The hooligans all stood in shocked silence. They crowded around the holo-projector.
"Repeating the top story today, this morning at eight thirty two, Supreme Chancellor Dorian Janarus was assassinated by Mandalorian marauders," the news man said, to the loud astonishment of the hoodlums.
"His body was recovered in his office, but his head was taken by the brutal killers, as a sick trophy," the anchor said, shaking his head.
"Blast! Them Mandalorians are bad news!" one of the thugs exclaimed, "Vicious!"
"Several government workers were also killed or seriously wounded in the violent attack at the Executive Tower," the news man said, reading from the prompter.
"Details are still forthcoming, but it seems that the attackers crashed a compact starship into the lobby at the one thousand nine hundred and seventy third floor of the Executive Tower and immediately began attacking the government workers and government officials, at the scene," the news man said, shaking his head in astonishment.
"Damn! Crashed a starship into the building?!" another street gangster asked, amazed.
"Two dozen special security forces were killed or wounded, in the extraordinarily violent and vicious attack.
"The Mandalorians are also, believed to be behind the violent raid against a retired war hero, formally the commander of the Commando special forces, retired General Thelonia Redrish."
The news anchor, became visibly shaken when the director spoke to him in his earpiece.
"This just in, breaking news from the deceased chancellor's mansion," he said, his voice nearly cracking, "It has just been reported, that the Mandalorians also attacked at the official chancellor's residence in the Organa Residential District. Two Jedi are among the dead, there. The attack there was perpetrated at seven ten this morning.
"The marauding Mandalorian raiders also defeated the chancellor's security forces at the official residence, before quickly departing the scene and perpetrating their second attack at the Executive Tower."
"Blasted stars!" another thug exclaimed, "They really wanted him, but bad!"
The anchor stopped speaking again to listen to his earpiece.
"We have video. We'll show it to you now," he told his audience of quadrillions.
His audience wasn't just on Coruscant. This news feed was being broadcast throughout Galactic Republic Space.
The security video showed a train of speeders begin to move down the driveway. Shortly after the speeders began moving, hundreds of Mandalorians suddenly appeared, seemingly out of thin air. One of the speeders was almost immediately taken down.
The edited video showed the reinforcements arriving on the scene, engaging the Mandalorians, but getting stopped by the incredible firepower the Mandos brought with them. The edited video switched to a scene of a Jedi attacking a group of Mandalorians near the chancellor's mansion, presumably to stop them from getting inside. These Mandalorians wore a different style of Mandalorian armor from the majority of the raiders.
Of this small special group of raiders, one of them was believed to be the leader. The Chiss' cobalt blue skin could be seen on her exposed face, she was the only one who wore a turtle shell helmet with a wide brim that went around the rim of the helmet, except over her brow.
In quick succession she initiated a series of attacks, starting by firing a single blaster bolt at the Jedi, which he blocked with his lightsaber. However, the resulting explosive burst of the bolt against the blue beam of the Jedi's weapon was much more powerful than what should have been expected. The Chiss immediately followed up the blaster bolt with a stream of burning liquid, which splashed onto the Jedi's robes as he got nearer, engulfing him in flames.
"Damn! They got the dirty tricks!" one of the misguided youths exclaimed.
The Jedi tore the flaming robes off of himself, revealing his white armor, and was almost within reach of the Chiss Mandalorian warrior. However, she suddenly jetted up, and backwards, twenty meters into the air and immediately rained down a torrent of blaster bolts onto the Jedi with twin blaster pistols.
It was clear, in the video, that the Jedi moved with incredible speed as he dodged the bolts, avoiding direct hits. However, it was also clearly evident that he was still getting caught in the explosive bursts, and that he was becoming weaker with each blast. Then, without any warning, three streams of blaster bolts came from off camera and caught the Jedi by surprise, instantly killing him.
The Chiss Mandalorian descended to the ground again, walked up to the obviously dead Jedi, stood over him and kicked him, before stepping back a few meters and blasting his corpse into pieces with a single bolt.
"Blasted cold nexu-hearted Chiss!" a thug exclaimed at the carnage.
The scene in the security video had changed from the chancellor's mansion to a huge office lobby. The edited security video showed the permaglass in the lobby shattering, explosively. Amid the rain of shattered glass, most of which reversed course, as the rain of shards were blown out of the lobby, a starship painted like a transportation lory speeder, suddenly materialized. A small army of Mandalorians emerged from the back of the starship and charged into the lobby.
One of them ran up to a woman at a desk and she dropped to the floor.
"How'd he kill her?" one gangster asked, confused, "I didn't see him do nothing to her."
The others blasted their way into a set of doors next to the poor woman's desk. Meanwhile, one of the Mandalorians used a blaster cannon to destroy the turbolift doors, causing two victims to get sucked into the shafts.
The thugs laughed at the sight of the unknown victims getting sucked away.
