The First Mission

Torin Qel-Droma (Codyman@aol.com)

The heat was oppressive, even in the confines of the bar in which Torin Qel-Droma sat.  A small fan in another corner of the bar only served to swirl around the thick dust that clouded the place.  He sat back in the corner booth, looking up at the holo-vision that flickered over the bartender’s head.  The barman turned up the volume, listening intently, desperately hoping for better news.

Today’s weather is exactly like it has been for weeks.  It’s going to be around 130 degrees (55 C) today, with no sign of the heat letting up anytime soon.  It looks like we may get a little rain in the weeks ahead, but for the time being, it’s just hot.  We recommend staying indoors as much as possible.

Torin gazed down at the drink in his hands.  The glass was warm to the touch after only a few minutes, the whiskey near undrinkable.  He took a sip regardless, looking into the glass as he brought it up to his face.  It was crusted with dirt and dusk floated around on top.  He was tired of waiting.  He had been coming to the bar for 3 days, waiting for his contact, but he had seen nothing yet.  He shifted his weight in the seat, trying to remain comfortable in the oppressive heat.  He had adjusted his attire to fit the look of the people on this desolate world of Lantare, wearing little but a wife-beater and some cargo pants, his hair, dreaded, and long, his face unshaven and bearded.  He carried no weapon on a planet where a person was judged by the size of their piece.  Still, not a being anywhere dared approach him.  On his first day of bar sitting, a lithe cat-like thing had sat at the bar watching him for nearly an hour.  When Torin had finally acknowledged its existence with a cold stare the thing had stood up screaming in its native tongue.  “Death has come, Death is there!” Torin chuckled a bit and took another swig of his drink, turning his attention back toward the screen.

The Imperial General in charge of the two garrisons here in Jaggerbund City has toughened his search for the leader of the resistance movement, Commandant Shrrinn Kruaan.  He has hired a number of bounty hunters to search out the Commandant’s base of operations, stating that he would like to have things cleared up before the imperial parade three days from now.  He has stated that when found, Kruaan will face a fair trial before imperial courts.  He is wanted for spreading anarchy throughout the city and outlying territories.

Torin once again turned his attention away from the holo-viewer to see a new silhouette emerge through the dusty entrance.  The figure was thin and moved with a bird-like gait, toward Torin’s table.  Torin moved up in his seat, resting his arms on the table to show that he meant no violence.  The figure slid slowly into the booth, on the other side of the table, snapping his head around spastically, checking every angle of the bar.  Torin reached for his shirt with lightening fast quickness, pulling the thing’s face into the light. 

“Could you please be a bit more calm there?  You’re freaking me out.”  He let go of the filthy thing.  It was dressed in a foul array of clothes, nearly covering his entire body.  A full breathing apparatus was fastened to his head, allowing him to breathe fairly easy outside, in the dusty air.  He detached the breather from his head, revealing the visage of a very thin man, very rat like in his appearance, with a long slender nose and teeth that protruded from over his upper lip.  Torin took a sip of his drink and leaned back in his booth, ready to get down to business.  “OK, I’ve been waiting 3 days for you here.  Do you have what I want?”  The twitchy rat man ran his hand through all his rags, looking for the item Torin had requested, causing even more dust to fly up around them.  Torin shook his head.  “You dirty little…” The man’s hands appeared once again, a disk in his left hand.

“Here, dis be wha you want, righ?  Do you ‘av wha’I wan?”  Torin pulled out a small sack of targa, the addictive spice like drug of this world.  He slid it across the tab to the twitchy man.  The man handed him the disk.  “I’av to tank you for dis.”  He greedily began to open the package, sniffing the spice eagerly.  Torin began to stand, and the little man, moved back instinctively, coveting the spice like a child, holding it to his heart.

“Relax, I’m getting up to get another drink.  We’re done here, so I’m going to sit at the bar and watch the holo-news for a bit.  Enjoy the spice.”  The rat-thing settled down some and began to look at his spice again.  Torin worked his way over to a stool at the bar and took a seat, once again turning his attention to the news.

The parade is going to be the biggest in Lantare history, and is expected to draw heavy crowds.  Unfortunately, critics have decried the parade as an attempt to show imperial might.  In other news, the price of water has moved up to nearly 25 credits a gallon.

Torin peered to his left, watching two desperate gamblers fight over a quart of water.  One accused the other of cheating, making it readily noticeable that his gun was quite ready to be used.  They backed down and returned to their game.

Tension is high, but the imperial garrison leaders are assuring the public that this will be a very safe event, and that all resistance movements will be subdued.

