"To defeat the enemy we took whatever weapons we could and returned the pain they'd given us. They say now that the Forcesaber is the tool of Bogan, and that its darkness corrupts all who use it. Do I regret taking up the Forcesaber to defend Tython? No. Not for a second, and anyone who does is a weak-minded fool." Je'daii Daegen Lok, 10,667 TYA
During their long journey from Tython, relying on ancient outbound flight information and the compulsions of the Force for guidance, the three Jedi had made brief encounters with over a dozen worlds before reaching this region of space. On each inhabited world they'd found a different race and civilization, and each of those had existed in isolation and ignorance. Most had been vaguely aware that life existed around other stars, and some spoke of half-legendary alien tyrants who'd once enslaved their people, which the Jedi took to mean the Rakata. Some of those societies had been oligarchic, some tyrannies of native birth. Only one—an early planet they'd visited called Caamas—had been ruled by the collective choices of its people.
None of them had prepared the Jedi explorers for the Tion Cluster. A network of primitive hyperspace relay beacons connected some thousand worlds together into the unified Empire of Xim. For half a year they had laid low, scouting systems on the edge of the Empire, learning what they would while avoiding attention. The Force could accomplish miracles. Essan believed that, because she'd experienced its rush of power in ways most Jedi had not. But what could it accomplish against the might of Xim?
Today, all it could do was keep them alive.
The bridge of the Hand of Light was suddenly cramped. Since departing Tython, no one had stepped foot on this ship except the three Jedi. Now Erakas had insisted they bring these Tionese aboard. At least, she thought they were Tionese. This region was packed with humans (indeed, the whole galaxy seemed rife with them; to her disappointment she'd yet to encounter any hint of other Sith) but the green-skinned, horn-faced male was unlike anything they'd met so far.
The two hangers-on had obediently strapped themselves into the emergency crash seats at the back of the cabin, which was good, because a flight of small, nimble Imperial gunships had nearly reached the Hand. Master Talyak's four hands worked the controls nimbly, steering the Hand into slides and curves to avoid the first volleys of tracer bullets. From what Essan had heard, this was merely the testing stage; as soon as the Imperial ships got close enough, they would unleash more lethal missiles.
Thankfully, the Hand had formidable weapons of its own. They'd aimed not to use them (because it would most certainly draw attention) but now there seemed no choice.
Essan took the controls of her own station in hand. Her targeting computer came online, and the sensor screen showed in bleak detail the approaching enemy swarm. To Talyak she said, "Tell me when to open fire."
"Not yet," the Talid warned her. "We can still evade them."
Behind her, the human woman spoke in Tionese, "Where's my father's ship? We have to contact my father!"
Essan didn't know what they were going to do about their hangers-on. With warships on their tail there was no chance to stop and exchange passengers. They'd have to jump clear of the system for that.
"Please," the woman moaned, "You've gotta have a comm system, right? Right?"
Erakas, who'd dropped into the seat on Talyak's right, replied in her tongue. "Our systems might not… speak yours."
"Where's your comm? Let me see it, please!"
Those gunships were very close now, and Essan didn't need any more distractions. In Tythan she hissed, "Erakas, show her. We'll do the rest."
The young man nodded and waved the other human over to his console. The woman unbuckled and dashed over, and after a second the green-skinned alien followed. They all hunched over Erakas's station, exchanged muffled words in Tionese.
Essan forced her attention off their half-understood garble and onto the threats in front of her. The Imperial gunships had reached missile range; the first two released their warheads, which homed immediately onto the Hand's drive signature.
"Now?" she asked Talyak.
"Now," the Master confirmed.
He stopped twisting the Hand in evasive maneuvers long enough for Essan to mark the incoming missiles. Targeting with two separate cannons, relying on the flow of the Force as much as information from her sensor screen, Essan unleashed bursts of energized plasma. Faster and more powerful than the Tionese weapons, these bolts of energy shot out and instantly clipped their targets. Both missiles became brief blossoms of fire in space, then scattered into fading debris.
The unfamiliar weapons stunned the gunships, but not for long. Next, four missiles launched from different directions.