The edited video cut to a huge office space showing the same Chiss Mandalorian holding the Chancellor's head in one hand. The Chiss Mandalorian was accompanied by only two other Mandalorians. One of them wore the much bulkier armor. The other wore the same armor as the Chiss but was was also quite petite, except that this small Mandalorian wore a full visored helm of Mandalorian design.
Unknown to the wider galaxy, the Sith were involved in this action. This was because of a decision at the governmental level to edit the Sith out of all of the holographic video clips.
The Chiss stopped at the door and turned to face the captives at the sides of the office space. She lifted the head, to show it to the captives, and immediately the government workers fell apart, some fainting, all weeping uncontrollably. Then the Chiss Mandalorian walked out of the office followed by the other two, and the video ended.
The news anchor came back on.
"It is strongly believed that these Mandalorians are still on Coruscant. They are highly dangerous and most heavily armed. If sighted, do not confront them at all. Immediately call your local law enforcement precinct and report them and their location."
The news man paused again to listen to his earpiece.
"This just in! The Galactic Republic Special Investigations Bureau has just released these images," the news anchor reported.
Holographic models of the Mandalorians' armor were displayed. The model was displayed showing a frontal, side, and rear view of a Mandalorian warrior. The colors, bronze, brown, and olive drab, and the style of the bulky heavy armor, particularly their very distinct visored helmets were shown.
"Eleven Mandalorians, at the Executive Tower, wore this style armor," the news man reported.
The image changed to show the armor that Wrehn's team wore. The five in her team wore a distinctly different style of Mandalorian armor. Wrehn's team wore a lighter grade of armor than the members of Clan Sharratt, and the colors were also different, burnt orange and black. Wrehn was the only one in her team not wearing a visored helm.
"This is the face of the Chiss female who is believed to be the leader of these Mandalorian raiders," the news man reported.
Wrehn's face, was clearly imaged, complete with her faded ragged scar on her cheek.
"Remember, do not confront these dangerous killers yourselves," the anchor warned his audience, immediately report them to your local police precinct or to the Galactic Republic Special Investigations Bureau.
"We will now go to break, however, instead of cutting to commercial, we will display the holographic models of the Mandalorians' armor. When we return from break, we'll have analysis of their attacks and their weapon and armor choices."
"They were as bad as rancors, but we could have taken them out, no problem," one gangster boasted.
"It wouldn't be nothing but a thing," another said, joining the first.
"We're the One Hundred Ninety Second Avenue Gundarks!" a third one proclaimed, to the cheers of his fellow gangsters.
Wrehn's holographic image was in the rotation of holographic models on display, and it came back on.
"Can I talk to you guys a minute?" Wrehn asked the thugs, taking them by surprise.
The hooligans looked at the hologram of Wrehn, and then at her, with her team and the Mandalorians standing behind her.
The ramp came down. Wrehn, her team, the Sith lords, and her hired mercenaries all casually walked down the ramp. The thugs were engrossed by something they were watching on holo. So engrossed that they didn't notice her approach. She had to call to them.
"Can I talk to you guys a minute?" she asked, with her best smile.
The thugs looked at her and her team with great shock and obvious growing fear, nearing panic.
"It's her," one of the hoodlums said, voice filled with fear, "It's them. We're dead."
"Nah! Nobody's gonna kill you," Wrehn assured the gangsters, "I just wanna talk. Can we talk?"
"What do you wanna talk about?" one of their terrified number asked.
"We got to make some repairs to our ship back there," she said, pointing over her shoulder with a thumb, "Can we hang out here on the hoopball court for a short while? We won't bother you or anything."
"Wrehn," Gault said, laughing, "Look what's on holo."
Wrehn looked at the holo-projector for the first time and saw her holographic image holding up the chancellor's head. The deceased chancellor's head was blurred out of focus.
"Oh! Blasted balls of thunder!" she cursed, "Why'd I have to go wearing this helmet?!"
The news anchor was speaking, as her crew and her hired mercenaries moved a bit closer to see.
"Recapping the main points Hank Rollith, the director of the Galactic Republic Special Investigations Bureau has made," the news man said, "With the information they have on file, they will identify this Chiss woman. A reward in the amount of one billion credits has been put on her head as the leader of the Mandalorians who took part in this assassination. Once she is identified, they'll be able to find the rest of them."
Wrehn turned to her crew and hired killers.
"We're worth a billion credits," she quipped, "Not bad, eh?"
"You're worth a billion credits," Gault corrected, "You're the leader of the Mandalorians who offed the Chancellor."
The Mandalorians and the members of her crew behind her laughed at the humorous interplay.
Then she returned her attention to the troubled youth.
"You guys thinking of collecting on my bounty?" she asked. Then as though tempting them, added, "You'll get ri-ich. Really, really rich."
