Intergalactic Alliance Book One: A Prologue to War A crossover Star Wars / Star Trek fan fiction by Crayz9000 Star Trek © Paramount Star Wars © Lucasfilms LTD All Rights Reserved I would like to thank many people who directly or indirectly helped me with this fanfic, namely: Rob Dalton, for his archival and editing of this work. Rob Wilson, for his continual feedback and editing Dr. Curtis Saxton, for his excellent Star Wars Technical Commentaries website, where I obtained much information and corrected some terrible errors which would have otherwise occurred. The denizens of alt.startrek.vs.starwars for their feedback, either positive or negative. Chris O'Farrell for giving me some slight inspirations about the Yuuzhan Vong. Nick, AKA Nom Anor, for writing the Essential Guide to the Yuuzhan Vong, without which I would have been hard-pressed to write this. Some anonymous Frenchman for posting many Voyager scripts online, where I could read them. I could have not completed this without them, since I've never watched a single episode of Star Trek: Voyager. Chapter 1 The buzzer of a chronometer went off suddenly, startling a seated man out of his doze. He immediately looked up at the wall display, and swore under his breath. "07:00 hours. Kriff, I'm late!" He grabbed a jacket that was lying nearby, and started out at a run for the bridge. A contingent of Republic troops, stretched from wall to wall, marched through the rather narrow corridor. None of them turned a head to look at a somewhat dishevelled officer running along. After all, he was their commander, and thus demanded respect. The troops compressed somewhat, and allowed him to pass by. Finally, he reached the turbolift, and quickly smacked the control panel, eliciting a harsh buzz from the computer. Slowly, he lifted his head, and read the sign that a droid had hung across it. "Turbolift closed for maintenance." He cursed as he looked at the sign. "Doesn't anything work right on this ship?" Immediately, he began running in the direction of another turbolift. It was a full two minutes before the fleet commander, panting and out of breath, arrived at the turbolift. This time, he slowly pressed a button on the control pad. Quiet clicks and hisses followed, and the door slid open. He dashed inside, barely dodging the too-quick door, and punched in his destination. The turbolift chimed, and a few seconds later started moving. Two guards sharply turned, blasters drawn, as the bridge blastdoor quickly hissed open. They immediately snapped to attention when they saw who it was. "Sir!" The commander ignored them and continued moving, coming to his customary spot on the bridge, and turned to a young man standing nearby. "Lieutenant Ricow, fleet status?" A reply came back immediately. "We have not come out of hyperspace yet." Fleet Commander Salsbrey turned toward the bridge viewports. You couldn't really tell when the Star Destroyer was in hyperspace, since the viewports were all blacked out. For all he knew, they could be staring at a blank patch of space. Finally, he turned back to the lieutenant, barely stifling a yawn. "Estimated time to arrival?" "ETA in 1.03 hours." Slowly, Salsbrey walked over to his command chair, and wearily sat down. It would be a long wait... blast those corvettes with their Class 2 hyperdrives! By galactic standards, Class 2 was extremely fast... considering that the norm was three or four. But the commander had grown accustomed to the Victory's Class 1, and so it was like being stuck in one of Coruscant's aerial traffic jams, on a much larger scale. Finally though, the navicomputer chimed. There was a slight, barely perceptible shudder, and the nine hundred meter bulk of the Victory-class came out of hyperspace. Commander Salsbrey immediately got to his feet. "Fleet status, Lieutenant." The reply was prompt. "So far, only three of the five Nebulon-B cruisers are reporting in." Salsbrey walked over to the port-side viewport, watching the three shovel-headed cruisers slowly move away from the entry point. He didn't blame their captains; after all, when there was a synchronization problem in a large task force, who wanted to be rammed by a friendly ship? He pivoted around to face the lieutenant, then spun back just as quickly when alarms went off on the bridge. A blossoming explosion promptly caught his eye; something had collided. "Commander, the Nebulon-B Monitor is reporting extensive damage to its aft sections. They've lost all propulsion." "Who, or what, rammed them?" "Unknown, sir. It's not one of our ships, though." A shower of meteoroids impacted on the bridge, with almost no effect on the shields. More alarms went off, adding to the din. "Bring the force to red alert." "Sir, the force is at red alert." The commander inwardly groaned at temporarily forgetting Republic fleet procedures. "Where are these-" He winced as the forward turbolasers vaporized a rather large chunk of rock, and then he continued. "-these rocks coming from?" "Sir, that's what we're trying to figure out. Apparently, they're coming from the middle of nowhere." "Nowhere?" Salsbrey could hardly believe his ears, and his voice rose. "Are you trying to tell me that these rocks are coming from NOWHERE?" "Well... not quite, sir. We've located a possible source. It appears that there's a normal black hole, and some freak gravitational anomaly, in a binary orbit. The asteroids keep appearing from between the two. Kind of odd, but after all, this is interstellar space." "Well, good. Instruct the fleet to maintain full defensive posture." "Yes, sir." An ensign looked up at the commander. "Commander, it appears that the rest of the fleet has arrived from hyperspace. However... there's one ship missing. It's the Interdictor." Salsbrey looked at the new arrivals intently. "Anything could have happened. You know," He turned to the Captain, and looked him in the eye. "I'm rather disgusted with the performance of this task force. Cutting-edge ships, Palpatine told me. They're cutting edge, all right. It looks like these ships didn't even finish the testing process! I go from my ready room, and the main turbolift is down for maintenance. So I waste extra time walking to the next one. The door nearly takes my leg off. Then I am informed that there was a terrible sync problem between most of the ships of the fleet. How much more can go wrong on a simple search-and-destroy operation?" "Quite a bit, I'm afraid." The Captain pointed to a wireframe status display. "It looks like we've got company, and I don't mean the Outbound Flight Project." Salsbrey bent over for a closer look. "Twelve ships, each roughly thirty meters long, of an unknown type and completely unidentified. Smugglers, perhaps?" "Smugglers, pirates, innocent merchants... who knows? They don't look terribly friendly." "Well, let's just prepare to intercept the Outbound Flight Project. I hope the Interdictor arrives shortly, or we might as well go home. Anyway, we can't let some gnats like that interfere." "Yes, Commander." *** "All craft, prepare to jump to hyperspace on my mark. Form attack pattern Lambda." The twelve freighter-sized patrol craft rapidly moved around, interweaving like moths at night. Then, the command came. "Mark." All twelve ships flickered with pseudomotion as they jumped into hyperspace. Less than a millisecond later, they emerged. Now, they were over 190,000 kilometers closer to Salsbrey's invading task force. And that made a big difference. The man, or rather, alien, leading that small group of ships sat quietly in the cockpit of the largest ship, his attention focused on the invading ships. For a human speaking Basic, his full name was almost unpronounceable. Because of this, he was simply known as Thrawn. Like most Chiss, his skin was tinged blue, and his eyes had a reddish glow. The Chiss were a rather interesting lot. They controlled a large portion of territory on the Outer Rim, but remained fairly quiet. Nothing got in, or out. That isn't to say that they were not good at intelligence; rather, they excelled at it. But what really set them apart from the genetically similar humans was their average high intelligence, and seemingly strange tactics. They were very good at analyzing the enemy, finding the weakest spot, and taking advantage of it. "Concentrate fire on the largest battleship. It appears that the sensor arrays are on that superstructure; target them with ion cannon. Watch for starfighters." Thrawn looked down at the status displays. If his hunch was right, the largest ship was feeding detailed sensor data to the rest. Knock those sensors down, and it would be like poking one eye out. In the cockpit of another Chiss ship, proximity alarms went off. The pilot, another Chiss by the name of Mantrel, pulled the patrol craft into a sheer climb, all the while light turbolaser blasts impacted his shields. Fortunately (for Mantrel at least), the enemy was not using their larger weapons for fear of hurting their own ships. Finally, the ship reached the top of the bridge superstructure. He leveled it out, and came out in a full- throttle attack run. The patrol craft lurched slightly as his underside ion cannon opened fire, striking directly on one of the large globes. As soon as the brilliant bolts impacted, blue ion arcs danced across the metal hull of the battleship, causing damage whenever they hit an exposed or un-hardened circuit. His attack run complete, Mantrel pushed down hard on the control stick, and his ship responded accordingly, going into a steep dive down the backside of the bridge superstructure. Mere seconds later, he leveled out to avoid passing through the ion wash of the battleship's engines. On the bridge of the Star Destroyer, orders were being issued faster than they could be carried out. Sometimes a lieutenant would get confused, and report incorrectly. Unfortunately, this was not the case as Lieutenant Ricow ran towards the commander. "Sir!" Salsbrey turned around rapidly. "What is it?" "Sir, we've lost the portside sensor array. We might as well be completely blind on that side." "Is there any way to compensate?" "No sir, that's the problem. The turbolaser operators are having to rely on manual control." The commander turned to face the portside viewports, and muttered under his breath. If the Chancellor had equipped him with a full fighter escort... but it was too late for that. Palpatine had deemed it unnecessary, since the target was a lightly armed Bulk Cruiser. Unknowingly, he had endangered the entire mission for lack of a few expendable pilots. Another shout rang across the bridge. "Sir! Bridge shields down to 40% efficiency and dropping quickly!" Salsbrey looked up quickly, and his look quickly turned to one of horror. A heavily damaged patrol craft was heading right for the bridge, and at full throttle. The last word that came out of his mouth was, "Blast!" Then, disaster struck. The thirty-meter long ship plowed into the command structure (which was not much larger), knocking the already weakened shields down, and completely shearing the bridge extension off. It was a one-in-a hundred chance. And it was in Thrawn's favor. On the other side of the battle, Captain Jonabo Cuncam watched from the Nebulon-B cruiser Mainstay as the bridge of Salsbrey's ship, the Victory-class Star Destroyer Victorious, exploded in a quickly dissipating fireball. Time seemed to slow as he watched. The main engines of the Star Destroyer flared, pushing the giant ship directly towards a Corellian Corvette. A brief second later, the engines died down as its engine room shut off the fuel supply. But it was too late. The sharp bow of the Victory impacted amidships on the Corvette, and plumes of atmosphere jetted out from both ships as their hulls were rended. To make matters worse, the main solar ionization reactor of the Corvette detonated with the force of a hundred proton torpedoes as it was pierced, ripping the Victory's bow further apart. Here and there, the occasional turbolaser battery scored a hit on one of the attacking ships, but not enough to slow them down. Slowly and laboriously, Cuncam reached for the comm, and pressed the transmit button. "Victorious, this is Captain Cuncam of the Mainstay. Is anyone in command still alive? Please copy. Over." A shaky voice came back. "Sir, this is Lieutenant Ricow. Salsbrey was killed, along with the Captain. I've been badly wounded. We've lost all engine control. I'm starting the self-destruct, and hope to take a few of them with us. Retreat while you can. Over and out." Cuncam looked with sadness at the command ship, and saluted his commander one last time, ignoring the battle for a brief second. Then, he hit the comm again. "Attention all spaceworthy ships. This is Captain Cuncam of the Mainstay. As your senior Captain, I am taking command of the fleet in Salsbrey's demise. We are retreating. That is an order." The ten remaining spaceworthy ships left from Salsbrey's task force of fourteen turned away as fast as they could, some spraying coolant or atmosphere from broken lines, some pock-marked with many small holes, and almost every one damaged in some way. They jumped to hyperspace in a somewhat random order, no two ships jumping at the same time. Eventually, all that was left in space was the crippled Victorious, the crippled Monitor, assorted debris from the Corvette, and Thrawn's patrol ships. In the cockpit of a patrol ship, a blinding flash of light momentarily startled Mantrel. Before he had time to think, a shock wave briefly buffeted his patrol ship, knocking it about like a leaf in a windstorm. He quickly checked his sensors, which only confirmed his suspicions. The largest ship, which he had just finished a strafing run on, had exploded. Either one of his companions had scored a perfect hit on the main reactor, which was a bit unlikely, or it had self-destructed. Mantrel chose the latter. *** A certain Jedi Master took a look out of the viewport of the ship at the mottled sky of hyperspace; he and his cohorts had left Yaga Minor several weeks ago. In several hours, the ship would come out of hyperspace to make a course correction, and then everybody would go into hibernation during the years-long trip to a nearby galaxy. But somehow, Jorus C'baoth didn't feel all too good about this mission now. He'd talked to the other five Jedi Masters on the ship about his uneasiness, but they didn't think much of it. Abruptly, the comm buzzed, slightly startling the Jedi. C'baoth knew that it was probably the Captain, wanting him to see something. He quietly sighed, and then walked over toward it. "Yes? What is it?" The voice continued, "-re going to pull out of hyperspace sometime soon for a change in course; we would like you to be up here, in case anything happens." The Jedi still had that slight tingling feeling on the back of his neck as he left for the bridge. *** "Coming out of hyperspace in three... two... one..." The Interdictor cruiser slightly shuddered as the hyperdrive shut off, revealing a war zone. Captain Hekew took one look out the viewports, and immediately turned toward the comm. "Comm, just what the kriff happened here?" "Unknown, Captain. Looks like somebody had their ass handed to 'em on a platter, though." The Captain chose to ignore the rest of the ensign's comment. "Is there any sign of the rest of the task force?" "Negative, sir. However. I don't quite know what's happening. The scanners are picking up a... a little under a dozen freighter-size ships." "If they're hostile, they can't do us any damage. Power up the interdiction field generators, and wait for that Bulk Cruiser. It may be that the rest of the task force hasn't arrived yet." "Yes, sir." *** Its codename was OFP Home. However, it had been christened the Ny'lith Boro by visiting natives of Yaga Minor. The ship itself started out life as a 600 meter long Neutron Star-class bulk cruiser, built by Rendili StarDrive just several years earlier. It had never seen combat, and was modified for extended range at the Yaga Minor shipyards. Twenty-five of the cruiser's thirty quadlaser cannon had been taken out to make more room for the extra fuel and supplies, and internal space had been expanded by removing all but two shuttles from the hangar bay. It was running on a skeleton crew of 300, utilizing the same technology as the Katana fleet had, only six months earlier. Naturally, there had been objections to that, as those same ships of the Katana Fleet had been lost to some hive virus, which drove the crew mad. However, the Rendili specialists had taken several measures to prevent such a thing from occurring with the Project. First was the decentralization of the ship's main computer, with elaborate security precautions. Second were the thousands of droids on the ship. These ranged from the protocol droids, which were necessary if any contact was to be established, to the floor-cleaning MSE droids, to the massive repair droids which moved about on an elaborate system of tracks on the ship's hull. A plethora of objections to the astronomical expenses had come from the Republic Senate. But, as any politician knew, such objections could be easily overcome with large applications of money... or a little help from the Force. The mission of the Project was to travel to the nearest galaxy, 800,000 light-years distant. The cruiser had a modified Class 2 hyperdrive, which was capable of traveling at one hundred sixty seven light-years per hour. It would take almost two years to get there. Because of this, the ship had been fitted with a top-of-the-line carbon freeze facility, capable of freezing people unharmed. The plan had been for the crew to go into hibernation when they arrived in-system, and the autopilot would take them the rest of the way. As soon as the ship was within 100 light-years of the destination, they would be automatically defrosted so the mission could continue on manual control. As Master Jorus C'baoth walked out of his quarters into the dimly lit passageway, he carefully avoided a panicking MSE, or "mouse" droid. It took him a good minute to reach the main turbolift, even with his brisk pace. Once inside, a row of buttons glowed yellow. He pressed the one marked Bridge, and the computer chimed. "Authorization required for bridge access." C'baoth muttered under his breath as the hand and retinal scanners popped out of the turbolift's wall. He placed his left hand on the palm scanner, and drew his eye to the level of the retinal scanner. The computer chimed again. "Voiceprint required." By now, C'baoth was about ready to rip the scanners out of the wall, but restrained himself. Instead, he cursed under his breath. After all, there was a reason for the security. "Voiceprint confirmed. Turbolift activated." The turbolift shot upwards, its inertial dampers dramatically softening the hard acceleration. Within several seconds, it slowed to a stop. The door quietly hissed open, and two troops walked forward to inspect the new visitor. Once they saw who it was, they retreated to their posts. *** Captain Timne Hekew quickly looked up at the cell door, just in time to see a blue-tinged person enter. "Now what? Have you come in here to gloat at me?" "No, Captain Hekew. Or rather, former Captain, since I've relieved you of your duties. I might mention that you're rather incompetent." Hekew bristled at that. "Just who are you? This isn't going to last for long, since the rest of my task force should be arriving shortly." Thrawn calmly looked at him, and took a gamble. "Oh is it? Let me tell you, thirteen Republic ships already arrived. After I destroyed the command ship and another ship, the rest fled. From what I gathered out of this ship's computer banks, those ships were your task force. And I don't think they'll be back for quite a while." The former Captain looked at Thrawn, trying to determine whether he was lying or not. This man's face was very hard to read, but everything told him that Thrawn was telling the truth. He swallowed, and the blue-skinned person continued. "Don't worry, we aren't here to kill you. Although that idea tempted me when I saw how spineless you were. Now, tell me. Who are you waiting for? And why?" Hekew hesitated. The mission is supposed to be top- secret... but I can't carry it out, not with my ship captured. Unless... "Why do you want to know that?" "Simple. This is Chiss space, and you're intruding. We don't take intruders kindly." No kidding, Hekew thought, taking note of the name... Chiss. So that's what he is. Never heard of him. Oh well... "We were sent here to intercept a certain project, one which would have intruded even further. The idea behind it was to expand the reach of the Republic into Wild Space." Not quite the truth, but not quite a lie, either. I hope he buys it. Thrawn did, to a point. "Very well. But if you're lying... you can forget about ever seeing Coruscant again." He took a look at the Captain's somewhat shocked face. "Oh yes, even out here in what you call the Unknown Regions we know of the center of your Republic." *** Alarms began shrieking across the bridge of the Bulk Cruiser as it abruptly came out of hyperspace with a jerk. Chairs and people went sailing around in the lack of gravity and total confusion, while the bridge lights flickered and died. Several emergency lights winked on, throwing some light on the shambles. Eventually, C'baoth floated toward where the Captain should be, a calm confidence exuding from him. He looked around, and finally saw what he came for. "Captain Avin!" He was greeted by a groan. "Help- urk- me get- ack- this thing off!" C'baoth moved toward him as quickly as he could, and used the Force to lift the chair away from the stuck Captain. "Thank you, Master." "No problem. Do you know what happened?" Avin turned to a lieutenant who had just crawled toward them. "Lieutenant, what happened?" "Sir, it looks like we hit an interdiction field of some sort. It blew the safeties on the hyperdrive, and caused a massive power surge that knocked out just about everything. Whatever didn't get fused exploded, and the engine room is currently trying to put out a pretty big electrical fire which erupted down there." "Interdiction field? I thought that the only ones they could produce were weak-" Avin was suddenly cut off by C'baoth. "Captain, I'll fill in. Sienar Defense Systems recently released what they call the 'Interdictor Cruiser.' It's about as long as this Bulk Cruiser, and carries two gravity-well projectors. The field it generates would easily yank a Dreadnought out of hyperspace. Apparently, someone got a hold of one." The lieutenant glanced at both of them. "Well, that's not really reassuring. Who would do that?" "I have no idea. But let's not sit here and talk. Lieutenant, are the sensors operational at all?" "No, sir. We've got a technician working on them, though. He says that they should be up in a few minutes," replied the lieutenant. "Terrific. Any other good news?" "Yes. We've manually identified a single Republic Interdictor, about a dozen freighter-sized ships, and one hell of a lot of battle debris." "Can we hail the Interdictor?" "No sir, the comm is down." "Kriff! Can't we do ANYTHING?" The lieutenant briefly grinned. "Not really, sir, although you could probably put on a EVA suit and send hand signals." Avin looked at him, his face completely free of mirth. "I suppose that's better than just waiting for them to fire." C'baoth quickly looked at the bridge viewports, just before the ship shuddered again. "Too late. They've opened fire." Chapter 2 Brilliant streaks filled the sky, as the Interdictor quickly brought most of its small guns to bear on the crippled cruiser. Small plumes of plasma rapidly erupted from the ship's skin as the energetic bolts struck the armor, and the natural reaction of the cruiser was to slowly move sideways. Normally, the ship's maneuvering thrusters would have countered such an effect... but they were down, like most everything else. In the meantime, several people on the bridge of the cruiser had other things to care about. One of the technicians steadily dragged himself towards the Captain, and started speaking. "Captain, we're losing armor rapidly! Hull's already breached in several places!" "Lieutenant, if the engine room can't give us some power, we're going to be debris just like all that." Avin waved his hand toward the viewports, with the accidental result of sending himself flying backwards. "We estimate that power will be restored in fifteen minutes." Still too long, he muttered under his breath. But what he said was, "Good." "Thank you, sir." C'baoth watched the tech leave, then turned back to Avin, who had stopped his movement. Avin nearly shouted. "Fifteen minutes! We'll be dead in fifteen minutes!" "The future is difficult to see, even with the Force." "Oh, you and your miserable Force. Always spouting off at times like this." C'baoth didn't even answer. He started concentrating, shutting out Avin, the battle, and most other distractions. Of course, in zero-Gee, one didn't have to worry about the deck shuddering from impacts... although one did have to worry about bouncing one's head off the wall. The Captain continued to rant. "In fifteen minutes we'll all be dead! YOU HEAR ME?" Still C'baoth said nothing. His face became strained, as the face of someone who is trying to lift a heavy load. Finally, his diligence paid off, and a smile broke out on his face as the Interdictor stopped firing. Avin was confused, naturally. "Why- why have they stopped firing?" C'baoth continued to ignore him. Within seconds, the Interdictor opened fire on the freighter-sized patrol craft, scoring several direct hits before the Chiss realized what was happening. Thrawn paced the bridge of the Interdictor, suddenly halting as the ship stopped firing. He quickly turned towards one of the other Chiss. "What is going on?" "I'm not sure. Gunnery control is not responding." "Where is Lieutenant Mantrel?" "He just landed in the hangar." "I want him here on the double." "Yes, sir." "And get the rest of my team ready." "Yes, sir." He turned and looked back at the status displays. Apparently, the crew had hated their former Captain, and so when he and a small contingent of Chiss commandoes had blasted in, the ship's first officer had actually _helped_ him capture the Captain! It really made one wonder about how loyal these humans were, especially now that the human gunners had started firing on his patrol ships. Just then, Mantrel came up at a run. "You requested me?" Thrawn turned back from the displays. "Yes, I did." He turned around to see the rest of the team arrive, then turned back. "You are to head down to Gunnery and see what they are doing." "Yes, sir." The team turned and marched off immediately. "Captain, the engines are back online!" Avin looked toward the comm, which was too far to reach. Well, he thought, if they're back online... He grabbed at a nearby beam, and flung himself towards the helm. "Inertial dampers are online." The Captain braced himself against another console, and pulled back on the throttle controls. He didn't care where the ship went, as long as it got them away from that Interdictor. Although the inertial dampers were back online, the acceleration forces shoved C'baoth, who was still concentrating, back a bit. Or you could look at it the other way, that is, that the ship moved and C'baoth stayed still. Either way, it had the same effect. "Hyperdrive is online." The dampers caught the rest of the inertia, but C'baoth was already moving in the microgravity. His trance broke abruptly, and he used the Force to keep from slamming into the wall. "Avin, what's going on?" While he waited for the Captain to reply, he slowly made his way forward. "Engines are back! I'm taking us out of here!" "Avin, the hyperdrive is still inactive. How do you think we're going to get out?" "They fixed the hyperdrive!" At that, C'baoth reached out with the Force. With what he sensed, he would have kicked himself, if it was even possible. "Captain, just keep to the helm. I'll set the navicomputer." "Yes, master." C'baoth continued to drag himself forward until he finally reached the navigator's position. Once there, he wedged himself in between the console and the deck above (after all, it was in the crew pit) and activated the navicomputer. Now, it was all or nothing. He let the Force flow through him, intuitively entering the jump coordinates. Finally, he pulled back on the controls, and watched as the multitude of specks spiralling about the viewports elongated, becoming streaks, then abruptly vanished as they were replaced with the mottled sky of hyperspace. Mantrel strode briskly toward Thrawn, noticing his superior's apparent disapproval. "Sir, by the time we reached them, whatever happened was over. Gunnery has no idea what happened. Most of the gunners were limp in their seats, and are currently being taken to medical." "Hm. Most unusual." A blur caught the corner of his eye, and Thrawn snapped around, only to see the Bulk Cruiser jump to hyperspace. "Lieutenant! Can you track their vector?" "Um..." The human turned around, and looked at Thrawn. "Yes... and it leads directly to a black hole." The Bulk Cruiser suddenly lurched, throwing C'baoth out of his hunched position and directly into one of the viewports. He looked out, and watched, somewhat intrigued, as the normal view of hyperspace slowly morphed into a swirling blue vortex. And then the shock hit him. It was like dying and yet staying alive. He could not feel the Force, even though it was technically generated by the crew on board. Avin turned from his position to see C'baoth clutching his head. "Master! Are you all right?" It took a full minute for C'baoth to recover, and when he did, he noticed that the vortex, whatever it was, had ended, leaving them in realspace. He shakily spoke. "Yes, now I am. But I don't know what happened. It was as if the Force had suddenly been cut off, and then just as suddenly restored. Do you have any idea where we are?" It was the Captain's turn to be confused. "No, I don't. And it doesn't help that the sensors are still down." "Is the comm working?" "It was... before we went through that whatever-it-was." Avin pushed himself towards the comm station, and picked up a handset. Static was all that came out. "Guess that says it. Power, but no connection." C'baoth looked at the wrecked mess that was once was the bridge. "I'll go down there and see what happened." "Lieutenant, I want you to perform a sensor focus on that black hole. Let's make sure they're not just hiding." "Yes, sir." Mantrel tapped Thrawn, who turned around. "I'm not a scientist, but it might be possible that they-" He was cut off as the lieutenant turned back. "Sensor scans come up negative. There's some armor plating and assorted debris there, but nothing indicative of the target." Mantrel tried to speak again. "It might be possible-" This time, he was cut off by Thrawn. "Very well, I have reason to believe they were destroyed. With the damage they took, especially to their critical systems, they were likely destroyed by the black hole. Helm," ordered Thrawn as he walked over towards the crew pit, "Prepare to jump to the rendezvous point." "Yes, s-" The navigator's words ended abruptly as he went down with a smoking hole in his forehead. The rest of the human bridge crew promptly followed him as the Chiss opened fire. Quietly, Thrawn turned to Mantrel as he put away a blaster pistol. "Plot a course to these coordinates." Mantrel stood staring at the dead crew, until finally Thrawn noticed, and spoke. "They were not trustworthy. This eliminates our biggest risk. The rest of the humans could probably care less, based on what I saw." "Yes, sir." He immediately turned to the console, and began entering coordinates. Several seconds later, the computer spat out the course, and Mantrel engaged the hyperdrive. Back on the Bulk Cruiser, C'baoth picked his way through a tangle of broken girders to get to what was left of the crew quarters. He stopped at his own room, and tried the door. It had fused shut. Nearly cursing, he drew his lightsaber, and four slices later the door fell outward. Apparently, the artificial gravity was working in this section. C'baoth didn't have to look very hard to see that it wasn't really worth pressing on. The bunk had flipped over, tearing insulation and wires from the walls, which were scattered through the cell. He could only hope that the other Jedi had survived. *** His consciousness screamed in pain, abruptly waking the Jedi Master Dellen Morsa up. He was surprised to see that he was floating, but even more surprised at the fact that he could not sense the Force. It was like being blind. Dellen groped about in the dark, trying to feel for the light switch. He found it, and flipped it, but it wouldn't come on. He was about to start to search for his lightsaber by hand, when the ship shuddered, and suddenly the Force was with him again. The Jedi, now connected to the Force, summoned his lightsaber to his hand, and it was instantly on, bathing the cell in a bronze glow. Next door, he heard coughing. Must be that pesky Gungan Jedi, he thought. As he was groping toward the door, though, a klaxon began blaring and slowly he could feel the tug of gravity. It didn't take long to right himself, and so landed on his feet. Immediately, he walked towards the door, which refused to open. Since his lightsaber was already out, he slashed through the door. "Dellen, is that you?" The Jedi immediately identified the voice as belonging to Master C'baoth. "Yes, it's me." "Good. Where are the others?" "I'm not sure. I heard Master Jarus coughing, if that's any help." "That's a start. Have you tried to go down to the engine room?" "No, you found me as soon as I got out of my quarters. What the heck happened here, anyway?" "We hit some kind of hyperspace anomaly after a brief fight with an Interdictor." "That's helpful. Any idea on where we are?" "No." "Terrific." By now, C'baoth was in sight, and Dellen could clearly see what a mess he was. But then, he probably didn't look too festive himself. *** After fifteen minutes of walking, all six Jedi reached the engine room, only to find the blastdoor sealed. Jarus was the first to speak. "Should we try to go inside?" C'baoth shook his head. "If the blastdoor is sealed, there's a reason to it. Master Hkalle, can you tell if anybody is alive in there?" The drab salmon Calamarian nodded. "Yes... a couple." He focused for a second, and then continued speaking. "Both badly burned. I don't think they'll survive much longer." C'baoth considered it. "Well, there's another blastdoor down the hall. Maybe it works." "See? I was right after all!" The Gungan's head was bouncing up and down, much to the discomfort of the rest of the Jedi. "See?" Dellen allowed an annoyed look to come across his face. "Will you just shut up? I don't know how Master Yoda allowed you into the Academy, much less allowed you to become a Master." "Patience, Dellen. He'll learn." Dellen turned around, to see C'baoth looking at him. "Although sometimes I get exasperated, as well. Now stop bickering, since we're losing time!" Most of the Jedi immediately began walking. Dellen, on the other hand, stood behind. He shook his head in disgust, and then followed. When Dellen arrived, C'baoth and the other Jedi had already plunged their sabres into the door, almost ignoring the molten durasteel which dripped to the floor as the sabres cut it. With a resounding crash, the center chunk fell inside the engine room, and a torrent of air rushed through the opening. Dellen stepped through first. "Whoo, it's hot in here. That fire must have just gone out. And I can hardly see." C'baoth walked past him, blinking rapidly. "Yeah, the atmosphere must have stirred up the dust." He paused, looked about, and then continued. "I think the survivors are over there." Master Hkalle ran past them, only to be greeted by coughing. "Help... me... I... can't... breathe." The survivor erupted in more fitful coughing. The Calamarian answered in his gravelly voice. "It's all right, we'll get you to medical." He carefully used the Force to levitate the injured crewman. "Dellen, could you give me a hand here?" "Sure thing." Dellen rushed over, and joined in the effort. Well, it was the best a Jedi could do, and actually better than an antigrav stretcher. The only problem is it was difficult to maintain levitation for extended periods of time. The injured engineer turned his head slightly, and was naturally rather freaked to notice that he was floating about a foot off the deck. "Wha- wha's happening?" Hkalle answered. "Don't worry. We're just taking you to medical." *** Three days had passed, and a meeting was being held in the mess hall with what command crew there was. Master Jorus C'baoth stood up first. "As coordinator of the Outbound Flight Project, I call to attention the fact that we have apparently left the galaxy, although we are not quite where we expected to be. As you may know, our destination was a small dwarf galaxy only 800,000 light-years distant. However, scans confirm what I suspected the moment we dropped out of the anomaly: that we are indeed in another galaxy... over fourteen billion light-years distant. How we covered that distance in such a short amount of time I do not know, but what I do know is that our main hyperdrive is apparently fried, leaving us stranded here." The lone surviving engineer, Derek, stood up. "The hyperdrive is fine. My problem is that the motivator, a rather small and delicate piece of equipment, was destroyed in the explosion that occurred when we went through the anomaly. We don't have a backup... although we were supposed to." Captain Avin remained seated, but turned his head towards the engineer. "Is it possible to jury-rig some other motivator to work with the hyperdrive?" "If the rest of the engineers were still alive, we could probably do it. But I'm the only one left, and it would take more time and concentration than I have." Derek turned towards C'baoth, and continued speaking. "Did you say that there was a carbon storage facility on board?" "Yes... why do you ask? It was installed so that we could enter hibernation during the long trip through hyperspace to the other galaxy." "Well, as the navigator told me, the nearest star system here is about forty light-years away. At medium sublight speeds, which is all we're capable of now, it would take about seventy years to reach it. If we entered hibernation, I could set the ship's slave system to maintain us at about two-thirds lightspeed. Otherwise, if we didn't enter hibernation, most of us would be dead by the time we reached the system." Most of the people at the table nodded in agreement, and C'baoth responded. "That could work. But we were only supposed to be in carbon freeze for two years. Can the equipment handle seventy years without any maintenance?" "Actually, it's a good thing they didn't use stasis units, as was originally proposed. Once we are sealed inside the carbonite, the nature of the equipment says that unless the computer decides to wake us up, we won't die or wake up. Plus, the units take a minimum of power - much lower than stasis chambers." Avin queried the engineer this time. "We have redundant backup units for the computer, correct?" Derek's reply was brief. "I personally tested the system. We have three levels of redundant backup systems. Each level will only activate if the level above it goes down. And these particular systems have reliably run for hundreds of years with little maintenance." "I suppose that's a good reason to try. And if we die, it won't really matter since we'd die of old age otherwise. Most of the other people spoke in unison. "Agreed." Chapter 3 "Captain, I'm picking up something on the long-range scanners. It is something artificial." The speaker was Lt. Commander Seven of Nine, navigator of the Federation starship USS Voyager. Captain Kathryn Janeway didn't remove her eyes from the viewscreen, which was displaying one of the few surviving videos from the 20th century. Titanic, she believed it was called. A rather intriguing movie, in her opinion. Seven spoke again. "Captain?" "What- Oh, yes. What is it?" "Captain, there's an artificial object showing up on the long-range scanners. It's not Borg, and it's not Species 8742. As a matter of fact, the computer can't identify it with anything we've seen before." "Can you put it onscreen?" "No, it's out of visual range." "How long do you estimate it would take us to get there?" "Two hours at maximum warp. Maybe more, maybe less depending on the conditions." "Seven, increase speed to warp 9.3. Plot an intercept course with the object." "Affirmative." Janeway leaned back in the command chair, and resumed watching the movie. *** A bit over two hours later, the USS Voyager pulled