It would be hard for Talyak to maneuver, even harder for Essan to shoot. But together they had the Force, and it gave them what they needed. Relying not on spoken commands but on their mental bond, the two Jedi worked as one mind sharing six hands. Essan felt every tug on Talyak's controls and knew every twist he'd put the ship through before he did it. At the same time, she moved both of the Hand's cannon independently, tapping the firing controls without thought. Instinct and her innate power guided ever finger-twitch as she blasted one missile after another.
The gunships didn't fire any more, but they didn't retreat. Four of them moved around the Hand in different positions to bracket them and keep them from escaping. Only two peeled off to give chase to the generation ship, which continued to shoot away from Endregaad in a straight and mindless line. A few precise shots to its engines would disable or destroy it, and if it stayed intact, Xim's forces would ransack it and take all its secrets, thus negating the mission the Jedi had set to accomplish.
Essan had never handled failure well, and this one was especially bitter. But there was nothing she could do now; the only hope was to survive.
Communicating without words still, she asked Talyak a simple question: Should she open fire? Their weapons would be able to punch through the gunships' defenses and open an escape vector. Yet Talyak was cautious; the more they damaged Xim's fleets the more attention their foreign ship would draw, and besides, they were Jedi and refrained from taking a life whenever possible. Very softly, Talyak reminded her that they followed Ashla, the path of light, above all.
Essan rankled at the scolding, however gentle, but she held her fire.
Then came a voice aloud. In Tionese, the human woman cried, "We've got it! …I think."
"Try it," her companion urged.
As they worked the comm controls, Essan tracked the salvagers' ship with her eyes. It still hung close to the errant generation ark and seemed willing to interpose itself against the two Imperial gunships.
The human woman called, "Dad, are you there? Can you hear us? Repeat, can you hear us?"
The reply was marred by static that made the Tionese even harder to understand, but Essan could pick up relief and desperation warring in the responding voice.
"We're in the other ship," the woman insisted. "Right, that one. Yeah, I know we're surrounded. No, I don't know how we'll get out. Just… Hold on, we'll figure something out." She looked to Erakas. "We'll figure something out, right?"
Erakas looked to his Jedi companions, the same question in his eyes.
Essan wanted to punch out right now; destroy or cripple a gunship and break past it. But in times of crisis, important decisions had to be made by their leader, their Master.
Sitting in his cockpit chair, Mal-Oba Talyak lowered his shaggy head and considered.
-{}-
Kroller didn't even think. He knocked the Gravity Scorned into a roll and peeled away from the ancient ark. The two hemioliae training it continued their pursuit, though one sprayed bullets to warn Kroller from returning. He didn't need the reminder. He set thrusters to full and raced for the strange alien ship and the four other hemioliae boxing it in. The acceleration was so strong the g-forces tightened his chest and made it hard to breathe. Only when the edges of his vision started to blacken did he lay off thrust and allow himself to coast, still at intense speed, toward his children.
Now that he was getting near, though, he hesitated. He'd seen that ship blast a bunch of seeker missiles with pinpoint plasma bolts, displaying the kind of accuracy even Xim's best gunners would struggle to match. Still, you didn't start a fight when the odds were four-to-one against. Two-to-four wasn't much better.
He checked long-range scanners. That Imperial polyreme, the one with the charming designation Harridan, was vectoring toward them at a slower speed. Likely it was also keeping an eye on the retrieval team it had sent down to Endregaad. That helped a little, but they needed something more.
Kroller knew how to make a big distraction, oh yes he did. It was the kind that could easily get him killed, but it would also make it easier for Reina and Vaatus to escape on that other ship. He had no way of knowing who they'd hooked up with, where they were from and what that strange vessel was capable of, but he knew they needed help and he was the only one poised to deliver.
The comm line was still open. He said, "Reina, Vaatus, you there?"
"We hear you," his daughter replied.
"Good." Kroller licked his lips and tapped the control panel to bring Gravity's gun turret online. It would be great to have somebody at the weapons station aiming that thing manually, but the computer would have to do. Thankfully it had plenty of targets to aim at.