"There's no way! We don't wanna die! Please, don't kill us!" one of the youth pleaded, his voice trembling.
"Sure," Wrehn said, her tone friendly, "You guys just stay on this side, here. Don't try to leave and go anywhere. We'll be out of here in a couple of hours, maybe faster. Yeah?"
"Yeah," they fearfully agreed.
Wrehn and the Mandalorians turned to return to the dropship where she saw the three crewmen searching the sides and bottom of the dropship for damage.
"You guys want us to help? What can we do to help?" she asked.
"This is the worst blasted mess I ever imagined that could land on our laps," Captain Jond Rove said to his lieutenants.
"I don't think your plan to blame one of the syndicates is gonna work, Captain," one of his subordinates said, worried, "How're we gonna clean it up?"
"I'm thinking I would ask the chief for help with our huge missing persons case," Captain Rove said, "They'll dig around and while searching through the Nexus' hide outs, will find the freezers and the corpses. I'll get my ass chewed for not figuring this out on my own. Meanwhile, they'll figure out that it was the Mandalorians that did it."
His holo-transceiver made a chiming sound. He looked and saw that it was from the desk sergeant and answered.
"What is it?"
"We're being raided, Captain, they're from headquarters, Sir," the desk sergeant said, just as his door slid open.
Eight heavily armed and armored police officers rushed in. It was a Special Operations Police Unit from a different precinct.
"Don't move! You're all under arrest! Keep your hands were we can see them!" one of the SOPU officers shouted.
Jond Rove, quickly opened his desk, grabbed his pistol, even as the SOPU officers shouted at him to drop the blaster. He pointed at one of the armored officers, and they all responded, blasting him to death.
The lieutenants were instantly knocked out of their chairs and pinned to the office floor before they could do the same.
Commander Chattef Tarnnar Fett sat in the commander's chair in the bridge of the heavy destroyer, the Star Crusher. He listened to his bridge crew exchange information with each other in the performance of their tasks.
The Star Crusher was nearing the end of its patrol, and nearing its home port, Mandalore. In a few hours, the heavy destroyer would establish a very high orbit over the planet, and shore leave rotations would begin. Each of the three rotations would enjoy two galactic standard weeks on leave. At the end of the leave period the crew would begin preparations for their warship's next patrol in Mandalorian Space.
The heavy destroyer's commanding officer, Captain Rennet Panand Fett was resting, reading and writing correspondence, to his family, friends, and associates. Soon, he would prepare for sleep, as were the ship's crew who worked during his rotation.
Chattef Tarnnar read a message brought to him from one of the hyperwave intragalactic communications equipment operators. He immediately got out of his commander's chair and rushed to the Captain's state room. He knocked on the sliding door.
"Enter!" was the reply to the knock on Rennet Panand's door.
Chattef Tarnnar touched the door contact, and it slid open.
"Read this, Rennet," Chattef Tarnnar said, rushing to the captain's desk and handing him the datapad.
Rennet Panand activated the datapad and read the contents on its display screen.
"By order of Mandalore, all of Mandalore is now on a possible war footing. All clans shall ready themselves for possible war against the Galactic Republic," read the first message.
Rennet Panand looked at his executive officer with a look of great astonishment. He went on to read the next message.
"By order of Admiral Ura Drasda Fett, all ships will cancel shore leave, and immediately make preparations for extended, sustained combat. The fleet will assemble over Mandalore. When the fleet has assembled, ship commanders and executive officers shall board the flagship, for a briefing. This is a war warning order."
"What do you think, Chattef?" the captain asked his XO.
"I think the Champion of the Great Hunt has accomplished her mission, whatever that might have been," Chattef Tarnnar answered.
"I think so, too," Rennet Panand replied, "What is our status?"
"We're just under six hours from establishing orbit," the XO reported.
"I'll be out on the bridge to announce our new orders in a few moments," the captain said, adding, "In the meantime, see what you can find in the news."
"Yes, Captain," Chattef Tarnnar replied, turning to make his way back to the bridge.
Darth Tormen leaned back in his reinforced durasteel office chair, wearing a triumphant grin on his face. The news reports were exactly what he wanted to see. Watching his hired killer hold up the Chancellor's head for all to see was exquisite. Quite notable was the explicit absence of any mention of Sith involvement. It was all being blamed on the Mandalorians.
"How can the dark lords deny me a seat on the Dark Council now?" he asked himself, rhetorically in his broken, raspy voice, adding in triumph, "I am worthy to be counted among them!"
Wrehn watched as her crew and her hired guns inspected each stealth field transmitter for physical damage to the flat circular stainless, reflective surfaces, which were mounted flush with the outer hull of the dropship. She, Ymmiir, and both Sith lords watched as the Mandalorians and the Chiss' crew worked.
Most of the field transmitters on the sides, front, back, and bottom had been inspected. Not a single bit of damage had been found.
