into his comm unit, "tell them to eliminate that light freighter. The last thing we want, or need is witnesses."
"Yes sir," one of the flight crew responded at once from the cockpit.
For a moment nothing happened and then the four TIE's – which would be making that terrifying characteristic screech they made when on an attack dive – that were escorting this Gozanti, and two standard gunships appeared in his view streaking towards the vaguely horseshoe shaped freighter. Given how beat-up it appeared – honestly did its captain have no pride in the ship at all - it certainly wouldn't take the TIE's long to send it up in flames.
The first TIE opened fire, green bolts of plasma shooting forth from its cannons, raking along the ground in a spray of smoke, dust and molten glass as they shot towards the freighter. Jallo resisted the impulse to shake his head, it was a ridiculous display, but one that unfortunately the Imperial flight schools drilled into their pilots, being designed more for intimidation than anything concrete. To someone like him – who'd been a professional soldier all his adult life – it served no purpose other than to waste tibana gas. The raking shot's finally reached the freighter and that was when things started to go wrong…
…first instead of punching through a thin hull to ignite the interior the bolts broke apart and dissipated in a rainbow blaze of diffusion as they hit the hull showing that the freighter actually had armour reinforcing its hull. A frown appeared on his face at the sight, which was definitely illegal though it was something that most Imperials ignored as it was a rule that was impossible to truly enforce.
Secondly someone down there – who he couldn't see due to both the distance and the deep pool of shade being cast by the wreck – didn't appreciate the TIE shooting at the freighter. Something small, but impossibly fast moving, shot out of the shadow and impacted the offending TIE striking it right on one of the solar wings. A brilliant yellow explosion enveloped the TIE annihilating it in an instant, burning fragments falling to the dusty desert floor moments later. The speed of the projectile, clearly a missile or rocket propelled grenade of some kind, its small size and the ease with which it had annihilated the TIE shocking every Imperial present to see it.
The shock proved deadly as two more of the projectiles – and a fusillade of blue energy beams – smashed into the remaining three TIE fighters quickly sending them the way of their comrade. Smouldering debris from the destroyed ships littering the desert floor. Impossible, Jallo thought before shaking off his stunned surprise as he realized that this was going to be a much harder mission to complete than he had ever thought possible.
"Drop our AT-DPs to flush out and deal with those forces," he ordered into his comm.
"Yes sir."
Within seconds a faint jolt ran through the deck as the two seven and a half meter tall walkers docked to the underside clamps were released and dropped to the desert floor below. Immediately the two walkers began advancing towards the downed ship. The lead walker opening fire its single heavy cannon spitting out bright red bolts of plasmatic energy towards the ground just outside the downed ship.
As with the TIE's before them the response from the enemy hiding in the shadow was immediate, accurate and devastating. From three separate locations bright blue particle beams slammed into the cockpit of the lead walker titanium-reinforced durasteel armour offered little protection against the attack. It melted nearly instantly allowing the beams to slice into the cockpit module and the delicate equipment – not to mention the pilot and gunner – inside. The result was predictable as the entire cockpit module erupted into a brilliant explosion that tore it completely apart. As the explosion dissipated the legs – somewhat comically – continued moving forwards according to the last command to their actuators before suddenly swaying and falling over.
Incensed by the destruction of the other walker – and the deaths of their colleagues aboard it – the crew of the remaining AT-DP opened fire right at where the nearest of the deadly alien particle beams had come from. Moments later a small explosion erupted at that location.
It was the AT-DPs last act.
Nearly simultaneously beams and tiny missiles – whose destructive power completely belied their small size – from a dozen locations converged on the unfortunate walker. A brilliant series of explosions enveloped the walker, so bright in fact that it momentarily overloaded the optical pickups making the image wash out for several seconds. When the image returned the AT-DP was gone, a pile of smouldering half-molten metal marking where it had been ripped apart by an incredible amount of firepower. Jallo scowled not at all happy with the situation. Those AT-DPs had been swatted like they were little more than annoying insects and not a war machine that had brought many a rebel to heel and which continued to enforce Imperial Law on planets across the galaxy. And the TIE's the ease with which they had been disposed of was frankly beyond embarrassing.