"Dad," Reina pressed, "What's going on?"
"I'm almost at your position," he said. Through the porthole he could see five starships all growing in size and definition. "Get ready to make a run for it. Let me know what beacon you're aiming at before you jump."
"What are you-"
"You know what I'm doing." He glanced at the weapons systems. Gun ready, targets locked. The two nearest hemioliae were still turned away from him. "Love you both," he said. "Now get the hells out of here."
He tapped one button. The standoff ended and the battle began.
-{}-
Death was not unknown to Shen's clan, but their lives on Endregaad had little opportunity for danger. The passing of one merited a prolonged ceremony with rites led by the Elders, then a consignment of the body to scared flame and was traditionally followed by a day of silent mourning, when each of them, even youth like Shen, were encouraged to ruminate on the prospect of inevitable end.
Tonight they had three dead and no time to remember them. When the nine survivors of the expedition returned to settlement, the cluster of tents and huts around the Sanctuary had become a town for ghosts. The fires had all been extinguished; no one could be seen outside. It was only when they reached the gate to the Sanctuary—a set of heavy metal doors slanting backward into the slope of a hill—that the portal opened.
Though there was only starlight to see by, Shen could tell his mother's eyes widened in shock when she beheld the three bodies, each carried by a separate runner. At the rear of the pack, the heavy foreign object recovered from the pod was carried between Kaim and Rone in a hastily-made bier.
A second Elder emerged from the gate behind Quoll. The weathered, brown-skinned Plev hissed through his sharp teeth and said, "You only lost three?"
"Some of us are injured." Shen tipped his claws toward Vosh, who'd torn off part of her tunic to bandage the still-bleeding bullet-wounds on her upper arm.
Quoll gathered herself and turned to her son. "We heard the battle and were afraid all were killed. Who attacked you?"
"Humans with black armor and guns," said Shen. "We killed all the ones who deployed, but their airship retreated. I could not stop it. I am sorry."
Vosh clasped his shoulder with her good hand. "You have nothing to be ashamed of. You were magnificent in that fight. The Force was with you, I could tell."
It was not a light claim to make. Plev asked, "Truly? Did you use its power?"
"I used it," Shen said firmly. "I only wish I could have used more."
"You used enough," Vosh assured.
Yet Shen's attention was firmly on his mother. Quoll said, "We will discuss this later. Bring the fallen inside. We can prepare for rites."
"I don't think we have time for that," Shen said, and raised one hand toward the sky. "There are more of them out there, and they will come to find those who have slain their comrades. I can… feel it."
This was also not a claim made lightly, but he believed it to be true. Both his instincts and the Force were speaking and they were telling him the same thing. They had stirred a powerful enemy and Endregaad was no longer safe. The planet on which they'd lived for most of his life could no longer shelter them.
Which meant they would have to take to the stars again and search for a new refuge. He remembered the last journey only as ugly childhood memories: cold, quiet despair, and the nasty fear that someday the humans would find and exterminate them all. Those feelings had returned but he was older, stronger, and the Force was with him. He had to believe that.
Facing his mother, he said, "We cannot stay here. They will scour this planet until they find us. Our only hope is to move before that happens."
"The Sanctuary is camouflaged and defended," said Plev. "We may be able to withstand them."
"Or we may not," said Quoll, "and we cannot risk finding out. You heard my son. Prepare to flee."
Plev made a reluctant growl but ducked back through the gate without argument. Quoll stepped aside and waved others through. The bodies were brought through first, followed by the other battered youths, including Vosh.
Rone and Kaim were last, and Quoll's eyes settled on the machine they carried between them. Kaim explained, "This is what they died for. Your son insisted we bring it. We don't know what it is, but this was inside the pod."
Quoll bent forward and brushed her claws gently over the hard metal and sharp angles. Half of the cable which had connected it to the pod dangled limp and ended in a lightsaber's burn-marks.
"We may have something in the Sanctuary which can interface with this machine," she said, "but I must examine it closer."
"This is the human's technology," Rone said with distaste. "What do you think we can do with it?"