out of warp. By now, Titanic had ended, and Janeway's mind was focused on the strange object. "Computer, on screen." The computer complied, and a view of the alien ship was displayed. Janeway found herself wondering about it. "Seven, how long is the ship?" "Six hundred meters." came back the prompt reply. Lt. Paris let out a slight whistle. "That's about the size of the Enterprise!" Janeway ignored his comment, looking closely at the ship, which had a rather odd design. Its bow was a small, slightly pyramidal shape, with a long, narrow cylinder connecting it to a comparatively fat end section. The stern section, she guessed, was where its engines were. But where were the warp nacelles? As she scanned it, a small shape caught her eye. "Computer, magnify the stern." The computer complied, zooming in on the fat stern. Seven scanned it, and announced, "There appears to be a docking bay located in the center of the stern. Perhaps we could take a shuttle and investigate?" Janeway shook her head. "No, we have too few shuttles as it is. Are you reading any shielding?" "If there is any, it is not activated at the moment." "Weapons?" "Only five turret-like emplacements. There are roughly twenty-five holes similar to those housing the turrets, but they have apparently been covered over." "Hm. Interesting. Any life signs?" "I'm reading approximately two hundred humanoid beings, but their signatures are suppressed." Janeway stared at the screen for a second, and then turned around. "Interesting. Tuvok!" The Vulcan walked up. "Yes, Captain?" "Tuvok, prepare the away team. Lt. Commander Seven and I will go with you. Commander Chakotay, you have control of the ship. Lieutenant Paris, you have the helm." "Yes, Captain," replied Chakotay and Paris, in unison. Tuvok stepped into the turbolift, and waited for the Captain and Seven to follow. Once the door hissed closed, he turned towards the Captain. "Captain, do you think this is such a good idea? We are beaming onto a unknown ship, with unknown systems, and which has shown neither aggression nor friendship toward us. We may be violating the Prime Directive doing this." Janeway scoffed. "No, of course we're not violating the Prime Directive. Remember, our mission is to seek out new forms of life? This is a classic First Contact situation." "Yes, Captain, I understand, but..." His voice faltered as he thought of what to say. "No buts, Tuvok. We will investigate that ship, and if it proves to be hostile, we will leave. Understood?" He gave her a resigned look. "Yes, Captain." Eventually, the turbolift reached the transporter room, and the door hissed open. Torres and several ensigns were already there. Tuvok handed everybody their compression phaser rifles, and several ensigns grabbed tricorders. Then, all of them stepped into the transporter pods. "Engage." With the familiar whine and shimmering mists, all seven members of the away team disappeared. When the away team materialized in the sealed hangar bay of the Bulk Cruiser, it was pitch black. "I can't see a thing!" "Turn on your light, stupid!" "Oh yeah... forgot about that." The light flicked on, revealing the face of its carrier, Ensign Munro. "Captain, look at this plaque!" Torres ran over, and aimed her tricorder at the wall, near the door. Janeway looked at it, "I can't read it. Do you know what it says?" Torres looked surprised. "No, actually, I can't. The tricorder doesn't know what to make of it. The Captain looked harder at it, "That's odd." In the meantime, B'Elanna was inspecting the door, or more precisely, the door's controls. "These controls seem rather simple to operate." She pressed a control button, and was greeted by a harsh buzz. The door didn't open. Seven stepped up to the door. "Allow me." She plunged her assimilation tubules into the control panel, and immediately clicks and hisses could be heard. After a few seconds, the door opened. She was the first to step through, tricorder in one hand and compression rifle in the other. "It appears that the life-forms are approximately two decks above us, and fifty meters to the right." The team fanned out, and then stopped. "Where do we go?" asked Munro. The ex-Borg looked down at the display. "I believe there's a vertical tunnel of some sort..." She held up the tricorder, swept it around for several seconds, and then put it back down. "immediately to the left." A Jedi in carbon freeze was not usually inconvenienced by unconsciousness, although the Jedi could become unconscious if he wanted. But this was not Jorus C'baoth's wish right now, nor was it the wish of one of the other Jedi. C'baoth's consciousness was sharply jarred as his danger sense tingled. He knew full well that he couldn't move his body... however, his spirit could move. It took some effort, but finally, he was free. Once he was free, he looked around. Master Dellen had apparently done the same thing, and was looking around in the dark. "Well, Dellen! How's it feel, being in carbon freeze this long?" "Not much for the worse. I think we've got problems, though. There are some other beings on this ship. Don't ask me how they got on board." "They're moving this way. Maintenance tunnel, I think." C'baoth moved towards the main entrance to the carbon freeze room, then walked right through it, with Dellen not very far behind. "There they are..." "I don't believe it! They're human!" "It would appear that the life-forms are just beyond this door." Seven of Nine walked up to the door in front of them, and pressed another button. The door slid open, almost noiselessly, revealing a vast room. Janeway gasped in awe at the sight. "Would you look at that? That face... it looks like a statue!" As Voyager's away team looked at the carbon-frozen crew, something began to happen. Thousands of pinpricks of light erupted from each of the frozen people, and slowly the pinpricks merged into larger holes, revealing the flesh of the crew. Floodlights began to turn on, and several wheeled droids scurried into the room, not even pausing to look at the people from Voyager. The ship was awakening from a 70 year-long sleep. Chapter 4 Captain Avin awoke from his sleep, slowly coming to realize how stiff and sore he was. Of course, not to mention the slight inconvenience of being temporarily blind. As Avin stumbled forward, he felt several strong droid arms grip him, preventing him from falling. His head swam, but his vision cleared as a medical droid rolled up and injected him with some type of stimulant. Avin noticed several people that he had never seen before on the other side of the room. He blinked, then rubbed his eyes, but they were still there. Just then, he felt C'baoth run into him, and turned to him. "Who are those people over there? I don't remember seeing them before." "I'm not sure either, only that they aren't part of the crew. I'm going over to talk if I can." C'baoth motioned to one of the gleaming silver protocol droids, which immediately followed him. Avin decided to follow him. "Looks like they noticed us. I hope they're friendly," observed one of the ensigns. Seven brought her compression rifle up slightly. The aliens didn't seem to be armed, but she didn't want to take chances. She watched as a silvery gleaming... what, robot? stiffly walked towards them, and made some gestures, finally speaking some words in a language she did not understand. Seven turned towards the Captain. "Captain, can you understand what it's trying to say?" "No. Can you?" Seven pressed her hand to her ear. "My universal translator's having some trouble. We might have to reprogram these things." "That's odd. Mine isn't working either." The robot seemed to be watching them, and Seven turned towards it. "Can you understand me?" It paused for a second, looking back and forth, and then spoke in a feminine voice. "Why, yes. Let me introduce myself. I am C-3PA, human-cyborg relations. I welcome you aboard our ship." The droid turned around, and gestured at C'baoth and Avin. "This is the esteemed Jedi Master Jorus C'baoth, along with the Captain Avin. We represent the Galactic Republic." It paused again, this time seeming as if it was awaiting a reply. Seven lowered her compression rifle. Janeway turned to look at Seven and shrugged, then looked at the droid, then to the other beings, and then back to the droid. "I am Captain Kathryn Janeway of the Federation Starship Voyager. I accept your welcome, but please accept my apologies for intruding on your ship." The Voyager away team watched as the droid turned around and began speaking to the other beings in a strange language. One of the other beings replied, and the droid turned back. "Master C'baoth tells me that we accept your apologies. He was about to ask what you were doing aboard our ship. But he still would like to know how you got aboard this ship without setting off the intruder alerts." Janeway turned to the rest of the away team, then turned back. She was dumbfounded. C-3PA watched, and then spoke. "Master C'baoth figures that you are uneasy, and tells me that we can talk about that at a later date." The droid immediately turned around as C'baoth tapped it on the shoulder, and said something to it. The droid immediately spoke again. "Master C'baoth also feels that you are trustworthy, and so tells me that our ship is in desperate need of repairs. He would also like to know where we are in this galaxy." Janeway coughed. "Well, do you have a conference room? That would be preferable to just standing here." "Why, yes! Our ship was equipped for just that purpose. Follow me," said the droid, placing emphasis on "just." Then, it turned and began walking. As it was walking, C'baoth stepped up and began talking to it. "Threepia, what are they speaking? It sounds familiar, but I can't understand it." "They appear to be using a strange dialect of one of the root languages of Basic. That particular dialect has not been used in many tens of thousands of years." "That's interesting. Might they be descended from one of the early colonies?" "That is a possibility, sir, although a remote one. It could be the other way around, if you look at it that way. That particular dialect predates the invention of the hyperdrive." C'baoth replied without looking at the droid. "Well... if they have a fast ship, it could be a possibility. However, there is no need to lecture me on the subject." "I am glad to hear of it, sir." "Just who are those people, anyway? They look like us, but I haven't heard of a Galactic Republic in this galaxy." Torres looked at the Jedi in front of her, then at Janeway. "Look, Lieutenant, I don't know either. They may explain that later. In the meantime, just stay alert." "Yes, Captain." Finally, they reached the end of a hall, and a large door hissed open to reveal a large conference room. The droid stopped by the door, while C'baoth, several other Jedi, and Avin walked in and took their seats. "What do we do?" C-3PA heard Munro. "Please take a seat. There are plenty of chairs." After everyone had stepped in, the door closed and C-3PA shuffled forward toward the table. "Captain Janeway, Master C'baoth requests that you tell him about yourself and your party. He will then likewise explain, and we will then see what we can do." The Captain stood up. "Very well. I believe that I am already introduced; however, I don't believe that the rest of my party has." She waved to her right, and sat down as Seven began talking. "I am Lieutenant-Commander Seven of Nine, Tertiary Adjunct of Unimatrix Zero." "I am Lieutenant B'Elanna Torres, Voyager Engineering." "I am Commander Tuvok, Chief Security Officer." "Ensign Munro." "Ensign Brenton." "Ensign Harry Kim." They looked at the other party, who exchanged nervous glances as C-3PA began translating. "Captain Avin." "I am the Jedi Master Jorus C'baoth, Coordinator of the Outbound Flight Project." "Jedi Master Dellen Morsa." "Chief Engineer Derek." The protocol droid translated everything again, and finally Janeway stood back up to give her story. "Three years ago, in the year 2371, our ship, the Federation Starship Voyager, was taken to this quadrant by a being known as the Caretaker. We lost all of our medical personnel in the trip, as well as much of our original crew. We have been through many hardships, with our ship being almost destroyed at times. When we were first taken through, we estimated that it would take approximately seventy years to get back to Federation space at our top speed, and most all of our attempts to get back sooner have failed... LOOK OUT!" She dove under the table, reaching for her phaser, as several Borg drones appeared behind them. "No... Oh my!" C-3PA stepped back in a programmed appearance of shock. But the droid's reflexes, custom- tailored for a working life of protocol, were not enough to dodge the assimilation tubules that extended from the Borg's fist. Captain Avin's blaster was out in a flash, and the drone promptly went down with a circular burn in its head. Of course, that really got the attention of the rest. Ignoring the rest of Voyager's crew, the drones bore down directly on C'baoth and Avin. A second drone went down, courtesy of Avin's blaster, just as several more beamed in. Derek and Master Dellen ran out of the room, Dellen with his lightsaber blazing. Avin noticed them, and immediately ran after them. "Where are you going?" "I'm heading down to the engine room. I have a feeling that something's going on down there. Where you going?" "Bridge." Avin ran back to the door. "C'baoth! Get out of there!" The Jedi decapitated another two drones with his lightsaber, gestured to the Voyager crew, and ran out. Janeway and the others were quick to follow, and were quickly out in the corridor. C'baoth didn't waste any time in running to the turbolift. The door hissed open, and everyone piled in. "Master, just what are those things?" Avin turned in the cramped space, and looked at the Jedi. "Some type of cyborg, I would guess. If the translator hadn't been the first thing destroyed, I'd ask those Federation people." In several seconds, the door hissed open on the bridge. Some of the crew were already up there, blasting away at the drones. They didn't pay any attention to the new arrivals, short of briefly pointing their blasters in that direction. In the meantime, Seven was fiddling with her tricorder. Finally, she tapped her ear. "Captain! The Universal Translator has been re- programmed." "Great. Now if only it was at a better time." Avin listened to the Voyager crew, and was slightly surprised to be able to understand them. He immediately ran over. "Do you know what these things are?" The other Captain responded. "They're Borg. I hope that your ship is either heavily armed or very fast." "It's neither. It's a combination medium warship and cargo ship." "Great. Well, Captain, we can probably help you more from our own ship." Janeway pressed her comm badge, and was beamed out shortly. Avin stood staring at where she used to be, then turned back to the battle. "Captain! Where have you been?" "Away. Where did these Borg come from?" "They arrived a few minutes ago, and have been ignoring us. I don't know why." "It's the other ship that they're interested in. They must have some new technology." She finally reached the command chair. "Go to red alert. Fire torpedoes, full spread." "Torpedoes away." "Lieutenant, are the shields up?" "Negative. Should be in a few seconds, though." "Do we have any gunners at the turrets?" "Yes, although they have no target. The sensors are still down." "Well get them back up!" "Trying, sir." The lights dimmed as the shield generators came on. Avin blasted another drone which was inspecting a console, and made his way forward. "We've got eyes. I've got the target... and it's got us." "What?" "The hostile is a three-kilometer cube. It's scanning us with some sort of beam." The bridge lights went off as the Borg scanning beam crossed the bridge. Quickly, the emergency lights came on. "Shields at eighty percent and charging. I hope they don't keep running that thing across our shields." "The cube has opened fire. I'm reading damage to only ten percent of the cube from our torpedoes, and it's repairing." Seven looked up at the viewscreen as multiple waves of green bursts erupted from the Bulk Cruiser, impacting on the cube within a few seconds of firing. "The Republic ship has opened fire. Each volley takes about three percent off the cube's shields, and the volleys are spaced apart about one second. However, the cube is already adapting. Effectiveness of Republic weaponry against the Borg shields is down by one-half percent per volley." Janeway looked at the status indicator. "Fire phasers. Sustained bursts." "Yes, Captain." "We have some proton torpedoes, correct?" Avin was looking at the lieutenant again. "Well, yes, but..." "How many?" "Approximately four dozen." "Fire them. All of them." "Yes, sir." The lieutenant got on the intercom, and gave the instructions. He then turned around. "Captain, the gunners are telling me that the capacitors for the quadlaser batteries are going to die in a matter of minutes." "Well, let's just hope that our new friends can keep these aliens off long enough for us to replace the capacitors." "Yes, sir." Twelve waves of heavy proton torpedoes flashed out of the flanks of the Bulk Cruiser, the first two waves battering down the Cube's shields. The other eight waves impacted on the surface, some absorbed by the defense mechanisms, but most wreaking massive destruction on the Cube. A hole opened in the side of the cube, and the torpedoes, which were programmed to seek power sources, flew inside and deepened the hole. But as the last torpedo cleared it to the center, the Ny'lith Boro ran out of torpedoes. "Captain?" asked Lt. Commander Tuvok, as he looked up from his weapons console. "What?" "There's a hole opened to the center of the cube, but the Republic ship's stopped firing. I suggest we launch a couple of torpedoes into that hole and try to destroy the cube." "Proceed." Several photon torpedoes shot out of Voyager's torpedo tubes, heading on a course straight for the cube. The first one slipped into the hole, which was rapidly sealing. The second one impacted against the repairing hull, and detonated. The third one was shot down by the Cube's defense systems and never made it. Near the center of the Cube, the last torpedo continued on, finally impacting against the core. The detonation began a small chain reaction in the core, which created a energy surge in the Cube's plasma conduits. The surge spread throughout the Cube, overwhelming all sorts of controls and equipment. Whole corridors vanished in a burst of plasma, cooking the hapless drones in the searing, several thousand degree temperatures. All of this took only a few seconds, and when it was over, all that was left of the Cube was a charred and partially melted hulk. Chapter 5 "So... what you're telling me is that you need the assistance of our engineers, correct?" The Outbound Flight Project's head engineer, Derek, looked hard at Janeway. Master C'baoth had just given the Voyager crew their story, after the Borg Cube had been destroyed. "Correct." She leaned back in the chair, her practical side taking over. "Well, what can you give us in return for our assistance?" "We can give you a ride back to Federation space." Lt. Paris perked up at that. "You mean... How long would it take?" Janeway glared at him for speaking out of turn, but Derek answered anyway. "From what you've told us, about one week." Paris' jaw dropped. "One... one week?" Derek looked at him curiously. "Yes... what's so odd about that? Our cruising speed is around one hundred twenty light-years per hour." Nobody from Voyager said anything, and Derek continued. "Of course, it might take some preparation to piggyback your ship on ours, but it should be workable." Finally, Janeway answered. "Well, in that case, we'd better hurry. More Borg could arrive at any time." "Good. Let's get to work." *** "Hold this access panel for me, would you? Thanks." Lieutenant Derek stepped out of the way as Torres grabbed the panel and pulled it outwards. As she pulled it off, several arachnids dropped out from behind it, startling her enough that she dropped it. "I said-- oh kriff!" He spent the next few seconds smashing the black creatures. "I wonder how they made it on board. Must have been on the supply ships or something." Derek bent down and flashed his glowlamp inside the compartment. "Well, that jolt we had completely overloaded the surge buffer. That can't be good for the rest..." His gaze continued across the inside of the compartment. "Yeah, it blew out the reverse power coupling, and the main feedback shunt." Torres knelt down next to him. "What on Earth are you talking about?" He leaned back. "Huh? Oh, should have told you. This is just the central power converter for the hyperdrive." Derek stood up, and looked at the other engineer. "Come on, I'll show you the schematics." She watched him walk away, then slowly got up and followed him. He continued speaking. "Normally, I'd have several dozen other engineers, but they got killed in the accident." Derek stopped at a large, rectangular object temporarily suspended in the air. "Here's the hyperdrive." "Is it supposed to be black like that? I can't see anything distinctive about it." "No, that's just soot. We had a pretty big fire down here." To demonstrate his point, he grabbed a small static collector out of a worktray, and passed it over part of the hyperdrive surface. The soot came off, exposing the glistening white surface, which had myriad patterns seemingly embossed in the surface. "Hey! You! Over here! Get this cleaned!" Torres looked at him, confused. "Who are you talking to?" "Just one of the droids. They need to get all the junk off of this, or it could overheat." He stepped back from the hyperdrive, turned around, and walked over to a computer terminal. "Here's the schematics for the power supply." She tried to peer over his shoulder, but was unsuccessful. "Mind letting me see it?" "Oh, sorry. Sure, go ahead." There was a long pause as Torres tried to read the schematics. "I can't really understand any of this." "I didn't exactly expect you to." He raised his arm, and pointed at the screen. "Here's the hyperdrive, and there are the main power transfer cables. They run up this central column," he moved his hand up the display, "across the room, and into the power converters." He brought his hand back to the hyperdrive icon, and was about to start again when Torres interrupted him. "Are those plasma conduits?" He gave her a confused glance. "Are they what?" "Plasma conduits. We use them on Voyager to carry power from the warp core to various systems throughout the ship." "Well..." He paused to scratch his chin. "I seem to remember some of the engineers talking about using plasma to carry power a while back, but most of them passed it off as too dangerous. We're using superconducting wire on this ship. What is the warp core, anyway?" Torres let out a nervous laugh. "I see that you're as confused with our systems as I am with yours. The warp core is pretty much a matter-antimatter reaction chamber." Derek's eyes widened, and he let out a low whistle. "You're telling me that your ship is powered by a matter- antimatter reactor?" He turned to look at the hyperdrive. "And we're docking with it... that's like..." She laughed again. "Don't worry, we have some pretty good containment systems on the core. If the containment fields go down, we can eject the core." "What are the containment systems powered by?" "Powered by? They run off the main power systems." "That's comforting. If the core power fails, everything fails." "Lieutenant Paris, match speeds and prepare to dock." "Yes, Captain. Matching speeds..." Paris looked up at the viewscreen, which was mostly filled with the looming form of the Bulk Cruiser. "We're matched." "Very good. Proceed with the rotation." "Rotating one hundred eighty degrees... rotation complete. Now docking." He leaned back, and watched as the computer began the docking maneuvers. Giant frameworks, not unlike those of a shipyard, extended from the sides of the Bulk Cruiser, slowly moving toward the Intrepid-class ship. The ship shuddered for several seconds as magnetic clamps on the framework latched on, and then it was still. "Hand me that hydrospanner, please." "Which one is the hydrospanner?" Derek looked over B'Elanna's petite figure to a worktray. "Just give me the tray. I'll find it." "Sure." She grabbed the tray, reached over, and handed it to him. He quickly selected the hydrospanner, and set about removing a large, black box. "Well, the hyperdrive motivator is a complete write-off. Now where can I get another?" Torres looked at the box. It was riddled with cracks, and one end showed evidence of melt damage. "Did you say that there were a couple of hyperspace-capable shuttles on board?" Derek turned away from the motivator. "Yes, but the motivators are designed for a different class of hyperdrive. It could take a while to refit the data transfer interfaces and power regulators." "Well... true. How long would you estimate?" "Oh, maybe two or three hours straight with your help. Can't say for sure, since anything could happen. The biggest problem is that I have to change some of the motivator's internal circuitry. That requires equipment that I don't have. If I had it... well, you wouldn't have run into us." "Ah. What kind of equipment do you require?" "Well... the motivator uses a combination of standard, micro, and nanocircuitry. If-" Torres cut him off. "I know just the person to help. Seven of Nine." She tapped her commbadge. "This is Lieutenant Torres, requesting to speak to Lt. Commander Seven of Nine." Derek briefly tapped her on the shoulder. "I'm going to get that motivator while she comes. Should be back in a couple of minutes." She looked at him, obviously startled, as he began running towards the exit. "What's the status from the engine room?" Captain Avin turned towards one of the ensigns. "They're still working. Lieutenant Derek estimates that they should be finished in a matter of hours." "Well, that's good news for a change. Is Voyager transferring their crew right now?" "Yes, they are." "Good. Well, anyway, just make sure that no hostiles arrive." "Yes, sir." "Oh, one more thing, Ensign. Have the main capacitors for the turbolasers been replaced?" "We're working on that right now." "Very well. Carry on." "Yes, sir." "Hey! You over there!" Derek shouted at one of the astromech droids across the small hangar bay. "Get over here!" The droid twittered a reply, and willingly trundled over while Derek punched in an access code for one of the shuttles. "Come on, I'm going to need you inside. You know how to shut down the power systems for the hyperdrive motivator, don't you?" The droid gave an indignant blat, and Derek figured that meant a yes. "All right, let's get to work." He walked up the ramp, with the droid following close behind. It didn't take very long to pull off the access panels, and with the astromech droid's assistance, Derek had the motivator. "Just seal this up for me, OK?" The droid twittered back, and the engineer started running back to the engine room. When Derek arrived, five minutes later and out of breath, Seven and Torres were already waiting for him. He set the motivator down on the workstand, and turned to the two women. "So, now what do we do? I still don't have the equipment that I need..." Seven glared at Torres. "Nanoprobes can't do everything, you know. Sometimes I feel like you're expecting me to perform miracles." She stammered a reply. "Well... um... he said that the motivator... um... used a combination of..." "I said that it uses standard circuitry for the power input, and a combination of micro and nanocircuitry for the data processor. You said that you knew the perfect person, and I thought that you meant Seven had some equipment I could use. But unless it's invisible, I don't exactly see the equipment." Seven spoke. "Perhaps that can be fixed. Would you mind if I analyze it?" "Um... no, go ahead." She stepped up to the table. "Do you keep data on the internal structure of the original... motivator?" "Yes... it's in the computer banks. Would you like me to recall the schematics? "No, just let me see the computer." He hesitated. "Um... well... it's rather sensitive technology." "You do not have to worry about me harming the motivator. I will take the utmost care not to damage it." "Well... that wasn't exactly what I meant by sensitive... but I guess we have no other choice. Go ahead." Seven turned around, and walked over to the computer terminal that Derek had used only a few minutes before. She picked up her tricorder, and pointed it at the terminal. "Hey! What-" Derek's question was cut off by B'Elanna. "It's just a multipurpose scanner. What harm could it do?" "Enough. Seven, please put that thing down. I'll access the schematics for you." Surprisingly to him, she submitted. "That is acceptable." He stepped up, and began rapidly entering in commands. In a few seconds, the schematics were on the screen. "All right, here they are." Seven stepped back up and began looking at the schematics. "I believe that I have already noted several inefficiencies in the design of this motivator. They will be corrected when I begin work." "Huh? Inefficiencies?" She turned back towards him. "Yes, inefficiencies. Why is that so surprising?" "Um... nothing." As he looked at her face, his own expression changed. "Wait... I should have known. You're one of them. One of those cyborgs that attacked us." She responded bluntly. "My link with the Collective was severed more than a year ago. I hold no wishes to return to them." Derek's muscles released some of their tension on that remark, and he sighed. "Well, anyway, we need to get on with the work. It's almost 0100 hours." *** "Janeway to Chakotay." She tapped her comm badge, and waited for a reply. She didn't have to wait long. "Chakotay here." "Please report to my quarters at once." "Yes, Captain." Several minutes later, the door hissed open. "I'm here, Captain." "Commander Chakotay, I am rather curious about this situation. We come across a seemingly derelict ship, beam aboard, and discover that the species aboard is apparently human. They tell us that they ran into some kind of anomaly while in hyperspace - whatever that is - and ended up here, then floated for about seventy years. Then they ask for our help with their hyperdrive and offer a trip back to Earth in exchange. They don't seem to use warp, or even antimatter. Their drive system seems about as fast as slipstream, but from what Torres tells me, there's no slipstream core. Instead, there's something they call a hyperdrive, which is a big rectangular object. And it definitely doesn't generate power for the ship. But here's the kicker. They have us clamped to a framework extending off their ship. With warp, that framework would generate so many instabilities - I don't believe that even slipstream could handle that. The only conclusion that I can come to is that it's a drive system we've never heard of before this. Chakotay, what do you say we have B'Elanna gather as much data on this 'hyperdrive' as possible?" Chakotay hesitated. "Well, I don't want to spoil their trust. They seemed friendly enough to me." She looked back at him. "But you remember Arturis, don't you? And the convenient appearance of the USS Dauntless?" "Well... first off, they're human. Second, their ship was already drifting here, abandoned. Third, there are over two hundred people plus... droids, I think they called them." Her eyebrow raised. "But maybe they're all holograms. If they are, then it isn't much of a problem to drift for a few years - I rather doubt their story of drifting for seventy years - the only technology I could think of which would preserve humans for that period of time is stasis, and they didn't seem to be using that." "But we saw them come out of hibernation. Most of them were stumbling around until those droids came up and injected them with some kind of stimulator." "Ah, but maybe that was a ploy to get our trust. Kind of how they used to say a crocodile cries?" "Captain, all due respect, but aren't you getting a bit paranoid? The tricorders indicated them as human. I'm guessing that those bricks they were embedded in was some kind of cryogenic hibernation chamber. I see no indication that these are not good-natured humans." "But Commander..." She looked at him hard. "Remember how the Borg arrived so very conveniently as soon as our meeting started, and yet haven't come back? Notice how their weapons were so devastating to the Borg? And now they want to transfer our crew? I think this is a ploy, albeit a well-choreographed one." "Kathryn... we've been flying through this quadrant for several years now. We had a chance to go back through the Caretaker's array. He even had a self-destruct timer in place, and told us to do that. Yet we didn't. You ordered it destroyed. Then we had a chance to run for the Bajoran wormhole - I looked at the charts we made, and that was only a several week's journey. Yet you ignored it. We were experimenting with transwarp technology, but we didn't use it. We captured some Omega molecules. Seven was able to stabilize them... yet you ordered them jettisoned and destroyed. Do you realize, Captain, that the Federation was very foolish to order Omega molecules destroyed by any mean possible? We could have destabilized them in a subspace explosion when that photon torpedo went off. I was only trusting you at that point. And then there was the so- called USS Dauntless. We could have hijacked it, killed Arturis before he sabotaged it, and taken it home. Did we do that? No. Even with what we know of slipstream, we could have modified Voyager to withstand the stresses, and gone home. Did we do that? No. Captain, I've been rather unimpressed with many of your decisions. And I don't want to be stranded here if we double-cross these new allies." "Chakotay, I never want you to mention Omega again. But all I'm saying is that we should be alert. Maybe we could obtain a DNA sample from these people and let the Doctor analyze it, see if it's really human. We could have Torres quietly obtain information on the hyperdrive, and try to create a duplicate, just like we did with slipstream. Commander, you saw the person they call C'baoth. I think he's a telepath. Maybe the rest of their crew isn't deceiving us, but he could be controlling the crew." "Captain, I believe that you are jumping at shadows. Permission to leave?" "Permission granted," she indifferently spat. He turned and walked out of the room, leaving a confused and contradictory Captain behind. Chapter 6 Janeway looked at the door for a while, then touched her commbadge. "Captain to sickbay. Computer, activate emergency medical hologram." The Doctor's voice came back. "Please state the nature of the medical emergency." "Would you please stop saying that?" "I've told you before. If you don't like it, talk to Lewis Zimmerman at Jupiter Station. I can't do a thing about it- it's like asking a cat not to meow, or a dog not to bark." She rolled her eyes. "You know, I might just be able to do that in a couple of weeks. Doctor, I have a specific request for you. I want you to analyze a DNA sample from these new people." "How do you suggest I set about obtaining it?" "I don't know, you're a hologram. They don't know that you have a mobile emitter. Maybe you could pass yourself off as one of the regular crew and get aboard their ship during the transfer." "I suppose that could work. Why do you want the DNA sample?" "For security purposes." "Ahh. I see. How soon do you want it back?" "Preferably before we leave for Earth." "So, about three hours. I'll do my best." "Thank you, Doctor." "Commander, we have a slicer on board, correct?" The officer in question turned around. "Yes... why?" "Where is he? I need to talk to him." "He's in computer control, Deck 17. Where else?" Captain Avin ignored his question, immediately setting out for the turbolift. *** Derek watched rather curiously as Seven touched the hyperdrive motivator with a single finger. There was a slight crackling sound as some small implants began to form on her hand, and a tiny tubule extended from her finger to the motivator. After nearly a minute, the tubule and implants disappeared, and she drew her hand back. "I am finished with the modifications. May I watch you install it?" "Sure, go ahead." Derek walked up to the bench, picked up the motivator, and plugged it into a test jig. "I'm just going to run a couple of tests on this first. Um... Miss Torres, would you be so kind as to turn on the power on my mark?" She walked over to the switch, and held her hand over it. He counted down the time, not looking up from the jig. "Three... two... one... mark." Torres hit the switch, and there was a slight hum as the power activated the test jig. "Ok, I want you to slowly ramp the load on the motivator up until it's at the maximum rated power output, then hold it there. The controls are immediately to your left. I'll tell you when to turn it off. Begin." "Power level 10%... 20%... 30%... 40%... 50%..." reported Torres calmly. "Hold it right there." He adjusted one of the settings on the test rig, and then waved at Torres. "Continue." "60%... 70%... 80%... 90%... 100%." "It's holding. Leave it there for now." Derek hooked up a special meter to the motivator output, and looked at its readings for several seconds. "Go ahead and run it over max power. But do it very slowly. Begin." "100%... 01... 02... 03... 04... 105%... 06... 07... 08... 109%..." "Hold it." He checked one of the sensors. "Getting a bit warm. But it's still running at optimum capacity. Continue." "110%... 11... 12... 113%..." One of the alarms went off on the sensor panel. "Nothing critical, just the early temperature warning. Keep ramping it up." "114%... 115%... 116%... 117%..." Another alarm went off. "Second temp warning. When you hear the third, bring it back to 80%. I want to push this thing to its limit, make sure it doesn't fail when we need it." "118%... 119%... 120%... 