It was yet more proof that whoever the newcomers were, they had a level of tactical capability that was frankly almost unimaginable. Certainly, it wasn't power that he could hope to challenge with the remaining forces he had available right now. He would have to wait until the larger part of the planetary garrison, and with it heavier weapons like AT-AT's, arrived from Bestine on the other side of the planet from here. Even then, given what he had seen, engaging the unknowns would be fraught with risks though they would be risks he'd have to take lest he get dragged before someone like Grand Moff Tarkin and got shot for cowardice in the face of the enemy.
"All ships pull back several kilometres," he ordered into his comm at last. "Vengeance for this outrage will be ours but we will first have to wait for reinforcements from the capital."
"Yes sir," the helmsman and communications officers acknowledged. Moments later the view below began to swing away as the Gozanti began turning away from the crashed vessel, its escorting gunships matching the move. Jallo watched, still quietly seething at his own helplessness, as they pulled away. I'll get you soon, he thought to the unknowns as they pulled away, you will pay for the people you've just killed. I will make sure of it.
To say that Han Solo was stunned as he watched the remaining Imperial ships retreat would have been an understatement. What he had just seen, the utterly contemptuous ease with which Captain Sommerville and the survivors of his crew had wiped the floor with the Imperials, was both amazing and beyond terrifying. That Cyclone armour system that they were wearing, and the weapons that they had, were powerful beyond anything he had ever seen in his life before. Which was saying quite a bit considering how far he'd travelled, the places that he had been since he'd first left Corellia all those years ago.
"You do realize that they'll be back," he said turning to look at the armoured man standing next to the empty tubes on his one arm showing where he'd shot off a pair of those lethal little missiles of theirs. "Those transports have only withdrawn until reinforcements, and heavier vehicles like AT-AT's, can arrive from the main garrison on the other side of the planet."
"I figured as much," Johannes Sommerville replied with a sad sigh. He hated fighting in a Cyclone, it was why he was a fleet officer not a blasted marine. Plus taking on the Imperials was hardly a fair fight given that the Cyclones weapons were designed to take on and destroy robotech battle mecha. Mecha that made the mecha he'd so far seen these guys have look like toys. "How long do you think we have?"
Han frowned and did a quick bit of math in his head. "Probably no more than fifteen minutes," he said at last, "twenty if we're lucky then we're going to be up to our arm pits in stormtroopers."
"Damn that's not enough time," Johannes replied with a wince. He had hoped that they would have bought enough time for their reinforcements to arrive and extract them from this dust ball of a planet. Unfortunately, it didn't look like there would be as even though Zendril was certainly pushing his ships fold engines as hard as he could it would still take at least another twenty minutes for the Sumatra and her escorts to arrive and defold over this planet. And that was assuming they didn't experience any misfolds due to pushing their engines so hard.
Thankfully there was an alternative to staying here and fighting a battle that they probably wouldn't be able to win despite their seemingly generally superior firepower.
"Captain Solo I hate to impose on you, but would it be possible for you to give me and my people a lift into orbit," Johannes asked, "before we crashed, we transmitted a distress call. More of our ships are on the way and will be here within half an hour. If you can take us into orbit and wait there until they arrive, I would be very grateful. Plus, my people will be able to reward you quite handsomely."
Han's eyebrows shot up even as he inwardly grinned. "I can do that," he agreed knowing that anything he got from these people as a reward for his help would be well worth it. "But what about your ship the Imperials will surely invade it the moment we leave."
"It won't matter all the vital technology is set to self-destruct if they attempt to tamper with or remove any of it," Johannes replied. "Plus, when the Sumatra arrives, she's sure to drop a reflex missile on the remains of the Windermere to ensure her destruction. As much as we would love to be able to salvage her there just isn't enough time."