"It is like their technology…. but different." Quoll straightened. "There is no time. We will examine it later. Get it inside."
They did as ordered, and once they'd passed through the gate it was only Quoll and Shen, mother and son facing each other in the dark and empty husk of their village. Looking around at the huts he asked, "Have people gathered their valuables?"
"Only what they could take with them," she said. "All we truly need is in the Sanctuary. And all you need is inside you."
She believed what she said; he wished he could believe as firmly. He spun on one heel and took a long final look around the settlement, dark and still, faintly brushed by silver starlight. He wished his farewell to it could have been different.
"All right," he said, "Let's go inside."
So they did. He passed through the gate first, while Quoll lingered behind him to seal it airtight. Then they crossed the down-slanting corridor into the heart of the Sanctuary itself. Despite its vital significance for his people, Shen had never liked the place. The metal walls were too cold, the low ceilings and cramped spaces too constricting. Buried beneath the soil there were no windows, no hints of stars or daylight. It was worse now, when even the largest rooms were packed with bodies. His people looked tall and confident on the surface because it was their world and they lived beneath its skies unchallenged. Here they seemed hunched, frightened, pathetic refugees; scraps of a dead civilization and a dying race. He hated this place because it showed them for what they truly were.
But there was no time to give reign to his bile. He followed his mother to the Chamber of Elders, where Plev and the other leaders of their clan gathered around the archaic machinery that made the heart of the Sanctuary. They stood in a circle beneath a domed roof, each at his or her dusty console, but none moved to touch them, even when Quoll took her place and completed the arc.
Standing at the side of the chamber, Shen watched his mother lift her head and speak. "We all knew this day would come. We cannot hide from our enemies forever, but we can continue to evade them. We can run. And we can survive." She touched her console, swiped away a patch of dust, and turned the switch on its side. "Let us begin."
The other Elders did the same. Their consoles shuddered and glowed, and a faint electric hum filled the room. Shen felt a small but steady vibration under his feet and breathed in deep. He wasn't even certain the Sanctuary could operate after all these years, but it had lasted his people for centuries and it roused now like an old man rising out of deep slumber. It was an awkward, sputtering, almost painful awakening, but the Sanctuary was becoming itself once again.
Shen could feel it.
As the Elders began working their consoles, the door beside him slid open. Rone and Kaim edged inside, and Shen whispered in warning, "You're not supposed to be here."
"Neither are you." Rone looked at the Elders and the lit-up consoles. "They're really doing it. We're really doing it."
"We have no choice. What we fought back was just a search party. The humans will come at us with all their might next."
"So it's come to this," Rone's voice was tight with anger.
"You knew it would," whispered Kaim.
"Where will we go now? Where could we possibly—"
"Trust the Elders," Shen said. "They'll find a place for us."
Rone's eyes narrowed on Quoll. "That is easy for you to say."
"No. Nothing is easy now."
Rone didn't argue more. The three of them watched and listened as Quoll raised her arms and announced, "The time has come. We must take to the stars again and search for a new refuge. Let us go now, and quickly, before the humans trap us."
Plev lifted his head and said, "Agreed!"
"Agreed!" echoed the others, and they input the final commands into their consoles.
The humming in the room got louder. Air rushed through the vents and the vibration beneath their feet became so violent Shen had to brace himself against a wall. A groan from far below sounded like metal tearing; then came a white-noise scream. He looked at Rone and Kaim, saw both of them wide-eyed in fear, and knew he looked no better.
"To the stars!" Quoll hollered above the rising noise.
The other Elders joined her in a refrain: "To the stars!"
And, to surmount his own terror, Shen bellowed the same words. Rone and Kaim joined in too. They were all shouting it, over and over, until their throats were sore with words that had become their talisman against doubt and danger.
Then, with a final violent wrench, the Sanctuary broke free of the earth in which it lay buried. Night-dark rock and soil fell away in clumps from the room's transparisteel dome, revealing piece-by-piece a wide spread of stars. Kaim and some of the Elders were knocked to the deck but Rone and Shen braced themselves against the bulkhead to keep from falling. And standing in the circle, clutching her console so hard her claws dug into the metal, was Quoll. She had tilted her head back and stared upward at the stars toward which they now flew. In the Force, Shen could feel his mother's conviction; all panic was drained, all doubt, leaving only hard resolve.
