Chapter 11: Harrsk's Offensive.
39.4.15 GrS
The Volkori Nebula, The Deep Core
Imperial-II class Star Destroyer, Veretorix II
Doonium plating groaned and shrieked as it was forced aside by the spike of the boarding pod, the interior of said pod rattling around us as it did so. Then a louder shriek filled my ears as the one spike became four and the blast doors of our boarding pod slid open soundlessly. A blue ray shield activating to prevent the pod from depressurizing. There was something else the blue screen did, maybe keeping the boarded ship from losing atmosphere, but I never bothered to learn.
"Go Go Go!" shouted Atten to the stormtroopers, and they prepared to surge forward, taking the area around our insertion point before rapidly moving onward to secure their objective. Basic Corp boarding tactics at work. Any VIPs among the boarding party, such as dedicated intelligence slicers or interrogation officers who needed to point out a specific person for the stormtroopers to not kill, would be escorted to the AO by a squad of troopers.
I had long trained my stormtroopers out of such practice, and instead of being in the middle of the wave of white plastoid armor sweeping into the depths of the Veretorix II, as the IFF identified her as, I was leading the charge. I was the huntmaster and the stormtroopers my loyal hounds.
The Dark Side beat its war drums in concert with my breathing, eagerness coursing through me to take my lightsaber to something concrete. The rage that coursed into the Force from my stormtroopers, strengthened the presence of the Dark Side a bit further than if it had just been me on my lonesome in the star destroyer.
"We are two levels below the main bridge, sir." Atten spoke up from my left side as we moved forward at a brisk jog. Our helmets filtering out the wailing claxons of the ship so as to not deafen us.
"Where did Besh platoon land?" I asked as I unclipped my lightsaber from my hip and ran over the internal layout of the upper levels of an Imperial-class ship in my head.
"Besh platoon landed four levels above the bridge and have reported no hostile contacts. They await your order."
"We'll take the bridge pit and Besh will secure the analysis and astronavigation chambers directly behind the bridge pit. That'll give us valuable additional intel on the spread of Harrsk's forces and movements. " I put the hand with my lightsaber up in the air and waved it forward, the saber still unignited. "Double time it!"
The jog turned into a run, as I led the platoon through the white hallways of the star destroyer; aiming for the stairs that would take us right to the entrance of the bridge pit.
We encountered nobody on the first level, the one our pod had impacted into, and our group had made it about part way to the next stairwell that would take us right up to the bridge pit when we finally ran into our 'fellow' Imperials.
"Contact left!" The warning came from two troopers who were on the foremost left of our little column.
Crack! Thumm! Crack! Barked the E-11 carbines. I saw a screen appear in the left corner of my vision, showing the stormtroopers gunning down a trio of figures dressed in the grey tunics and white hats of communication officers.
The half formed thoughts of me not being able to test my skills today were finally put to rest. Of course there were still people on this ship. Where else could they go? We were in a nebula for crying out loud, a nebula that stretched from Ojom to Khomm in width and just about ran straight to the galactic core in terms of length, and there wasn't an escape pod in existence that was rated to withstand exposure to the forces of a nebula.
I picked up the pace, legs now pumping hard. More and more members of the Veretorix's bridge crew were encountered by the troopers on the outskirts of our column, right up until the trickle of targets became a flood as we ran smack dab into the middle of a very target rich environment, just shy of the bridge proper.
From the briefest of seconds that I to study the cluster of uniformed men and women, I managed to gleam why the we hadn't run into any organized groups up until now: however was in charge of the ship had decided to not abandon ship and had elected to pull everyone from non-important stations to help keep the situationally very important stations up and running. And since it was the galactic standard for warships to have all the important stations based in and very close to the bridge pit, all the still living crewmen had been drawn to the bridge.
Considering that the Veretorix II's remaining turbolasers had still been firing when the boarding pods had launched, whoever was running this star destroyer had had the right idea. Shame I was about to put an end to that.
"No prisoners!" I yelled out, deciding that would be a fine enough command to give to my men before finally getting down to the wonderful business of slaughtering my foes.