121%..." The third alarm went off, and Torres rapidly knocked the power back down. "Nice work. I was only able to push the original motivator to 113%. Seven, you have my compliments." Derek nodded that the Borg. Seven replied, rather stiffly. "Thank you." "OK, we just did the load test. Now we do the gravity well test." B'Elanna looked at him, slightly confused. "Gravity well test?" "The navicomputer will simulate detection of a gravity well, and the motivator is supposed to immediately bring the hyperdrive off-line to avoid damage. Or at least in theory; I've had motivators that simply blew out, or didn't deactivate the dummy hyperdrive. If that happened in real life, the ship with the bad motivator would blow its hyperdrive and be stuck in hyperspace forever. That's happened in the past, too. There have been tales of heavily loaded cargo ships with expensive payloads that were lost in hyperspace and never made it back. Of course, it's pointless to go looking for them, since every collision in hyperspace just makes the ship go faster... theoretically. Kind of an odd quirk, but one we have to deal with." Torres and Seven exchanged nervous glances, and finally Torres asked him. "But this ship blew it's motivator... yet here you are, in normal space." Derek stopped and looked up from the test jig. "I really don't know what happened, and neither does anybody else. But I think the ship was pulled out of hyperspace by the anomaly just before the resulting power surge fried the delicate stuff. What gets me the most is the way the power surge occurred. It didn't come from the main reactor... instead, the hyperdrive backfed the power and control systems. Otherwise, the surge buffers would have stopped it." Seven looked at the hyperdrive, as it hung in midair. "May I see the computer logs at the time you hit the anomaly?" "Um... I'm afraid not. The volatile memory was wiped when we hit it." B'Elanna turned to talk with Seven, then turned back to Derek. "I think you hit a wormhole." "Wormhole?" "It's kind of a kink in space-time. If you go through one, you'll usually cover a great distance in a very short period of time. There's been talk about using them for time travel, but they're hard to use accurately, especially if the wormhole is unstable." "Ah. Now, unstable... what does that refer to?" "Some wormholes... in fact, most wormholes, collapse after a period of time. We only know of one stable wormhole, and we believe that it was artificially created." "So, what you're saying is that the one we came through may have collapsed?" "It's a possibility. How long did you say that you've been adrift?" "Seventy years, give or take a few months." Torres turned to Seven, then back again. "I'll talk with the Captain. Maybe we can see if it's still there. Seventy years... how fast was this ship travelling?" "Oh, about two-thirds lightspeed. I think the rough distance was forty light-years." She breathed a sigh of relief. "Well, since you told us that this ship makes about one hundred twenty light-years per hour... that's about fifteen, maybe twenty minutes. Not much of a detour." "Yeah, I guess I'd like to see my family again. Although seventy years... my little sister would be older than me!" He laughed. "But only in appearance. Carbon freeze is almost like time travel, or simply being in stasis." B'Elanna blinked in surprise. "You have stasis?" "Yeah. We use it for shipping perishable foodstock and the like." He looked down at his wrist chronometer, and spoke before B'Elanna could even open her mouth. "Hey, it's getting late. You want to go talk to your Captain about the wormhole while I install the motivator? I can handle it from here." "Um... I guess so." Torres turned toward Seven again, and asked her, "You want to come with me or stay here?" "I believe that I will stay here," answered Seven. "This is rather intriguing." As B'Elanna was turning to leave, Derek addressed her. "Miss Torres? I almost forgot, the turbolift is still running in secure mode." He fumbled around in a pocket of his coveralls, and pulled out a small card. "I should have given this to you earlier. Seven of Nine already has one. It's a temporary access card. Put your thumb on that corner... good. It'll allow you access to most non-critical decks, as well as this one. It's also keyed to your identity, so don't try to share it with anyone." "Thank you." As the half-Klingon left, he turned back to the test rig and began changing the settings. *** "Who's in charge down here?" Captain Avin had just stepped into CompOps, the computer control center, and was looking around. "I am, sir." A rather nondescript man in a lieutenant's uniform stepped up. Avin looked at the lieutenant's badge. "Lieutenant Stane. I'm looking for a slicer." "Ah, then you would be looking for Ph'ngu Reco. Best slicer I've ever seen. In fact, I'm amazed that the Republic put him on our ship." "Yes, yes, where is he?" asked Avin impatiently. The lieutenant pointed down a small corridor. "Down that way. He's usually pretty absorbed, so you might have to knock several times." "I'll find him." "Yes, sir." The lieutenant went back to his post as Captain Avin headed down the corridor. Eventually, he came to the door, and knocked once. A bored voice answered. "Who is it?" "This is Captain Avin. I need to talk with you." "Oh! Yes, sir!" The door hissed open, and Ph'ngu stepped back to allow the Captain in. Avin took all of it in in several seconds. Ph'ngu was a fairly typical human, at an average height, with straight (but messy) black hair, dark brown eyes with large bags beneath them, and rather unkempt clothing. But so was the room. Data disks, reference manuals, and assorted computer components were scattered around haphazardly, making it look like a junkyard that a Bantha had just crashed through. "This place is a mess." "I like it this way, sir." The slicer dumped several empty ration packs off a chair and into a waste receptacle, then dragged the chair forward. "Would you care to sit down?" "Yes, thank you. Ph'ngu, I need to talk about something urgent." "Go ahead, shoot." "Well, I would like you to see if you can extract Voyager's logfiles. It's not that I don't trust them, just that I think they've got something that they are not telling us." The slicer mulled that over. "Voyager... you mean that ship we docked with a while back? Oh, that one. Yeah, but I'm going to need access first. There any data lines between this ship and Voyager?" "Yes, the droids were stringing some control lines across the framework. I think they were for sensors on that ship or something." "Good. Do you know if they tie into the main computer?" "I would assume so, since that ship has its own sensor network. Kind of redundant to place sensors when it's already got them." Ph'ngu didn't listen to the rest of the comment. "Give me a few days, and I'll have those logs. You have some kind of time deadline?" "We'll be undocking from them in about two weeks. Is that enough?" "More than enough. You'll have those logs, believe me." "I appreciate the work." "Thank you, sir." "Good evening, sir. You need anything?" A bored security guard was sitting at his post, only paying the Doctor minimal attention. "No thank you, I'm fine. How are you?" "I guess I'm all right. Not much going on around here, 'specially at this time of day, or night, or whatever. Say, you know anything about where we're going?" "Not really. I usually don't listen for that kind of stuff." "Huh. I hear we're getting the hyperdrive prepped for some kind of run." "Well, I hope it works. Anyway, I've got to be going." "Sure- hey, what's in that bag you're carrying?" "Oh, just some medical equipment." The Doctor pulled out a hypospray, and showed it to the sleepy guard. "No problem. Move right on through." The Doctor began moving down the corridor, then stopped. "Where's Medical?" "Medical? Take the turbolift to Deck 12, I think. You don't need secure access to get down there. Is this your first time on board?" "Yes, it is. The medics wanted me to bring some stuff down there for them, and it could spoil if I stay here any longer." "No problem, sir. Have a nice evening." "Same to you." If the Doctor were human, he would have breathed a sigh of relief... but he was a hologram. He walked down to the turbolift, and pressed the access button. The door slid open, almost noiselessly, and he stepped inside. He selected Deck 12 from the control panel, and the turbolift shot away. A few seconds later, the doors opened again, and he stepped out into another corridor. This time, there were droids bustling back and forth, and it didn't take the Doctor long to find the entrance. "You are a hologram, are you not?" The Doctor spun around to see who had spoken. It was one of the 2-1B medical droids. "Yes, I am." Not like it mattered much; it was difficult to hide from another machine. "I am looking for a blood sample for testing. One cc should do." "You are from Voyager? What is your reason?" "I need to perform DNA tests for... influenza. It is not a life-threatening virus, but still an annoying one. I suspect that one of your crew may have picked it up from one of our crew." "Please wait. Which crewman?" "Lieutenant Derek." "Please wait." The med droid rolled across the room, and pulled out several silicon vials. "These samples may not leave this area. Do you wish to conduct tests right now?" "I suppose that would work." The Doctor took the vial, and walked to an apparent testing facility on the other side of the medbay, placed a minuscule amount of blood into the analysis chamber, and took the vial back. He then extracted a medical tricorder from the bag, and began scanning the sample. One hour later, the Doctor shut the tricorder off and placed it back into the bag. His work was done; all that remained was to clean up the analysis chamber and leave. Leaving was not much of a problem; the guard had fallen asleep, and as a hologram, the Doctor did not make any noise when he didn't want to. In a matter of minutes, he was back in Sickbay. "Sickbay to the Captain." "Janeway here. What is it?" "I have the data you wanted." There were some shuffling noises, and then she responded. "I'll be right down." Chapter 7 "This is Lieutenant Derek. I would like to speak to Captain Avin." He stood, hunched over the comm control in the engine room. "The Captain is not here. Would you like to speak to the commander?" "No, thanks. How soon will the Captain be back?" Slight rustling sounds came back over the intercom, and Derek could only figure that whoever it was at the other end had left the comm station. Finally, the comm was picked up again. "This is the Captain. Any news on the hyperdrive?" "Yes, sir, that's what I wanted to talk to you about. I've run all the tests on the motivator, installed it, and applied power. We can go anytime you want." "Excellent!" "Um, but Captain, there's something that Voyager's chief engineer pointed out, and that is that the anomaly we ran into may be a wormhole. They were wondering if we could briefly go back to the rough location and have a look. It's only about a fifteen, maybe twenty minute trip." "Well... I suppose we could briefly take a look. I'm going to tell them to finish their evacuations." "Captain, I have finished analyzing one of the samples. Their DNA is virtually identical to ours, and the only differences are just the strands which give a human its individuality. These people are most definitely human." Janeway simply stammered. "But- but- but what about the aliens on board?" "I have not had a chance to examine their DNA yet." The buzzing of a hastily rigged intercom interrupted the brief conversation. "Captain Avin to Captain Janeway, come in please." She tapped her commbadge. "Janeway here." "Please finish the evacuations of your ship. I have just been informed that the hyperdrive is ready, so we will be making the jump in approximately ten minutes. I've also been asked by your chief engineer to make a slight detour... with your approval, of course." She looked blankly at the wall, suspecting trickery. "What is this detour?" "We're going about forty light-years out of the way to investigate some kind of anomaly. I think they referred to it as a wormhole." The Captain relaxed a bit. "Is this the one you arrived from?" Avin paused for a moment. "We believe so." "I'll be right over." She waited until the intercom disconnected, and then turned to the Doctor. "Looks like I've got no choice now. Doctor, I want you to make sure nobody has access to the ship's computer." "But how, Captain? I'm a doctor, not a soldier. Do you expect me to go running around with a compression rifle?" "No. Nobody will be allowed on board this ship while we're in hyperspace. But I'm afraid that they might tap into the computer through those data cables we ran for monitoring the warp core." "Well, I will try my best." "Thank you, Doctor." She turned, and walked out of the sickbay. "Kriff." Ph'ngu watched as page after page of sheer gibberish scrolled down his screen. Apparently the ship's computers were not exactly compatible. He wasn't about to start slicing yet; just trying to interface with the alien computer was enough of a job. Finally, he terminated the query, turned to another console, and began typing. A decoder was all he needed, and apparently there were some which had been rigged to the sensor networks. It was just a matter of obtaining the program... *** "5... 4... 3... 2... 1..." The navicomputer timer counted down to zero, and stars turned into starlines as the Bulk Cruiser launched into hyperspace. Janeway, who had just arrived on the bridge, let out a slight gasp at the sight out of the bridge windows. She walked over to Seven, who was standing at a makeshift console connected to Voyager. "What is the ship's status?" "Structural integrity fields are optimal. The warp core is currently in standby, and I do not detect any problems with it." "Are the sensors working?" Seven looked up from the console. "All sensors are operational; however, only the tachyonic scanners are actually returning data. I would presume that we are travelling too fast for everything else, including subspace communication signals." "I guess that's why they call this hyperspace. Very well, continue monitoring." "Yes, Captain. Ah, wait... I've detected something. A very large gravitic anomaly... corresponding to dual quantum singularities, type unknown. Range about eight light-years, or a full day at maximum warp. However, at our current speed, we should be there in approximately five minutes." Janeway shook her head. "Amazing. I'll let Captain Avin know." *** "Dual quantum singularities? What do you mean?" Janeway shot a glare at him, even though it wasn't his fault. "We don't know. They could be anything... black hole, white hole, wormhole, odd hole..." He looked at her quizzically. "Odd hole? Sorry, I'm not much of a scientist." "That's just the nickname one of my crew has for a Type IV singularity." "Ah," he said, "I see," although he didn't look like he understood. "Well, anyway, we'll be pulling out of hyperspace in less than a minute. Janeway, could you please... um... take a seat or something while we come out of hyperspace?" "Why? You don't want me to see something?" "No, not at all. It's just... um... for your own safety." She snorted. "Safety indeed. I might be a woman, but I'm also a Captain. I would like to see just what happens when we come out of hyperspace." He gave a resigned look. "Go ahead, do whatever you want. Just for the record, remember that you are aboard my ship, and will do as I request. If I was aboard your ship, I would do what you requested. Understood?" She nodded, then sharply turned towards the helm as a klaxon went off, and the ship's main computer began counting down the time. "Entry into realspace in T-30 seconds and counting." "Entry into realspace in T-20 seconds and counting." "Entry into realspace in T-10 seconds and counting." There was a slight shudder as energy was applied to the hyperdrive, knocking the ship out of hyperspace and back into realspace. As soon as the ship was in realspace, though, the lights flickered just as the starfield went spinning crazily. Multicolored lights played across the faces of the crew, most notably the blue hue of the flare. One of the crewers looked down at a sensor display, then shouted in shock. "Plasma jet!" Avin was quick to respond. "Shields at full, and get us out of here!" "But what about Voyager?" "Extend the shields!" There was a brief pause, while the bridge lights flickered and finally came on steady. The ship, however, didn't stop spinning. "Unnecessary, sir. We're through." "Damage?" "Not sure about Voyager, but some port bulkheads on Deck 14 and 15 have been breached. Containment doors have that section sealed off. Let's not go through that again, all right?" Avin looked over at Janeway. "How is your ship?" Seven heard him and responded. "It has taken heavy damage to Deck 1 and Cargo Bay 2. There are several ruptured plasma conduits, although I have shut them down. You may be thankful we were not on the bridge at the time." Captain Avin heard her and turned back to the comm. "Where did that plasma jet come from? I don't seem to remember it being here when we... um... came through the first time." Seven of Nine responded once again. "The plasma jet appears to originate from the barycenter of the two singularities. It is a common astronomical phenomenon, actually. Several hundred thousand kilometers in width, extending for nearly a light-year, these are usually found near supermassive black holes. You may be interested to know that the two singularities are a Type-I and Type-VII, or more commonly a 'black hole' and a 'white hole'. Although I will admit it is rather strange to see both so close to each other. The interaction of the accretion disks seems to be generating the plasma jet, while gravitic interaction has... created a wormhole." Captain Janeway looked at the bright phenomenon. "So B'Elanna was right, after all. You did hit a wormhole." Seven continued. "There's something else. The reason we nearly... got fried, as you say, was because the two singularities are very unstable, and nearing the end of their lifespan. We were hit by a small disturbance at the edge of the main plasma jet. I estimate only two days before the singularities... combine. The wormhole, however, will collapse much faster, in about one hour. Rather remarkable, too, considering the age of this galaxy." Avin briefly looked out the dimmed viewports. "If that still leads to where I think it does, should we try to contact the Republic? Send a message pod or something and let them know we're still alive?" One of the crewmen answered. "Captain, a message pod won't be able to withstand the stresses. It would get torn to shreds. If we have a probe, I would recommend we send it." He turned to another crewman. "Do we have any probes?" "No, sir." Janeway, who had been listening to the whole thing, finally spoke up. "Voyager carries several Type IV probes. We could let you use one of them." "Could it withstand the stress?" "I believe so. It's built on a photon torpedo casing, about two meters long and one-third as wide. We've used them as coffins in the past, and in fact one crashed into the surface of a planet intact." "No problem. I assume you want to go over to your ship anyway to see what was damaged." He turned to another crewman. "Ensign, get a message pod from storage, and bring it to Voyager. We'll need the homing beacon and holorecorder from it." "Yes, sir." *** Lieutenant Derek knelt down next to the probe, which Torres and Paris had already pulled the cover off of. Finally, a crewman ran up, followed by several droids. "Here's the message pod, sir. Captain Avin's message is already recorded." "Good." He turned to one of the astromech droids. "Help me get the cover off this, all right?" It twittered at him, and moved forward, extending a fusion cutter. "No, no, we don't want to damage what's inside. Don't you have a cutting blaster or something?" The droid's dome rotated back and forth several times. "Great, then I'll have to go get some tools. Guys, I'll be right back." Torres looked up at him. "You'd better hurry. That wormhole is going to close in half an hour." "Don't worry, we'll have this baby ready to launch well before it closes." Nearly fifteen minutes later, Derek came back, out of breath from running. "I'm back. Some idiot dumped the tooltray into a storage locker, and it took me several minutes to find it." He grabbed the cutting blaster, set it for a short beam, and started slicing away at the nose of the pod. "OK, here's the... beacon, and here's the recorder. Give me a few minutes to disconnect the fusion generator, and then we can launch it." Torres glanced down at a watch. "We've only got another five minutes before the wormhole collapses." "Then we'll have to launch it in a hurry." He finally pulled out a small, rectangular assembly. "Here it is. Is there room?" "I'll have to remove the scientific package, but yes, there is. Hand it to me, please." Derek handed it to her, and she shook her head. "I'm amazed that it's so small. How long will it run?" "On the amount of fuel it has there, about one year. It's very efficient." "So I can figure. All right, it's in." She flipped the lid closed, taking care not to damage it, and gestured to the worker droids. "Help me load this in the torpedo launcher, OK?" The droids wheeled over, almost effortlessly picking up the sleek torpedo, and trundled it over to the launching mechanisms. Once they had set it down, B'Elanna touched her commbadge. "Torres to Janeway. We're ready to launch." Her voice came back. "You're clear to fire." "Standby." She walked over to a console, and pressed several buttons. The probe immediately began moving forward, while the computer counted down. *** Captain Avin watched the brilliant orange streak move towards the wormhole, where it finally disappeared. He turned around to his first officer. "Prepare to make the jump to hyperspace. I don't think we want to be around when those things collide." "Yes, sir." Chapter 8 YT-2400 Light Freighter Headwind, somewhere on the Corellian Run "I think there's an Interdictor patrol somewhere around here. I'm going to take her out of hyperspace and change the course slightly." "We don't have that much time, Dorba." "We'll be even further off schedule if we get caught with this shipment." The pilot relented. "OK, but make it quick." "Will do." She dragged back on the hyperdrive controls, and the YT- 2400 light freighter smoothly came out of hyperspace. But as the copilot turned to enter new coordinates into the navicomputer, the sensor console began beeping. The pilot, a Twi'lek male by the name of Cla'mil Smosco, glanced down at the sensor console. "Oh great. We've arrived just in time to see a couple of black holes collide. Dorba, we'd better get out of here quick." "No, wait- there's something else. Looks like... Old Republic subspace beacon. I'm going to focus the sensors on it." The Twi'lek's head-tails waved back and forth as he shook his head. "It could be a cloaked ship. Nobody's used the Old Republic beacons in decades. I don't think one could still be working today." She groaned at the alien's paranoia. "I've got a focus. Looks like a message pod- it's about the right size and shape. I'm locking tractor beams on it." Cla'mil sniffed. "Well, you're the one responsible if you get us in trouble. Those patrol Interdictors have pretty good sensor systems." "Don't worry, by the time they figure out we're here, we'll be long gone. OK, it's in the auxiliary cargo hold. Now let's get the hell out of here." She checked the navicomputer, and turned on the autopilot. There was a pause, and then the Corellian freighter entered hyperspace with a lurch. Then, the human copilot got up, and stepped to the back of the cockpit. "I'm going down to the cargo bay, and see what it is. I'll let you know what I find." "Well... all right. Just make sure it isn't a weapon or something." She nearly laughed. "I've got a lot more experience with live warheads than you do, hot shot. Remember, I was a munitions handler in the Republic Navy during the Black Fleet crisis." "Yeah, and then you got discharged when they thought you were trying to blow up the place. I was pretty reluctant to hire you after I heard about that." "That was nothing! One of the other handlers dropped a proton torpedo by accident, and I dove to grab it before it hit the ground. The thing wasn't armed, but it got the sergeants all nervous, and so both of us were discharged. Will you let me go? I need to check on that thing we picked up." "Sure, go ahead. Just don't blow the ship up." She glared at him as she exited the cabin. It took less than a minute to run through the curved walkways, and reach the hold. There, Dorba paused. The probe was still in the contamination airlock, but it wasn't like any message pod she had ever seen. At two meters long, it was a sleek, rounded shape, with red lettering in some language she could not understand on the side. Dorba ran over to the control panel, and checked the sensors. It was definitely the source of the subspace signal, and was apparently uncontaminated. It took several seconds, but she pressurized the airlock, and opened the top hatch. There were times when she wished that she could afford some droids, and this was certainly one of them. A protocol droid would have been useful to read the lettering on the side, while an astromech would have been useful in opening up the dumb thing. But she didn't have either, and so had to settle for doing it the hard way. She walked over to an equipment locker, picked out a power prybar and scanner package, and set them down beside the strange probe. "Well, I've got the tools, and I've got the time, but how in the heck do I get this thing open?" She looked at the probe, and carefully touched it with one finger. It was at the same temperature as the rest of the room. Getting bold, Dorba ran her hand across the slick surface, feeling for any cracks she could pry open. Finally, as her hand touched the middle of the side, she felt a slight seam. Not much, but hopefully... She grabbed the prybar, and inserted it into the crack. A slight click, and the top popped open. Dorba smiled in satisfaction, and looked inside. "Looks like someone gutted a message pod and dumped its innards into this thing." Reaching in, she pulled out an older model holorecorder, set it on a bench, and activated it. A quarter-height figure sprung to life in front of the recorder, and began speaking. "I am Captain Avin of the Outbound Flight Project. I doubt that you will be able to come to our aid anytime reasonably soon, and that is the reason I have ordered this probe to be sent. We survived an ambush by an apparent group of Republic and alien ships, and ended up at a much different destination than we had planned, as we traveled through a wormhole. The two black holes that created the wormhole are destabilizing, and should collide in a matter of days after this message was recorded. We entered hibernation, and it is approximately seventy years after we left our own galaxy now. We have come into contact with other humans in this foreign galaxy. They have helped us repair our ship, and in return we are towing them back to their home planet. They claim to belong to the United Federation of Planets, and appear to only control a small part of this galaxy, maybe one hundred or so planets. For reference, I have included our current coordinates relative to your galaxy. Be reminded, though, that all the astronomical data we have provided is at least fourteen billion years out of date." For the next minute, complex coordinates were displayed. Finally, the message terminated with a beep, and the recorder shut itself down. Dorba was shocked, staring at the recorder. "The Outbound Flight Project... I thought it was destroyed! Cla'mil can never see this." Thinking quickly, she connected the recorder to a computer terminal, and copied the entire message to a datachip. She then shoved the chip deep inside her shirt. As for the recorder... she looked at it for a while, but quickly threw it into a container of ryll spice as she heard footsteps coming down the walkway. Panicking, she shouted down the walkway. "Cla'mil! Don't get any closer until I jettison this thing! It's a torpedo!" He kept on walking. "No, it's not. I had a look at the sensor data you collected near the black hole." Cla'mil pulled out a blaster pistol, and pointed it at her. "And I want you to give me whatever data you got from it." "T- t- there was none," she stammered. "The radiation wiped it's memory clean." He smiled grimly. "Message pods are hardened against radiation. I find that hard to believe. Now give me the data, or..." The Twi'lek looked down at the blaster pistol. "you're fired." She gulped as he brought his finger down on the trigger. Just as he was doing so, however, the ship jolted, sending the shot wild. She took the opportunity to slam her elbow into his soft head-tail, making his hand spasm and send the blaster flying, then she tried to get up. He attempted to kick her in the groin with his foot, but apparently forgot that she wasn't a human male. Dorba merely grunted in pain, and crawled across the room to where the blaster pistol was. Picking it up, she spun around as the Twi'lek got up, and fired perfectly, shooting him right between the eyes. He collapsed to the floor in a heap, and she dashed to the cockpit, where the comm speaker was broadcasting. "Attention unidentified ship. This is the Imperial Star Destroyer Magistrate. You have not answered any of our hails. Stand down and prepare to be boarded. I repeat, stand down and prepare to be boarded." Dorba slapped the comm. "This is the freighter Headwind." She paused for a moment, then continued speaking. "I'm so glad you found me. I have a toxic coolant leak in our cargo bays, and am currently sealed off in the cockpit." The person on the other end was obviously taken aback by her apparent willingness, and paused for a second. "Gases are of no concern to stormtroopers. However, we will tractor you into our hangar bay, and a team of engineers will seal off the leak for you." The freighter shuddered, and she knew that the Star Destroyer had locked its tractor beams onto it. "Affirmative, Magistrate." Dorba looked around nervously, knowing full well that there was no coolant leak. Well, she thought, if you don't have one, create one. She ran back out of the cockpit, and located a convenient coolant duct. Grabbing a oxygen respirator, she placed it over her face, and carefully slitted the duct with a vibroblade. Coolant gases immediately came boiling out into the corridor, and she ran for the cockpit. Several minutes later, when the shuddering had subsided, the comm went off again. "Freighter Headwind, please open your main hatch. I repeat, please open your main hatch." She slapped the switch. "Hatch is open." "Thank you, Headwind. We will try to make this as brief as possible." Another pause, and the voice came back again. "I have just been informed by the stormtrooper engineers that your coolant leak has been sealed. Please exit your ship. The Commodore would like to speak with you." Commodore? That's a rather unusual rank for a commanding officer in the Imperial Remnant... "That is acceptable, Magistrate." She stood up, and looked at the BlasTech DL-38 pistol in her hand. It would not do to have the Imperials take it... if she could find one of Cla'mil's hidden spots... there. She dumped it into a hidden compartment beneath the pilot's seat, and exited the cockpit. Immediately, two stormtroopers stepped up, grabbed her arms, and escorted her out of the ship. *** "So, Miss Dorba, why was your freighter carrying a load of spice, and a dead Twi'lek?" Commodore Mantrel looked hard at her face. She looked down at the floor. "He tried to kill me. I knocked him on the floor, took his blaster, and shot him." "So I could tell. But you still haven't explained why you were carrying a load of spice. You were smuggling it, correct?" Dorba nodded, and the Commodore continued. "Smuggling is a punishable offense in the Empire, the Republic, and most independent star systems. However, considering the value of your cargo, I have decided to let you off with your ship, and a small container of spice. I'll also give you a piece of advice. Don't go back to whoever wanted the cargo. They will likely kill you right there. Instead, I would recommend you disappear." "But- but the cargo. They were going to pay us ten thousand for hauling it." He nodded. "I notice you used us. I suppose that the Twi'lek was your employer?" "Yes, he was." "Filthy scum. I like them no more than I like Hutts. But as for the spice, the small amount I have left you is enough to pay full market value for your ship three times over." She gasped. "It is? I had no idea." "Apparently your boss didn't want to tell you the real value. But I have other things to do right now, and I suggest you leave. Promptly." She got up, and turned toward the exit. *** "Attention freighter Headwind. You are clear to leave." "Affirmative, Magistrate. I am starting the pre-flight sequences." She slapped the switch, and ran back to the engine compartments. If history was anything to go by, the Imperials had booby-trapped her ship in some way. After she looked around for several seconds, she saw what she was looking for: a piece of equipment, which had never been there before. Wasting no time, she dragged it into the now- empty cargo bay, and placed it in the airlock, then ran back to the cockpit. A light was flashing, indicating that the pre-flight sequence was complete. She eased up on the repulsorlifts, and the Headwind floated off the hangar floor, and slowly into space. As soon as the freighter was in space, she vented the main cargo bay airlock, sending the suspect equipment into space, and slammed down hard on the throttle. "Attention freighter Headwind. You seem to have-" The controller's voice was abruptly cut off as the ship was jolted hard, and she yanked back on the hyperdrive controls. Dorba breathed a sigh of relief, and spoke to herself. "I seem to have lost a bomb, thank you very much." "Clever little girl, isn't she." Commodore Mantrel watched the form of the Corellian freighter disappear into hyperspace. "She jettisoned the... ahem, present we left, although I don't think she suspects the homing devices we planted." Captain Ollic turned towards Mantrel. "Should we make the jump to hyperspace?" He considered it. "Certainly. Oh, and Captain?" "Yes?" "Have that old holorecorder we found in the spice sent to my quarters." "I will see to it myself." Mantrel turned back to the viewports. "That spice... I could purchase almost an entire fleet of ships with it. This will really help us. Captain Ollic?" "Sir?" "Make sure that the spice is treated carefully. I want it carbon frozen for now." "Yes, Commodore." Chapter 9 Dorba leaned back in the cockpit, relaxing completely for the first time since she had joined the Twi'lek. It was much easier to unwind when she didn't have to listen to his constant yammering. And the nice thing was that the Imperials had disposed of the body for her. However, she was jerked out of her reverie as the navicomputer beeped, signaling that she had arrived at Tatooine, half a galaxy away from where she was stopped by the Imperials. And... the beauty of an Outer Rim planet was that there was virtually no space traffic control. Probably why Tatooine had been a hideout of criminals and smugglers for decades. She hit the comm. "Freighter Headwind, requesting permission to land at Mos Eisely." Silence. She hit it again. Maybe she was out of range. "This is the independent freighter Headwind, requesting permission to land at Mos Eisely." Silence again. "Mos Eisely Traffic Control, do you copy? Over." Still, silence. Dorba checked the sensors, and was surprised when Mos Eisely didn't show up where it should have been. She moved the freighter into a parking orbit around the planet, and began deep scans of the planetary surface. Where Mos Eisely once was, there was only a deep crater. Mos Espa seemed to suffer the same fate, and only a few scattered settlements showed up. Finally, she locked onto one of the larger settlements, and began re-entry. Re-entry was brief and fairly routine, with no major problems to speak of. She put the ship down less than a kilometer from the settlement, and walked down the landing ramp. Large plumes of smoke billowed out of houses in the distance, but closer up she could see the remains of some kind of vehicle. She drew her blaster, and cautiously walked towards the vehicle. It was an older military- version Imperial speeder bike. After glancing over it, Dorba righted the vehicle, and tried to activate the power. With the familiar whine of repulsorlifts, the bike came to life, floating nearly a foot off the ground. Dorba paused, confused. Who, or what was all the destruction caused by? Would her staying on the planet result in her own destruction? Finally, after she had mulled it over in her head, she hopped on the bike and set off toward the settlement. A grizzled man, seemingly sandblasted from the perpetual desert winds of Tatooine, squinted up as a brilliant streak moved towards his home settlement. Realizing that it was not one of the ones which had come earlier, he set out toward the settlement. Fifteen minutes later, he came to a canyon peak, and pulled out an old pair of macrobinoculars. A gleaming shape caught his eye, and he pointed the binoculars at it. It was a Corellian light freighter, one of the YT series if he could remember the classes properly... Dorba slowed her borrowed speeder bike to a walking pace, and slowly steered it through the deserted lanes of the settlement. Finally, when something caught her eye, she stopped and dismounted. The sight made her shudder. A charred humanoid skeleton lying next to one of the ferrocrete huts, still smoking from heat. Dorba quickly got back on the bike, and gunned it to top speed. The grizzled man walked towards the ship, taking a swig out of his canteen on the way. Eventually, he reached the main boarding hatch, and tried the controls. The door slid open without any problems at all, and he cautiously stepped inside, then made his way toward the cockpit. The smuggler brought her bike to a stop at the boarding ramp. Strange, she thought. I didn't leave the hatch open... Drawing her blaster again, she held it up and quietly stepped inside. After a quick glance down the corridor, she began to walk towards the cockpit. There was a slight clang behind her, and she spun around to see the hatch slide shut. By now, she was getting uneasy. Someone is trying to steal my ship. Dorba edged toward the cockpit door, which was closed. She slapped the controls, and spun through the hatch, her blaster pistol at the ready. The smuggler didn't have to wait long for a target - a weather-beaten man, sitting in the pilot's seat. "Put your hands where I can see them!" she spoke in a commanding tone. The man complied, and she quickly looked him over. Reaching down, she pulled out his blaster pistol, and put it in her own holster. "All right, I'm not going to shoot you... yet. But I need you to tell me what you were doing on my ship." He coughed, then spoke. "I need a way to get off this planet as soon as possible. They..." He looked out of the cockpit viewscreen. "They could return at any time." A confused look crossed Dorba's face, and she stammered. "W- w- but you still didn't answer my question." The man paused. "I wanted to get off this planet by any means possible, even if it meant stealing a ship. You have my apologies." She stared at him for a second. "I was going to leave anyway, since there's not much here. I could take you somewhere on the way... anywhere in particular?" "Someplace away from this godforsaken rock." "Well, my next choice was going to be... oh, I guess Coruscant would do. Fine with you?" He shrugged. "Sure. Can I have my blaster back now?" Dorba glared at the would-be thief. "What, so you can shoot me? Did you think I am crazy or something, after you try to steal my ship? I'm amazed that I didn't shoot you in the first place!" There was a long pause, and finally he relented. "Fine, fine. Do what you want with me, but just don't kill me." He almost broke out crying. "There's nothing left for me. Everyone that I knew was killed... everything I owned was destroyed... don't you understand?" She thought over it for a while, the blaster still pointed at him. "Well... I guess I can see how you feel..." The man shook his head. "No, you don't understand. I went out into the hills east of my house to find a droid which had wandered off. And then it happened. Dozens of drop- ships of some sort landed, and I concealed myself as best I could. But I still couldn't help peeking out to see what was happening. I- I-" "OK, I get it. What's your name?" He looked up. "Poone." "Well, Poone, I think we had better get going. And no, you're not getting your blaster back." "Commodore Mantrel to Captain Ollic." The Chiss' voice floated over the comm. "Captain here." "Please come down to my ready room. I need you to see something." "I'll be right down." The Commodore spun around in his command chair, looking at the holorecorder. It was truly interesting. Finally, the door chimed. "Come in." It hissed open, and the Captain stepped in. "So, Captain, how much spice was on that freighter?" inquired Mantrel. "Approximately 2,184.5 kilograms of Grade B spice, since we left that smuggler five hundred grams. Grade B costs approximately ten thousand credits per gram, and so the estimated value is almost twenty-two billion credits." Mantrel's eyebrows rose slightly. "Twenty-two billion? That's more than I thought there was. Perhaps we should start raiding smugglers more often." "Perhaps. But remember, those smugglers are quite often well armed, and we currently possess only this Star Destroyer, three Dreadnoughts, and a dozen smaller ships. If we come under attack by a large group…" "Captain, I know what you are thinking. We need an Interdictor." "Precisely. But how are we going to obtain one?" "Captain, have you forgotten about the spice we took? As a saying goes, 'a little spice goes a long way.'" "But most of the Interdictors are in the hands of the other warlords. I don't think they are willing to give up one of their most prized ship classes to a group of mavericks like us." "Then you have not seen the most recent Intelligence data." Mantrel changed the view on the vidscreen to one of a star system. "Sienar Fleet Systems, producer of the Immobilizer-418. They've stepped up production of all warships for the Republic, although Intel has no idea why." Captain Ollic rubbed his chin. "Ah… I see. But if they have a contract with the Republic, why are they going to sell an Interdictor for a few grams of spice?" "They aren't. I don't think any reputable corporation would. But an individual might." Ollic looked at the Chiss incredulously. "You plan to bribe an employee?" "No, I do not. There are plenty of other beings who want spice desperately. We sell it to them, they give us money, and then we purchase the ships we want with that money. It is as simple as that." "Sir, if we flood the market..." "We will not. It will simply take time. But enough of this. There was something more important I wanted to show you." He turned to a vidscreen, and placed a small datachip into the playback