Once they'd burst free of the surface, the shuddering stopped. Ancient engines drove them skyward in a smooth, straight line. With an ascending roar, the Sanctuary took flight toward the stars, as it had in generations past, to seek out a new home.
Only this time the humans would try to block them by any means necessary. Staring up through the dome Shen saw one light, brighter than any star and moving fast against the firmament. Their first obstacle, but not their last.
-{}-
Erakas had mentally braced himself for a fight, but he hadn't been prepared for this. Everything happened in quick succession: the salvagers' ship opened fire, the Imperial gunships returned streams of bullets, and the Hand of Light erupted with plasma bolts from its own cannons.
Every ship wove on its own through the chaotic, deadly hail. Master Talyak flew the Hand while Essan was given free reign with its weapons, and Erakas could feel them coordinating closely in the Force.
As for Erakas himself, he frantically tried to ready for a lightspeed jump while their two tag-alongs clung to the back of his chair like they were afraid they'd fall off. Tionese ships of this size didn't have artificial gravity, and they were clearly trying to wrap their heads around what the Hand could do.
The young human woman was relentless curious. He'd found that out when he'd helped her patch in a hail to her father's ship. Now, as she clung to the right arm of his chair, she was still asking questions. "What kind of armor does this thing have? I've seen your hull, it's not kiirium. Not duranium either."
"It's complicated," Erakas replied. He'd learned to use that Tionese phrase whenever he wanted to shut down a conversation, but she wasn't having it.
"Those weapons aren't standard lasers either. You just clipped through the flank of that hemiolia and that thing had kiirium plates."
"Reina," the horn-faced alien said warningly. Was that her name?
"Sorry," she said, "I get nervous when I'm about to die. It gets me babbling—damn!"
A missile came out of nowhere and nearly smashed into the Hand head-on, but Essan clipped it with a plasma bolt at the last second. The warhead burst into a fireball directly ahead of them and Talyak had no choice but to plow through. Debris tinkled softly, terrifyingly, on the hull. Their armor should be able to take it, but they needed to avoid damage to the Hand at all costs, because repairs were next to impossible in this part of space.
They'd have to deal with whatever hurt they took. As soon as they cleared the debris cloud they found themselves soaring directly for one of the enemy gunships—hemioliae, Reina had called them. Even before Essan could pump out plasma bolts, the gunship veered hard and turned away. To Erakas's surprise, he saw another gunship turn as well. Both of them seemed to be making hard, fast lines toward the planet.
All he could see through the viewport was a thin crescent of daylight surrounding a nightside disc, but something drew his attention there.
"Get closer," he said aloud. "Get closer to the planet."
He felt Essan questioning him, but Talyak complied. The Hand followed the retreating ships in a straight line while Essan pumped bolts from their aft to discourage pursuit.
Without asking permission, Reina leaned forward and slapped the communications console, opening a connection with her father's ship. "Dad, you there? What's your status?"
"I've got punctures in three sections of the hull and the starboard engine's lagging. Must've taken a hit to the supply line."
"You've got to get out of here. Can you make a jump?"
"I'm patching into the Raxus beacon. Really in the mood for a gods-damned vacation right now," Kroller's voice strained. "I could sure use you here, Reina."
"Jump as soon as you can. Get clear."
"Not without you two." A tiny pause, then: "What the hells are you doing? Why are you going toward the planet?"
Erakas leaned toward the comm. "Something is happening there."
"What something? Who are you people?"
This conversation was a distraction they couldn't afford. He said, "We can discuss when we meet later. Please jump. Jump now!"
With that Erakas pounded a button and closed the comm line. Reina stared at him accusingly and the green alien said, "He'll never leave us behind. We're his family."
Erakas heard the ache in that voice. Some might have wondered how an alien could be family with two humans, but he didn't doubt it. The love he had for Master Sohr matched any love he could have had for a biological father. He'd gotten used to his new companions over the past year, but right now he ached for his old Kwa mentor to give him some guidance, some assurance, some hope.