"The only place they haven't looked is on top of the ship," Calaverous said, adding with a sigh, "I suppose I can go have a look."
Calaverous walked, with a slight limp, to the side of the dropship and, using The Force, leapt to the top of it. He shook his head at what he saw.
"Well, I think I found what the problem is," he said, adding with a laugh, "It's a complete mess up here. It's all covered with shattered permaglass!"
Upon hearing this, Edrik tilted his head down and rested his face in the palm of his hand.
"Of course," he breathed out, feeling stupid for not thinking of it, "Zhey vere tracking zhe glass fragments on zhe top of zhe hull."
Gunter made a face that showed his exasperation. Tilting his face downward, he placed his hands on his hips and slowly shook his head in great disbelief and embarrassment.
"How could vee not sink to consider zat zeh glass vould cover some of zeh stealth field emitters?" he asked rhetorically.
Using The Force, Calaverous carefully levitated the glass shards, until they were all above his head, in a perfectly flat rectangular plane. The glass shards suddenly rocketed over the side of the parking structure, splitting the air and causing a sound that sounded like a wind storm, but only for a brief second. The thousands of pieces of shattered permaglass, varied in size from as small as a thumb to as large as a buff man's chest.
They hung, suspended six stories above the metallic street below. Then, quite suddenly the glass shot straight down, creating the windstorm sound just before the thousands of fragments of glass slammed the durasteel road below. The impact of the thousands of fragments sounded like explosive hail. The glass fragments disintegrated into very small glass splinters, taking on the appearance of white sparkling powder.
"Perhaps, now police will find us," Ymmiir said, laughing, "The gizka pups will find trouble with police."
"It'll be a good way to test the stealth field generator and emitters," Wrehn said, optimistically, then adding, "Clan Chief, please get everyone loaded aboard. I'll join you all in a bit. I'm gonna have a word with the small fry over there."
Vindis decided to join Wrehn, as Ymmiir nodded acknowledgment of Wrehn's orders and made his way to the dropship. She favored her right knee as she walked beside Wrehn.
"Are they witnesses that need to be eliminated?" Vindis asked, Wrehn.
"Nah, I want to tell 'em to go ahead and tell the cops what they saw," she said, "I don't want them getting in trouble for harboring assassins. They might get charged with treason."
"Why should you care what happens to those trash?" Vindis asked, astonished at what she perceived as the Chiss hunter's weakness.
"I'm feeling generous," Wrehn gave as her answer.
"What's your gang called?!" she shouted at the fear drenched youth, as they were still a bit of a ways away.
"We're the 192nd Avenue Gundarks," one of them answered.
Causing Wrehn to smirk, and Vindis to laugh out loud.
"Well, gather around, 192nd Avenue Gizka Pups!"
The youthful men and women did as they were ordered, too fearful to defend the honor of their gang's name.
"We just made a lot of noise a little bit ago," she told them, "No doubt the cops are coming."
"We swear! We won't say nothing!" one of them shouted in fear.
"We swear!" the others echoed earnestly.
"Nah," Wrehn said, smiling, "It's alright. Tell the cops everything. What we said, what we did. Tell 'em that we made that mess down on the street, too."
"If you gave us any trouble, we was gonna kill you all," Wrehn told them, truthfully, "but you guys were alright. You kept quiet, didn't call the cops while we was here, and didn't make us come after you for running off.
"I figured one good turn deserves another," Wrehn said, smiling and nodding her head to show that she meant it, adding, "So, I'm not gonna kill you, and I'm gonna give you a word of advice. Tell the cops everything so that they don't arrest you for treason against the Republic."
The light of understanding finally came on in the faces of some of the youth.
"Thanks," one of the youth said, "We really appreciate this."
Another of the youths, becoming bold decided to ask a question.
"That guy that jumped up on top of the starship, is he a Jedi?"
Vindis was incensed at this and decided to let the youth have a piece of her mind.
"Yeah," Wrehn said, before Vindis could speak, "He used to be a Jedi, but he bugged out of the order and got into doing jobs using his power for money. I guess he didn't like being a Jedi. Their lives are really boring."
With that she turned and walked off. Vindis followed, fuming at Wrehn for what she said. In the end, however, Vindis remembered that the Dark Council wanted cover from this operation.
"As insulting as it was, being thought of as a Jedi, I must admit that this Chiss thug has acted appropriately," Vindis told herself.
As she made her way up the ramp, Wrehn felt her holo-transceiver vibrate in its niche on her utility belt. The Chiss bounty hunter sat in her customary spot between the load master and Mako. The ramp came up and, as she applied her seat restraints, the ramp locked and sealed itself. She then took her communications device and read the message on its screen.