slot. "This was the message on that old holorecorder contained in the spice. I believe it came from a message pod of some sort. Observe." The Chiss activated the vidscreen, and watched as the message came up. After watching the message, Mantrel turned to the Captain. "You notice that he claims he is fourteen billion light-years away. At conventional hyperdrive speeds, it would take too long to cover that distance, and I have run some calculations on the data he gave us." He turned to a small console, and typed in some commands. The vidscreen promptly switched to displaying data. "It would take approximately twelve thousand standard years at the cruising speed of a Bulk Cruiser. However, I was there when we encountered the Outbound Flight Project, and that was nearly seventy years ago. I tried to tell Thrawn that the Project may have hit a wormhole, but he would not listen. He thought it had just flown into a black hole, and was destroyed. Well, this is proof it was not." The Chiss turned to another small console. "Wormholes have always been interesting to me. They act like kinks in both hyperspace and realspace, allowing ships to travel great distances, like the fourteen billion light-year distance between this galaxy and the one the Project ended up in, in almost the blink of an eye. Apparently, this Captain didn't realize the problem with hitting a wormhole in hyperspace, and their motivator was likely blown by a power feedback from the hyperdrive." He replayed the beginning of the message, then continued speaking. "Notice how he said the wormhole's collapse was imminent. That means it would be useless trying to find that wormhole now. We will just have to wait for another way." "Yes, sir." Chapter 10 Sand. Dellen looked around him. All he could see for miles was sand. And coming across the sand were hundreds of strange-looking creatures, evil-looking creatures. He looked down, and realized that he was without his lightsaber. Dellen started running... he could not escape. The aliens pressed upon him... And suddenly, he found himself in a deep, underground chamber. Dellen looked about him, scared. The aliens which bustled about him looked familiar... they were of the same species as those which chased him in the desert. But now they were simply going around with unknown business. He cautiously began walking forward, and they all ignored him. He took a look at the tunnel walls. They were made from perfectly fitted stones, with not a crack visible. Up ahead of him was a gleaming silver door. Dellen stepped forward, and stared at the door. Slowly, a five-by-five control panel became visible. He reached out to it, and started pressing buttons. The door clicked, and quietly hinged open, revealing a vast chamber beyond, made from the same gleaming substance as the door. He stepped through... And found himself in a group of three children and an astromech droid. The light that had previously illuminated the chamber was noticeably missing, and the youngest of the three moved forward eagerly. But the other two reached out, grabbed him, and dragged him back. They walked back through the tunnel door, and Dellen followed. He stared at the tunnel for a second. Instead of being flawless as he last saw it, it was cracked and slimy. Dried mud sat piled up at the sides with skulls poking through here and there, and footsteps trailed through the dust. Dellen figured those were the footsteps of the children. After they had left, he became bored and decided to go back into the strange chamber to take a better look. The door was sealed, so he simply walked through it, not pausing for a second to think of how strange that was. He continued on, finally coming to the edge of the platform. He tried to stop. He could not... it was as if the floor was greased. Dellen went off the side of the platform, and plummeted straight down... He sat up in his bunk, in shock. After looking around him for a minute, the door buzzed, and he turned to it, reaching out with the Force. "Come in." The door hissed open, and Master C'baoth stepped in. The Jedi Master took a quick look at Dellen, and spoke. "What happened?" "I had a nightmare... or maybe a vision. I'm not sure. I was on a desert plain, being chased by strange aliens... then I was in an underground chamber with the aliens... I stepped through a door... found three children in front of me... they left... I stayed... and fell." C'baoth stared at the wall. "It sounds strange to me, but it might be significant. Don't forget it." "How could I? It was so vivid... I felt like I was right there." "That's the way visions are. Can you tell when it was?" "I'm not sure. It seemed that I was... jumping back and forth in time." "Well, just remember it. I came down here to bring you to the bridge. We're only four days away from the destination. Master Ryaspi has been manually setting the navicomputer to avoid obstacles, although some detailed charts we got from Voyager are helping. It appears that they charted just about everything they came across." Dellen chuckled at that. "No wonder they were taking so long to get back. But at least it's helping us." *** "Please state the nature of the medical emergency." Silence. "Hello?" The Doctor looked around him, slightly confused. Who had activated him? He checked his memory buffer. Aha, he thought. Someone tried to tamper with my program... then stopped? This is strange. Ph'ngu glanced at the logs. He'd been working at it for two days straight, not even pausing to eat, but still met with no luck. Finally, he broke off where he was, and got up. The slicer stumbled, and then fell over. He struggled to get back up, stumbled over to a ration pack, then hungrily gobbled down the contents. Ph'ngu sat down, and finally when he felt strong enough, he opened the door and stepped out into the corridor. An ensign glanced at him. "At it again, I see. You trying to kill yourself or something?" He didn't bother to reply. "Is the Mess Hall open?" "Should be. I just got back from there." "All right, thanks." Ph'ngu walked over to the turbolift, and selected the deck the Mess Hall was located on. The door hissed shut, and the turbolift shot on its way. The Doctor ran a quick scan of the system. Someone had been trying to get in, all right, although he could not figure out how. After pausing to 'think', he decided to place the main computers into a Level-3 diagnostic, which should shut out all intruders. He decided to turn himself off. "Computer, end program." "Unable to comply. Level-3 diagnostic in progress." If the Doctor were human, he would have hit himself in the head. But he knew that was pointless. Ph'ngu set his food tray down at the table, and looked at it. He had piled it high with two servings of just about everything on the menu. He grabbed a utensil, and was about to dig in when Captain Avin sat down across from him. The slicer quickly stood up. "Sir!" "Hello, Ph'ngu. Find anything yet?" The slicer relaxed. "Not much other than some personal stuff. Mostly complaints about the food." "You mean Neelix's food?" "Yeah. How did you know?" "He tried to start working in here. Gave me a sample of his cooking. I politely refused after tasting it." Avin looked at the slicer, who was gulping down the food quickly. "Do you always try to work the food synthesizer units to death?" Ph'ngu barely paused to speak. "Not usually." "I see. You don't have to overwork yourself, you know." Ph'ngu stopped, and motioned at where a couple of Voyager ensigns were sitting. "I've been running into one roadblock after another. Once I've started on something, I don't like to stop, or I might forget something. But I'd rather not talk about it here." The Captain stood up, and pushed his chair back. "Very well, keep up the good work. I'll talk with you some other time." "Yes, sir." Ph'ngu stared at the wall, wondering about the computer. His fork idly dropped down on the tray, and he snapped his fingers. "I've got it!" Then he picked up the tray, and ran to the turbolift. One of the MP-80X droids looked up after him. "Sir? You are not supposed to leave the mess hall with the tray..." The slicer didn't listen, as he was already in the turbolift. *** "Freighter Headwind, you are cleared for landing. Proceed on your current vector and land at Docking Platform one- one-three-eight seven-foxtrot." "Affirmative, Coruscant Control." Dorba started the landing cycle, and leaned back in the pilot's chair. "Is smuggling always this easy?" The passenger she had picked up on Tatooine, a man by the name of Chro'far Poone, was looking out of the forward viewports at the dazzling sight of the galaxy's capital world. "Not usually. But it's not like I'm carrying anything contraband. Besides, inspection units tend to just glance over things... most of the time." Just then, the comm squawked. "Freighter Headwind, you are straying off your pre-defined course. I urge you to correct your ship at once." Dorba slapped the comm switch. "My apologies, Coruscant Control. I got a bit distracted there for a moment." She shut off the comm, made the corrections, and turned to Chro'far. "I forgot to mention that they have the touchiest space traffic controllers in the galaxy." "Heh. Guess I'd better remember that." She nodded, but didn't divert her attention from landing the ship. *** "Jackpot." Ph'ngu watched as decoded Basic text scrolled down the screen. He picked up a headset and put it on, then tapped in a few more commands. "Craptains Kog..." Idly, he flicked a switch, and the optical sensors of a mostly disassembled protocol droid lit up. Finally, the slicer leaned back in his chair. "Captain's Log, Stardate 48315.6. We've traced the energy pulses from the array to the fifth planet of the neighbouring system and believe they may have been used in some fashion to transport Kim and Torres to the planet's surface..." "Captain's log, supplemental. The Maquis ship and Voyager have encountered a debris field where sensors have detected a small vessel..." "Captain's log, Stardate 48439.7. As we maintain a course back to the Alpha Quadrant, we're conducting what would normally be routine maintenance to the ship. Routine, that is, if we had access to a starbase..." "Captain's Personal Log, Stardate 48546.2. Our journey home is several weeks old now, and I have begun to notice in my crew and in myself... a subtle change as the reality of our situation settles in. Here in the Delta Quadrant, we are virtually the entire family of man. We are more than a crew. And I must find a way to be more than a Captain to these people. But it's not clear to me exactly how to begin. At the Academy, we are taught that a Captain is expected to maintain a certain distance. Until now, I've always been comfortable with that distance... Maybe this is just the way it works. Maybe the distance is necessary. Maybe more than ever now, they need me to be larger than life. I only wish I felt larger than life. Computer, delete last sentence." Ph'ngu chuckled at that one, but kept on listening. "Captain's Log, Stardate 48623.5. There are 246 elements known to Federation science. We believe we have just discovered the 247th inside the ring system of a class-D planet. " "Captain's Log, Stardate 48658.2. We successfully left orbit without further interference from the Kazon. Commander Chakotay was injured, but is recovering from his wounds. " "Captain's Log, Stardate 48693.2. We've altered course to investigate... some unusually intense photonic activity in a nearby protostar. Lieutenant Torres and I are beaming aboard samples for further analysis. " "Captain's Log, Stardate 48921.3. I continue to wonder about the issue of procreation aboard the ship." "Captain's Log, Stardate 49037.2, supplemental. We have no explanation for the mysterious disappearance of the telepathic Bothan. We can't even be certain that he was actually here. He seems to have left us with any number of unanswered questions. " He perked up at that. "Bothan...?" "Captain's Log, Stardate 49208.5. I have convened a meeting of the senior staff to determine how we can get close enough to the Nistrim ship to deploy the antiproton beam." "Captain's log, Stardate 49301.2. We have assigned quarters to our new passenger, who has entered his name on our crew manifest as Quinn. I am eager to engage him in interesting ship activities as soon as possible." "Captain's Log, Stardate 49548.7. There are no signs of any pursuing Vidiian vessels. And we have resumed a course toward home." "Captain's Log, Stardate 49655.2. Our sensors have located a variety of flower which may prove to be a valuable nutritional supplement. I have sent Mr. Neelix and Mr. Tuvok to collect samples." The voice changed after that entry, and the slicer grabbed a datapad to take notes on. "Acting Captain's Log, Stardate 49690.1, supplemental. After six weeks, the decision to leave Captain Janeway and the First Officer behind still seems to weigh heavily on the crew." "Captain's Log, Stardate 49694.2. We have contacted the Vidiian convoy with encouraging results. They have promised to communicate with Dr. Danara Pel and ask if she will help us." The voice changed back to that of Captain Janeway, and Ph'ngu took note. "Captain's Log, Stardate 50156.2. After 72 hours, Lieutenant Paris and Ensign Kim are still missing, and I'm quickly losing patience with the Akritirian authorities. They continue to deny us access to the surface, and they've yet to confirm whether our crewmen were killed in the bombing." "Captain's log, Stardate 50537.2. Routine scans of an uninhabited star system have revealed the presence of gallicite, a very rare substance, on the fourth planet." "Captain's Log, Stardate 50984.3. It's been twelve hours since our confrontation with the alien lifeform. There's no sign that we're being pursued... and we've had no further encounters with the Borg..." The audio stream stopped there, and Ph'ngu looked up to see text being displayed on the screen. "Captain's Log, Stardate 51003.7. Three days, and no sign of Borg or bio-ships. We appear to be out of danger... but the entire crew is still on edge... and so am I." Ph'ngu muttered under his breath as the audio stream was cut off. "Looks like here's something they don't want anybody to see..." He tapped a few more keys, and glanced down at his (now cold) synthesized food. He picked up a ration bar, tore off the wrapper, and downed it while one of the slicer droids set to work. A few minutes later, the audio stream restarted. "Captain's Log, Stardate 51781.2. We're approaching the star system where we believe we'll find Omega. I have to admit, I've never been this apprehensive about a mission..." "Captain's Log, Stardate 51978.2. It's been five months since we received the encoded message from the Alpha Quadrant. We know that the transmission was from Starfleet Command... but we still can't decrypt it. B'Elanna thinks it's a lost cause... but I haven't given up. I keep hoping inspiration will strike... somehow." There, the logs ended. The slicer looked at the terminal, and it was asking if he wanted to look at the other logs. He selected NO, and leaned back in his chair- one of the few comfortable things in his cramped quarters. It was made of some of the finest Corellian nerf hide, and used a special automatic-adjusting system to give perfect comfort. He flicked a couple of switches, and the chair's back gradually hinged down into a sleeping position. "Room, lights-to-sleep mode." The lights began to dim, and Ph'ngu drifted off into sleep, still thinking about what he had uncovered. Chapter 11 Dorba, a rather average human female in her early thirties with flowing brown hair, stepped through the docking bay doors and into a dirty, dimly lit street on the night side of Coruscant. Following close behind was the passenger from Tatooine. He paid no attention to the filth, and began walking in the direction that an old, rusted-out sign pointed. "Hey!" Dorba shouted in his direction. "Where are you going? We have a vehicle!" He stopped and turned around. "The repulsorlifts are low- range. We can't fly here. I'm going to try and find a decent hovercar." *** "Madame President, we've lost all communications with Tatooine for some reason. I'd be willing to pass it off as a downed Holonet relay, but it isn't just Tatooine that's affected, and it isn't just hypercomm transmissions. We've also lost communications with an outpost on Dubrillion, and one of the civilian monitoring stations, some place called ExGal-4... or maybe Belkadan... also hasn't responded in a couple of weeks. Admiral Ackbar and General A'baht want to take action immediately, while Admiral Drayson and the rest of the admirals want to wait and see." Leia Organa Solo, one-time princess of Alderaan and now president of the Republic, listened with interest to the military advisor in front of her. "Have we sent any scouts?" "Yes, we have. A probot left for Belkadan two weeks ago, and still hasn't reported back. We sent two more in succession, and none of them have reported in. The top brass are still debating whether they should send a manned scouting mission." She glanced at the report. "I'll tell those dumb Bothans to send it, for the sake of the Force! Anything is better than nothing." "Yes, madame, that's what Ackbar and A'baht have been trying to say." "Thank you, Lieutenant." She watched as the lieutenant walked out, and another walked in. "Madame President." "Hello, Major Chandrille. NRI, I presume? What did you want to talk to me about?" "Ma'am... do you mind if I close the door?" "No, go ahead." The lieutenant walked across the room, and activated the door latch. He then walked back to stand in front of the Princess. "Ma'am, I have some very disturbing news." He was somewhat surprised when she didn't react. Instead, she motioned to him. "Go ahead. I've already heard some pretty disturbing news." "Ahem... Well, it seems that there's a new Imperial faction which is not allied with Admiral Pellaeon. All we have received is that it seems to be a relatively small group, perhaps a single Star Destroyer and some escorts, which is going about generally raising hell, although they haven't gone past raiding ships yet. It seems rather like what happened with Admiral Daala a few years back. We have just talked with Admiral Pellaeon, and he said that there might be a rogue Captain loose, but he wasn't sure." She pursed her lips. Could this have a connection with Tatooine? "Anything else?" He shook his head. "No, ma'am." "Very well, you may leave. Oh, Lieutenant?" "Yes?" "See if you can figure out just who this rogue is. Don't make it a top priority, though." "Yes, Ma'am." Leia waited until he had walked out, and then she turned to a comm unit. "Admiral Ackbar, please." The voice that came back was definitely not Ackbar's. "The Admiral is in a meeting right now and cannot be disturbed. Would you like to leave a message?" "No. This is the President, and I must speak to Ackbar. Immediately." The voice suddenly became apologetic. "I'm sorry, Madame President. I'll see what I can do." You had better, she said under her breath. *** "Any ideas yet?" Dorba glanced over at the passenger side of the older SoroSuub hovercar she'd bought. "Seems like I've circled Imperial City at least a dozen times now, and there's still nowhere to land." Chro'far continued to focus on the comm unit in front of him. "I'm not sure which agency to call. Bureau of Land Management, maybe?" She snorted. "No, I think the Navy would be more interested. Have you tried to contact them?" "Yeah, tried it already. I got the Recruiter's Office the first time around, and had a nice chat with the officer there. Unfortunately, he couldn't help. Then I tried the High Command. Nothing but dozens of droids telling me that all the officers are busy at the moment." "Have you tried to contact the President's spouse?" "No." He looked up. "Why?" "Just try it. I'm familiar with Han's reputation." "You think he's on the planet now?" "It's just a wild guess." "Well, I suppose it's better than nothing." Chro'far tapped the comm unit, and began speaking. Half a minute later, he looked up. "Put her down at Landing Pad 38, near... some place called 'Arturo's'. He says that one of his friends will meet us there." The smuggler thought for a minute. "Yeah, I think I know where that is." She dropped the car into a lower altitude, heading for the city's underlevels. *** "Ackbar here." Leia looked up to see the Mon Calamarian's face displayed on the viewscreen. "You wanted to talk with me?" "Yes, I did. I guess Senator Fey'lya's been giving you trouble again?" He nodded. "Same old thing. Seems they never give up." Leia rolled her eyes. "This is an emergency, and we need to get in communication with those planets. How much is one recon-X going to cost?" "Well..." He paused. "The cost of the ship, and one pilot if he's killed. But Fey'lya's the credit-pinching type. Too narrow-minded to realize that it might cost much more later on- like what happened in the Koornacht cluster a few years ago." "Is there anything you - we - can do?" "Anything?" He let out the Mon Calamari equivalent of a laugh. "We've tried just about every trick in the book. He still won't give up." "Sometimes, I wish we could have him removed from the Senate." Ackbar looked back at her. "Every time anything like that is brought up, he cites the importance of the Bothans to the Rebellion, and now the Republic." "Right," she said. "Thirty years ago, when their spies captured the Death Star plans. Now, they're just a pain in the side... although they certainly do supply us with strike cruisers. But perhaps we should make the Senate more like that of the Old Republic." "Now, Leia, you know perfectly well that it is designed to prevent another incident like what happened with Palpatine." She shrugged. "Yes, I know. Still, sometimes I wish we could bend the rules a little." *** "Did he say who would be waiting for us?" "No." "Wait, I think I see someone I recognize..." Dorba started walking towards a dark-skinned man, who was standing in the middle of the crowd. The dark-skinned man took a step towards her. "Well, look who we have here." "Lando Calrissian, bachelor to the end," she said jokingly. "Listen, I have no time for smooth talk." The galaxy-class con man quickly got serious. "All right, I know what you're here for." He motioned to a table in one corner of the bar. "Sit down. Han told me that you had a passenger from Tatooine." "Yeah... I did," she said, turning her head to look around. "But where'd he go?" "What's he look like?" "Tall, a little over two meters, kind of weather-beaten." Lando looked up over her. "Yeah, I think I see him. I think he's in a bit of trouble." She spun around in her chair. Sure enough, he was in trouble. A white, furry Talz had shoved him against the bar, while everyone else backed away for fear of getting hurt. He nimbly ducked out of the way as the intoxicated Talz took a badly aimed swipe at him, and instead the punch slammed into a drink beaker, shattering it and nearly shredding the alien's fist. It howled in pain, and tried to swipe at him again. This time, the man hardly had time to bring his arms up to block the blow. Dorba leaped out of the chair, set her blaster pistol on stun, and took aim at the Talz, which had decided to begin attacking one of the drink mixers. In a flash, rippling blue arcs traveled over the alien, knocking it out along with several bystanders. Lando ran up to Chro'far. "Hey man, you all right?" "I think so... my arm hurts, that's all." "Hey, Miss Morchi!" Dorba ran up. "Yes?" "I don't think this bar is a good place to hang around, even though the Coruscant police know me rather well. You have a hovercar?" "Yes." "Good. I used the city transport system." *** "The Palace is to your right. Take- no, down! Use that landing area. Yeah, you got it." Dorba glanced down at a map displayed on a small viewscreen. "Are you sure?" Lando looked hard at her. "Trust me. I know this place." "Well, I hope you're right." She pushed down on the controls, and the vehicle moved towards one of the lower entrances. In the meantime, Lando explained. "The upper platforms are reserved for the more... ahem, affluent in society. That's why we have to park down here." "So I can tell." Dorba said as she yanked on the controls to dodge a large supply vehicle. She pulled into the landing area, and the car began to shut itself down. Finally, she turned back to Lando. "Now what?" "Well, we can head over to where Han is, or we can stay here. Your choice." "Where is he?" "In the President's suite." She glanced out the window. "I guess that would be better than staying here." Chapter 12 USS Enterprise, Earth Orbit "Captain's Log, Stardate 53306.9. A new contact has simply... appeared out of nowhere practically in Earth's atmosphere. The only indication ot their arrival was a brief burst of cronau radiation, which may be indicative of their drive system. We can rule out a cloaking device, as even they leave warp signatures. Sensors show the ship as some sort of hybrid, with an Intrepid-class appearing to make up part of it. It is certainly more massive than this ship, and I can only hope that it is not hostile. We are hailing on all known frequencies, with no response so far." Jean-Luc Picard turned to the comm. "Any response?" The reply from the comm was equally brief. "No, sir." "Councillor, do you sense anything?" he enquired of Councillor Troi. The Betazoid's brow furrowed. "It is as if..." She closed her eyes. "I am not sure. There are not much of any emotions... except boredom." "Boredom?" Picard's expression changed, his surprise obvious. "Sir, I do not believe you know what it means to have such a strong feeling of boredom. As a matter of fact, I've never felt such a strong feeling of boredom. It's overwhelming, like the crew hasn't had much to do for several years... there are some other emotions present, but the most prevalent is certainly boredom." "Are they hostile, or just bored? If they're as bored as Q, perhaps we should go to yellow alert," asked Picard with a wry smile cracking his face. "As I said earlier, Captain, I cannot tell. Whoever is on that ship, they are most definitely not Q. Although I am sensing some similar, but weaker presences..." Troi struggled to grasp the confusing situation aboard the alien vessel, and it showed in her voice. Picard moved closer, lowering his voice to ascertain exactly what he faced. "So... are they some sort of semi-Q, or just normal people, or bored semi-Q? Or are they bored normal people? Or are they all of the above, but especially bored?" His exasperation was showing slightly, as the need for concrete information was warring with his understanding of the difficulties Troi faced in this situation. "Captain! Please, I can't answer everything. I simply don't know." Troi was forced to admit. "Very well. Commander Riker, bring us to yellow alert. Raise shields and continue to hail them on all frequencies." "Aye, Captain. Yellow Alert. Shields up, continuing hails." *** "Earth... at last. I..." Janeway nearly broke down, crying. "I thought I'd never see it again." "This is it, huh?" Captain Avin brushed past her to look out the viewports. "It... it reminds me of Alderaan. Big, blue... beautiful compared to Coruscant." She pointed out the viewport, recognising the starship she saw from the data transmission they had intercepted from Starfleet... in what seemed a lifetime ago. "And there's the flagship of Starfleet, the Enterprise - NCC 1701-E. Moving... damn! Right towards us!" She glanced at Avin. "They'll think we're hostile! We have to hail them!" At that point, the comm officer spoke up. "Sir? We're getting hailed on one of the older subspace frequencies. Two-dimensional video and audio." Avin glared at the crewer. "Well? Display it!" He then turned back to the other Captain. "Looks like that's already been taken care of. Now if you will excuse me, I must get back to my duties as Captain of this ship." *** "Captain, they've responded." "On screen," commanded Picard. The viewscreen flashed on, showing a blurry image of a strange bridge. Picard immediately spoke. "Mr. Data, can you clear the interference?" "No, sir. The problem appears to be in the other ship's equipment." Data responded, confirming this with his console readouts. "Can you do anything to fix it?" Riker asked. "Possibly. Their equipment appears to be generating harmonics which are distorting the transmission, rather like the non-heterodyne electromagnetic 'radios' of the 21st century. However, I may be able to lessen the interference by filtering the transmission through a special computer algorithm of my own design." Data promptly responded. "Very well. Make it so." Picard directed, pleased at the speed and efficiency Data displayed in his answers. At least someone had a grasp on this situation. The android turned to the console, and began tapping away at the LCARS interface. Within a minute, the static cleared. "Excellent, Mr. Data." "Sir, I had not started the reprocessing yet. The other ship seems to have fixed their problem." Data reported, checking the LCARS interface to be certain. He was interrupted by a woman on the viewscreen, who was craning her neck in an attempt to get a better view. "Captain..." She straightened her shoulders. "Captain Kathryn Janeway, USS Voyager. Reporting in from the Delta Quadrant." Janeway paused, letting it sink in. "It's nice to see you again, Captain Picard." *** Grand Corridor, Imperial Palace, Coruscant Chaos. Dorba, in all of her eleven years as a smuggler, had not seen such a chaotic mess of bureaucrats. She guessed that there were over a hundred different species travelling through the halls of the Imperial Palace's Grand Corridor. Lando tapped her shoulder, leaned close to her, and pointed to the end of the hall. "Miss, we can't stop here. Seems that the Senate just got out of a session. It had something to do with some uprising or another on Rhommamool and some other planet in the Expansion Region. Kind of bad for business..." Lando smiled, directing her on, his charm taking the edge off the obvious contempt he had for the bureaucracy. She dodged to the side as a fat, repulsive Twi'lek senator nearly ran into her, then grimaced as she felt her back pop. She definitely wasn't getting any younger. "Yeah, I'll say. Did we have to come through here? Or are you just showing off?" Dorba asked, as she kept an eye out for a clear path through the crush. He hesitated. "Well... it's the fastest way from where we parked to the President's suite. Actually, Leia is probably still in the Senate chamber right now, if I remember her schedule correctly." "I don't want to see her alone. I want to see both of them, together." Dorba insisted. "Miss, that could be tricky. I'm not sure Palace Security would like a criminal like you coming into the President's Suite, anyway." "Excuse me?" *** Ph'ngu glanced at the chronometer, and blinked in surprise. He had been busy for over thirty hours. He casually accessed the main navicomputer, and called up the logs, then blinked again. "We're out of hyperspace!" *** Janeway nearly jumped out of her skin as her commbadge buzzed. It was the Doctor. "Captain, I must speak-" "Computer, deactivate Emergency Medical Program." she hissed, still trying to converse with Picard on the viewer. "Unable to comply. System offline." The Computer responded. "Override offline mode. Deactivate Emergency Medical Program." "Unable to comply. System offline." She turned away, removed her commbadge, and turned back. "What was that you were saying again, Captain Picard?" *** Lights on the bronze dome of a slicer droid came to life, and it began beeping rapidly. Ph'ngu walked over, and looked at the display above the droid. Even though it was a rough translation of the actual log, it was enough for the slicer to figure out what was happening. He had forgotten to patch the logs, something they taught every novice in Intel Academy. "Oh, kriff!" LCARS LOG 53070.88 1500:48:15.925 GST INIT System Memory Reset INIT System Initialized INIT Voice-Command System Activated INIT LCARS Logging Enabled LCARS LOG 53301.51 0200:34:44.553 GST INIT Level-3 Diagnostic Started. LCARS LOG 0200:55:28.673 GST ERROR Diagnostic Interrupted by USER 33138:ENSIGN.T.PARIS LCARS LOG 0300:31:43.442 GST Diagnostic Resumed by USER 10024:EMH LCARS LOG 53306.93 0600:26:53.336 GST ERROR USER 33138:ENSIGN.T.PARIS does not have access to SYSLOG WARNING Account Violation. Automatic report to Starfleet Security. ERROR Comm Offline ERROR No connection available to Starfleet LCARS ERROR General Protection Fault. System Offline. INIT Comm System by USER 00183:EMH ERROR command failed WARNING System Offline Ph'ngu looked at his chronometer. It had only been a few minutes since the LCARS system (as he had learned it was apparently called) crashed. If he could bring the system back online, and erase the logs in the process, hopefully they would pass it off as a system glitch... *** "I'm sorry, Captain, but we're having some slight technical problems here. Captain Avin tells me that some of his ship's systems are on the fritz. Would it be better we beamed over to your ship to talk?" Janeway asked Picard. Picard hesitated. "Well... I suppose so. Who is beaming over?" he inquired. "My command crew, and some of the Republic diplomats." He perked up. "Republic Diplomats?" "If you don't mind, Captain, I would rather talk about it in person." Janeway tried to get her point over without being too obvious. "Certainly. However, I must inform you on behalf of Starfleet that it might be better if... er... Captain Avin moved his ship into a higher orbit." Picard suggested. Kathryn turned to Captain Avin, spoke briefly, then turned back to the viewscreen. "He says it should be possible, although his ship is running low on fuel." "Then prepare to beam over. I am rather interested in what happened in the Delta Quadrant, after all." *** LCARS SYSTEM HALTED Ph'ngu glanced up at the viewer. Not quite what he wanted, but it at least had the same effect. The whole alien system was so strange he was having trouble figuring out what the heck was going on. He was rather glad that the system's security was not very strong, or it would have taken him much more than two weeks. And now, if he remembered his orders correctly, he had to get everything back in order before they undocked or something like that. Oh well, at least he was more familiar with the system now. Or not. He nearly hit himself on the side of the head when the thought occurred to him. The system turned itself off, and he couldn't remotely turn it on if it was off. And their ship apparently couldn't function without the main computer... great, he thought. No life support, no nothing... Then the screen flashed red as some secondary system activated. EMERGENCY WARP CORE BREACH IMMINENT CONTAINMENT FAILING BREACH IN TEN MINUTES THIRTY SECONDS He grabbed a commlink. "Engine Room, please. Derek, this is Ph'ngu. What the kriff is a warp core? I'm getting this message that whatever it is is going to breach in... oh, about ten minutes. Is that bad or something?" *** On the other end of the commlink, Derek jerked as he heard a muffled thump in the background. "Ph'ngu? Hello? You still there? Great..." He terminated the connection, and activated a new connection. "Engine room to bridge. Patch me to Captain Avin now. Listen, Captain, we've got a big problem. Can I talk to Voyager's chief engineer?" "Captain Janeway?" Avin Interrupted the Viewscreen discussion between the Starfleet Captains. She turned to see Avin looking at her. "What?" "Who's your chief engineer? Derek needs to talk to them. He says you've got some problem with a warp core." Her face turned ashen, but she still turned towards B'Elanna, and motioned for her to come over. When the engineer arrived, she listened for a second, then turned towards Avin. "Could you please put it on the speakers?" B'Elanna asked him. Avin motioned to the comm officer, who complied, and she began talking. "OK, Derek, what's going on?" That was the first, and most vital, question. "We're getting something on one of the terminals that the warp core is going to breach in about nine minutes. Don't ask me what happened, because I don't know. But we'd better stop it somehow, because if there's an antimatter reaction this close to a planet..." His voice trailed off as he considered the possiblities. "Can we eject the core?" "Well..." B'Elanna tried to think of how Voyager was oriented. "No. The core ejection hatch is pointing right at your ship's midsection. But do you have any power to spare?" she asked, thinking quickly. "For what? You mean to transfer to Voyager's containment systems?" Derek queried, starting to catch on to her plan. "Exactly. Say, seventeen-point-five-seven gigawatts?" He whistled. "That's a little much for a transfer, but we can probably do it. Although I think there's one other problem, and that is that your main computer is off." "Offline?" "No, turned off. Dead." Now, it was Torres' turn to go white. "We'll have to send a team. How much time now?" "Seven minutes." He read back to her. "We can't go through the access hatches in that time, especially since the turbolifts are going to be dead." Janeway, who had been listening, turned to the viewscreen. "Captain Picard, if you noticed, we've got a serious crisis here. Voyager is dead, about to have a warp core breach. Can you transport our people into Voyager's engine room?" The reply was prompt. "Are they ready?" Janeway spun towards Tuvok, who was rushing around the bridge. "Tuvok!" "Yes, Captain?" "Do we have a team?" "No. We don't have protective suits available here. Voyager won't have any breathable atmosphere with the life- support down, and we also need to deal with the possibility of radiation or plasma leaks. We weren't expecting this, since Voyager was in standby," Tuvok pointed out. Kathryn turned back to Avin. "Do you have any suits available?" Avin shouted an order, and some Republic troops walked up with several bulky, armored environment suits, originally intended for extravehicular activity. "Will these do?" Tuvok looked them over. "More than perfect. Ensign Munro!" "Sir!" The ensign enthusiastically replied. "Get into one of these. We've got to go, now!" The ensign looked it over. "How do I get in?" One of the Republic troops gestured to the back of the suit. "You crawl in here." Munro looked a little apprehensive about it, but finally started getting in. Finally, Tuvok looked to the viewscreen. "Captain Picard, we stand ready." With the familiar shimmering beams of the transporter, the members of the hastily assembled team vanished, reappearing in the engineering section of Voyager. Torres' voice came across the comm. "Alex! You're going to have to head right for Engineering! Captain Avin says to use the suit's thrusters." "How?" Ensign Munro asked, looking around the suit. "The suits have hand controls," Torres relayed across the comm. Munro fumbled with the controls a bit, then shot down the hallway as the suit's built-in ion thrusters activated. "OK, I'm at Engineering. I don't see any force fields," he reported. "That's because the main power is down. You have to get to one of the backup computer systems, and get some power flowing to the containment systems. The others in your team are going to get the manual power transfer linkup connected. Can you handle that? You have two minutes left." came Torres' voice, barely staying calm whilst relaying the urgency of her orders. "Where is the backup computer?" Munro asked, moving further into the room. "It... should be on your left... I think the screen is on. Can you see it?" Torres said, visualising the room in her head. "I think so. The screen is flashing red." "That's it. Get it out of failsafe mode, and try to get to the containment system control screen." "OK, got it. What now?" "There should be some indicator of power, and it's probably red. When it goes green, transfer all power to the containment system," the engineer directed, her calm becoming more evident as the situation came closer to resolution. "Right. How long till it goes green? It says I have only fifty seconds left," Munro stated, clearly not feeling the same sense of calm. Tuvok broke into the intercom. "I've just applied power. It should be turning green any second now." "Got it! But... nothing's happening." Munro started to feel the onset of panic. "The containment systems could take a while to come up to full charge. This is the first time that the main computer's been dead like this." Torres said, attempting to reassure him with her tone and certainty. "Thirty seconds. Still nothing." Munro could feel sweat beading on his face inside the suit's helmet. Captain Avin walked over to the shield and weapons control station. "Can we bring the shields to full power?" The midshipman glanced at the