Then he felt it from the planet ahead: Hope, and a stirring of the Force.
"What's going on down there?" Essan rasped in Tythan.
"A starship has left the planet. A large one," Talyak replied in the same tongue. "The warship is moving to intercept it."
Erakas checked his sensor board. One of the modifications they'd made to the Hand since arriving in the Tion region was to buy and upload an encyclopedia of starship types to their database. This newcomer, however, stubbornly refused recognition.
Was there a connection to the Tythan ark? He saw no way this could be possible, but something that unusual had to be investigated. Which meant it also had to be defended. They hadn't been able to salvage the ark, or its computer core, but they might still save this.
He didn't need to speak this to his companions. The Jedi shared the same thought, the same intention. Talyak drove them ahead until Endregaad's dark face filled the entire viewport. Against so much blackness, the lit-up length of the Imperial polyreme became visible, as did the darting thrust-trails of three hemioliae and one large, lozenge-shaped vessel half the size of the polyreme, trying desperately to push clear into space.
Talyak dived into the fray. Reina yelped. Essan, rigid with focus, laid down a line of plasma bolts that intercepted one of the gunships with precision. The hemiolia exploded just as brilliantly as the missiles it was carrying.
The Hand veered around this explosion, cut across the bow of the fleeing ship, then arced around to continue its defense. As it did so, a collective realization ran through the Jedi, one that shocked them to the core and caused them to shudder in their seats.
"Someone is using the Force on that ship," Essan said aloud.
-{}-
Shen was just one being, panicked and confused along with the hundreds of his clan all packed into the fleeing Sanctuary, but there was one thing he could do, one tool he could use, that set him irrevocably apart from them all.
Still standing in the Chamber of Elders beside Rone and Kaim, he closed his eyes and reached into the Force. He couldn't shatter enough light-bulbs or twist gun-barrels to stop that massive warship ahead of them, but he dared hope he could use his power to confound the minds of his enemies or encourage his friends. Because that, his mother said, was what the Force could do. But would it be enough? Even before his race had lost touch with the Force, it had failed to protect them from the Scourges, and their civilization had been at its peak then. But the Force was the only tool Shen had.
As soon as he tried to use it, he received an unexpected blessing. A starship swept in front of them like a silver blur, and from its cannons spouted plasma bolts that tore into one of the attacking gunships and instantly destroyed it.
Unexpected help was even better than the Force. Spirits soared around Shen, but they needed more than even that. Quoll and the other Elder maneuvered the Sanctuary into a hard turn and veered around the warship. It released powerful missiles from its broadside cannons and the Sanctuary tried to catch them all with its plasma cannons. Their unexpected allies swooped down to help intercept the trailing warheads.
They were good, but not enough. One missile impacted into the Sanctuary's side. The entire ship trembled and Shen had to brace himself against the bulkhead to stay upright. Then came the second impact, which threw him, Kaim, and Rone into a messy pile. They extracted themselves from one another and raised their heads to breathe whiffs of smoke. The Elders were shouting to each other, bouncing panicked reports of battle damage back and forth. Even Quoll, still clenched resolute at her console, was looking harried.
It was then that Elder Plev announced, "We have nearly cleared the planet's gravity well! We must jump to lightspeed!"
"Where can we go?" asked another. "The navigation systems… they are down!"
It was a death sentence. Shen had not passed through lightspeed since he was a child, but he knew the passage was incredibly dangerous. One wrong move could doom them to instant death in the heart of a sun.
He also knew that, in the long-lost time of their peoples' glory, they had used the Force to navigate the stars. Indeed, it had been the web that bound their star-spanning civilization together. Which meant he was, again, meant to act,
"Let me try," he said, and stepped to the ring of Elders.
Quoll did not even have to argue on his behalf. They were too scared, too confused, too desperate. The Elder at the navigation console stepped aside and Shen peered at the unfamiliar controls. Yet he reached out with his three-clawed hand and felt them, understood their purpose. He saw the dial he could have to twist to send them leaping into hyperspace; touched the throttle that would aim them, saw the counter should have ticked away astrogation statistics, but was now a mess of static.