A few of the crewmembers that had been away from their overcrowded stations had but seconds to react before they were cut down by red bolts of plasma, the stormtroopers surging to the sides of me to carry out their much anticipated task.
As for myself, I advanced, a single blade on my saber ignited and the Dark Side surging around me in glee. Heavy Shii-Cho chops hewed limbs from torsos or split grey bodies in twain. Legs, hands, arms and heads went flying with precise sun djem strikes as I moved forward like water, around, over and through my enemies.
While I cut through the pathetic chaff that dared to stand in my way, I cast an aura of terror before me, causing those not directly in my way to start blubbering or shaking in fear. My mere existence causes them to shy and run away from my path. Not that avoiding me would save them, my stormtroopers were also in the process of killing all in their sight.
As I finished pushing the lower half of my blade vertically through the face of a female analysis officer, who had responded to my terror wave by leaping at me in a fight portion of fight or flight instinct, I saw that I had finally made it to the double blast doors that marked the entrance to the bridge. Not bothering with the physical, I wrenched the locking mechanisms open with the Force and the doors swooshed open with a decidedly ear wrenching groan. Good thing that they wouldn't have to close after this, otherwise that would be a right bitch for the mechanics to fix.
I strode through the door with the drums of the Dark Side in my ears, Atten and two troopers flanking me, when the Force shot a warning to me.
Danger, below.
Snap-hissss went the second blade of my lightsaber as I fell into a Soresu stance and deflected the blaster bolt right back into the face of the man who had fired it at me from the bridge pit.
I looked at the dead man, noting that he had the black cap and uniform of a senior naval officer, then the sound of boots shuffling in front of me drew my gaze.
The huddle of officers that opened fire on me with blaster pistols prevented me from properly feeding the indignation that I felt at that man daring to think that he stood a snowball's chance in hell of killing me, as deflecting the incoming tide of red took priority.
The first volley was batted away from me in a wild manner, errant bolts spraying through the bridge space and impacting into those very vital consoles, frying the machines.
Snarling under my helmet, I redirected the second round of blaster fire up and away from me in a classic Soresu velocity, so that they only scored the durasteel of the floor and the ceiling, not anything electronic in nature. I would not be cheated out of my rightful prize just because these fools wanted to do out in a blaze of glory!
"Atten, clear the pit." I ordered the man and his stormtroopers behind me, who hadn't yet opened fire into the mass of traitors in the bridge. A wise choice, I realized. They'd run the risk of interfering with my deflecting of the enemy fire.
"Do not fire your blasters." I warned and waited for Atten to say 'yes sir' in response before making my next move, my saber still blurring in front of me to deal with the fast paced fire being poured upon me. Regripping my saber with two hands, I took two steps forward to clear a space for my stormtroopers to move past me.
Thankfully the huddle of people in front of me didn't shift their fire but I didn't want to give them time to think about it, so I moved to end our little exchange. Problem was, the Dark Side wouldn't be pleased with a simple and non-flamboyant end to this encounter. I had drawn deeper than I had wanted to, I realized, smelling the phantom sulfur under my nose and feeling the roaring flames of unadulterated power in my veins.
Shit, I'd been out of active combat for two months and my control had fucking slipped. Although I had to admit, for a bunch of deck officers with their candy adorned chests, they were able to get a mean rate of fire up. So it was a good thing then that I had drawn on more of the Dark Side than initially intended. It'd be a very ignoble end for an Inquisitor.
The Dark Side chanted its pleasure to me, in a tongue not unlike the Sith I was slowly learning, as I wrapped the Force around the seven, no eight men in front of me and sent them flying. Not away from me, as a jedi might have done, but towards me, headfirst and at speeds that would break their necks if they didn't die to me first.
And die they did, as all on the bridge were treated to the results of what happened when you put several fully grown men into the rapidly spinning blades of a lightsaber: giant sashimi.
The Dark Side, appeased, lessened its grip and I reinforced my mental shields a tad more while reducing the amount of power I was drawing from my ever present companion. Lesson learned and all that, with no desire to repeat.