Han almost asked what a reflex missile was. He had never heard of a weapon like that before but decided that he really didn't want to know. From what he had seen so far of these peoples firepower, not to mention the insane durability of their ship, he knew he would sleep better at night not knowing just what a reflex weapon was. "Alright," he agreed, "Chewie?"
"Yes Han," Chewie answered.
"Let's start getting everyone on the Falcon, we're heading for orbit."
"Alright Han."
"This way please," Han said gesturing to the embarkation ramp for the Millennium Falcon. He began walking in that direction and the sound of heavy footfalls in the sand let him know that Captain Sommerville was following him. In moments he was back inside his beloved ship though the other captain didn't follow for a few seconds but when he did follow Han blinked to see his armour was missing – aside from some functional looking armour that had to have been underneath – and that he was pushing some type of vehicle. "Where'd your Cyclone go?"
"This is it," Johannes answered gesturing to the bike.
"Huh?"
"A Cyclone is a type of veritech, meaning variable engineering robotics integration technology. It's a technology we have that let's vehicles and other technologies have multiple forms. In the case of the Cyclone a high powered bike is one form, powered battle armour is the other."
"Incredible. Is there anything you people cannot do?"
Johannes chuckled. "You'd be surprised," he said, "while our technology and science are quite advanced there are still many things even, we do not yet know or understand."
Han shook his head. "I find that hard to believe but no matter," he replied, "make yourself and your people comfortable. I'm going to head to the cockpit and get ready for take-off."
Johannes nodded and watched as Han walked away and disappeared down a corridor. Johannes then turned and began guiding the crew coming up the ramp to find comfortable – well as comfortable as many of them were going to get given that many of them had injuries – places in this somewhat shambolic common area of Captain Solo's ship.
Imperial Gozanti Transport
Ten Minutes Later
"Major the freighter is launching."
Major Jallo Rafan blinked at the report from the cockpit. He instantly turned his attention to the monitor feeds from the cockpit in time to see - in a spray of fine sandy dust - the YT-1300 light freighter rising from where it had been sitting next to the downed alien ship. He considered ordering the cockpit crew to shoot it down but decided against it, due to their distance from the freighter it would take too long to get close enough for their cannons to have a chance of penetrating the freighters deflector shields. Instead, he watched as its nose rotated towards space before, with a burst from its ion engines, it shot off towards space.
"Have the garrison send some fighters into orbit," he ordered, "have them detain that freighter if possible. We need to know what they know about the unknowns. Also run a scan of the unknown ship now."
"Yes sir," came the acknowledgement from the cockpit. "Sir comm scan shows that there are now no lifeforms on the crashed ship. The freighter must have taken all the survivors aboard. Sir should we land, with nobody aboard now we should easily be able to take the crashed ship."
Jallo almost said yes however something made him pause. Somehow, he knew that if he boarded the downed ship then he, and his entire squad, would not survive what was to follow. It was after all possible that the unknowns had rigged something up, something that would completely destroy the ship the moment they boarded. Alternatively, the aliens had surely transmitted a distress call and thus it was very likely that more of their ships were coming, ships that would certainly immediately destroy the crashed vessel to keep its technology out of the hands of potential enemies. It would be what they would do after all.
"No instruct our gunships to watch it but to take no action other than to keep any scavengers away," he ordered at last, "I don't want any of our people aboard it if more of the unknowns ships arrive before our own ships get here. They'll certainly destroy the wreck and anyone on it, or at least try to. As for us we'll go after that freighter, get us into orbit."
"Yes sir."
Authors Notes: Well, another chapter bites the dust, I hope you all enjoyed it and the growing mystery of the asteroid station as believe me Dana and co have barely scratched the surface of what is there and what it is actually a part of. Until next time, stay safe everyone.