"From: Cignos Statti Bank of Nar Shaddaa. To: Yehw'reh'nomai. Esteemed banking customer, 1,000,000,000,000 credits, Imperial currency, have been deposited to your account. Converted to Hutt currency it translates to 999,897,977,076 credits. Your beginning balance was 1,855,793,029,609 credits, Hutt currency. Your new balance is now 2,855,691,006,685 credits, Hutt currency. Have a bountiful day, highly esteemed banking customer!"
Wrehn smiled, realizing that her client had also seen the news broadcast and had paid immediately.
"Now all I gotta do is deliver this head for another five billion and this job'll be done, and I'll be set for life!" she thought to herself, quite pleased.
Four police units crept towards the parking structure. Two glided a meter above the durasteel road, and two glided eight stories up. The two units above, caught sight of the youths of the 192nd Gundarks. They seemed to be sitting quietly around a holo-projector, watching some sort of programming.
"Resh 34, this is Resh 28. I've got approximately fifteen youths on the top of the parking structure. They appear to have turned the top level parking into some kind of lounge. Resh 28, and 49 are going to go down and make contact. Over."
"Understood, Resh 28. Resh 34 and Resh 30 will investigate a suspicious powdery material coating the road down here," the police sergeant leading the four speeder patrol, said, then to the dispatcher, "Resh 34 to Dispatch, please send a forensic team in hazmat gear to 192756 West 192nd Avenue. We've got an unknown crystalline substance coating the road at the address."
On the top parking level the youths noticed the two police cruisers quietly descending onto the hoopball court. The youths didn't flee. Instead they approached the police units, coming to a stop when the eight officers began exiting the two police speeders.
One of the youths spoke.
"We're innocent," he said, earnestly, "We don't have nothing to do with that mess, officers."
The look of fear and uncertainty was shared among the members of the small wanna be street gang.
"What are you talking about? What do you mean?" the corporal asked, expecting to hear excuses about the strange material coating the road below.
"We saw it in the news," the youth said, plainly scared, his eyes watering up, "They got the Chancellor. They was here. They didn't kill us. They told us to tell you everything."
"Resh 34 this is Resh 28. We need you up here, Sergeant," the corporal said, "We've got a lead."
Wrehn carefully watched the holographic video supplied by the stealthed probe droid. She watched as the two police units, investigating the crystalline power on the road, swiftly ascended to the top of the park structure. Eight more officers exited their police units and approached the first group of officers.
She watched as the officers took each youth individually, separating them, and then began to take notes as they questioned the members of the 192nd Avenue Gundarks. Soon after, the area was flooded with tens of police units, carefully scanning the rooftops of sub-buildings and open areas large enough to accommodate their dropship.
The moment of truth came when two units slowly passed, one to the side, on street level, and one overhead. The units passed by with no reaction, and the other units did not change their search patterns. After a time had passed, Edrik and Gunter became convinced that their stealth field had been repaired.
"Let's get going, then," Wrehn told the two.
Their stealth probe was recalled and recovered before the dropship silently lifted off and began the long slog up a few hundred mega floors, dodging traffic along the way, before finally exiting the building through the rooftop opening. Piloting the stealth dropship, Edrik took advantage of a break in the otherwise heavy traffic, moving away from the heavy streams of speeder traffic into open air.
Tensions rose when Gunter had passed back word of a squadron of starship fighters, descending into the atmosphere and circling overhead.
"Maybe they got word from the local police," Gault said, trying to be optimistic, "They're just circling, not coming at us."
Edrik guided his dropship on a steady climb towards space, carefully avoiding nearing or crossing the sound barrier. Despite how quiet the engines were, getting near or crossing the sound barrier was noisy. Air turbulence made loud whooshing sounds, and the roiled up air could be picked up on certain kinds of sensors. Also, moving the dropship above certain speeds, depending on the moisture content of the atmosphere, tended to leave vapor trails which could easily be seen behind the otherwise invisible ship.
Climbing at this low speed was a slow, monotonous, many hours long process, and while it grated on the nerves of the passengers in the troop compartment, the dropship crew were quite used to it. Because of the issues of the loud turbulence, sonic booms, and the vapor trails, the climb out of the atmosphere was a tedious, but expected part of flying a stealth spacecraft deep behind enemy lines.
With the increasing altitude, the skies over the ecumenopolis became a darker, and darker shade of blue until the tiny dots of low orbital traffic, reflecting sunlight, had just begun to become visible to the naked eye. The ever darkening deep blue sky then began to transition towards black when they reached the highest, thinnest parts of the atmosphere.
At this point, the dots were very easy to see as they seemed to stream across in many lines of different inclinations. Each of these streaming sun illuminated dots represented an artificial satellite. The number of these artificial satellites were legion.
Most were for local communications, many others were for intra-galactic communications, a few hundred were dedicated to weather tracking and forecasting, and so on. Thousands of the dots moved at different altitudes generally moving in an easterly direction. Many more of these dots moved in a generally northerly direction, and after crossing the north pole, the same satellites would then stream in a southerly direction.