displays. "I think so. I mean, Yes, Sir! Strengthen the midsection shields?" he asked. "Definitely." "Done, sir." said the midshipman, who altered the neccessary controls. "Fifteen seconds. Captain, this isn't going to... hey, it's coming back! Display is green. It's stabilized." The relief was very evident in the jubliant tones of Munro's report. Chapter 13 ISD Magistrate, Outer Rim "Commodore?" Captain Ollic stared at the ready room's door, wondering if it was going to open or not. He pushed the call button again. "Commodore? Are you there?" The Captain was about to turn away when the door slid open. He spun about and stepped inside, straining to see in the dim light. Cautiously, he stepped forward to the Commodore's chair, and peered around. Mantrel sat in the chair, motionless. As Ollic walked to the front of the chair however, the alien Commodore's eyes snapped open. "Well, Captain. I'm sorry I kept you waiting so long. I was meditating on certain matters. Please, take a seat." He motioned with his hand to a seat at the other side of his desk, and Captain Ollic quickly walked over and sat down. In the meantime, the Commodore continued. "How is the procurement process going, Captain?" "Not so good, unfortunately. Warship prices are going through the ceiling, and there aren't any Interdictors available. However, one of our contacts has a large battleship for a price lower than most." The only thing on Mantrel's face that moved at the report was his eyebrows. "What kind of ship?" He asked quietly. "It's called a Droid Control Ship. I'd estimate it around seventy years old, but apparently still spaceworthy. The contact wants several trillion for it." Orric said, knowing the likely answer to that price. "Former Trade Federation battleship?" "Yes, sir..." His voice trailed off, and a confused look crossed his face. "How did you know?" "Never mind that, Captain. Are there any competitors?" Ollic thought for a second. "Only one, I believe. The contact didn't tell me who, only that they had put in a bid for 1.6 trillion credits." "And what did you bid?" "I haven't set anything yet- I couldn't. I came here to ask you if you knew that several hundred kilograms of the spice disappeared." Worry started to creep into Orrics voice. "Your concern is appreciated. However, I can explain." The Commodore turned to the shadows, and addressed an unseen figure. "Nali?" At the Commodore's word, a sleek, lithe female figure stepped out of a darkened corner, much to the surprise of the Captain. Ollic spun his chair around again to face the Commodore. "With all due respect, Sir, what is the meaning of this? A concubine?" He was incredulous at the idea. "Must I remind you, Captain, that I am not human? Chiss take only one 'wife', as you say, for a life partner. Petty things like concubines hold no attraction for me." Ollic glanced back at the curvaceous form with disbelief. "Then what is that? A bodyguard?" Mantrel allowed a smile to cross his face. "Precisely, Captain. But Nali's not a mere bodyguard. She is a human replica droid, programmed to serve my every bidding. I have learned from the mistake of my predecessor, Grand Admiral Thrawn, in using unstable Noghri as bodyguards." Ollic's jaw dropped. "A human replica... You spent all that money on a droid?" He exclaimed, his voice reflecting his extreme surprise. "Yes Captain, I did. But you need not worry about funding. I think I have found something more valuable than spice." "What could be more valuable than spice?" "You'll see." Mantrel reached under his desk, and pulled out a datapad, which he then handed to the Captain. "Look for yourself." Ny'lith Boro, Earth Orbit "Captain Janeway?" Picard's voice came across the comm, although he could not be seen on the viewscreen yet. "I have just talked to Starfleet Command. They are calling a council, to be held here on the Enterprise. Captain Avin and the Republic diplomats are requested to attend." "How soon?" Janeway asked "Immediately. We can beam you down right now, if you want." "Hold on." Janeway turned from the viewscreen to Captain Avin. "Would you prefer to beam down?" Avin hesitated. "I... suppose. Although I don't know about the Jedi," he hastily added, turning towards C'baoth. It was C'baoth's turn to be confused. "Well..." He paused, exchanging glances with the other Jedi. "I'd rather take a shuttle, thank you." USS Enterprise, Earth Orbit "Captain Picard? A pleasure to meet you. I am Captain Avin, in command of the Ny'lith Boro." He stepped up to the Starfleet Captain, shook hands, then took a seat at the conference table. Picard cocked his head when Avin named his ship. "How did your ship get that name?" "Well..." He paused. "It's a long story, but I'll try to make it short. While my ship was being refitted at the shipyards on Yaga Minor, a group of native Yagans took a tour of the shipyard. The Captain who was their tour guide was trying to please them, and so he allowed them to christen the ship. Ny'lith Boro, I believe, means Destiny's Wind in their native tongue." "Ah, I see. We need to get on with business however. As Shakespeare expertly said in the epilogue of King Henry IV: 'First, my fear; then my court'sy; last, my speech.' So true that is. We have had the fear and courtesy, now, we must have the speeches." Avin nodded at this, making a mental note to find out who Shakespeare and King Henry IV were. "Certainly. Oh, that reminds me. This is the flagship of Starfleet, correct?" "Yes... why?" Picard looked at the other Captain quizzically. "If this is, then, the best ship in the fleet, why is it just sitting in orbit of Earth?" "Repairs, upgrades... We just got back from Cardassia Prime, where we had a minor skirmish with another ship. It was supposedly a diplomatic mission..." Toward the rear of the conference room, Dellen sat quietly, watching Avin, C'baoth, and the Federation representatives discuss matters. As his gaze swept across the room, though, his eyes came to rest on a striking, black-haired woman sitting on Picard's left. As he looked at her, he noticed that she turned her head to look at him. The Jedi felt a weak pressure on his mind; he subconsciously blocked the feeble attempts to probe his mind. Eventually, it seemed that the woman gave up, and the pressure ceased. Telepath, he thought. If they've got a telepath... Dellen cautiously reached out with the Force, feeling towards his Captain. As he came nearer to the Captain, though, the mental pressure increased. Slowly, he caused a telepathic disturbance, disrupting the thin Force tendrils he felt emanating from the woman. She turned back towards him, a barely noticeable look of confusion on her face. Then the bald-headed Captain tapped her on the shoulder, and her attention was disrupted. She's only a weak telepath, Dellen thought. Nothing like a Jedi. The Jedi Master reached out with the Force again, this time setting up, in essence, a Force shield around Captain Avin. As he did so, he noticed that C'baoth stirred in his seat. He's probably noticed my handiwork, he quietly thought. Well, I don't think he'll give it away. "So, you are from a galaxy over fourteen billion light-years away, and represent a Galactic Republic..." Picard's voice trailed off as he considered the possibilities. "What's so strange about that?" An air of silence fell across the conference room, and all the heads at thetable turned towards the person who had spoken out of turn - Master Jarus. Captain Picard and Troi exchanged nervous glances, while Jarus just stared at them. "What is strange is... everything." Commander Riker looked up from the table, as if he was playing poker - since diplomacy to him was like a big game of poker, you just had to know when to stop bluffing and show your hand. "You already know that your own ship is faster than our fastest, and you claim that it even isn't the fastest ship you have." He glanced at a PADD. "You probably already know that Voyager, on the other side of this galaxy, would take over seventy years to get back. And yet you make the same trip in only two weeks." Avin looked up, moderately surprised. "Yes... that's correct." Riker continued. "Well, if your ships are that fast, I can see the concept of a workable Galactic government. But the entire concept still seems foreign to us." Earth Spacedock, Two Months Later "This, Captain, is the USS Dauntless, NX-72826. Only a few ships have been named the Dauntless; the first was one of the old Daedalus-class explorers. Every Dauntless has been a testbed of new technology." Admiral Jellico spoke with pride about the new ship as he waved his arm across the internal viewport in Spacedock. "It is the second ship of the Yeager class, and is comprised of an Intrepid primary hull with a Peregrine-like secondary. Four hundred and two meters in length, it completely outguns Voyager, due to its six Type XIII phasers and large magazines of quantum torpedoes. Standard warp cruising speed is a fast Warp 7, but the maximum speed is lower than Voyager's at Warp 9. The ablative armor is heavier, and above all..." His voice sank to a whisper. "It carries not one, but two cloaking devices." Captain Janeway turned from the admiral to gaze at the large but still sleek ship. "You... You named her because of the Dauntless we encountered in the Delta Quadrant, didn't you." He nodded. "Precisely. It is our first ship to use the Quantum Slipstream drive technology that you brought from the Delta Quadrant. The first Slipstream run is scheduled for later next month." "But..." Her voice faltered. "Why did you bring me here?" Admiral Jellico turned to the Captain. "This will be your new command. You are the only Captain in Starfleet who has experience with the drive system." The Captain looked longingly at the new ship. "But what about the crew? Is my old crew coming with me?" He turned back to her, a smile on his face. "Certainly. Lieutenant Paris has been pardoned for working with the Maquis, and so have Captain Chakotay-" "He's a Captain now?" Kathryn cut him off, her surprise showing. "Yes. I am giving him your former command, the USS Voyager. However, as I was saying, Lieutenant Torres was also pardoned, due to her exemplary conduct under your command. But..." The admiral looked at the starship. "Neelix." "What about him?" "He has requested to attend a Parisian school of culinary arts for the next four years." She laughed. "Let him. He could use the help with his cooking." "I take it that he is the one crew member you don't mind losing?" he inquired. "You've never had to eat his food." The admiral's eyebrows raised. "I take it that's a bad thing. Well, if you would, shall we go take a look at the new ship?" "Of course." Chapter 14 USS Enterprise Captain Picard was quite tired after the continual talks with the Republic diplomats. Actually, talks was not the right word; they were wondering if there would be any way for them to get back to their own galaxy. "Unfortunately, no," he had told them. "We simply don't have the necessary equipment to create a wormhole, especially one covering those distances." They didn't seem to have any evil intentions as far as he was concerned. Actually, as he thought back, they had any number of chances to inflict damage... but they didn't. Although he found Captain Janeway's recounts of the ease with which they destroyed that Borg cube disturbing. He silently padded along the corridor to his room, and finally came to the door. It was locked. "Computer, why is my door locked?" he demanded. The voice that came back was neither that of the computer, or any of his crew. "Oh, what a rhetorical question. Let's see... perhaps you left your keys inside again? Oh, I forgot you don't use keys now. Everything is run by this nice, overworked computer." It didn't take Picard long to figure out what was happening. "Q..." he growled. "Ah, I was wondering how long it would take you to figure out who it was. I suppose you need me to perform the menial task of opening your door for you. Very well, then," the omniscient being said with a sigh. The door clicked open, and Picard stepped into his room to see Q sitting at his study table at the other end, studying a book. As the Captain entered, Q took off his spectacles, placing them aside to look at Picard. "I do say, you seem quite unhappy. Perhaps it has to do with the requests from your visitors?" "Get to the point, Q." "Oh yes, you haven't changed one bit. Still just as impatient. Actually, I thought it was due time to pay you a visit." "And put me on trial again?" Picard demanded. "No, no, nothing like that. I just came to give you some good, old-fashioned advice." "Which I need because..." Q sniffed. "Oh, the skeptic. Mon Capitaine, you don't think that any rational omniscient being would just be playing around with you, do you? Of course not." "What are you trying to tell me?" "That you should not throw away advice freely offered you." Picard raised his hand to speak in protest. "But you haven't given me any advice!" The being gave a resigned sigh. "Well, if you want the advice, then you'd better be prepared for it." He swept his arm, and suddenly Picard found himself standing on the bridge of a damaged starship. Lighting panels were out, and a thick smoke filled the air. Picard coughed. Q, standing beside him (and not in the least bit affected by the smoke), spoke up. "This could be the fate of the Federation... depending on how you, and your comrades, react." The viewscreen flickered to life, showing a planet below which was in turmoil, apparently shattered. Lava flowed freely across the surface in multi-kilometer floods; great gaping canyons criscrossed areas of it; and in the center, there was a great crater, as if something huge had smashed into the planet. "Care to guess which planet that is, mon Capitaine?" Picard stared blankly at the viewscreen. "I..." He blinked as a burnt-out... vaguely familiar... structure slowly moved past the view. It suddenly clicked - the structure was Spacedock. But his tongue refused to cooperate. "E... Ear... Earth?" He stammered. "Correct. Maybe you're expecting brownie points for that? No? Well anyway, this is indeed Earth." The Captain stared in shock at the grim sight. "What could do such a thing?" Q shrugged. "Oh, plenty of things. I could do it myself if I felt so inclined. But this is another mystery you have to figure out yourself. After all, mon Capitaine, the story is still being written; how the ending turns out depends on what you do." As Q spoke, his voice began fading. With a flash of recognition, Picard found himself back in his ready room, everything still the way it had been before... including a pair of spectacles lying on the table. *** In a seemingly endless field on the planet of Dantooine, two combatants sparred in a lethal duel. One was a red-headed woman, who fought desperately against the strong opponent with her lone arm. The other opponent was a horrid-looking humanoid form, a Yuuzhan Vong warrior - who was slowly pressing on. The Vong spun his amphistaff around, throwing most of his weight into the blow. The human, by the name of Tenel Ka, reacted by bringing her lightsabre up to block it. But she lacked the strength necessary to deflect it, as she could only hold it with a single arm. In a cruel twist of fate, her grip loosened under the strain, releasing the rancor-grip lightsabre. The Vong continued to press on, and so the amphistaff drove the brilliant silver blade into her arm, with the result of it being sliced it off in not just one place, but two. She let out a resounding cry of pain as she seemed to watch history repeat itself in slow motion. The two pieces of her right arm dropped to the ground, while her lightsabre went flying on its own trajectory. But as she stared in shock, the Vong swung his amphistaff around again as a whip. The monster struck her lizard-hide armor, knocking the now-unbalanced girl backward into the grasses of Dantooine. She dashed her head against a stone, and knew no more. Jacen heard, or rather felt, his close friend's call of distress across the battlefield. A piercing cry through the Force, one that he had only felt once before... a cry of pain, pain of which he had been the cause. His anger flared at the memory, and all thoughts of staying calm went out of his mind. His rage let loose, and he began battering the somewhat startled Vong warrior he was facing with a flurry of lightsabre blows, moving with a fluid, blinding speed. The warrior tried to cope with the battering, but was slowly driven back. Gradually its guard fell, allowing Jacen to get several thrusts in. They were repulsed by the vondoon crab armor, but nontheless the armor was weakened. Finally, Jacen drove his lightsabre again into the same place, and the blade pierced the armor. The Vong fell to the ground, slowly dying from the massive internal bleeding. Jacen charged toward Tenel Ka's location, his rage nigh unbridled. The other alien, standing over her in triumph, was unprepared for the sudden onslaught from a new direction. It rose in challenge, but Jacen was furious. Not even bothering to come into close combat with the fearsome warrior, the Jedi used the Force to literally tear the ground out from beneath the alien, which tried unsuccessfully to retain its balance. Taking advantage of the awkward position of his opponent, Jacen attacked with his lightsabre. The Vong would have none of it. He somersaulted backwards, drawing his amphistaff close to gain speed. At the last moment, he extended it again, using his own momentum to regain his stance. Already, Jacen was there, lightsabre at the ready. There was barely a second for the alien warrior to prepare before emerald lightsabre slammed into living amphistaff. The sheer force of the clash drove the lightsabre hard into the amphistaff, before it bounced back and flew out of Jacen's grip. But the damage had already been done. The amphistaff began to convulse, striking the Vong warrior several times before he flung it at the disarmed Jedi. Jacen, drawing on the Force, anticipated the move bare microseconds before it happened, and launched in a somersault over the alien's head. As he vaulted over, the lightsabre flew back to his hand. Igniting the brilliant blade in midair, he quickly arced it down, scoring the crab which protected the warrior's skull. He landed on the other side of the Vong, and used his momentum to roll away from the alien and erect himself. This time, though, the alien warrior was not going to be taken by surprise. He swung with a club, striking at the Jedi's momentarily unprotected ribcage. Jacen grunted as his wind was knocked out of him, and he felt several ribs crack under the blow. He charged at the Vong again, but this time the alien rolled out of the way, leaving the human to correct himself. Jacen instinctively used the Force to flip himself again, narrowly missing Tenel Ka but still slicing into the ground... and her discarded lightsabre which was laying on it. He plucked himself out of the tall grass, managing to cut his cheek open on a strand of the aforementioned vegetation in the process. Jacen took a look around; it seemed that the Vong had decided to retreat. He shrugged, and walked over to where his friend was. Cursing at himself for letting himself be separated from Tenel Ka, he shut his sabre down and bent over her, feeling for a pulse. He felt a weak one, and thumbed his commlink on. "Jacen Solo to Republic Command, over." "Republic Command, do you copy?" He turned the squelch down, only to be greeted with a burst of static. So, they were being jammed. With a sigh of resignation, he drew on the Force, and picked up the limp form of Tenel Ka. By the time he had crossed the hundred meters separating him from Tenel Ka's small Hapan transport, the 'Rock Dragon', the strain began to catch up with Jacen. His leg muscles began to cramp, nearly causing him to lose his balance. It was all he could do to steady himself with the Force as he ran and keep a hold on the 55-kilo girl he was carrying. Finally, though, he got to the ship, and climbed up the ramp. He dumped Tenel Ka on a bench, and tore off a strip of his robe to serve as a makeshift bandage for her arm. Then he slapped the main hatch control, and ran to the cockpit. All Jacen could hope for, as he fired up the transport's systems, was that the battle in space was faring better than the battle on the ground. *** Things do not always go as planned. Captain Marole Dunack of the Republic-class StarDestroyer S-2938 (which the crew had nicknamed 'Space Debris') had learned that a long time ago. But that knowledge did not help to alleviate the current situation - she was pitted solely against a Vong assault cruiser, waiting for the Republic ground forces to evacuate. It was unfair, she thought, that she was pitted against a cruiser in only a destroyer, albeit a potent one. The Vong warship was over 1,700 meters in length, while her ship was only 1,200 meters and much less massive. And the ship's 20 ion cannon were all but useless against the Vong, since they didn't rely on electronics. That, of course, meant that she was only using four-fifths of her ship's total firepower. Plus, the Vong ship had a large supply of coralskippers, as she had found out in the first few minutes of combat. Her ship's lone squadron of outdated Y-wings had been cut to pieces by the onslaught of coralskippers, leaving her only a few heavy assault craft, which she dared not risk. Coolly, yet with a sharp edge from the strain, she turned towards the conn and spoke. "Report." "The cruiser and its starfighters have focused their attention on the planet. All of our excess energy is being diverted to recharging the shields," a lieutenant calmly read off. The ability to stay cool during combat was one thing that the Captain liked in her crew. However, that wasn't of much use now. "Have we gotten any response from the ground commander?" She asked. "Negative." came the prompt reply. *** Jacen jinked to one side as he sensed several plasma bolts whiz by the small transport. He calmly reached down to the console, and powered up the ship's sole quad laser- cannon. He pulled into a sharp turn, taxing the ship's inertial dampers to their max. There was a slight thump in the back of the ship; he forgot that he'd not secured Tenel Ka, but could only hope that a few bruises and a lost arm were the worst of her injuries. An alarm flashed red as the ship's shields took a direct hit from the plasma blasts flying around it. Although the 'Rock Dragon' was fast, it wasn't fast enough to outrun the quick coralskippers. There was only one thing he could do about them. He killed the repulsors, and transferred all the power he could to the engines, then pulled into a sheer climb to escape the atmosphere. The transport surged forward in a display of raw power, its two ion engines pushed past their redlines. But finally, when he had cleared the upper atmosphere and the gravity well had lessened, he pulled back on the hyperdrive controls. There was another brief lurch, and the ship surged forward with the familiar flicker of pseudomotion, leaving the Vong coralskippers in its dust. Chapter 15 Tenel Ka returned to awareness with the knowledge that she was no longer on Dantooine, Yavin IV, or even the 'Rock Dragon' for that matter. In the pit of her stomach she felt a leaden certainty, that she knew perfectly well where she was. Slowly, so as not to disturb anything, she lifted her head off the pillow it was laying on, and tried to scan the surroundings. Around her was a curtain of sorts, in a bland, nondescript shade of pastel. Immediately to her left was a brown, chunky form that she tentatively identified as a 2-1C series medical droid. After looking at the droid for a period of time, she ascertained that it had put itself into standby mode. Then the Dathomirian turned her head over, to look at the other side of the room. This time, it gave her a better idea of where she was. A frame of expertly carved synthwood rimmed what she identified as a viewport, with stars outside slowly rotating in regard to the ship. Above the viewport was an even more telling sign - the Hapan Royal insignia. She let out a barely noticeable sigh. The last time she'd been in a similar place, a little over five years before, was after she had lost her left arm in a sparring match with her close friend, Jacen Solo. She certainly didn't like to remember that incident. Trying to piece together what happened, Tenel delved into her memories, attempting to find out what it was she last remembered. It hit her like a stampeding herd of banthas. History has a strange way of repeating itself - but she'd never expected it to repeat so soon. She had lost her right arm in the fight on Dantooine... and now there was that strange tingling feeling in both of her arms. Add to that the fact that she was aboard a Hapan starship... there was only one thing she could do. She tried to move her arms and was not terribly surprised when, instead of just having two arm stumps wiggle, she very nearly hit herself in the head. The commotion brought the med-droid out of standby, and he immediately became concerned. 'Just like a droid,' she thought with amusement. "Miss, please do not exert yourself. You have just been taken out of a bacta tank, which you were immersed in for the past two weeks." That statement alone was enough to almost make her jump out of the bed. Instead, though, she calmed herself down and asked the droid. "How... long?" "Two weeks. You had massive external injuries, and we had to give you two prosthetic arms." "Who ordered the arms?" Tenel asked. The droid paused. "I do not know." She flopped back in the bed, accepting defeat. The question was really unnecessary, as the only person who would have had the gall to order prosthetic arms for her - again - was her Hapan royal grandmother, Ta'a Chume. *** "Checking fleet status, sir. Dreadnought Stormcrow reports ready. Dreadnought Summoner reports ready. Dreadnought Striker reports ready. Strike Cruiser Hellbringer reports ready. Nebulon-B Frigate Coret reports ready. Nebulon-B Frigate Overlord reports ready. Quasar Fire-class Bulk Cruiser Firemoth reports ready. Fleet Tender Niven reports ready. Marauder-class Corvette Mazon reports ready. Marauder-class Corvette Grinder reports ready. Corellian Corvette Cybrosis-II reports ready. Corellian Corvette Kitfox reports ready. Corellian Gunship Malevolance reports ready. All ships ready, Sir." From his command post on the bridge, Captain Ollic watched in wonder as Nali, the Commodore's human replica droid, read off the list precisely and smoothly. She was working at the communications post, after having replaced a lieutenant commander. At first, the commander had objected to being forced to leave his post, but when he was offered the command of the newly-acquired Hellbringer... well, he put those misgivings aside eagerly. Commodore Mantrel had figured that it would be less obtrusive having his bodyguard at a post, instead of just standing idly on the bridge, and Captain Ollic had to agree; it was pretty unusual to have civilians simply standing around the bridge, especially during combat. It certainly helped that Nali excelled at whatever she tried. And at Comm-Scan in particular, Nali excelled. She could identify any ships that turned up in a matter of microseconds, beating their best human operators by nearly a minute on the identification time. 'Perhaps,' Ollic thought, 'buying her was not as much of a mistake as I first believed.' "Hyperspace jump plotted?" He inquired of the helmsman. "Affirmative." the officer promptly replied. Ollic strode purposefully over to the comm, and held down the transmit switch. "All ships, prepare to jump on my mark." There was a beat before the order came. "Mark." He watched as the ships of the small fleet almost impossibly accelerated to an appreciable fraction of lightspeed, then vanished into hyperspace. Finally, his own Star Destroyer made the jump, with the familiar elongation of the stars. He stifled a yawn and sat down in the Captain's chair, which he almost never used during a battle. How strange to think that the last battle he had been in was nearly a year ago, when some stupid warlord had decided that he wanted this Star Destroyer for his own. Twenty-five years ago, the striking arm of the Imperial Navy - the Imperial Starfleet - alone numbered twenty-five thousand Star Destroyers, plus cruisers, battleships, command ships, and support craft. Ten years ago, there had been two hundred Star Destroyers in the entire Imperial Navy, and one year ago, there had only been five dozen - with no more being produced, as Kuat Drive Yards was now under the control of the Republic. Five dozen was hardly what one could call a fleet. Of course, that was not counting the multiple hundred smaller support craft, like Strike Cruisers, Katana-class Dreadnoughts, Carracks, Nebulon-B frigates, and others. And there were only a couple of command ships, neither of which really classing as more than a glorified Destroyer. In the glory days of the Empire, even the lowliest Commodore or Admiral commanded several dozen Star Destroyers. Now, it took a 'High Supreme Grand Admiral' to command the same number. 'How things have changed,' he thought. "The warlords are getting old, and incompetent as well. No, stupid is more like it.' He remembered the mess with the Hand of Thrawn, as it had been later found out. Yet at that same time, he had been under one of Thrawn's peers; Mantrel. Back when Thrawn had encountered the Republic - at which time Ollic hadn't even been born - Mantrel had been with him. As a result of that long experience, the alien quickly saw through the charade put up by Moff Disra and Major Tierce. That was the point at which a disgusted Mantrel separated from the mainstream Imperial Remnant, to build his own force. The thought came to the Captain with shock, although he'd known the fact for a while. The Commodore was over a hundred years old! Yet, for his age, he hardly looked thirty - by human standards, at least. From what Ollic had gleaned in conversation with the Commodore, Thrawn had been Mantrel's elder by at least several dozen years, and possibly more. *** Tenel Ka lifted one of her prosthetic arms up, and took a long look at it. There didn't seem to be any difference, from the outside at least. The doctors must have used the holographic image of her right arm, the image they'd taken almost six years ago. She focused with the Force, amplifying and focusing her hearing on the arm. The barely-noticeable whirrs and clicks of the servo and stepper motors, turning the miniature pistons and gears inside the arm, she could hear clearly. In the sense that her nerves could control the mechanical parts, the arm was the same. She had just unconsciously demonstrated that, as a matter of fact. It made her somewhat curious how the doctors and engineers managed to deal with the fact that her arm had been sliced off halfway down the bone, chopping her bicep muscle in half. She tried using the Force again, this time to see where the arm ended. Tenel Ka sensed the blood flowing, from her heart into her arteries, and upwards... They had cut off some more of her arm, nearly to the shoulder. In fact, they had replaced the joint for the shoulder as well, to fix the problem with the muscles. Her entire right arm was mechanical. Kriff. Next, she tried the same process with her left arm, the one which had been sliced off several years before in the fateful sparring match with Jacen. On that one, she was lucky. She remembered that her arm had been sliced off just millimeters above the elbow, leaving most of the muscle intact. Thank goodness for that! Some of the flesh of the arm had regrown in the bacta tank, and so they just attached the new mechanical to the end of her arm. She let out another sigh. Two bio-mechanical arms, both firmly in place. It was pointless to try and have them removed, since that would just result in unnecessary trauma to her body. 'Besides,' she thought, 'I had enough trouble with just one arm. How hard would it be if I had no arms?' The Dathomirian quickly checked her body. It seemed to be intact, with all of the wounds she'd received on Dantooine healed. She flipped one leg off the bed, much to the consternation of the 2-1C droid. It jabbered at her, telling her not to harm herself, but she just ignored it, and proceeded to get her lizard-hide armor. She almost couldn't believe how mangled it was. Deep gashes in the tough hide crisscrossed the back, and the front was nearly slashed to ribbons. 'Thank goodness I had that on. If I hadn't...' she stopped the thought - it was too hideous to think about. Her attention went back to the armor, and as she looked at it, she realized that there was no way she could possibly put it on. Instead, she decided the robe would just have to do for the moment. Tenel Ka pulled back the curtain to step into the corridor, and practically ran into Jacen. "Jacen!" she exclaimed, surprised. However, she quickly calmed down. "What are you doing here?" He looked at her face, trying to figure out what she meant. "Sticking close to you. What else?" he said, half jokingly. She wasn't laughing. "Ah. I see. So you brought me here?" Jacen's voice dropped lower. "Yes," he nearly whispered. "I had no choice. The Vong took Dantooine, and all but destroyed the garrison there - but that isn't the worst of it. While you were in the bacta tank, they took several dozen other planets. The Republic is weakening, Tenel Ka. The politicians have been spreading the Fleet throughout the worlds they represent, and not paying any attention to strategy. They've hamstrung most of the competent commanders, like Admiral Ackbar and General A'baht, by placing them on the other side of the galaxy." "So that's why you brought me to the Hapes Cluster." Seeing his nod, her face became grave. "Tell me, how far have the Vong advanced?" He paused. "I'm not quite sure. I heard a week ago that the Braxant Sector's been overrun - remember, where some of the Imperial Remnant is? - and I think Admiral Pellaeon's allied with the Republic. Other than that, I really have no idea." "I see." she said bluntly. "So what do we do?" Jacen sighed, and hung his shoulders. "I don't know. The Jedi Academy would seem like a good place to go, but last I heard, Uncle Luke doesn't want anybody heading in or out of the system if they don't have to." "A wise decision," she observed. "It's too easy to track traffic in or out of a system." "So I figured. I guess we just stay here for now." "That would seem reasonable, if this was not a Hapan royal starship." "You have something against your own people?" he exclaimed, partially shocked. Tenel Ka held up both arms for Jacen to see. "This." She flipped an access cover on one of the arms back, revealing the gleaming mechanical rods inside. "They did this to me, without my permission." "What's so bad about a prosthetic-" She was getting slightly annoyed, and it showed in her voice. "It is not the arms as much as the fact that they did this without my permission. I may have an aversion to things that could weaken me, such as the use of machines, but I can see that trying to cope in life without any arms is folly." She took the opportunity to shut the access cover, and continued talking. "Jacen, dear friend, I try to use my own wits and body to handle a task before I ask for assistance. Now I see that engaging in battle with a single arm against the Vong warrior on Dantooine was not one of my smarter ideas. However, I've learned from it. It is sometimes better to be over-prepared than under- prepared." Jacen's eyes sank. "Yes, I should have known. It was my fault, not sticking by you..." She spoke quickly in a consoling tone. "That was not your fault, Jacen. Had you come to help me before, the other warrior may have killed you. I may have lost an arm, but that pales to nothing in comparison to you losing your life." He looked up, gritting his teeth, but chose to remain silent. Tenel Ka noticed his silence. "You certainly have changed, Jacen." she noted with a smile on her normally mirthless face. "If I remember correctly, just six years ago at the Academy you would have grinned, then said, 'Great! Does that mean that you're ready? Oh, have I told you this joke yet...'" The other Jedi returned the smile at the memory. "Do you want to hear a joke?" he inquired, putting the emphasis on the 'do.' "It may be a bit inappropriate in this situation, but I don't see a little humor hurting anything. Go ahead." He paused to think, then finally spoke after a few seconds. "What makes a Vo... never mind." He cut himself off, not wanting to remind her of the recent battle. She finally noticed his reluctance, and softly asked him. "Jacen, what's the matter?" Jacen tried to speak, but he had some problems rolling the words off his tongue at first. "I... I nearly slipped into the Dark Side. I was so angry - I... I thought you had been... been killed." He paused to catch his breath, not realizing how heavy his breathing had become. "If you had been killed, there wouldn't have been anything preventing me from crossing that line." *** "Bearing?" Captain Ollic's voice carried across the bridge of the Magistrate. Everybody on the bridge was tense from the situation, as Commodore Mantrel seemed to think that this lump of rock was worth investigating. Normally, it wouldn't have been this tense, but the fact that this particular asteroid lay deep inside Vong-controlled space certainly didn't make anyone feel good. "Bearing is 090 mark 127. We are in orbit of the asteroid." Replied the Sensor chief. "Any result on the scans yet?" "Negative. Passive sensors do not detect anything." The Captain glanced at the displays. "Begin active scanning. Let's map this piece of rock." He kept the 'If there's anything useful about it, that is' part to himself. "Affirmative, sir." Ollic turned and strode across the bridge, not bothering to look out the bridge viewports. As the Star Destroyer's bridge was turned towards the asteroid, all that could be seen was the dull, reddish asteroid. Finally, Nali spoke up. "Artificial form on the horizon of the asteroid, range sixteen thousand kilometers from current position. There is no indication of current activity in the area." Ollic was wondering what to do, when the Commodore stepped forward. "Order two TIE/Drones to move in for a closer look. They are to break off at first sign of danger." "Affirmative, sir. TIE/Drones launching." As the drones moved forward, Mantrel did not speak, knowing that the situation was critical. "Range two hundred kilometers and closing." Ollic was sure he heard the Commodore mutter to himself, "Any moment now..." "Range one hundred kilometers and closing." "Range fifty meters and closing." Finally, Mantrel spoke up. "Activate jamming." "Jamming activated, sir." Nali barely had time to pause before her console lit up like the night side of Coruscant. "Attempted target locks on T/D Alpha and Beta. They are breaking off." Now, Mantrel violated his own orders. "Abort break- off. Move them in closer." The droid didn't question his seemingly contradictory order. "Yes, sir. Range twenty meters and closing. T/D Beta destroyed. T/D Alpha beginning evasive maneuvers. Target is firing turbolasers at close range... There has been a massive power surge in the target. Target has stopped firing. Should T/D Alpha proceed?" His response was succinct. "No." Ollic was wondering what the heck Mantrel was trying to do, when it finally dawned on him. He turned to Mantrel. "This station's been here for over thirty years without any maintenance. By jamming the automated targeting computers, you caused them to go into automatic defensive firing mode, and that..." Mantrel finished for him. "That caused the old, dried-out capacitor banks to collapse, rendering the main defense systems useless... for the cost of only one TIE/Drone." "Ingenious." The Commodore shook his head. "The fact that turbolaser capacitors dry out with time isn't new. Maintenance crews have known that for years. I'm only applying that knowledge to combat, with the knowledge of what happened in Grand Admiral Thrawn's last battle, over the remainder of the Katana Fleet. But enough of this. Time is of the essence." Ollic replied without realizing it. "Yes, sir." "Have the Stormcrow, Summoner, and Striker bring their ion cannons to full readiness, and order them to hold flank position, they are to be designated Group Scrambler. Then move us in, slow and easy, let's not set off any more alarms." Mantrel turned from Nali to the Captain, and quietly spoke. "If I'm correct, that little docking bay should be large enough to hold this entire task force." The Captain's jaw briefly dropped, but he shut it quickly. "Yes, sir." *** "Standby, Group Scrambler." Nali waited until the precise interval, then delivered the order in her perfectly modulated voice. "Fire." A dozen multi-colored ion cannon bolts lanced out from the Star Destroyer and three accompanying Dreadnoughts, striking precisely on the external docking structure. Lightning danced across the metallic surfaces, shorting electrical pathways and damaging delicate equipment, such as the exposed turbolaser turret power supplies. The effect was perfect. All of the remaining turbolaser turrets on the asteroid, which had been blasting away at the lead Star Destroyer, fell silent, their data or power linkages severed. The Star Destroyer and its escorts cruised, almost inexorably, towards the asteroid. As the docking bay loomed closer, klaxons blared all over the four warships. Crews scrambled for the light turbolasers, taking up their posts in the possibility that anything else happened. Yet it appeared that the ion cannons had done their job. Nothing happened on the asteroid, save for some electrical power surges still coursing through the power grid. Captain Ollic watched nervously as the Star Destroyer passed - a little bit too closely - by the fifty-meter-wide barrels of several heavy turbolaser cannons. As soon as the ship was through the entrance, he breathed a sigh of relief. "Prepare to dock. Have the stormtrooper squads make ready for a possible hostile boarding." Mantrel thought for a second, the continued. "Order every stormtrooper squad to have at least one hand-held ion cannon with them, as well as some E-web heavy blasters." "Yes, sir." the droid acknowledged unquestioningly. Ollic, however, was full of questions. "Sir? Why the ion cannons?" The Commodore turned towards him. "Do you think the Emperor would place a Dark Jedi on a remote asteroid, without food and such things to sustain him?" The Captain paused to think. "No, sir. That would not seem right." Mantrel continued. "I am not one to second-guess the Emperor, but if I had to defend an asteroid like this one, I would use droids. They are cheap, strong, and do not question orders." Ollic nodded. "What kind are we expecting?" The Chiss thought for a second. "It could be anything from old, semi-autonomous battle-droids to X-1 war droids." The Captain shuddered at the mention of the high- security prototype droids. "X-1s could cut through our stormtrooper squads in seconds." "And that, Captain, is the reason for the ion cannons. X-1s are expensive, and if we can repair and re- use them, it would benefit us greatly." "Yes, sir." Chapter 16 San Francisco, Earth Captain Avin strolled down Market Street, mere blocks from Starfleet Headquarters. He'd been getting tired of the cramped environs of the Bulk Cruiser, and so had decided to have a look at the blue-green planet below. As he walked along, he drank in the view of some of the quaint-looking shops littered throughout the city. He was pretty much alone, except for the gleaming bronze protocol droid stiffly walking alongside him. Somewhere in the city was one of the Jedi Masters; he didn't worry too much. A Jedi could take care of himself easily. However, the lack of security astounded him. He hadn't seen any clearly labelled security forces yet; if he was on Coruscant, he'd likely have been frisked a few times already. And yet here he was, walking down the street in broad daylight, carrying a small holdout blaster inside his shirt in case of an emergency. Several children, probably around ten years of age, turned around to gawk at the gleaming droid. He had brought the droid with him simply because only Starfleet personnel carried the Universal Translators, and not civilians. He turned into the shop, smiling at the children as he walked by. They smiled back at him, but clearly they were more intrigued by the droid. Avin couldn't blame them; if you lived on a relatively primitive planet such as this one, something mundane like a protocol droid was a wondrous creation. In fact, he'd felt the same way when he saw his first starship, as a child almost thirty-five years ago - 'no,' he corrected himself, 'one hundred and five years ago.' The droid jabbered in his ear, telling him that the shop he was currently in was an antique shop, specializing in rare objects from the eighteenth century of Earth. Avin subconsciously listened, but his attention was focused on a large, dark brown object that sat inside a transparent protective case. The shop's proprietor walked towards him, smiling at his appreciation, and explaining the object in his alien tongue. Avin turned to the droid, and motioned for it to begin translating. "Sir, the kindly proprietor tells me that this is a purely mechanical clock dating back to the year 1792. It is one of a kind, handcrafted by an expert 'German' woodcarver of the era." Avin nodded, wondering about the untranslated word the droid had just said. He peered closer at the timepiece, noticing some details he'd not seen before. There was a transparent window in the center - wonder that he'd not noticed it before - and saw a brass pendulum, nearly the same color as the translator droid. Finally, growing tired of it, he motioned again to the droid, and walked out of the shop. From the corner of his eye, he saw the shop's proprietor waving at him, apparently hoping that he would come back. 