He didn't need numbers, he told himself. He had the Force.
And if the Force couldn't save his people, what was it good for?
Shen closed his eyes and tried to tune out all the panic. The entire ship shook violently around him as another warhead impacted. They couldn't survive many more hits. But he pushed all of that from his mind and focused. He moved his hands over the controls, felt the dial ready to twist between his claws. One motion of the wrist, and where would he send them? He changed their heading slowly, carefully, reaching out with the Force all the while.
He felt doom ahead. A final end, even worse than what they'd get here. He pivoted, changed direction again, felt more danger, hot and scorching, the core of a star. And then, finally, he felt relief. Refuge, even if only temporary. He felt the universe reach out to him and promise survival.
Shen reached back, took its hand. He twisted the dial and the Sanctuary trembled all around him.
When he opened his eyes, he looked through the chamber's dome and saw the spectral lightstream he remembered from childhood as the ethereal embrace of hyperspace.
-{}-
Vaatus had never been so confused in his life. He didn't know what kind of ship had just torn away from Endregaad, he didn't know why the mismatched beings on this impossible vessel had rushed to help them, and he certainly didn't know how they were able to operate this ship so dazzlingly well without sharing words aloud.
Case in point: the red-skinned gunner, the furry four-armed pilot, and the mere-human nav officer were all laser-focused on their areas of attention. None spoke aloud; none even breathed a gasp, but somehow they managed to coordinate their twists and dives and counter-attacks as they nimbly raced away from the Imperial polyreme. It should have been impossible; even fully-crewed the Gravity Scorned would have been vaporized by a half-dozen missiles by now. Yet this ship kept outrunning one warhead after another and shooting down the few that got too close.
He could see from her face that Reina was amazed, but more than anything Vaatus was frightened. He had no idea what these strangers wanted or what they could do to accomplish it, and that left him terrified.
Of course, getting vaporized would be even worse, so for now he held on and prayed their strange talents would get them out of this fight.
As soon as the ship from Endregaad disappeared into hyperspace, he said, "Tell me we can get out of here."
The young man said, "Running now."
"Good." Reina lurched forward and slapped his comm system back. "Dad, do you hear me? Are you there?"
"I'm here," he returned. "What the hells was all that? Where did that ship come from?"
"I don't know, but—ah!"
Reina gasped; the ship lurched around them and the red-skinned woman snapped something aloud that was probably a curse. Vaatus didn't know anything anymore, but that had certainly felt like a missile exploding just outside their hull.
"Are you hit?" Kroller called frantically.
"We're still flying," Reina returned. "I think we're ready to jump." She slapped the young man on the arm. "Tell me we can jump now."
He exhaled deeply. "Almost."
She peered at his control board, which was an inscrutable mess of buttons and lights. Vaatus had been looking around and hadn't seen anything that looked like a navigation console. The systems that linked a ship to the beacon network was pretty standard throughout known space, because everyone used the same paths to traverse hyperspace.
Except, perhaps, these people.
"We will be clear," the human said, "in one second."
Then he closed his eyes.
Vaatus stared in fresh shock. The red-skinned woman and four-armed pilot had also closed their eyes. It looked like they'd all gone asleep at the controls—at the exact same moment their pursuers were closing in. He and Reina looked at one another, each wondering if they were about to die.
Then the pilot reached with his lower set of hands, tapped his controls, and pulled a throttle. Eyes closed all the while.
Hyperspace took them away.
-{}-
This day had been full of so many surprises Kroller could no longer tell which were good and which were bad. Even when the ship his children were on winked into the safety past lightspeed he wasn't sure, because they'd left him no parting message, no indication where he might rendezvous with them.
So for a moment after they jumped he just stared at the blank space on his sensor screen where they'd just been, wondering what he should do.