Certain regions of space, however, were kept clear of satellites in order to accommodate starship traffic. That could only be helpful if the pilot or navigator were following the directions of a space traffic controller, which Edrik and Gunter were not doing. Everything they did, to avoid collision with the satellites, was with the aid of passive sensors and their eyeballs pointed outside the fight deck canopy.
Then, there were the satellites at geostationary orbit. Those were very faintly visible because of their very great distance above the planet. At geostationary orbit were millions of satellites with a multitude of tasks, such as monitoring for ground quakes, communications, orbital traffic control, and many other tasks.
However, among these geosynchronous satellites were a very specialized set of satellites. These satellites were up there for a unique purpose, orbital observation. The orbital observation satellite was an autonomous artificially intelligent droid.
Its job was to sift through the billions and billions of objects flying over the exterior of the city world. Anything flying over the mega rooftops of the hundreds of millions of mega buildings was identified, categorized, given an identification flight number, and compared with the work of the other orbital observation droids.
There were fifty thousand of these droids, in an evenly spaced constellation, around the planet. Each droid scanned a thin slice, from North Pole to South Pole, like a segment of a citrus fruit. Whenever an anomaly was detected, the orbital observation droid gave it a special identification designation and shared that information with the droid next to it, depending on the direction of travel of the anomalous object.
As a result, there were always two droids keeping an eye, as it were, on the anomalous object. In this case, there was no object, but there was a slightly turbulent trail of hot air slowly climbing into the upper reaches of the atmosphere.
Previously, when the dropship was being tracked, these orbital observation droids were picking up the pieces of glass that hadn't been blown off the top of the dropship hull. This time, however, there was nothing to track. Yet, the trail of heated air and light turbulence was quite anomalous, and kept the mildly curious artificially intelligent droids' attention.
When the contact information was shared with the sixth orbital observation droid, and when that sixth droid had picked up the anomalous contact, it decided to pass this information on to the Galactic Republic Near Space Defense Force, for closer inspection and investigation.
A squadron had already been deployed, based on reports from the local police force deep in the lower levels of one of the mega buildings. This squadron, had been circling very high up in the very thin atmosphere thousands of meters over the rooftops, searching for tell-tails. It was feared that the assassins had gotten away. However, this anomalous contact report from Orbital Observation, could only be their escaping assassins.
The squadron flew at high speed, climbing steeply, going higher still into the upper atmosphere, heading towards the vacuum of space. With the dropship nearing the vacuum of space, and the upper limits of the atmosphere, traces of its passage was becoming increasingly difficult for detection. Orbital Observation, at their distance, had already lost track. Meanwhile, the squadron of starship fighters, who were much closer, only had a very faint and intermittent contact with the trail of heated air.
The squadron neared the last known location of the heat trail and entered that flight path, effectively following the trail behind the dropship.
A sudden burst of blue beams shot forward from beneath the dropship. It was the first indication that they had been tracked and were now under attack.
Senior Lieutenant Some'dri'komai changed heading, turning to the right while greatly resisting the urge to increase speed. Edrik looked right, past his younger brother, out of the canopy in time to see twenty fighters shoot past, below the dropship's relative position. He looked to the left, and watched as the fighters shrank into the distance.
In another ten minutes, the shuttle would finally be above the most tenuous uppermost layers of the atmosphere and in the vacuum of space. He knew they would get an update on the location of his ship, but he had to exercise patience.
As he expected, Orbital Observation detected the curving trajectory of the dropship, as he'd made his turn to the right, via their very tenuous heat trail, and updated the information to the squadron. He watched the fighters make a series of maneuvers that would get the high performance interceptors on his tail again.
"They're getting into our heat trail and shooting blindly," he told Lieutenant, Junior Grade Erudeg'unte'romai, in Cheunh, "If they continue with this tactic, they will eventually hit us.
"I'm going to gradually increase speed and turn randomly, to get us out of the top of the atmosphere sooner, and to keep them guessing where we are."
"Understood," Gunter responded, keeping his professional cool, "Shall I deploy the rear view imager?"
"Negative, that," Edrik replied, "That would give their radar something to detect."
With that, he made a random course change, this time turning to the left, towards the northern hemisphere, while increasing speed slightly, and steepening his climb. A burst of bright blue beams shot past the right side of the ship, missing by a wide margin, as he continued his turn to the left.
"We're out of the atmosphere," Gunter announced, "Recommend another speed increase, and a steeper angle of attack."
Edrik thought it over, as a swarm of radar guided missiles shot passed the dropship, just over a thousand meters to the left and below the ship. The ship killing missiles exploded in a ripple pattern. Edrik immediately turned tightly to the right, to try to create distance between the ship and the expanding cloud of shrapnel. He fought his impulse to increase their speed and their rate of climb.