'Some chance I will,' he thought to himself. 'Businessmen... they'll always be the same.' Another building caught his eye. It was a fairly impressive, four-story monolith of some material he couldn't identify. He turned to the droid, about to ask him what it was... only to find that the translator was in the center of a large group of children on the sidewalk, speaking to them in the strange language - 'English' he had learned it was called. Avin was about to shout at the droid, when he remembered that he couldn't remember its model number. 'What the heck,' he thought, and shouted anyway. "Hey! Translator! Get your shiny butt over here!" The droid ignored him, and he waded through the crowd of children, drawing attention away from the droid as the kids stopped to look at the newcomer in his strange uniform. Finally, he tapped the inattentive android on the shoulder. It hastily turned around, and Avin whispered loudly into its audio receptor. "We have to go!" "Certainly, sir. I was just-" He cut the droid off. "You're supposed to be accompanying me, not telling stories to children we don't even know." "My apologies, sir." "Tell the children you have to leave, and let's go!" "At once, sir." The droid turned around, and explained. When he did, however, most of the children got dejected looks on their faces, and sadly walked off. Some, however, stayed in place, hoping for some more from the strange gleaming robot. Avin shooed the remaining kids away, and dragged the droid with him. Finally, he asked the droid his question, pointing at the building. The droid paused to read from the signs and access his internal database, which was incidentally uploaded from a tour pamphlet. "That, sir, is the San Francisco Central Library. It has a complete index of electronic copies of many old documents, and has one of the most complete collections of Shakespeare on this planet." His brain clicked, remembering the statement made by Captain Picard two weeks previously. Avin motioned to the droid. "Sounds good. Let's go." *** ISD Magistrate Captain Ollic watched as the birdlike shapes of two Marauder-class Corvettes cruised into the asteroid's gigantic hangar to dock. They had been 'liberated' from the Corporate Sector Authority about three years ago; he remembered the incident clearly. It had started with the need to feed the large crew of the Star Destroyer - a perfectly rational need. However, there was one slight hitch - they were temporarily unable to pay for the large shipments of foodstock. Then, seemingly out of the blue, the Commodore decided to head over to the Corporate Sector. 'The Corporate Sector,' Ollic thought with derision. It was a place where, some thousands of years before, several corporations from the Core Worlds had decided to move in. They had colonized the unpopulated worlds of that sector, remaining autonomous of the Old Republic. That same status quo remained under the Empire, and lately the New Republic - as long as the Corporate Sector Authority maintained peace within their sector, and didn't decide to overstep their bounds, the galactic government couldn't care less. Thus it was that the Commodore's move was shocking for the Authority. Using intelligence data that Ollic wasn't sure he wanted to know the source of, Mantrel had located some hyperspace transit points used by the drone cargo freighters. The procedure, which the Captain had done several times, was fairly simple. They would wait by the transit points, and as soon as a unmanned bulk freighter dropped out of hyperspace, they would jam all the transmissions, tractor it into the hangar bay, relieve it of about half its cargo, wipe the logs, and send it back on its merry way. Each time, a different transit point was chosen; each time, only half of the cargo was taken. The Captain knew it was wrong, stealing shipments as they had done, but what else could they do, short of auctioning parts off of their warships to pay? The irony had culminated when Mantrel had ordered a hit-and-fade attack on a small Corporate Sector Authority shipyard. They didn't really damage anything, that was not the idea, but they had managed to slip the two Marauders - still in the final stages of their refitting and with full fighter squadrons to boot - right out from under the collective nose of the Authority. After that last incident, of course, they'd been forced to stay low. The Authority had complained to the New Republic, for all the good it would do them. As a natural result, it had placed the Magistrate on the top of many watch lists, meaning that a permanent base was out of the question. It also didn't help Mantrel's current standing with Admiral Pellaeon, and the rest of the Imperial Remnant for that matter. But it wasn't like it mattered that much. Commodore Mantrel didn't actually control any territory; in the Imperial system, territory was controlled by the Moffs, leaving the military commanders to worry about their fleets. The only problem was that Mantrel was not associated with any of the remaining Moffs - nor did he ever want to be. There had been other concerns, such as the slight problem of crewing the ships in the task force. Normally, the enlisted crew of the Imperial Navy would leave their families at home; but with a bit of foresight from the Commodore, they had been asked to take their families off the planets and to the fleet before he separated. It made Ollic nervous, keeping thousands of families on board the warships, something which was almost never done in the Empire. Even the Rebels, during the height of the Galactic Civil War, hadn't done that. But hopefully, with this large asteroid under the Commodore's control... The footsteps of a lieutenant snapped the Captain out of his thoughts, and turned his mind back to the task at hand. "Captain, we have completed phase one of the boarding. A fifty-meter radius around the LZ has been secured, with only three casualties. Most of the automated defense systems have shut down from neglect, but there still were a few live blaster turrets. The ion cannons took care of them without any problems." The captain heaved a sigh, the result of not getting enough sleep for the past few months - at least since the Vong invasion had begun. "Any sign of droids yet?" he asked, remembering the Commodore's comments. "No sir, unless you count the Commodore's bodyguard." the lieutenant added as a humorous touch. Ollic was not amused. "Very well. The troops are to proceed on schedule." "Yes, sir." The lieutenant saluted, and marched off the bridge - in Ollic's view, a bit too snappily. Recruits these days... *** Coruscant The deft fingers of Anakin Solo, a brownish-haired teenager at nineteen years of age, flew across the keyboard in front of him. Compared to his older brother, Jacen, and older sister, Jaina, he was the child of his family - although he resented being referred to as that by his aging parents. At the moment, he was sitting at a computer terminal in his cramped quarters on Coruscant, going over a particular datachip for the fifteenth time in two months. The datachip had been brought to his parents by a smuggler and someone else - Anakin couldn't remember their names. But apparently they'd gone to great lengths to get the chip. He'd already made two backup copies of the chip, in case he did something wrong. The bulk of the data on it was a holo-recording from a Captain Avin; his parents had already seen it. But the message was only partially interesting to him - what interested him more was the coordinates. He knew perfectly well where the point described was; what he was curious about was what to do with the information. Anakin sat back and stretched. It was so frustrating, having the data, and yet not being able to do anything with it. Rather like the Vong, in his opinion, since the Republic knew they were there, but couldn't really do much to stop them. As a matter of fact, that was precisely the reason he was going to be leaving for the Corellian system - or more specifically, Centerpoint Station - in approximately a week. 'Centerpoint Station.' The thought carried a lot of weight, and it seemed that there was something to it. 'Of course,' he thought. 'When I was on Drall...' Anakin stopped to think about it. When he had last been on Drall, working the ancient planetary repulsor in a desperate attempt to shut down the Starbuster plot, he had been nine years old. It had seemed like a lifetime ago to him. He slowly reached for his bag of datachips, located one which had some brief information on Centerpoint, and inserted it into the terminal's chip reader. Information rapidly scrolled down the screen, but Anakin ignored it for the moment. Finally, he came to the precise point he wanted, and stopped to read the information. That, along with what he had found out while on Drall, fit into place perfectly with the message. Anakin got up, pocketing the datachips. He would be leaving early for the massive station. *** In the San Francisco Central Library, Captain Avin inspected a terminal, which didn't look like any he had ever seen before. Actually, he thought, it did look like something he had seen before - a terminal designed for the visually impaired. He nearly snorted at the idea. The translator droid stiffly bent down next to him. "Sir, if you wish to search for Shakespeare, you press" it reached over to a glowing purple marker. "this button. It is a touch-screen display." Avin tried, unsuccessfully, to hide his annoyance - the droid was right, and he knew it, but didn't like to admit it. "Yes, yes, I was getting to that. Just let me get used to this, OK?" He snapped, brushing the droids arm away. "Certainly, esteemed sir." The droid's reply was respectful, if not overly prissy. Avin ignored him, still trying to make sense of the strange symbols displayed on the screen. Finally, his search having found something, he turned back to the protocol droid. "What is it saying?" He asked pointing at the screen. "It is saying sir, that there are twelve copies of 'The Globe Illustrated: Shakespeare, The Complete Annotated Works' available at this branch." Avin shook his head. "That isn't what I wanted to know. Who was Shakespeare?" The droid peered at the screen. "That information is contained in the book sir." The Captain stood up, and looked around. "So, then, where is it?" "Follow me, please." said the droid almost eagerly and set off into the libraries stacks. Captain Avin grudgingly followed the droid across the library, where it had already removed a PADD and began verbal translation of the data contained therein. "The Globe Illustrated Shakespeare: The Complete Works, Annotated. Edited by Howard Staunton, with Annotations and Commentary by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Samuel Johnson, and Others. Illustrations by Sir John Gilbert and Ray Abel. Engravings by-" An impatient Captain cut the rambling droid off. "I don't care about the history of the book. I want the history of Shakespeare." It scanned the PADD. "Certainly sir." There was a long pause as the droid forwarded, then stopped. "Of the personal history of Shakespeare, and of the usages of theatres formerly in relation to dramatic productions, so little is now known..." Avin sighed, and sat down at a nearby table. This could take a long time... Chapter 17 She had quickly found out that a new starship was not always what it seemed to be. Aboard the brand-new USS Dauntless, Captain Kathryn Janeway surveyed the bridge, noting the smell of ozone caused by an accidental plasma conduit rupture in the ready room - _the ready room, of all places_. Janeway had just realized that her supposed 'promotion' to the Dauntless wasn't exactly a promotion. Sure, she was on a new ship. Admittedly, it had a nice new drive system, apparently similar to that used by the Republic people. Certainly, it was armed more formidably than her former command, Voyager. And fine, so it carried a couple of experimental cloaking devices. But as she slowly sipped a steaming cup of fresh South American coffee, just loaded aboard the previous day, she knew that Admiral Jellico was, in reality, demoting her. She'd looked through the Starfleet database, and noticed that the Yeager-class was a chop-job of a ship, put together for the war against the Dominion as a disposable, heavily-armed, high-speed light cruiser. There were certainly plenty of inconsistencies in the new ship, chief amongst them the fact that the primary hull and secondary hull weren't exactly compatible. Her chief engineer, B'Elanna Torres, had been just about driven crazy by the incompatibilities. The secondary hull (in appearance, a scaled up Type-III Peregrine starfighter; in reality, a nightmare of improvised systems, components and structural compromises) had different plasma conduits as compared to the primary hull, which was from an apparently unfinished Intrepid-class, just like Voyager. The Starfleet engineers had done their best job to mate the systems, but that did not guarantee that the system would be free of plasma surges. Of course, there was one other little niggling fact, as the quantum slipstream drive had only been tested once before, on Voyager itself. The results then hadn't been exactly stellar - the starship had threatened to tear itself apart. Hopefully, the more integrated version aboard Dauntless wouldn't have as much of a problem with hull integrity. That still didn't negate the fear that the slipstream run would lead to the destruction of both the ship and its crew. The Admiral's choice of words in describing why she had been picked for command of the Dauntless was supposed to please her ego. However, it didn't appeal to her ego. At least, not after the two weeks since she had taken command of the prototype. Kathryn looked down at her mug, realizing with a start that she'd finished the delicious brew. Getting up to refill her mug, she remembered that the ship was scheduled to make the first of its trial runs in a few minutes. She stopped, and tapped her commbadge. "Lieutenant Torres, this is the Captain. Are we ready to go?" "Yes, Captain. Plasma conduits have been fixed, and everything seems to be in order." Janeway turned to now-Commander Seven of Nine, who was, as usual, at the ship's comm station. "Seven, request departure clearance from Spacedock." "Yes, Captain." She glanced over at the sensor displays. "After one other ship leaves, we are clear to depart." "Well, let me know when we're ready." She turned to the helm, where Paris sat ready. "Lieutenant, ready for one-quarter impulse on my command." Paris hesitated. "Captain... isn't running under impulse prohibited while in Spacedock?" She nodded. "Yes. I was wondering if you would catch that. Manuvering thrusters ready on my command, Mr Paris." The Lieutenant nodded, realising that she'd been testing him, and wondering what it would take for her to trust him again. "Yes, Captain. Thrusters ready on your command." *** San Francisco Central Library Captain Avin winced as the commbadge that Starfleet had given him beeped loudly. Rather awkwardly, he reached up and touched it - after all, he was accustomed to handheld commlinks. "Captain Avin here." "Ah, Captain. I hope I haven't interrupted you. This is Admiral Jellico, in Spacedock." "Did you want something, Admiral?" "Yes. I wanted to know if you could accompany the USS Dauntless on the first of its trial runs." Avin yawned, not really caring if the Starfleet Admiral heard it. "Can't one of your ships do it?" There was a pause on the other end. "We would if it was possible, but none of our ships are fast enough. Only your ship seems capable of keeping up." The Admiral's tone seemed to change to one of embarrassment as he continued. "I realise this is short notice, but the problem only showed up recently as we worked through the checklist for the test and realised we had no chase vessel with the neccessary capabilities." Avin smiled at that, knowing all too well the problems that could arise when a project was rushed through completion, as his own ship had been. So, back to the cramped shipboard life, after only spending a week on the planet. "I suppose that's possible." "Thank you, Captain. We appreciate it." "Same here, Admiral." Avin only wished he meant what he had just said. He turned to the droid, which was still reading off the life of Shakespeare. "Come on, we've got to go." "Certainly, sir. Shall I put back the PADD, or do you wish to borrow it for a period of time?" The droid asked. Avin paused, momentarily startled. "I can borrow it?" "Yes, sir." The captain thought it over. "Bring it, and let's go." "But, Sir..." The droid stopped. "We have to check the PADD out first." "Well stop delaying, then!" Avin began walking towards the exit, having decided that if the droid wanted to stay behind, it was welcome to. It had a very tiring personality. "Yes, Sir." said the droid, and shuffled along behind the Captain, trying desperately to keep up. When Captain Avin reached the counter, he could only shrug at the clerk, and point to the droid. Between the droid's incessant chatter and the stares he recieved from natives, Captain Avin was beginning to wish he'd asked Master Dellen to accompany him. The Jedi had quickly picked up the language, and was speaking it almost fluently. Avin wished he had the same capacity, but he was about ten years older than the Jedi. Finally, however, the droid arrived, and Captain Avin tried to check the PADD out. He quickly found out that a library pass was needed, since he wasn't a Starfleet officer. It took an additional five minutes to complete the application, which was difficult as he didn't live on the planet. Then the clerk reminded him that the PADD had only three weeks before it had to be returned, although it could be renewed for another couple of weeks. Eventually, an additional fifteen minutes lost, Captain Avin stepped out of the library without the PADD - he didn't know how long he would be gone - and noted that the sky was overcast, and a thick fog had rolled in. It was like trying to see though a durasteel plate. *** "We've just been put on hold by Spacedock, Captain. Apparently they have something else to do first." Seven repeated the information she'd heard in her earpiece to the Captain in her calm, almost Borg-like voice. Janeway muttered to herself. "I wonder what they're doing now." She straightened up, and addressed the crew. "I'm going to get myself a cup of coffee. If they clear us while I'm gone, just go ahead and take the ship out. Seven, you have the bridge." A chorus of "Yes, Captain" acknowledgements filled the air. In her quarters, Janeway bent down next to a coffee machine, waiting for the brew to trickle into her cup. Sure, it was doing it the old-fashioned way, but the flavor was certainly improved. When the cup finally filled - a long two minutes later - she stepped back out and headed for the turbolift. "Captain on the bridge." Janeway walked over to the ensign who'd announced her prescence. He was standing stiffly - and the rest of the bridge crew seemed to be hiding smiles at the situation. "At ease, Ensign, before you sprain something." The ensign relaxed, and she thought that she heard Kim laughing quietly. "Your name please, Ensign?" She asked, her amusement plain. "Ensign Jones, Sir." He replied, staring straight ahead, still at attention. She heaved a sigh. It was just like when she'd taken command of the USS Voyager, six years before. And her patience was getting stressed - not as if the coffee helped much there. "Ensign, do I look like a 'Sir' to you?" she asked. He looked at her face for a minute. "No, Ma'am." She sighed again. This was like repeating history. "Ma'am is acceptable in a crunch, but I prefer 'captain'. Understood?" "Yes, Captain." She walked around the bridge to her chair, shaking her head and thinking about how often she would have to repeat that conversation with th new crew members until it got through. *** Ny'lith Boro, Sol System "Does Voy- I mean the Dauntless - have the course plotted in?" Avin asked as he strode into the bridge. "Yes, sir. They are ready to go." Replied the First Officer. "Good. Helm, standby on the hyperdrive." Said Avin as he took his normal position, stood beside his chair. USS Dauntless "Slipstream drive ready. Fields at 100%." Torres' voice carried over the ship's comm system, still sounding as calm as ever although Janeway knew she was likely more than a little nervous. Now was the moment of truth. "Engage." Janeway ordered. There was a brief shudder as the slipstream field activated, then it abated as the Dauntless entered slipstream. Once again, Lieutenant Torres' voice came over the comm. "Structural integrity fields at 97%. They took a beating during entry, but they seem to have stabilized. There is a slight leakage of energy, though..." Torres paused to check some settings, although Janeway couldn't see what they were. "Minor problem, Captain. It was a shorted power transfer coupling. I've bypassed that coupling, and the problem seems to be fixed." Janeway nodded at nobody in particular. Apparently, the Starfleet engineers had done a better job than she thought. Seven, displaying her indifferent, matter-of-fact way of doing things, read the information displayed on the console. "We are outside the solar system. We will be at Proxima Centauri in less than five minutes, and are travelling at slightly over one light- year per minute." Janeway nodded absentmindedly, as a thought had just hit her. "Computer, forward view. On screen." The computer complied, producing a view from the forward camera. As far as Arturis (the alien from the race who'd invented slipstream) would have been concerned, it was just a normal view of the blue-green 'tunnel' of slipstream. But for Janeway, it clicked. She turned to Seven of Nine, and inquired of her. "Seven, do you see any similarities between slipstream and hyperspace?" The reply was prompt, if not overly technical. "Yes, Captain. Slipstream exhibits some properties that I observed while we were aboard the Bulk Cruiser. We are not quite in 'hyperspace' as your physicists would term it, but rather between subspace and hyperspace. The effect is, as we have noted before, quite similar to a transwarp conduit." Janeway blinked at the use of the term 'we' - an apparent reference to Seven's time in the Borg Collective. However, she didn't let it affect her concentration. "Noted, Commander. I have another question. Would it be possible to modify the slipstream and allow us to travel faster?" Seven paused to work with her console. "That is possible, Captain, although the current hybrid warp/slipstream configuration will not allow for any more modifications. It would have been possible with the dedicated slipstream core of the other Dauntless, however." The Captain nodded. "And if we disabled the warp drive, and transferred life support, etc. to fusion generators, would it be possible?" "Possible, but not probable. As I said, it would require a dedicated power source - or sources." The realization of what Seven was saying finally came to the Captain. "Seven, what did you learn about the hyperdrive while you were assisting the Ny'lith Boro's engineers?" The former Borg paused to think. "Their hyperdrive runs on four dedicated power sources, which are small, high-efficiency fusion powerplants. Each generator has roughly one half the power output capacity of our warp core. However, they have dozens of them scattered over their ship, meaning that their ship alone could, in terms of power generation, overpower a dozen Sovereign-class ships." Janeway started in surprise. 'If that's true... No wonder they destroyed the Cube so easily.' She shook her head, and forced her thoughts back. "So if we used two warp cores linked in parallel..." "It would be possible, Captain." Janeway turned back to the viewscreen, which was still displaying the dizzying view of slipstream, and she was somewhat dizzied as well - but from the idea. "Seven, inform Lieutenant Torres about the idea, and see what she can do." She ordered. Ny'lith Boro, Proxima Centauri "Unknown contact just came out of hyperspace." remarked a lieutenant at Comm-Scan as his screen lit up. Avin shook his head. "That'd be the Dauntless, but I'm not sure it came out of hyperspace." He checked a chronometer. "They're right on time. That's about a lightyear per minute... about half of our top speed. I guess we're not dealing with a non-hyperspace capable civilization anymore." The Captain turned around. "Master C'baoth, do you have any suggestions?" Chapter 18 ISD Magistrate "Sir?" Ollic spun around to see the officer who'd just addressed him. "What is it, Lieutenant?" "So far, Sir, we've cleared five decks. There were a few booby- traps, like enclision grids on the stairwells, but we knocked them out with the ion cannons. Quite helpful weapons, in my opinion." The Captain appeared to perk up. "Have you found anything of interest yet?" "Negative, Sir. There were just the usual facilities: medical bays, mess halls, crew accommodations..." "All deserted?" The Lieutenant looked up in slight surprise. "Yes, Sir. Deserted." Ollic nodded, somewhat intrigued. "I will inform the Commodore." "Thank you, Sir." The lieutenant saluted, and spun about to leave again. The Captain didn't move. "Lieutenant?" The young officer stopped in his tracks. "Yes, Sir?" "When I want information, I want it fast - and without your opinions. Understood?" The lieutenant swallowed. "Yes, Sir. Permission to leave?" "Granted." *** Ny'lith Boro "Lieutenant Stane." Captain Avin had just stepped out of the turbolift, and was looking around the computer center. Finally, his eyes lit on his target. Stane glanced up at the newcomer, and quickly snapped to attention. "Yes, Sir?" The Captain's question was fairly concise. "Is Ph'ngu in here?" "Yes, Sir. I believe he just got back from the Mess Hall." "Thank you, Lieutenant." His destination established, Avin walked down the hall again, finally coming to the door at the end. A 'Do Not Disturb' sign was stuck to it with some sort of adhesive. Ignoring the sign, he tapped the door. "Ph'ngu? Are you in there?" A muffled voice floated back in response. "Go away." "Ph'ngu, this is the Captain. Open the door so I can talk to you. Now!" There was a loud crashing sound from behind the door, and Avin could only guess that something had fallen over. He hadn't suspected that it was the slicer. Eventually, the door slid open, revealing a very dishevelled slicer - 'more dishevelled than last time,' thought Avin. However, he kept his thoughts to himself. "Thank you." Avin said perfunctorily. Ph'ngu rubbed at a bruise on his head. "No problem, Sir. I thought it was another Ensign. They've been bothering me quite a bit recently." "Ah." Avin paused, and nodded. "I wanted to see what you've found." The slicer shot back a quizzical glance. "Found... found what, Sir?" Avin's eyebrows shot skywards, or rather towards the ceiling. This was getting quite annoying, although he could only blame himself for waiting so long. "The logs. Remember?" He verbally prodded the young man's memory. Ph'ngu thought for nearly a minute, a blank expression on his face. Finally, he snapped his fingers. "Oh, that. I thought you'd forgotten or something. Come on in." Following the slicer, Avin stepped through the narrow doorway. If anything, the room was messier than before... He wrinkled his nose. "What... is... that... smell?" The slicer glanced up, oblivious to the odor. "Huh? Oh, one of the computers caught on fire a few hours ago. Too much dust or something. Anyway, I fixed it." His attention quickly went back to the stack of datachips he'd been thumbing through. After a while, he stopped, pulled one chip out, and slid it into a reader. "It's mostly audio, Captain." he explained. "About fifty hours long. You want to listen to all of it, or was there something specific you were interested in?" Avin furrowed his brow. "Yes... can you search for information on their government, their military?" Ph'ngu groaned. "Why didn't you tell me earlier?" He bent over, and grabbed the stack of datachips. Inserting another one into the reader, he kept talking. "That chip only had the logs. Just in case, I copied all the data they had on their computer core. I guess it was helpful, when I accidentally shut their system off..." He squinted at the display. "Anything specific about their government? Seems they kept everything on the main computer. Even some high-security stuff..." He glanced at the names. "Something called Omega, and some Genesis Project." The slicer's voice trailed off. "I guess that's not important, though. What was it you wanted again?" "Information on their government." Avin repeated wearily. "What it is, who runs it, how long it's existed..." "Sure." Ph'ngu quickly scanned the display - interestingly, Avin noted, the slicer wasn't using a voice-command system, instead opting for a keyboard. "Yeah, got something. They class their government as a 'Socialist Democratic Republic,' or something to that extent. It's been around since... um... around 2150 CE or so... that's about two hundred years. Headed by a President, who's elected every few years. They've got a Senate of sorts, with a seat for every one of their hundred-fifty or so member planets." Avin nodded at the information, although most of it went over his head - after all, he was a Captain, not a politician. But the information did seem to match what he'd heard during the talks between the diplomats. "And their military?" He prompted. "About four thousand starships, roughly one-half of which are rated as combat-worthy. Most are frigate-sized and below, with some about the size of a Dreadnought." "And?" "Um..." Ph'ngu glanced at the screen twice, surprise registering on his face. "Most of them are used for exploring, charting anomalies, mapping space..." He quickly ran through the list. "At a glance, I'd say they're at the level the Republic was... oh, about twenty thousand years ago." Avin nodded. From what he'd seen, that figured. "Anything else noteworthy?" "Yeah. They're striving to reach 'utopia,' which is.... apparently the state of nothingness according to their dictionary, although I could be reading this wrong." The Captain nearly snorted. "All right. Make a copy of that chip, and I'll take it down to Master C'baoth." "No problem." The slicer slid another chip into the datapad, and tapped a few buttons. Several moments later, he slid the chip out and handed it to the Captain. Avin turned to walk out the door, but stopped himself. "Ph'ngu?" "Yes, Sir?" "Play what you can find on Omega and Genesis. You've made me curious." "Sure thing." The slicer tapped at a few more controls, and the results quickly came. The display went black, and the letter Omega appeared. "This is just the 'intro' screen, I think." He paused as the terminal blinked several times. Ph'ngu grabbed a small black device, and spoke into it. "Access Janeway-one-one-five-three-red. Clearance Level Ten." Then, he hooked it up to the terminal, and tapped some controls. An image of a complex molecular structure appeared, and Ph'ngu read off the text appearing below it. "I think this is Omega. It says that it's the most powerful substance the Federation knows to exist, which carries as much energy as a 'warp core'." He paused to glance at another terminal. "I guess that means if a molecule is properly harnessed, it alone can produce a few billion terawatts of energy." He turned back to the main display. "Apparently Starfleet attempted synthesis of this molecule... somebody called Ketteract spearheaded it, trying to find a limitless source of energy. But I guess the molecule became unstable and blew the research station to pieces." He gestured to another image displayed on the terminal. "Seems it wrecked subspace for a few light-years in all directions. But anyway, Voyager ran into some other race, which was also experimenting with it. They took the molecules, intending to destroy them. One of the crew... a Borg... managed to keep the molecules stable at their own frequency, but the Captain ordered them destroyed." He chuckled to himself. "She ordered the datafiles destroyed as well. The primary ones were destroyed of course, but apparently the computer maintained hidden secondary copies... Starfleet's 'Black Box', I guess." Avin looked at the display with interest, his memory dredging up a snippet of information he had overheard back home. "Didn't the Republic have some project or other where they were experimenting with hypermatter?" he asked rhetorically. "I think that research facility blew up, too. You can't send any subspace transmissions through the area..." The impact of what he'd just said hit him. "You mean... these people experimented with hypermatter as well?" The slicer shrugged. "I don't know anything about that, Captain. I'm just a slicer." Captain Avin shook his head briefly. "Whatever. What about the Genesis project?" Ph'ngu checked the terminal. "Um... seems it was started by a Dr. David Marcus about a hundred years ago, as an alternative to terraforming." He scanned the display, and continued. "The idea was to make uninhabitable planets... well... habitable. The project went smoothly until some crazed renegade from a previous century hijacked a missile loaded with the device... he thought it would make a good weapon. He blew himself up, though, and the effect somehow created a planet from the gases of a nebula." He scanned the display again. "There's a lot more on it, so I guess I'll be quick. The planet was only stable for a few months, after which it self-destructed. Dr. Marcus was killed, and most knowledge of the project was lost. However, some of his writings on the workings of the device still exist... although they're kept in a secure place. It doesn't say where." *** "You had their computers sliced, didn't you." Avin looked at Jorus C'baoth in slight surprise. The abilities of a Jedi were, after all, exactly why they had been chosen as the diplomats for the Project. "Yes," he finally responded. "I wanted to determine if they were any threat." "Who gave you that authorization?" asked C'baoth, still looking directly at Avin unblinkingly. Avin bristled at the challenge of his authority. "I am Captain of this vessel. Nobody bosses me around on my ship." C'baoth's manner softened slightly. "Must I remind you that I am a Jedi Master? I was appointed in charge of this project, and it is my responsibility to see that it goes well. And that includes watching the Captain." Avin stood up to shout, but quickly sat down as he caught the steady stare from the Jedi. "I don't care if you are a Jedi Master or not. I am charged with the safety of my crew, and nevermind if you are High Coordinator of the Outbound Flight Project or some such nonsense." He glanced at C'baoth, and quickly wished he hadn't, as C'baoth's stare seemed to look straight through him as though looking at his soul. Instead, he quietly continued. "I saw the statistics from the datachip. From what I could understand of the planet's past history, the 'communist' Russian government was very unstable, and helped spark their third 'World War.' Now I gather that the 'Socialist' system is very much like the 'Communist' system in all appearances. Does that mean we're in danger if we form an alliance with them? And no, I don't mean the little exchanges of favors we've been doing each other. I mean a formal alliance, and possibly integration, with the Republic." The Jedi cleared his throat. "Captain, we are more at risk if we remain neutral. You should know better than to base a judgement on incomplete or hastily