The moment didn't and couldn't last long. His attention broadened to the rest of the space around him. The generation ship, that damned ark that had started all this, the one he'd wanted to pull salvage from, now drifted past Endregaad's orbit and was flanked by two hemioliae. The weird ship from the planet was gone, and so was the weird ship from the ark, and that meant the only ships around Endregaad now were the Gravity Scorned and a whole lot of Imperials.
And that meant Kroller had to go too. As he brought up his navigation controls he thought: Raxus. He'd told Reina that's where he'd go. Given this unhappy run-in with Imperial authorities it might not be wise to stay at one of Xim's worlds too long, but he could at least go there for a start. He could hang by the outskirts, watch, and wait to see if his children were there.
And if they weren't…
He'd scour all known space until he found them.
A pair of hemioliae were closing in from behind, but Kroller didn't bother with evasive maneuvers. He just flew straight until he got his lock on the Raxus Prime navigation buoy, tilted his course heading to match, and pulled his throttle.
Then he, too, was gone.
-{}-
The conquest of Estaria was wrapping up nicely. A new Imperial governor had been installed along with fifty thousand soldiers, its old governor had surrendered to a mild house arrest, warships in need of repairs had either been patched in orbit or ferried to the Mizar shipyards, and First Viceroy Marco IV Jaminere was getting ready to ride the Ascendant back to Desevro and see his family.
So when a high-priority courier drone arrived bearing a message from the Endregaad system, he knew something had gone awry.
As he walked down Ascendant's halls to the communications center he ran through possibilities in his head. The Harridan was an experienced ship and Captain Felric a fine commander who'd never botch a simple retrieval mission. That meant Harridan must have found something unexpected at Endregaad, something beyond the usual ghost ship drifting in space. Even a live generation ship wouldn't warrant a courier drone, which made him wonder if Harridan hadn't stumbled on some old Tyrant technology, the kind Xim wanted to get hands on.
The information on the drone was marked for his eyes only, so Jaminere sealed himself in a private viewing booth while the data was uploaded to its computer core. When the package came up, it was prefaced by a message from Captain Felric explaining that a generation ship of unknown provenance had been captured above Endregaad and was being investigated using standard procedures.
It was everything else that had gone awry.
As Jaminere reviewed the reports and watched the video clips from Harridan's exterior cameras, things got increasingly bizarre. He watched two starships of unfamiliar design fly literal circles around his best gunship pilots. The starships wore not kiirium plates but unknown armor, fired plasma bolts instead of lasers or missiles, and pulled off maneuvers that would have knocked a pilot unconscious without artificial gravity to counter dangerous g-forces. Yet neither ship was big enough to hold artificial grav generators.
The larger of those ships had launched from Endregaad, the smaller from the outbound ark. Despite this, and some differences in appearance, it seemed safe to conclude that these ships had been working together. Felric noted a third ship, a tramp freighter of Tionese make, which he dismissed as a scavenger caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. Probably correct, but Jaminere made note of that as well.
Then he watched the video from the surface. Something from the generation ship had crashed in Endregaad's desert. The retrieval team had been ambushed and slaughtered by a group of aliens. The HeliScout from which they'd deployed had been forced to retreat after suffering damage, despite the fact that those aliens had no ranged weapons.
Jaminere sat hunched over his screen, watched the video from the HeliScout, and re-watched it. He froze repeatedly on frames where the aircraft's spotlights caught the aliens in full. Three meters tall, blue-green skin, three-clawed hands and feet. Unlike any of the cataloged species of the Tion cluster.
Jaminere took a deep breath, then went to work. He sent out an immediate transmission via buoy to Endregaad, which ordered the Harridan to calculate a probable location for those alien ships based on the recorded trajectory of their last jump. Then he got up, left the booth, and ordered Ascendant's communications team to re-launch the drone for Desevro, authorized for the eyes of Xim alone. Once they recovered from their initial shock, they rushed to comply.
One more thought came to Jaminere. He weighed it, considered, and made his choice. Back in the booth, he prepared a short text message for his wife, telling her that this return to the capital was begin delayed due to an unexpected development. Then he sent a second message to Captain Felric, informing him that the Ascendant and the First Viceroy would be coming to personally join the hunt.