"Let's wait until we climb above Orbital Observation," he said, reasoning, "Any sudden and large increase in speed will create engine heat that will get past the exhaust inter-cooler, and become detectable through the ship's hull."
The dropship finally got past the ring of orbital observation droids, but were not free to accelerate. The squadron of Galactic Republic Near Space Defense Force fighters had gotten behind the dropship again based on the last known plot of the very tenuous radar return from one of the nearest orbital observation droids. The dropship had gotten close enough for its very powerful sensor to detect an object the size of a mote of dust, which also had a heat signature barely warmer than the surrounding vacuum.
Edrik made another random course change, turning right this time. Gunter looked out the right side of the canopy.
"PULL UP! PULL UP!"
Edrik didn't hesitate and pulled back, hard, on the control yoke. He also accelerated hard, pushing the throttle controls to the stops. The dropship avoided the wide pattern of bright blue blaster bolts, but were detected by the incoming spread of heat seeking anti-ship missiles.
The twenty missiles were spread in a wide pattern that would have caught the dropship whether they'd turned left or right, to avoid the spread of bright blue ion cannon beams. All twenty missiles detected the heat getting passed the inter-cooler and through the ship's hull. However, of the twenty missiles, only five had sufficient fuel to close with the dropship. The remaining missiles would eventually reenter Coruscant's atmosphere and burn up into harmless debris.
The senior lieutenant maneuvered again, turning sharply, away from the fighters, and the incoming missiles. All twenty missiles turned with the dropship, accelerating at a much higher rate than the ship, and rapidly closing the distance. However, the missiles furthest away would run out of fuel and would continue on a straight trajectory, while the five nearest had enough fuel remaining to maneuver and close with the ship.
"Disengage stealth field and bring up the force field at full power," Edrik ordered, as he released a cluster of heat decoys and made another hard turn.
Three of the heat seeking missiles, turned towards the decoys, leaving two missiles to follow after the dropship.
"Brace for impact!" Edrik shouted his warning.
The two missiles got within effective range and detonated, sending shrapnel at the back of the ship. The ship was violently buffeted, and began to tumble out of control, however, the shrapnel had been successfully deflected, sparing the dropship's hull any physical damage.
"DISENGAGE THE FORCE FIELD AND REENGAGE THE STEALTH FIELD!" he shouted, as he struggled to regain control of the ship.
Just as he stopped the ship's wild tumbling, he looked at the heading and trajectory plotted on the flight instruments. In essence, the ship was headed in its final heading, before the blast impact, but was pointed towards the planet.
Edrik set a time delay on the next cluster of heat decoys and radar reflecting baiters before dropping them. He then cut the throttle to thirty percent while changing the ship's course.
The course change had the effect of changing his heading at a near ninety degree angle, while the ship slowed and lost altitude. The planet's gravity began to exert its influence on the ship again. Edrik continued to make many course changes, before the fighters could reacquire the heavily armored buffeted dropship.
Four minutes had passed, and the decoys activated, sending out a very tenuous heat signature and a very weak radar return. The decoys were actually made and designed to be stealthy, only detectable when the decoys activated a heater, and actually copied and rebroadcast a radar signal towards the ships who pulsed in their general direction.
As he'd hoped, the fighters proceeded to close in on the decoys. Meanwhile, he cut the throttle, to twenty percent, to allow the engines to cool. Caught by Coruscant's gravity, he was now on an eccentric polar orbit, heading south.
The Galactic Republic Near Space Defense Force interceptor, lured by the decoys, misjudged and headed East on an equatorial orbit. They'd completely lost the trail. One hour later, Senior Lieutenant Some'dri'komai opened up the throttle again and raised the ship's attitude to begin climbing again. Gradually their speed increased, to fifty percent throttle, and their rate of climb began to increase as well.
Six hours had gone past, and although they'd scrambled several other squadrons of Galactic Republic Near Space Defense Force fighters, the trail had gone cold. The dropship was six hours out from the orbit of the Nova Star, but they were ascending along the wrong trajectory.
The Nova Star was several hours ahead on its projected orbital track, but exactly how far ahead was not known. Because of the wild maneuvering, Edrik climbed and navigated along a track that would take it somewhere behind the Nova Star. Therefore, both Edrik and Gunter worked independent of each other to make the calculations to determine where the Nova Star was, based on its last known orbit.
The two men had calculated and recalculated the complicated formula for orbital mechanics. The first time, the two men arrived at different answers. The two recalculated the numbers, this time agreeing in their results.
"Well, there you have it Senior Lieutenant," Gunter said, with a hint of a smirk, "I was right, and you were wrong."
Edrik kept a calm demeanor, a small smile hiding his embarrassment.
"Let's recalculate the numbers again, just to be sure," he told his younger brother.