read data. There were many contributary factors to their Third 'World War', not least of them the existance of highly aggressive rival nation-states." Avin was quick to retort. "But did you know that this Federation is bordered on all sides by enemies, with the exception of the Klingon Empire? They're already been engaged in a 'Cold War' of sorts with the Romulan Star Empire - whoever they are." "Yes," C'baoth admitted. "And I also know that only the Federation has humans as a major composition, as well as the fact that their rate of technological development has been faster in recent years than that of any other government in this galaxy, except possibly the Borg. If they become an autonomous branch of the Republic, like the Hapes Cluster, it would give us a foothold in this galaxy - which was precisely what this Project was intended to do." "But they're still 'Socialist'!" Avin objected. "Captain, your personal opinions and conjectures are not relevant to this situation. Republic policy states that no matter what kind of government a world or group of worlds has, we are not to tamper with it - unless, and I repeat, unless that government is endangering other worlds. Even then, we are not to tamper with its internal workings, but rather to let their own politicians sort affairs out. Only as a last resort do we step in, in the event that the government self-destructs." The Captain, having decided that discretion was the better part of valour, kept his mouth shut. There wasn't much sense in arguing with a Jedi Master at any rate. C'baoth noticed his silence. "You agree? Good. Now, you will not conduct any more foolhardy tampering of the Federation's systems behind my back." C'baoth stood up, and drew himself to full height, towering over the average-height form of the Captain. Avin felt intimidated by the Jedi, who seemed to have lightning flashing in his eyes. "Or I may have to relieve you of your duties as Captain of this vessel." Chapter 19 Fleeting instances of terror. Her children killed. A fleet obliterated. A galaxy destroyed. The Republic utterly annhilated. Vong everywhere. The extermination of the human race. Leia nearly jumped out of the bed in her apartment on Coruscant, as she came to consciousness. Beside her, her husband lay sound asleep... but not for long, if she had anything to say about it. "Han!" She shouted in his ear, and shook him. All the ex-smuggler did in response was turn over, and moan. "Han!" This time she shook him harder. Still, he didn't get up. By now, Leia was beginning to calm down a bit. She reached over, and picked up a chronometer. It read 2:19. The Princess got out of bed slowly, her joints creaking with age. Walking over to the refresher, she grabbed a glass of cold water, and walked back to the bed. There, she dumped it on Han's blissful sleeping face. "Whoa! Chewie! Help! We're caught in a tractor-" He opened his eyes, only to see his wife holding an empty glass. Then he began to notice his face, and the cushions, were wet. "Oh, it's just Your Worshipfulness." he said sarcastically, and rolled over. "What is it now?" "Han, I had a dream." "You're always having dreams. Go back to sleep." He grabbed the now-wet cushion, and put it over his head. Leia pulled the soggy cushion off. "Han, this wasn't just any dream." "Oh, that's what you always say. I know, I know, another Jedi vision. Lemme guess - it had to do with that message chip." She bent down toward his face. "No, it didn't." He blinked his eyes open, and propped himself up on the bed. After all, he was already awake; no point in feigning sleep. Besides, she had piqued his curiousity. "So what was it?" Leia paused. "I'm not sure. I saw... I saw Jacen and Jaina killed, mutilated... a massive fleet destroyed in seconds... the Vong dissecting this galaxy, star by star... the Republic shattered." Han's eyes rolled. "Isn't that what you always have nightmares about?" She shook her head. "No. This time it was different. I don't know why, but I'm certain this is important!" The former smuggler rolled over, and spoke with his head buried in the sheets. "Go meditate on it or something. Even better yet, why not sleep on it? I don't know about you, but I need my sleep to think clearly about the important stuff." She wasn't convinced. "Sure you do. I'm heading for my office. I have a feeling something's up and I need to think it through." "Fine. Just let me sleep." As Leia began to get dressed, she could hear the snores resume from her husband's side of the bed. *** The whirring of an MSE, or 'mouse' droid - because of its small appearance and behavior - broke the eerie silence. The droid weaved its way down a wide, deserted passageway, buried deep inside the massive asteroid. It was a large corridor, even by Imperial standards, which was why it was decided that the droid be sent. Even for a MSE droid, a series renowned for their twitchiness and strange reactions, it appeared to be behaving rather erratically. The droid would zip from one side of the corridor to the other, often pausing while small sensor arrays on its surface rotated. Eventually, it reached its destination at the far end of the corridor, where a massive blast door effectively sealed it off. The droid paused in front of the door, its limited programming attempting to make sense of the current situation. It rolled back and forth several times, various sensors extending and retracting from its tiny form. Finally, the droid rolled up in front of the door, and stopped. A brilliant red flash of light lit up the corridor. Almost before the shot was fired, the droid hastily rolled back from the door, it's tiny holdout blaster, still smoking, retracting back into its form. And then, milliseconds later, more blaster fire lanced out through the corridor, gouging chunks of durasteel-reinforced stresscrete out of the floor. The shots were aimed precisely at the droid's previous location, although they did not find their intended target. After all, the automated shootback systems on the asteroid had been preset for humanoid threats, not floor-cleaners carrying miniature blasters. As a matter of fact, the automated systems had been programmed not to harm maintenance droids. The droid whizzed off back the way it had come, as fast as its small wheels could carry it, blaster bolts impacting harmlessly all around it. *** "So the probe was a success, Captain Granglo?" The Captain of Platoon AA-127 stood in front of the Imperial Army commander, who sat in one of the asteroid's recently renovated administration offices. "Yes, Sir. The droid returned precise information on the locations of the shootback systems." General Marsh Gatre nodded at the affirmation of what he'd already heard from the comm system. The idea of using an inexpensive MSE droid, to test the shootback systems, had been his in the first place. He wasn't too surprised to know that it had worked, since most of his ideas usually did. "Excellent, Captain. Tell me... what do you recommend as the next move?" The Captain looked at his superior with apprehension. From the expression on the General's face, he wasn't sure if a wrong answer would just earn him a mild correction or a reprimand for stupidity. He mentally shrugged, and thought through the situation and his available options. "Sir, if this was a standard situation, I would use a shielded sniper squad to destroy the shootback systems. However, I am aware that this is, or was, an Imperial installation. It may be easier to slice the systems and shut down all the defenses in the area." The General nodded, and showed the briefest of smiles, raising the Captain's hope. "Your concern for the lives of your subordinates is noted; however, we've already tried the slicing option. At the first indication of intrusion, the systems shut themselves down, locking our people out. And unfortunately, this installation was not hardwired to the Emperor's specifications, meaning that there are no 'backdoors' to exploit." Granglo thought some more. "Perhaps, Sir, we could attempt to sabotage the cables powering the shootback systems?" "That has already been attempted. The cables have proven to be far too heavily protected." The Captain gave the General a confused glance. "Then what do we do? Our only option left is to lose men sniping the systems slowly." General Marsh pushed his chair back. "Not quite, Captain - there is this." He reached for another table, and removed a weapon which vaguely resembled an E-11, though longer with an apparently fixed butt-stock and a noticeably elongated barrel. "This is a rather primitive slugthrower. Almost no shootback systems can detect its discharge, as it is not an energy weapon." He handed it to the Captain. "I've already sent several of these to your unit. Their rate of fire is quite slow, but their accuracy is very high - approaching that of a Xerrol Nightstinger. Or... so I've been told. I also understand they have a kickback like an enraged Gundark. The sniper teams are by now quite familiar with the weapon." The Captain turned over the long-barreled weapon interestedly. "So we use these to neutralize the shootback systems." As the General nodded, he continued. "But what about the blast door, Sir? There are no controls for it, and you just told me that slicing would be useless." Marsh leaned back in his chair. "That is already taken care of. Your unit will have a mobile light turbolaser at your disposal. It should have no problems blasting through the door." He paused. "The Commodore is rather expectant of what we will find on the other side of the blastdoor. Do not fail me - or him, Captain." "I will not, Sir." The captain saluted, and walked out of the office. *** At one end of the corridor, several stormtroopers of Platoon AA-127 quietly moved into position behind some stresscrete barricades. Nobody knew what lay on the other side of the door, and quite frankly, not many of the squad wanted to know. But such were their orders. Behind the stormtroopers, several olive-clad regular Army troops moved the bulky form of a mobile light turbolaser, cannibalized from a ground defense turret, into position. Beside it were set several E-web repeating blasters, as well as a number of light ion cannons. Two stormtroopers slid belly-down onto the floor, crawling slowly forwards into position, and slipped the long barrels of their slugthrowers through small gaps in the stresscrete barricade. There was a quiet pause as everyone standing scrambled down and out of the way, and then the deafening sound of explosive discharges resounded throughout the chamber. There were some puffs of smoke as bullets from the sniper rifles found their targets, knocking parts of the shootback system out. The firing continued steadily for several seconds, until finally there were no more targets. Smoothly, the stormtroopers moved away, and took up positions at the edges of the barricade, out of the line of sight to the door. The four barrels of the turbolaser turret rotated into position, and fired in unison. Four green blasts of energy struck the blastdoor, turning its blaster-resistant alloy a brilliant cherry red as the door's heat drainage systems attempted to dissipate the energy dumped into it. Again the turbolaser fired with a loud concussion, and again the emerald blasts struck the door. This time, the door began to glow white. The turbolaser fired a third time, reducing the hottest part of the front section to molten slag, which flowed down and pooled on the floor. For a good half-minute, the turbolaser continued its bombardment, until all that was left of the door was a glowing frame and cooled slag on the floor. And finally, return fire came through the doorway. The hearts of the men manning the turbolaser sank into their armored boots as they saw the source of the firing - a trio of X-1 war droids. Blaster bolts spattered the stresscrete barricade, most of them causing little damage to the massive barricade. Almost acting on instinct, the men manning the turbolaser took aim and fired at the lead droid, knocking the war machine's shields down in a single shot. They never had another chance to fire again, as the light turbolaser blast actually fed the titanic war droid more power through it's feedback system. Furiously, more powerful blaster bolts spat out of the X-1 droids' cannons, turning man and Mobile turret alike into burning messes. The turbolaser turret had taken several direct hits before its power cells overloaded, causing it to catch on fire. The stormtroopers, some of the best units that the Empire had to offer, scrambled for cover from the onslaught. Sporadic return fire lanced back at the war droids, splashing against their heavy shields with little effect. Corporal Robal Reytuc dove for a discarded ion cannon, barely dodging the multitude of blaster fire being exchanged by both sides. He took aim as fast as he could, pulling the ion cannon's trigger almost as soon as he grabbed the weapon. Fortunately for him, the bolts hit their intended target, causing the droid to seize up as its computer core overloaded from the power surges. Seeing the Corporal's muster, several other troopers dove for the E-web repeating blasters, and quickly started spattering high-powered bolts against the shields of the war droids. Others grabbed the remaining Ion Cannons and the shots really started to turn the battle, though not without further casualties. One of the troopers was cut down as his E-web took a direct hit to the power cell, and exploded in a brilliant ball of fire. The Corporal rolled back from his ion cannon as the last X-1, disabled by a direct hit to the torso, lost its balance and toppled, knocking down the barricade and crushing the weapon beneath its multi-tonne weight. *** Captain Granglo cautiously entered the chamber after the troops had pronounced it clean, and gasped in amazement. It stretched as far as the eye could see in every direction. At a glance, he guessed it to be easily large enough to hold the Magistrate, and the rest of the ships in the task force for good measure. His gaze swept across the chamber, skimming over assorted machinery he couldn't identify. It finally came to rest on the far side of the chamber... which was stacked full of cargo containers. A Stormtrooper next to him shouldered his ion cannon, alertly scanning for targets, although Granglo figured there wouldn't be many more. X-1 droids were pretty kriffin' hard to take out, even for stormtroopers armed with ion cannons. For there to be more than three... well, it was unlikely to say the least. The droids required an inordinate amount of maintenance, and he was surprised that there were even three. "Corporal..." He scanned the stormtrooper's operating tag. "Reytuc." The trooper didn't move, and the Captain continued. "Get the rest of the squad, and have these containers scanned ASAP." There was a barely perceptible nod from the trooper. "Yes, Sir." his filtered acknowledgement came through the suit's helmet. *** "Good morning, Madame President." Leia spun around to see who had addressed her at this time of the night - or rather, as the unidentified speaker had pointed out, morning. But as she turned, she saw that it was just a C-5 series protocol droid. 'Don't they ever shut themselves down?' she wondered to herself. But she ignored its greeting, and continued to her office. It was about oh-four-hundred hours local time - even this early in the morning, the infamous Coruscant traffic jams had already begun, with the result of her taking nearly two hours to reach the Palace. She and Han had decided to move out from their suite in the Palace several weeks before, after finally tiring of the incessant visits from bothersome bureaucrats and minor functionaries. Wearily, she sat down at her desk, and switched on a data terminal. It came on instantly, and she stared blankly at its screen. Sighing, she turned away from it, realizing that it wasn't what she wanted. Instead, Leia reached for the hypercomm unit sitting on her desk. She paused to rack her brain, and finally tapped in the code for Centerpoint Station. If she knew Anakin, he'd probably be somewhere near the control station... "Hello?" A sleepy voice picked up the other end, and she heard fumbling, as if somebody had dropped something. "Madame President? My apologies." This time the voice sounded almost awake. 'Apparently she's looked at the caller display,' Leia thought. "No problem..." Leia awkwardly paused to remember who the admin of Centerpoint was. "I presume this is Administrator Sonsen?" "Yes, it is. Did you want to talk to somebody? It's pretty late here, almost midnight. I don't know how long it'll take to wake 'em up and get 'em here." "I understand, and yes, you can get someone for me." She caught her breath, and continued. "Can I talk with my son?" There was an even longer pause at the other end as Jenica Sonsen tried to remember names. "You mean... Anakin... Anakin Solo?" "Yes, that's him. Has he arrived there yet?" Leia heard some computer-like noises coming from the other end of the connection, some thousands of light-years away. "His ETA's not until later this week." The President of the Republic rolled her eyes, but shook her head and continued. "He decided to leave early, and should have arrived there already." More computer-like clicks and beeps came across the comm connection. "No, he's not here yet." She paused. "When did he leave?" "About three days ago." And more tapping came across the commlink. "The optimal T from Coruscant to Corellia is maybe a day or less with a C-One, four days with a C-Two, and somewhere over a week with a C-Three." She paused again. "Of course, the actual speeds don't depend on the class, but they might help. What C was the DU in his ship?" Leia racked her brain, trying to both decipher the Administrator's jargon and remember minor technical details at the same time. Her husband, Han, as well as Chewie, had pieced together a ship for Anakin from junkyard parts. Somewhere, they'd found the battered remains of a Y-wing starfighter, its engines and hyperdrive stripped long before. They'd added new engines, boosted the shields and power generation equipment to newer standards, and added an old Class Two hyperdrive. It worked for what Anakin used it for, but it was definately slow. "Class Two." She supplied. "Yeah, he'll probably be here tomorrow. You want me to have him give you a call when he gets here?" Leia breathed a sigh of relief. "Of course. If you would, please. Thank you." She cut the connection and let herself calm down. She knew he was all right, she knew he was all right, she knew ... that the dreams had seemed real, and she would still have to work out what to do. If only she was still younger, still able to make split-second decisions as she had for the Rebel Alliance... Chapter 20 Sometimes, it is possible to kill oneself in a dream. Not literally; how could mere thoughts kill a person? No, that was not how a dream can kill you. A dream could kill a person in several ways - one could sleep for too long, and be killed as a result; one could have a heart attack, as a result of physical exertion (although that usually only happened with older people). Or, sometimes, the dream could provoke one into making a stupid decision later on, that decision leading to your death. A dream is only supposed to be a random collection of thoughts, a summary of what transpired during the day, mixed with the last thoughts one had been thinking. As often as not, the dream would be random enough that the person in question shrugs it off. But other times, it would be vivid and clear, a 'lucid' dream some would term it. With a Jedi, muddled or lucid, this did not matter. The Force was what mattered. A Jedi looked at all the possible options, determining if anything was possibly a warning or a blessing. There are those people who say that dreams should be forgotten, placed aside in the face of reality. And they are right - to a point. If one dwells on a dream for too long, that person tends to have 'tunnel vision' of sorts, not seeing the things around them. This is why a Jedi must be careful. The Jedi must not dwell on the dreams, but also must not ignore them. The Jedi must be mindful of what is conspiring around them, but also remember any possible warnings from the dream. It is certainly not an easy task. Hapan Medical Ship, Location Unknown Jacen awoke with a start, a clammy feeling of perspiration covering his entire body. He quickly ran through his Jedi relaxation exercises, then delved into his mind, attempting to figure out what had happened while he was asleep. Nothing was really out of the ordinary with himself. He quickly concluded that the ship's environment control had to be out. 'Blast,' he thought. Then the ship shuddered. He tore the thermal sheets off the bunk and jumped down to the cold floor. Wearing his usual brown jumpsuit, Jacen didn't have to worry about dressing. However, his bare feet were cold from touching the metal deck. Very cold. "Room, lights full." The voice-command system refused to respond, and Jacen had to walk over to the manual controls. He tapped them, and the lights came on, dimly. The ship shuddered harder, as if it was being bombarded by asteroids. Jacen's urgency was growing by the minute, so he hastily put his boots on and clipped his lightsabre to his belt. If they were under attack, he didn't want to be caught unarmed. He walked over to the door, and hit the controls. The door quietly hissed open, and he stepped into the corridor. By now, the shuddering was growing regular. Jacen knew he would have to hurry. He dashed to the next compartment, and pounded on the door. Tenel Ka's voice came back quickly. "I'm coming." Presently, the door slid open, and the red-haired woman stepped through. "You have any idea what's happening?" He shook his head. "No, although I can guess that we're either in an asteroid field or under attack." As if to punctuate his point, the ship shuddered, harder than before. It wasn't enough to knock Jacen off balance, but he could hear the metal groaning, as if from impact stresses. "Come with me. I think you might be correct." Before Jacen could acknowledge, Tenel Ka was already running down the ornate corridor to the only turbolift on the level. Thankfully, the level was either deserted, or most of the people had already left. He ran after her as fast as he could. *** Imperial Storage Facility 000162-A "Sir, inspection of the first fifty cargo containers is complete." A stormtrooper-lieutenant walked up to Captain Granglo, carrying a datapad. He handed it to the captain. Granglo quickly skimmed down the pad, murmuring to himself. "Repulsors... ion engines... starfighter-grade turbolasers... E-11 carbines... Class-A thermal detonators... Merr-Sonn PLX-2M concussion missile launchers..." He looked up at the trooper. "Anything other than standard equipment?" "No, Sir." He paused, as if thinking, and continued. "This is just from the first fifty containers of nearly a thousand, Sir. I recommend we bring in a dedicated scanning crew for this task." Captain Granglo mulled the thought over. "I was thinking of that myself." The lieutenant continued. "We also noted that almost a hundred containers are stacked up against one specific wall of the storage space." Granglo nodded. "And I presume you want heavy loading equipment to move them?" "Yes, Sir." "Very well, I'll see if I can divert a few lifters over here, Lieutenant." ISD 'Magistrate' - Same Time "Captain Ollic?" A junior lieutenant inquired of the captain from Comm-Scan. "The asteroid sensor network's picked up some new contacts coming in from hyperspace. It matches the signature of an Allegiance-class heavy Cruiser-" There was a pause while the lieutenant scanned his displays. "-accompanied by an Immobilizer- class Interdictor. The Immobilizer is powering up it's grav-field generators; The Allegiance is actively scanning. They do not seem to be aware of us, Sir." Ollic had just arrived on the bridge, and was already walking over to Comm-Scan. When he heard what had just arrived, he stopped in his tracks, and instead, walked toward another comm post. He picked up a handset. "This is the Captain. Patch me through to the Commodo-" His order was cut off as the bridge turbolift hissed open, and the blue-skinned Commodore walked onto the bridge, followed closely by his personal bodyguard, Nali. Mantrel immediately appraised the situation. "I heard the chatter. Status?" The JG repeated the information, terminating in a few seconds. Mantrel thought for a period of time. "Is there any indication of who the commander is?" The lieutenant scanned his displays again. "It's almost in ID range... It's the 'Blue Fire', which is apparently..." He checked another display. "commanded by Rear Admiral Willcli Henek." The Chiss reflected on what he'd heard while under Admiral Pellaeon. Rear Admiral Henek was just another power-greedy ignoramus, one rank above his own title of Commodore. In fact, the Admiral had demonstrated his ineptness by actively scanning, which lit up all the passive sensors on the asteroid, as well as even the ships inside the asteroid's cavernous hangar bay. He might as well have rung a dinner bell for the Vong, metaphorically speaking. 'Incompetent asshole', Mantrel thought. The words summed up the Admiral precisely. But it wasn't like the rank made much difference, though; it only meant you got to command a few more ships, and were addressed as "Admiral." Henek, however, was from a splinter group of the main Remnant; like so many others, Mantrel included. How an incompetent, bumbling idiot like Henek commanded an Allegiance- class was beyond the Chiss; what he was currently worried about was the amount of turbolasers carried by the "destroyer-killer" as some had labelled it. Even with all of the ships in his own fleet put together, he would probably have a hard time dealing with this new threat. That is, if the Admiral was hostile. It took all of a second for the Chiss to decide that if anyone should strike the first blow, it would be himself, as he had the element of surprise. He turned back to Comm-Scan. "Sent a lasercomm message to all the other ships inside the hangar that they are to power down all systems, and instruct Hangar Control to raise a low-level static field - nothing noticeable, just enough to fuzz sensor lifeform readings." The systems they'd been able to slice so far were only the sensor networks and hangar control computers, which had initially been knocked out by the ion cannon bombardment. He certainly didn't want Admiral Henew to suspect anything. From all appearances, the Admiral may have arrived for the same reasons as Mantrel; he couldn't discount any possibilities. The bridge lights abruptly darkened as his orders were carried out, the only light now showing being that of the various status displays in the crew pits. "Comm-Scan, I do not want any acknowledgements leaving this ship - nor any of the others - if the Blue Fire queries us. Understood?" "Yes, Sir." the prompt acknowledgement came back. Another inquiry came across the bridge. "Sir, AGC wants to know whether they should activate the turbolaser batteries." AGC stood for Asteroid Gunnery Control - which, at the moment, Mantrel had his doubts about. "Tell them no to the turbolasers, but they have a KDY-150 'Planet Defender', correct? Order them to activate it, and await my command." The KDY-150 was one of the heaviest defensive weapons that Kuat Drive Yards produced. It was an ion cannon, capable of all but disabling a capital ship at a range of two standard planetary diameters. The weapon had been used by the Rebels at the Battle of Hoth to great success, disabling the Imperator II-class Star Destroyer Avenger before it was able to capture one of several fleeing transports. Mantrel didn't state his reason for shutting everything down, which was the fact that he wanted the Admiral to believe that it was a deserted asteroid, in the same condition he'd found it in. A single ion cannon shouldn't raise too much attention, at any rate. Allegiance-class Star Destroyer 'Blue Fire' "Lieutenant, how does the asteroid check out?" Admiral Henew turned to the crew pit, addressing a lieutenant at the scanner display. "There are several turbolasers... scattered in a specific area of the asteroid. I'm also picking up a low-level... static field covering a very small area nearby." The Admiral shrugged; something as old as this likely had quite a few things broken down. "Probably nothing. Is there a hangar bay?" "Yes, Sir." "Take us in, and have IC-1138-86D cover the entrance." "Yes, Sir." ISD 'Magistrate' "Sir, 'Blue Fire' is moving in. The Interdictor is staying behind, though." Mantrel remained cool. "ETA?" he asked of the lieutenant. "Thirty-eight seconds, Sir." Allegiance-class Star Destroyer 'Blue Fire' "We are entering the hangar bay." Henek strained his eyes looking out of the viewports. The hangar bay was pitch black, the only source of light the three massive engines of his Star Destroyer, which were casting a whitish glow mostly aft of his ship. But a familiar, brilliant white dagger shape caught his eye... "I want a full scan of this hangar bay. Now!" ISD 'Magistrate' "They're powering up their active scanners," the junior lieutenant calmly read off a display. Mantrel unmovingly stared out the viewports at the large form of the Allegiance-class. His order was quick and to the point. "Order AGC to open fire. Seek targets of opportunity." Allegiance-class Star Destroyer 'Blue Fire' "I'm reading over a dozen ships in here-" A lieutenant at Comm- Scan shouted over a klaxon which had just gone off. "Sir! We have a hostile target lock!" Almost instantly, a large, multi-dozen meter streak of light slammed into the bridge superstructure, causing the lights to flicker and die as power relays all over the massive, 2200 meter ship overloaded. Admiral Henek began shouting orders over the blaring klaxons. "Optimize the shields for ion cannons! Slag anything that looks like a weapon!" There was an awkard pause as the lieutenant scanned his displays. "Admiral, our shields are down... I can't communicate with the gunners." He paused as another ion bolt slammed into the ship, overwhelming the surge protection of more critical systems and shutting them down. "We're sitting ducks." Henek cursed at himself for letting such an obvious thing go past him. He watched, helplessly, as more of the devastating bolts flew around the Star Destroyer, some impacting and shutting down yet more systems, some finding another target with the Interdictor. Then, the hangar lights came on, bathing everything in their harsh blue glare. Immediately, he could identify the forms of a Star Destroyer, several Dreadnoughts, and many other assorted ships. 'We've been had,' he thought to himself. 'Somebody already got here.' And, as if on cue, the backup comm unit crackled to life. "Admiral Henek, this is Commodore Mantrel. You will surrender at once, or face the consequences. I see that your ships are disabled, and recommend that you comply." The Admiral bristled. He stormed over, hitting the transit switch. "Like hell I will, Commodore!" he spat, voice full of contempt for the subordinate-ranking officer. The voice that came back was cool as ever. "Very well... Admiral." With that, the Commodore cut the transmission. Henek, still storming, turned to the crew pit. "Get those systems back up now! I want Mantrel dead!" However, he failed to notice the small, 18-meter long form of a Telgorn Corporation Delta-class DX-9 stormtrooper transport nearing his disabled ship's bridge tower. *** Hapan Medical Ship, Location Unknown Tenel Ka rushed down the corridor to the turbolift, almost ignoring the fact that the ship, its inertial dampers taxed to the max, was bucking like a stampeding Bantha. Jacen, still slightly sleepy, trailed behind her by a few meters. The deck rocked, and ahead of her one of the corridor walls blew out, tearing with the horrific screech of rending metal. There was a strong gust of wind as the atmosphere was sucked out into the vacuum of space. The Dathomirian quickly stopped, her carefully tended reddish braids flying in her face as a virtual gale nearly knocked her over. Somehow she maintained her balance, and finally a bulkhead slammed shut down the passageway, sealing off most of the damage. Immediately, the wind subsided, although the now-constant shuddering continued. Tenel Ka cautiously approached the mass of twisted durasteel and synthetic paneling on the near side of the bulkhead. She turned to Jacen, who was panting for breath. It wasn't as if having about half of the air sucked out of the corridor had helped much. "It's no use," she said. "The turbolift's blocked. We might as well forget about heading to the bridge." Jacen haltingly acknowledged. "Yeah... so now what? Looks like we're stuck on this deck." The warrior, however, was inspecting one of the walls. "Maybe not," she quietly commented. "Jacen, can I see your lightsabre?" He unclipped it from his belt and handed it to her hilt-first. She took it, pointed it away from him, and ignited the emerald- green blade with the familiar snap-hiss sound. Ever so carefully, she began slicing through the wall, trying not to hit any power or data cables. A minute later, she deactivated it, and paused. "Jacen, do you mind if I keep it for now? I'll need it later." She asked. He hesitated. A Jedi didn't just let anybody borrow his lightsabre, but... "Go ahead," he finally said. "Thank you." With that, she clipped the weapon to her own belt, on a spare jumpsuit that Jacen had lent her. Then, she pushed at the section of wall that she'd sliced moments before, and it fell inwards in a cloud of dust and smoke. Tenel Ka stuck her head through the hole in the wall, inspecting the other side of it. Debris was strewn all over; however, the room was for the most part empty. A large hole was at one end of it - one of the ship's numerous ventilation shafts. Without hesitation, she jumped through into the room and quickly unhooked the smart-rope from her jumpsuit. In a blur of motion, she clipped the grappling hook end to a convenient protrusion at the opening of the shaft, and before Jacen could exclaim his surprise, jumped down it. "Tenel Ka!" he exclaimed, and ran over to the shaft. Sure enough, she was there, mechanical arms clinging to the smart-rope. She hollered up at him, indicating for him to follow... which he did, albeit reluctantly. After descending almost fifteen meters, Jacen heard the distinctive snap-hiss of his lightsabre igniting somewhere below him. He stopped his descent, and looked below to see Tenel Ka knocking a chunk out of the shaft wall. Then she quickly ducked through, and disappeared from sight. He quickly followed suit, jumping through- -and landed in the hangar bay. In a matter of seconds, he'd identified the form of the 'Rock Dragon', which had apparently collided with several other transport craft in one of the explosions. Tenel Ka, having finished coiling her smart-rope, tossed the deactivated lightsabre back to Jacen. He absentmindedly clipped it to his belt. In the meantime, Tenel Ka had set out at a run for her ship. Jacen followed, running up the boarding ramp after her. She dashed into the cockpit, and looked over the systems. "No!" she exclaimed, seeing him reaching for the preflight switch. "We don't have time for the checks. Just warm up the sublights, and let's get out of here." He nodded, flicking the appropriate switches. Finally, he sat down in the copilot's seat, exhaustion beginning to take its toll on him. The two hadn't said much in the past half-hour, since they were in a rush. But now, waiting for the sublight engines to warm up, they had quite a bit of time. Tenel Ka slumped down in the pilot's seat, and threw a tired glance at Jacen. "So..." she prompted. "So... what?" he responded, giving her a quizzical stare. "We're leaving, and it looks like a war zone." He pointed out of the viewport and through the hangar's opening, to where flashes of light could be seen in the far distance. "You think it's the Vong?" she quietly asked. He focused with the Force. Sure enough, he sensed the emptiness within the Force that they created. "Yes, it's them... and they've got a yammosk as well." The yammosk was, for the most part, the war coordinator of the Vong fleets. The creatures were breathtakingly huge, with a bulbous head and hundreds of tentacles. Due to their immense size, they were usually placed on a planet, where they could grow up to hundreds of kilometers in length, although some were protected inside the massive worldships that the Vong used. The fact that a yammosk was near made Tenel Ka shudder. She'd heard what had happened to the Jedi Knight, Miko Reglia, who'd been sent three months previously to inspect the Extragalactic Society's station number four on the planet Belkadan. He'd been captured, and taken to Helska IV, where he was suspended over the gaping maw which formed the mouth of a yammosk. Reglia had never made it back from the icy world. A hastily assembled rescue effort failed, and mere hours later, a Republic strike force had arrived, which managed to shatter the planet and destroy the fearsome yammosk... although they had sustained heavy losses in the endeavour. The memory of the Yuuzhan Vong, their mutilated humanoid bodies, like walking skeletons... the pain that Tenel Ka had suffered from one of their warriors... She nearly broke down in despair. And then, gently, a hand touched her shoulder. "Tenel Ka? We're ready to go." She shook herself. "Yes, Jacen. Let's go." Reaching up, she tapped some controls, and the familiar whine of repulsorlifts greeted her ears. Tenel Ka pulled back on the controls as she had so many times before, and with a surge of acceleration, the 'Rock Dragon' shot into space. Chapter 21 ISD 'Magistrate' "Sir, the commandoes have locked down both ships. Admiral Henek was killed, but the rest of the bridge crew, as well as the Captain of the Interdictor, decided to surrender." Mantrel nodded in acknowledgement. If they could keep casualties to a minimum, that was better. He was running low enough on forces as it was. "They have been informed of the change of command?" "Yes, Sir." "Good. Oh, and Lieutenant? Arrange for a meeting with the officers of the 'Blue Fire.' I want to... talk with them about a few things." "Yes, Sir." the lieutenant unquestioningly acknowledged. 'Rock Dragon' Jacen's heart sank as the small transport neared the thick of the battle zone. So far, Tenel Ka had managed to remain off the 'Top Ten Kill List' of the Vong coralskippers, but this was now a different matter. Small starfighters, grown of living yorik coral, each Vong coralskipper was a unique object. They only carried one pilot, plus the plasma emitters and a dovin basal, the combination weapon-shield used by the Vong. Even the E-wing starfighter, one of the heaviest fighters used in the Republic Navy, had serious problems just destroying one. A coralskipper, from a distance, looked like a mishappen lump of coal. But close up, an intricate beauty would be revealed in the patterns of coral. It was a pity that the Vong were bent on the extermination of the human race, a pity that the unique coral had to be destroyed. But such were the fortunes of war. Jacen, sitting in the co-pilot's seat, shoved down on the controls as another coralskipper whizzed past on a strafing run. Luckily, it didn't turn back, having found a new target in the form of a blade-like Hapan Miy'til starfighter. Jacen pitied the pilot, but there really wasn't much he could do at this point. He watched, helplessly, as several glowing orbs of plasma flew out of the Vong craft, instantly destroying the hapless starfighter. A chiming noise caught his attention, and he turned to another console. He opened his mouth to read off the display, but instead, his jaw just hung open. Fondor. Shipyard of the Old Republic, Empire, and New Republic; it had served for countless generations as a major builder of warships. Constructed there were some of the largest, and some of the smallest, ships of the Republic Starfleet. Part of the shipyards were leased to Rendili StarDrive, who produced the Dreadnought, the Victory-class Star Destroyer, and more recently, the Republic-class Star Destroyer, an enhanced version of the Victory. Also constructed there were some of the most mundane, everyday objects - droids. Some of the major android-building corporations, such as Cybot Galactica, had leased portions of the yards for the construction of general-purpose models, like worker droids and construction droids, ones which were used heavily at the yards. That allowed them to use their main facilities to build more specialized models, such as all-too-familiar C-3P0 line of protocol droids. And yet another part of the shipyards had been leased by Kuat Drive Yards. Major components of the Executor, Darth Vader's flagship, had been constructed there instead of in the Kuat home system. Also, it was used to build the 1.6 kilometer long Imperator-class Star Destroyers which were so common across the galaxy during the days of the Empire. Jacen checked the navicomputer's display again, just to be sure. There was no mistaking the readout - they were, indeed, at Fondor. What the entire Hapan fleet was doing there, he had no idea. Jacen also wondered why, of all places, the Vong had decided to attack Fondor, when other yards like Yaga Minor were closer. But Jacen knew that Fondor made a perfect target, having many of its major defensive warships siphoned off to protect lesser, 'more critical,' installations. From the last reports he'd read on Coruscant, the defensive fleet was down to a few dozen Dreadnoughts and Strike Cruisers - hardly enough to repel a conventional attack, much less a full Vong assault. Yaga Minor, however, being under the protection of the Imperial Remnant and Admiral Pellaeon, was far more heavily defended, which likely explained the strange reasoning of the Yuuzhan Vong. "Fondor," he croaked. "We're at Fondor." He looked over at Tenel Ka, who said nothing. However, her face said it all. Her teeth were clenched together, her gaze stern. She squeezed the triggers coldly, and the transport's laser cannon turned another coralskipper into rapidly cooling plasma. "Tenel Ka," Jacen slowly asked, "what in the name of the Force is the Hapan fleet doing here?" She was slow to respond. "I... I cannot answer that, Jacen." Tenel Ka continued to stare out the viewport, and watched in repressed fury as another starfighter exploded, this time a slower Hetrinar assault bomber. Slowly, a new look came across her face, one of shock. "No... perhaps I can answer it." Centerpoint Station - 0400 hours A rhythmic vibration had been building throughout the station for the past twelve hours, and was finally reaching its climax. Anakin Solo snapped awake, his bunk rattling on the floor. 