Silence fell as the sounds of blaster fire went away and I felt around the bridge and noticed the lack of hostile feelings directed my way and the very strong satisfaction that my stormtroopers were emanating into the Force at the sight of the dead traitors.
"The pit has been cleared sir." Atten told me, hopping back up to my level, flicking some errant..viscera maybe, off his vibroblade before sheathing it.
I nodded in response before pointing at a cluster of stormtroopers. "Go link up with Besh platoon."
Turning back to Atten, "Is the droid still in one piece?"
"Yes sir. TK-635 and TK-901 were escorting it." Ah yes, the two that were carrying DLT-19s.
"Then bring them in and set the droid to work."
It trundled the all black astromech droid, the only bit of color on it the silver intelligence insignia on its dome head. It's dome head rotated to look at me before letting out the signature whistles and beeps of astromechs the galaxy over.
"01001000 01100101 01101100 01101100 01101111 00101110 00100000 01010111 01101000 01100001 01110100 00100000 01100100 01101111 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01110111 01101001 01110011 01101000 00100000 01110100 01101111 00100000 01110010 01100101 01110100 01110010 01101001 01100101 01110110 01100101 00111111"
"Everything on the bridge's system." I ordered.
The astromech chirped and wheeled itself over to an astromech port and got to work.
"Have we made contact with Besh?" I asked Atten, not bothering to tune back into the general comms at the moment.
"Yes sir, they cleared out all resistance in their target area and have begun information extraction of the ship's astrography maps and hyperspace telemetry."
"Ah the wonders of modern engineering." I told the commander. "A task that would have taken up to a whole hour a mere twenty years ago now takes but three minutes and the droid still has room to spare in its memory banks."
"Progress is indeed a wonderful thing sir."
Three minutes later, the droid was done and the two platoons split back up. We retraced our steps back to the boarding pod and in no time we landed back on the Adamant and got a fine view of the Veretorix II collapsing in on itself as its spine finally broke. We had departed not a moment too soon it seemed. The forces of the nebula would soon wisk the remains of the once proud imperial vessel of war into its depths; never to be seen again.
The techies in the electronic department reported that it would take about a standard cycle to get all the data sorted but the brief appetizer report they had sent up had given Masal and myself something to chew over, tactically speaking.
Most of his suspicions, and my foreknowledge, had been confirmed. Harrsk has a very large number of Imperial-class star destroyers, somewhere around one hundred, true numbers pending. And he had gotten the manpower and resources to reactivate near forty Tector-class star destroyers as well.
Harrsk was also planning on leaving his cosy Deep Core bolthole very soon. The amount of jumps the late Veretorix II had been making around the edge of the border between the Deep Core and the Core proper was indicative enough.
But it was also extremely clear to Masal and myself that the 13th had absolutely no hope of even delaying Harrsk's offensive with the paltry numbers we could offer even in an unfair fight. So it became clear that we were going to have to pull back to get us some backup.
However before that, I gleaned something interesting from the preliminary data and my learned knowledge of how military ships worked in this galaxy. The amount of jumps the Veretorix II had been making should have left her hypermatter tanks completely empty, yet they weren't. Harrsk should have had the bulk of his fleet into the Core by now if all his ships could make the jumps the Veretorix II had been making, yet they were still firmly in the Volkori Nebula and therefore the Deep Core.
So Harrsk had a hypermatter shortage on his hands but not one so bad that he had to postpone operations. But his ships couldn't all have full tanks when they deserted to him, so clearly they had a refueling station, hopefully one nearby. And since we had a list of where the Veretorix II had been jumping to, plus the information on her hypermatter tanks, it might be possible to pinpoint where Harrsk was refueling his ships for his upcoming invasion of the Core.
And wouldn't it be a shame if an enterprising fleet with plenty of missiles and bombs to spare happened to jump in and say, destroy all that precious hypermatter.
Oh yes, what a shame for Harrsk indeed. Not to mention the additional time it would allow for me to figure out how I'm supposed to rangle up enough ships to pose so much as a challenge to Harrsk but that is a problem for another day.
A/N: Reviews are appreciated as always.