After achieving the same relative position for the Nova Star, albeit with updated times and the current position of their dropship, the two officers agreed to enter the coordinates and to increase speed in order to catch up. At their increased speed, they should have ended up beside the heavy battle cruiser, but about a thousand kilometers higher in orbit from the planet than the heavy stealth battle cruiser.
There was no answer to their very short range, very short wave length one thousandth of a second long radio signal. The two, again began recalculating the orbital mechanics formula, again updated with their new location and the updated flight times.
"We're in the right place," Edrik said, in a low voice.
"Then we've been left behind," Gunter replied darkly.
"Senior Lieutenant Some'dri'komai requests your presence at the flight deck," Nancy informed Wrehn.
A moment later, Wrehn was crouched down between Edrik and Gunter.
"Yeah?" she asked, a bad feeling in the pit of her stomach.
"We can't find the Nova Star," Edrik whispered to Wrehn, in Cheunh.
"We're lost?" she whispered her inquiry, also in the Chiss language.
"We're in the right place," he whispered back, "Either they've moved, or we've been left behind."
"If there's a procedure to follow in these kinds of situations, start doing them," Wrehn said, whispering her command.
"We've already begun it," he told her, whispering, "We shall remain in place, and send out our signal, once every two hours. If six hours has gone past without a reply, then we've been left behind."
"Then we'll wait six hours," Wrehn whispered, tersely, "After six hours, we'll head back to Coruscant, find a small or private spaceport, and steal or hijack a starship. We'll go to Hutt Space. Hopefully, we'll see Mandalore's fleets there, causing a commotion."
Wrehn returned to her seat and strapped herself in. She then began contemplating how best to break the news to everyone in the troop compartment. After a moment to think, Wrehn looked around the troop compartment and immediately noted five sets of eyes set on her. Ymmiir, Torian, Gault, and both Sith lords.
"I have an announcement to make," she said, hoping the news would not cause panic to set in, "It's not exactly good news, but it's not totally bad news, either. We're in the right place where we should be to get picked up, but the Nova Star's not here. Maybe because of the trouble we had earlier, the Nova Star moved just to be safe.
"We're following procedures and sticking around, for about six hours. If we don't get an answer, the plan is to return to Coruscant to find a small spaceport or a private spaceport. We'll steal or hijack a starship and run to Hutt Space. I believe Mandalore will be there with his fleets," she eyed Ymmiir as she said that last part."
"My crew will work on stealing the starship," Wrehn said. Turning her eyes to the Sith lords, she added, "Vindis, you'll come with my team to help. Calaverous, you'll join Clan Chief Ymmiir in providing security while the crew of the dropship prepare it for destruction. There are a number of technologies the Chiss will not want falling into Republic hands."
Turning to face Ymmiir, she concluded, "Clan Chief, besides providing security, allow a few of your warriors to lend their skills in demolitions to help the dropship crew to ready this ship for demolitions. If all goes well, I and my crew will have successfully broken into a starship, to steal it."
The Sith didn't like their orders, but they had no other choice. Ymmiir nodded once, resolved to trust Wrehn not to abandon him and his warriors. Edrik and Gunter were resolved to utterly destroy their ship and to die with it, if Wrehn left them behind.
The passengers remained silent until Calaverous had a say.
"I want to be sure you don't leave us behind, Yehw'reh'nomai," he told her, not smiling, "give me a hostage."
"I'll go," Torian immediately volunteered.
"Clan Chief, I need one of yours to take his place," Wrehn said, without skipping a beat.
"Ur Nehn Sharratt," Ymmiir said, without skipping a beat, "go with Great Hunt Champion."
"Yes, Clan Chief!" Ur Nehn Sharratt answered, beaming with pride that he had been chosen.
Wrehn turned to look at Calaverous. He shrugged, sure that he'd gotten the short end of that deal. He had to remind himself that Mandalorians were always ready to die gloriously, to be remembered in song and feast.
Nancy left her seat, reporting to the flight deck as ordered by the ship's commander.
"Reporting as ordered, Senior Lieutenant Some'dri'komai," she said, crisply.
"If you don't tell Yehw'reh'nomai who you are, you're going to regret it the rest of your life," he whispered to her, "I don't have confidence that we'll succeed in our efforts to escape Coruscant. This is it. Your last chance. You're dismissed."
"Yes, sir," she replied, huskily, turning away.
Dela'stri'domai returned to her seat, and after reapplying the seat restraints, proceeded to stare at her older sister.
She was frightened for two reasons. Her commanding officer had just told her that he believed they would die, and secondly, she didn't know how Wrehn would react to learning that she was her little sister. House Omai had cast Wrehn off. Writing her off as dead to them. And so far, Wrehn's attitude had been that she had written House Omai off as dead to her as well. Astrid watched Wrehn knowingly point blaster rifles at her cousins, how would she receive her sister?