'What the kriff...' he thought as the bunk continued to rattle. And then, as suddenly as they had started, the vibrations ceased. 'Somthing is wrong. Very wrong.' he thought. Anakin fairly flew out of the bunk, hastily grabbing his robe and lightsabre. He slapped the door switch, and ran off in the direction of the recently discovered control room, in which he knew some scientists had been hurrying to restore the station to full operation for several months now. 'Rock Dragon', Fondor An eerie silence settled over both Jacen and Tenel Ka as they somehow watched the impossible. The 'Rock Dragon' was on the outskirts of the solar plane, just above the raging battle. But it wasn't the vicious battle that had the two Jedi speechless. It was the fact that before their very eyes, both friend and foe vanished, the only trace left being many quickly dissipating clouds of subatomic particles. Some of the Hapan Battle Dragons abruptly bucked, as if encountering a tidal wave. Most snapped apart, their decks pancaking instantly. Others, on the edge of whatever-it-was, slammed into it and went pinwheeling away; the surfaces nearest the invisible force reduced to molten slag, regardless of their shields. Still others collided with each other, snapping like twigs in a hurricane. The Battle Dragons were painted to symbolize each of the Consortium worlds they represented. Each Battle Dragon consisted of a large, oblong dorsal saucer, connected by pylons to the smaller and rounder ventral saucers. The bridge sat aft on the ventral saucer, of which the perimeter was studded with ion cannons. To compensate for their relatively low rate of turbolaser fire, each Battle Dragon had its turbolasers arranged in a circle on the ventral and dorsal surfaces, from which each turbolaser could rotate to target any new threat. Inbetween the pylons were sixteen pulse-mass mine generators, their mines capable of simulating the effects of a gravity well. On the other hand, a Nova-class, one of which Tenel Ka and Jacen had been on mere minutes before, was shaped like a giant, four-hundred meter climber's ice claw. The ship's viper-headed bridge occupied the bow, and boasted armored panels which could roll down and protect it during battle. These ships were exceptionally fast and well-armed compared to the slow, lumbering Battle Dragons, boasting several Miy'til fighters and Hetrinar assault bombers in addition to their complement of twenty-five turbolaser batteries and two ion cannons. But slow or fast, well-shielded or poorly shielded, this did not matter. Friend and foe, Hapan and Vong, this also did not matter. All the engaged ships collapsed under the mysterious, invisible 'shockwave', which rendered the coralskippers and Miy'til fighters alike mere masses of disassociated atoms. The heavier ships were luckier, their hulls holding up to the 'wave' for a few seconds longer. If it could be watched in slow motion, it would be astonishing. The decks of a Nova-class, converted to a medical ship, slowly collapsed inwards crumpling like foil. The armored bridge slammed into the rest of the ship, its armor paneling rendered useless. Sublight drive units compressed briefly, exploding in bursts of plasma as their fusion reactors suddenly lost their containment. The Vong ships were somewhat luckier. The dovin basals, living creatures able to focus gravitic energy, provided protection until they, unable to handle the raw gravitic energies, simply died. Then the same happened for the Vong ships as did for the Hapan ships. Bits of coral were blasted away from the ships as an aquatic ship being blasted with high-pressure water to clean off barnacles. And, further confounding the two Jedi, despite all this destruction the invisible force continued on unabated. Whole construction frameworks were shorn off the penultimate moon of Fondor, their crews long since evacuated. The ships, under construction for weeks, simply evaporated. As if not satisfied with the destruction already caused, the invisible force decided to shear off more. An entire slice of the moon, an all but immovable mass of energy-absorbent rock, was as quickly erased as a surgeon might excise a brain tumor. And all of this happened in only a few seconds, leaving Tenel Ka and Jacen speechless. Seeing two battling fleets reduced to their subatomic components in seconds is not something one sees every day; and yet, they had just witnessed that very thing. Thousands of Hapan sailors, all killed in seconds. Millions of Vong, all destroyed in seconds, although who would be crying for them? No, Tenel Ka realized, it was a bittersweet victory. Thousands of Hapans lost their lives, but millions of Vong did as well. The entire Hapan defense fleet, idiotically extended to a shipyard that was outside the Cluster, destroyed in seconds. Although the Dathomirian knew that the Vong could have a new invasion fleet handy in only a matter of months, she also knew that the Hapans could not. Nor could the Hapans simply grow ships, like the Vong. No, the Hapan ships had to be slowly constructed in shipyards like this one, over a period of months. But what use is a warship without anybody to crew it? Tenel Ka slowly checked the 'Rock Dragon's limited sensor display. "It... it was a repulsor." she finally said, almost in disbelief of what she'd just witnessed. "Delivered from hyperspace... although I don't know of any repulsor powerful enough to do that," she hastily added. Jacen remained silent, his common sense battling with his Jedi knowledge. Finally, he responded. "I do." The Dathomirian warrior turned to him, unsure of whether she really wanted to know or not. "What?" she slowly and deliberately asked. He leaned back in the copilot's seat in shock. "OK, I'll tell you." There was a pause as he collected his thoughts, then spoke again. "A little over eleven years ago, mom - I mean Leia - decided to go to a trade conference on Corellia. Dad took the whole family along in the 'Falcon'." He paused again, and licked his chapped lips. "Jaina and I knew that something was afoot, but our parents wouldn't allow us to come forward. Later on, we learned that the 'Falcon' narrowly escaped a mock attack by supposed Corellian pirates." Jacen nervously checked the sensor displays, and continued. "We went to visit an "archeological" dig on Corellia, which I thought was rather odd. Anakin found something, and we followed him to a large, silvery chamber. Then R7-Q9 - our tutor's quirky astromech droid, I mean - found us, and told us to return to the group." He paused again, and looked over the displays. Satisfied, he continued. "Later, the Governor's mansion came under attack. Chewie took all of us to the ship, and we left for Drall in a hurry. There, we found another identical site to the one on Corellia. Anakin figured out how to use it, and activated it." He stopped, as if thinking. "It blew several tons of rock out of the chamber almost effortlessly, and we learned that it was a planetary repulsor." Tenel Ka interrupted him. "But how would a planetary repulsor affect us here? Gravitic energy propagates at the speed of light, it travels through normal space not through hyperspace! It would take years for it to reach Fondor." Jacen mutely acknowledged. "I know. I was getting to that. Anyway, later we learned that the Selonian repulsor had been used to destroy a Bakuran ship, much in the same manner as you just saw these ships destroyed." He paused again. "Anakin, from the last I heard, was going to go to Centerpoint Station." He stopped, and looked at the red-haired woman, who was giving him a strange stare at the mention of the station. "Centerpoint Station is basically a giant sausage-shaped station, which floats in the barycenter of the binary planets Talus and Tralus in the Corellian system. It's powered by something they call the 'Glowpoint,' which somehow taps the gravitic potential of the two planets... or something like that. Anyway, Centerpoint is pretty much a containment vessel for two massive repulsors, larger than any of the planetary repulsors. The station itself is larger than the first Death Star." "So you believe Centerpoint did this?" she asked, gesturing at the destruction. "It's the only thing that makes sense," he admitted. "Although I'm not sure why Anakin would fire it if he knew we were here," Jacen observed. "Perhaps he didn't fire it," the warrior quietly commented. "It wasn't very accurate - notice how it blasted the shipyards as well as the Vong fleet?" "You have a point," Jacen conceded. "Anyway, I'm calculating the quickest route to Corellia." He paused, and let out a sigh. "I hope that Anakin isn't in trouble or anything." After a few minutes, the navicomputer chimed, and it automatically threw the transport into hyperspace with the familiar streaking of the stars. Jedi Academy - Yavin IV Luke Skywalker, at one point Hero of the Rebellion, turned over in his bed. The slumbering form of his wife Mara Jade lay, arms akimbo, next to him. He took a moment to look at her loose, auburn hair; several years ago, he'd found it amusing that he was married to a redhead and his nephew, Jacen, was close friends with one. 'It must run in the family,' he had thought. Now, he pushed the thoughts out of his mind. Dawn was breaking over the jungle moon, and he had tasks to attend to. He got up, and took a look at himself through a mirror in the dim light. Surprisingly, even at nearly forty-five years of age, he was still strong and vigorous. It might have had something to do with the rigorous exercises he went through every morning. 'Luke,' he told himself, 'you might just live to be as old as Master Yoda. If you don't get killed first, that is.' But then he quickly dismissed the thought; who'd ever heard of a human living for nine hundred years? In the bed Mara stirred, her arm flopping uselessly in the area he used to be in. It was one of the few times he got to spend a night together with her; with the invasion of the Vong, it seemed that the whole galaxy had been turned upside-down. And then there was the fact that recently, he had decided to effectively seal off the Jedi Academy, since it lay directly in the path of the infernal Vong. One of these days, he'd have to evacuate it... Luke threw on a black robe, collected his miscellaneous belongings, and proceeded to step outside of the room. Then, without any warning, alarms went off all over the Academy. A pre-recorded voice announced, "We are under Imperial Attack. Repeat, we are under Imperial attack. Evacuate immediately..." Luke sighed. He'd never gotten around to changing the message in almost thirty years since the base had been a Rebel headquarters. Although it still served the purpose well... He rushed down to the lower levels of the ziggurat, to the former control room. Several other Jedi were already collected there, shaking their heads at a tactical display. The question was superfluous as a Jedi Master, but he asked it anyway. "What's happening?" Tionne, the Jedi that many trainees fondly knew as the sage, responded. "Vong." It was a single word that conveyed the message. "How many ships?" asked Luke. "From what we see, four assault cruisers and their accompanying coralskippers." Luke let his shoulders collapse. He'd known that the attack would come sooner or later, even though the Jedi had attempted to conceal the planet with the Force. However, the coordinates of the Academy remained known across the galaxy. Apparently he would have to evacuate sooner, rather than later. "Start the evacuations, Tionne." he ordered, checking the sensor network. "And get that shield up." Almost six years before, the Republic had installed an inexpensive shield generator of the type used at Hoth, a GenSet... well, he couldn't remember the model number. The first one had been destroyed by some Imperial resurrectionist movement, and they'd had to install another. He grimaced as the tactical representations of the Vong forces moved closer to the Academy. "Tionne, you stay here and monitor things. I'm going to the hangar bay, to get the Gallofree transports ready for liftoff." Turning, he hurried out of the control center. The galaxy seemed to be falling apart, and it appeared that the Vong hadn't even begun in earnest. Something had better change, and soon. Chapter 22 YT-2400 Freighter 'Headwind' "You heard anything about those Vong yet, Dorba?" Chro'far shouted over the din caused by the engines of another freighter which shared their crowded hangar bay. The bass rumbles and accompanying shrill whines made him wish you could place a muffler on an ion engine! "Not since we left Coruscant." Dorba shouted back in reply. The older man grunted an acknowledgement, and stuck his head back into the access port he'd been working in for the past hour. Dorba had decided to buy some upgrades for the ship. Among those were a new, military-grade sensor package, full-rig slave circuits, and a couple of droids. She had used some of the spice for this - though she hadn't told him that. "Do you think they're as widespread as people claim?" Dorba shouted at his back as he worked. "Guess so," he finally said after extracting his head for a second time. "Even the bounty hunters seem pretty tied up." He paused in thought, then said, "You'd think that the Hutts would be really mad about losing a big shipment of spice like that." "Yeah, I'd think so too, judging by what Jabba did to Han Solo that time." The former smuggler's legacy of being encased in carbonite was pretty legendary by now; it certainly had helped to increase the intimidation factor of the Hutts - although when Luke Skywalker busted him out, there went the intimidation... Ignoring her comment, Chro'far popped his head back in the access port again. "Hand me that hydrospanner, will you?" She gave him a confused glance. "I thought you already had it?" He sighed, pulled his head out once more and nodded in the tool's general direction. "That's it. Now quit stalling, and give it to me!" *** Imperial Storage Facility 000162-A "Ah. Captain Granglo. What brings you here?" inquired Marsh, a slight smile on his face. The Captain straightened himself. "With the help of the scanning crews, Sir, we've finished cataloguing the containers." He tossed a datapad onto the General's desk, not really caring about policy at the moment. The tiredness resulting from 24 hours of solid working had blunted his normal adherence to military protocols. As Marsh moved to pick up the datapad, the Captain began to recite the lists of information from memory. "Ten crates of Class-A thermal detonators, thirty crates of Merr-Sonn PLX-2M concussion missile launchers and ammo, fifty crates of E-11 blaster carbines and power cells, over one hundred fifty crates of some type of body armor... we couldn't tell what it was. Then there was another seven hundred and sixty crates of assorted mechanisms... the scanning crew figured that they were walker parts." He paused to catch his breath, and continued. "Plus, we uncovered another storage room - thankfully, without any more droids. We haven't begun scanning yet, but the crews estimate the chamber as twice the size of the previous one. Inside is... um... well, you'd better see it yourself, Sir." Marsh glanced down at the datapad he'd just received, a frown on his face. Slowly, it turned into a smile. He stood deliberately, got up from his desk, and walked around to the astonished Captain. "Well done, Captain," he said. "You've just found your first World Devastator." The General clapped his hand down on the now- shocked Captain's shoulder, and gave him an uncharacteristic grin. Granglo turned and stopped several times in confusion. "Should I contact Commodore Mantrel and inform him of the proceedings?" he finally asked. "No, I will take care of it. Just get the rest of that second room scanned - we don't want any booby-traps left." "Yes, Sir." He saluted, then left the room. *** YT-2400 Freighter 'Headwind' - Three Days Later "Final system check is green. We have been cleared for liftoff." Dorba double-checked her console to make certain. "All right. We're taking off." She leaned back as the ship began its liftoff sequence. A minute later, once the ship had cleared the atmosphere, she glanced down at the sensors. The newest, long- range ones were flashing and she studied them - and just as soon wished she hadn't. "Oh... kriff." Chro'far moved his head over to see what she was talking about. "There goes the neighborhood." he quietly added, turning back to his own set of consoles, and activating the hyperdrive. Epilogue USS 'Enterprise' - Three Months Later "Disengage slipstream." Picard calmly gave the order to the conn, and the ensign complied. "We are out of slipstream," he reported. "Is anything in the area, Number One?" Picard asked, wondering exactly why Starfleet had dispatched his ship, plus the USS 'Dauntless', to this patch of blank space. "Only the 'Ny'lith Boro', Sir." Riker replied, leaning over the shoulder of the Sensor operator. Picard blinked. Although the Enterprise-E had since been refitted with slipstream, it still felt strange to him that the strange Bulk Cruiser, apparently an insignificant warship of the Republic, could still outpace the flagship of Starfleet. "Open a channel to them." He ordered the Lt at tactical. "Yes, Sir. Channel open." The image of Captain Avin quickly appeared on the viewscreen. His unhappiness was plainly shown on his face. "Captain Picard, I have some good, and some bad, news for you." The aging captain grimaced. Since they were, for the most part, intruding into Borg space, anything could happen. However, he also felt certain that the Borg could, at the moment, care less, due to the remaining implants inside his brain that allowed him to listen to the Collective. Picard momentarily allowed his face to go blank, and focused on the quiet murmur of voices he could hear. 'Twelve of fourteen... hyperspacial anomaly in sector 159... diverting thirteen cubes to investigate...' "Captain?" Avin was staring at Picard, wondering if he had gone crazy or something. "Are you all right?" Briefly shaking his head to clear his thoughts, Picard replied. "Yes, I am." He paused, and looked up. "We should be expecting thirteen visitors, though not for some time yet." He paused again, then continued. "What was your news?" Avin stiffened. "Well, the good news is that we contacted the Republic, through a wormhole that they apparently created." Picard watched in interest. "And the bad news?" he prompted. "It's not the same Republic." Avin said bluntly. Picards eyes widened in surprise. "How could a galactic government change so soon?" On the other end of the viewscreen, Avin nervously fiddled with his Captain's insignia. "Er..." He paused in an attempt to gather himself. "There was a civil war soon after we left the galaxy." Picard nodded, not quite understanding what the other Captain was telling him. "So you mean that after 25,000 years, the Republic had a civil war? So how has it changed if it's passed?" Avin shook his head. "No, not just a civil war. The Galactic Republic became the Galactic Empire." He caught his breath, and continued. "There was a rebellion, and they re-instated a Republic - they call it the New Republic." Picard didn't move, not sure if he wanted to know any more. Avin was apparently collecting his wits, and finally continued. "But that's not the worst of it. The Republic is being torn apart by some extra-galactic enemy. They have formally requested the assistance of Starfleet." Captain Picard stared at the viewscreen for a few seconds, breathing heavily. A galactic government being torn apart, and here the Federation, barely controlling a quarter of their own galaxy, was being asked to assist. Finally, he turned back to the viewscreen and responded. "I'll talk to Starfleet Command about it, as soon as we get back to the Alpha Quadrant." "Thank you, Captain. Avin out." *** "Captain's Log, Stardate 53426.8. "We have been patrolling this mostly blank patch of space for a week now, with no sign of anything happening. The USS Dauntless is accompanying us, as it is the only other slipstream-equipped ship in Starfleet so far. Together, Starfleet Command feels we can hold most anything here in the Delta Quadrant at bay until they have a few more ships to send... however, I have my doubts." Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the USS 'Enterprise'-E finished his sentence, and glanced at the viewscreen, which was displaying a breathtaking view of the newly formed wormhole. Although was a view he'd seen many times over the past few weeks, every time he saw the wormhole, it still astonished the Captain that the Republic had been able to create a stable wormhole, especially one covering the vast distances spanning the two galaxies. Surely, he thought, they possessed some interestingly advanced technology. Picard figured that he finally knew how Zefram Cochrane felt when he first saw the USS Enterprise, a ship from over two hundred years in the future, in orbit and visible with the naked eye. Certainly, the Dyson Sphere that Picard had encountered years before was quite awesome, but all it did was sit there, collecting energy from the star. Some people in Starfleet had talked about colonizing the sphere - and Picard had to agree, it was an interesting idea - but try as they may, the idea hadn't gotten off the ground. Yet Picard and the Enterprise had already traveled to the far side of the hyperspace wormhole, in order to open proper negotiations with the 'New' Republic. As soon as they'd came out of the wormhole, the first thing that had caught his eye was the three-hundred kilometer long space station that sat serenely in the center of a binary pair of planets. As a passing bit of information, the New Republic diplomats had informed him that the space station, massive and yet insignificant compared to the Dyson Sphere, was what created the wormhole. It would certainly give the physicists something to chew on, Picard knew. The idea of tapping into the gravitic energy of a star itself, harnessing the energy of the planets that rotated about it... and being able to actually move planets! That was certainly unheard of. He snapped back from his thoughts, and quickly terminated the log entry - not a moment too soon. Thirteen cubes emerged from warp, each measuring three kilometers on a side. They served as battleships, planetary assault vessels, and transports for the Borg, who often built them from the assimilated remains of enemy vessels. A single Cube could take on a fleet of lesser vessels with ease, a fact so painfully illustrated at the slaughter of Wolf 359. For once, the Borg ignored the Federation vessel, instead moving towards the hyperspace wormhole on their inexorable course. 'To begin the assimilation of another galaxy', the Captain thought with shock. Picard spun towards the Tactical officer, his face serious. "Go to red alert. They have to be prevented from reaching the wormhole." Pent-up fury built up within him, as he remembered the tortures he'd sustained when he had been assimilated, and when they had partially assimilated the Enterprise. However, he didn't let it show on his face. "Open fire with everything we have," he ordered, his steely resolve evident in his voice. "Phasers on random rotation." Acting on the Captain's orders, the tactical officer tapped the controls, and immediately the blue-white spheres of several quantum torpedoes flew out of the Sovereign-class vessel, on a direct course to the Borg ship. Phasers were next; the golden-red blasts lanced out, playing almost harmlessly against the adapting shields of the Cubes. Despite the damage caused by the torpedoes, the Cubes pressed on to the wormhole, ignoring the lesser vessels. Picard sighed in resignation at the frustrating actions of the Borg. "Helm, lay in a course for the wormhole. We'll have to follow them through. Order the Dauntless to do the same." The Ensign promptly made the necessary modifications to the controls. "Done, Sir. We are moving towards the wormhole." "Orders to Dauntless sent and acknowledged Sir." Riker announced. Picard leaned back into his command chair. If this was what he thought it was - two Starfleet ships versus thirteen Cubes - it would be over very quickly. On the viewscreen, he watched as the last cube disappeared into the swirling, gaping maw of the rapidly nearing wormhole. Then slowly but surely, the mighty Sovereign-class vessel briefly shook as it entered the wormhole. The view of the stars was quickly replaced by a bluish tunnel, streaking past with a kaliedoscope- like effect. He hardly dared to think of how fast he was travelling. *** The hyperspace tunnel dissolved into a view of realspace, and Picard immediately discerned the bulky shapes of the Cubes. No Republic ships were to be found, although Picard thought he could discern a few strange charcoal-grey lumps at a distance... "What does the area look like?" he inquired of the sensor post. "Thirteen Cubes, and a few things that are registering as asteroids, Sir." Someone had once commented that a Cube looked as if a practical joker had decided to turn Spacedock inside-out; it was a fairly accurate description. Tubes and pipes, coolant lines and heat radiators, and antennae, these all protruded haphazardly from the surface of the Cube. It was almost as if the Borg couldn't decide where to run their conduits. Then Picard stiffened as a thought hit him. "Mr. Data, why are the Borg focusing their attention on those asteroids?" Before the android could answer, hundreds of glowing orbs of plasma erupted from the asteroids, moving towards the Borg Cubes, which were pressing on almost inexorably. When the Borg came into range, they opened fire with their own weapons, golden-white streaks of fire, the Borg torpedoes, hurtling back at the 'asteroids.' The first wave of plasma blasts struck the leading Cube, instantly tearing the entire face of the cube apart, and venting it to space. As Picard watched the viewscreen with morbid fascination, he fancied that he could see the bodies of drones drifting away, unable to deal with the vacuum without prior modification. He watched the progress of the Borg torpedoes as they neared the strange craft at a lesuirely pace... ... and vanished without a trace mere hundreds of meters from the colossal ships. At the sight, Picard nearly jumped out of the Captain's chair, eyes bulging in shock. The 'asteroids' were continuing to fire, completely ignoring the increasingly sporadic return fire from the Borg vessels. Voices went through Picard's head... Drone 14 of 27 online. New species identified. Designation 19702. Commence transmission on all frequencies: We are the Borg. Your biological and cultural distinctiveness will be added to our own perfection. Resistance is futile... Drone 3 of 4 online. Species designated 19702 is firing plasma- based weaponry- Drone 32 of 64 online. Assessing sub-node 27A, cube 3 of 13. Node has sustained critical damage- Drone 9 of 17 online. Cube 3 of 13 has been destroyed. Species 19702 assimilation priority: 10. Drone 5 of 8 online. Adapting to Species 19702 plasma weaponry... unsuccessful. Species 19702 firing weaponry- Drone 11 of 25 online. Cube 4 of 13 destroyed. Functions resuming from 5 of 13... Picard eventually shut the voices of the Borg out of his head, and stopped to think. For the first time he had seen , the Borg were being beaten, and beaten badly. He had heard Voyager's descriptions of the Borg's near defeat by Species 8472, but this was the first time he had actually witnessed a defeat at close hand. Hoping that the mysterious force hadn't taken a notice to his relatively insignificant ship, he turned to the conn. "Number One, bring us about. I want as much distance between us and those... er, ships, as possible." "Aye, Captain." Riker moved to the helm and began supervising the Helmsman. The mighty - by Starfleet standards, at least - Sovereign-class ship almost gracefully spun about, turning away from the Vong Assault Cruisers. It was too late. Several more orbs of plasma came hurtling towards the Sovereign, impacting on its shields in a dazzling starburst of colors. "Damage report!" someone shouted over the bridge. Several consoles were sparking dangerously and smoking, causing the ensigns to hurriedly back away from them. "Shields at forty seven percent! Modulations aren't doing a thing - the plasma is spread-spectrum!" The Tactical officer replied, working frantically at his controls in an attempt to get the shields strengthened. The ship shuddered again, causing Picard to involuntarily lean forward in his seat. One of the consoles exploded in a brilliant flash of released energy, killing an unfortunate ensign manning it. Smoke from the explosion quickly covered the bridge. The Captain sought to calm himself as he gave the orders. "Hail them." "They aren't responding to hails." Picard grimaced as the ship shuddered again, the reality of the situation coming to him. "Then take us to warp, Number One." Riker grabbed at a support column as the ship rocked from another impact. He then tried to make his way back to the conn, passing the unconscious body of the ensign whose post it had been and quickly scanned the LCARS display. "I can't, Sir." He coughed from the smoke, and continued. "We're being held in place by... what appears to be a black hole." Picard remembered some words which Data had told him, words spoken almost ten years previously, by Admiral Leonard McCoy... "She's got the right name... if you treat her like a lady, she'll always bring you home," he had said about the immediate predecessor of the E-E, the Galaxy-class Enterprise-D. Although the bridge was shuddering constantly, Picard took a few seconds to reflect on the words. Finally, he turned through the smoke towards Data. "Mr. Data, is there anything we can do to break free?" "Uncertain, Captain. However, the black hole appears to be artificially generated. If I can configure the deflector dish to emit an intense negative graviton pulse, it may be enough to dissapate the gravity field for a long enough period of time to allow us to break free." Data paused for a few seconds, then quietly continued. "We will have to evacuate to Engineering, however, and separate the saucer. The fields are intense enough that our inertial dampers will be taxed to their limits powering only the stardrive." The captain let his eyes drop. Thankfully, the E-E was not carrying any civilians; that was certainly a burden relieved... although it still pained him to leave even part of his ship behind. "Make it so," he ordered, albeit hoarsely from the smoke. Data, working efficiently as always, immediately began working at his console. *** "Captain!" B'Elanna Torres shouted over the comm, from her post in Engineering."The energy from the warp core has nowhere to go - pressure is at 200 tera-Cochranes and increasing rapidly. The antimatter reaction is speeding up considerably, and if we do not shut it down in a few minutes, it will begin to develop micro- fractures." Janeway looked at the darkened viewscreen, wondering if it was the mysterious attackers. 'It probably is,' she thought to herself. "Disengage slipstream. Engage warp, factor seven. Get us away from those things," she ordered, indicating the aforementioned attackers. Although Janeway could not see them, the engineer's status displays immediately went to green as the warp core had a load taken off of it, but then just as suddenly went red again. "That gravitic field's interfering with the performance of the warp field. I recommend that we drop to warp two as a maximum." Torres said, fighting to keep the core stable. Janeway sighed. "So be it. Tom, warp two to the wormhole." She settled back into her chair, hoping that there wouldn't be any more interruptions. Unfortunately, there would be. "Captain, priority distress signal from the Enterprise. I'm putting it on-screen." Seven of Nine worked at her console, and the message promptly was displayed. Kathryn watched the message, her jaw set. Finally, she turned back to the helm. "Tom, turn us about. We're going to get as many people off the Enterprise as we can." Lieutenant Paris' hands were a blur of activity as he activated the proper controls. "Yes, Captain" was the only acknowledgement he gave. She was already planning ahead. "Captain to transporter room one." She paused for the connection, then continued. "Start beaming people off as soon as we are within range." *** Captain Picard stood transfixed in his position, just in front of the Captain's chair. The rest of the bridge was in a panic, with people crowding into the turbolifts, but he just stood there, the perfect image of tranquility amidst confusion. Data, about to enter the turbolift, noticed the Captain standing in the middle of the bridge, and paused. "Captain, you must leave the bridge immediately!" Picard paused, lost in thought. "Had his chest been a cannon, he would have shot his heart upon it..." "Sir, I do not see what Moby Dick has to do with the current situation." The captain was totally lost to the situation around him. The ship continued to shudder from the numerous impacts of the plasma blasts, and smoke boiled across the bridge. Still, he remained indifferent, perhaps leading one to believe that he had gone crazy. And he continued speaking. "The gaudy, blabbing, and remorseful day "Is crept into the bosom of the sea; "And now loud-howling wolves arouse the jades "That drag the tragic melancholy night "Who with their drowsy, slow, and flagging wings "Clip dead men's graves, and from their misty jaws "Breathe foul contagious darkness into the air. "Therefore, bring forth the soldiers of our prize; "For, whilst our pinnace anchors in the Downs, "Here shall they make their ransom on the sand, "Or with their blood stain this discolour'd shore." Data looked at him quizically, cautiously side-stepping to avoid an exploding console. "Shakespeare's Henry the Sixth, Act Four, Scene One." He paused for a moment to run some calculations, and continued. "I still do not see what that has to do with our current situation." Picard turned to the android, his face grim. "I'm not sure what it has to do with our current situation either, Mr. Data." He stopped to regain his balance as the ship shook hard and overwhelmed the inertial dampers, and continued. "There was a custom of the ancient Greeks that a Captain should go down with his ship." The android stopped to regard his captain in a new sense. "Surely, Captain, you're not thinking of committing suicide?" That remark brought a smile to Picards face. "No, no, of course not." He coughed again, and seemingly contradicted himself. "However, the enemy must be made to look away from the 'Enterprise' and 'Dauntless', and concentrate on matters closer in. I dare not leave it to the computer in the case it fails; besides, there needs to be an experienced officer here to see and take advantage of any opportunities during the diversion." He saw the android's mouth open to rebut him. "Data." He smiled sadly, continuing. "There is a time for arguments, and a time for friends to go their own ways - please go. Starfleet will need you. Tell Will that he is to take command of the what's left of the 'Enterprise'... I won't be coming." Data was unconvinced, but acknowledged. "Yes, sir... and farewell." He quickly rushed to the now-deserted turbolift, and the door closed behind him. Now that the bridge was empty, Picard grimly strode across to the helm, and scanned the controls. 'Good,' he thought. 'The saucer's been evacuated and separated.' Picard took a second to familiarize himself with the controls. Then, after taking a deep breath, he tapped the throttle controls to full impulse. *** The saucer section of the Enterprise-E surged forward in acceleration, heading directly for the largest of the Vong ships. Unprepared for this sudden attack, the Vong quickly tried to reverse their dovin basals in an attempt to repulse the massive saucer. It was too late for the Vong. The saucer slammed into the Vong ship like a million-tonne battering ram, its bow crumpling from the impact. But there were still three hundred meters of metal to follow it. Meter by devestating meter, the duranium hull crumbled the coral, itself melting in the process. Fusion reactors across the saucer succumbed to the intense forces placed upon them, exploding in nuclear fury. Entire panels of ablative hull armor were torn off, drifting away serenely, seemingly unaffected by the destruction that the Enterprise was causing in its death throes. And still, the saucer of the mighty ship plowed on. The internal frame of the ship, now all but missing the protective hull, glowed as plasma conduits ruptured. The explosions vaporized corridors and nearby sections of Vong ship, although any fires caused by combustion of materials promptly went out in the vacuum of space. "Farewell, Enterprise. We hardly knew thee," Riker said solemnly, now standing on the bridge of the 'Dauntless', where he had been beamed to. The plan originally had been to take the stardrive section home, but the battle bridge had been destroyed before that was a possibility. Now Riker watched the viewscreen as a blinding white flash signalled the warp core detonating as the strange gravimetric fields of their enemy pushed the drive beyond endurance. Captain Kathryn Janeway, watching the demise of the flagship, appeared worried. But worried was quite an understatement; frightened or scared would be a better term. "Activate the phase-cloak," she ordered, hoping that it would at least discourage the mysterious attackers. "Aye, Captain," Seven responded, activating the highly contentious piece of equipment. There was a slight shimmering as the phasing field activated, and then it went away. Riker stared in shock at the destroyed wreckage of the Vong ship, and the scattered hull plates which were all that remained of the mightiest ship in Starfleet. One, bearing the famous registry number of NCC 1701-E, drifted across the view in a stunning display of victory through defeat, a reminder to any passing visitors of the mark the ship's century-long legacy had left. Then, the turbolift hissed open, and Data stepped out onto the bridge. Commander William T. Riker turned away from the display to the new arrival. The person who was missing meant more than the android who was present. "Data," he inquired, "where is the Captain?" The android replied in his typical matter-of-fact way, having deactived his emotion chip in reaction to the situation. "He decided to remain with the ship, Sir." Riker turned back to the viewscreen, his eyes wide with shock. He had known that one day, he would command the 'Enterprise'... but he'd never expected it this soon. "And farewell... Captain Jean-Luc Picard. May your legacy live on."