The rat man dug into the pouch of spice with his finger, tasting it.  He smiled as the drug went to his head, producing a feeling of euphoria he had never experienced.  This was much better than any targa he had ever taken.  As it influenced his senses, everything seemed to speed up, and things were changing before him.  The wall of the bar flew at him as if he was racing toward it on a swoop, and then began to spin.  Voices echoed and danced around in his head.  Everything was getting faster, and faster, until he could take it no longer.  Then blackness hit.  His heart stopped a second later and his head hit the table with thud.

Shrrinn Kruaan has stated that he and his resistance will not attempt anything during the parade in lieu of the parade falling on the Lantare holiday of water harvest.  Still, he continues on to say that he and the people of Lantare will not stop their fight to free themselves from imperial rule.

Torin stood up from his stool, tipping the bartender as he walked away from the bar.  In passing, he gazed down at the dead rat man.  In seconds he emerged from the dusty bar, to an even more dust filled world.  He had a job to do, and in three days, the planet of Lantare would never be the same.

The sun was high in the sky, beating down on Torin Qel-Droma as he lay on a roof of one of Jaggerbund’s buildings.  He wiped the sweet from his brow.  It was another day of oppressive heat.  He no longer had dreads or an unshaven face.  Instead, he stood was now clothed in imperial soldier fatigues, hair cut short and dyed black, face as smooth as the day he was born.  He surveyed the street below with macrobinoculars, carefully cataloguing every little thing he saw.  He was looking for the perfect spot, the place where his plan would have the most impact.  Imperial soldiers surveyed the street below him, allowing machines to set up dividers that would keep the people separated from the parade.  Even the machines setting the partitions seemed to strain as the brutal sun beat down on them.  Indeed, the soldiers were very lazy throughout the whole operation.  Many of them stood chatting to one another in the cleared off street, drinking from their canteens, and smoking cigarettes.  As Torin surveyed things he heard the encroaching footsteps of another soldier approaching him from behind.  Torin lowered the binoculars and turned to face the man.

“I’ve surveyed the area, and this seems like a bad place for any assassin, if you ask me sir.  The rooftops overall will be a fairly bad place actually.  We’ll have LAVs patrolling the skies, looking for things like this, and I find it hard to think any assassin could stay up here for so long, frying in the sun, and still get a steady shot off on the garrison general.”  The other officer made a note on his datapad.

“So you’re saying that a roof shot is an unlikely possibility.”  Torin lit up a cigarette and took a few puffs before he responded.

“Well Sir, I’m not saying someone wouldn’t try it, I’m just saying that if I was an assassin I’d rather be shooting from somewhere else.  Course, assassins are unpredictable.”  He let out a long plume of smoke from his mouth.

“Well, I’ll file that in the report major.  The general considers it very important that the people see him out in the open, instead of hiding behind some wall.  He wants to show the people he is not afraid of them.”  The office hooked his datapad onto his side and pulled up a canteen, taking a long sip.

“Well, sir, I firmly doubt these resistance fighters have the technology to get by our sensors.  I’m sure we’ll catch them if they try.”  He flicked the cigarette off the building.  “But if you’ll excuse me, my lunch break awaits.”  He patted the officer on the back and walked and headed for the stairwell.

The parade was three hours away.  Torin Look at his datapad for the last time.  The disk showed him the location of Shrrinn Kruaan’s hideout, below the city.  He had practically memorized the layout, but he looked it over one last time for good measure.  Closing the program and taking the disk out, he crushed it in his hands, and threw the datapad against a wall.  Still clothed in imperial uniform, he was in an abandoned building planning his way of attack.  He reached into the pack on his back, pulling two imperial blaster carbines from his pack.  He holstered one on his belt, and held the other in his left hand.  He took a deep meditative breath and made up his mind, he was ready.  Walking over to another section of the building he came up to a section of floor that appeared to be boarded up.  He knelt down to the floor, putting his ear to the boards.  There was definitely something below these boards.  He proceeded to knock as the disk had told him, 3 times in quick succession, follow by two slow knocks, a five-second wait, and a final knock.  The wooden panel moved aside, throwing up a good deal of dust in the process.  As the two guards looked up to see who their guest was, Torin had already jumped the ten feet down to them, side kicking one in the head, breaking its neck instantly.  He grabbed the other by the head by sticking two fingers through his eyes, and throttling his head into the wall.  They were both dead before they could make a sound.  Torin proceeded down the halls slowly, making sure not to alarm other guards in the process.  He crept by the closed doors as silent as a cat, making his way as best as possible toward his objective.  With little problem, and only a few more deaths, he had reached Shrriin Kruaan’s underground office.  The door flew open into a room, lit with hundreds of candles, as Kruaan meditated.  The Bothan’s eyes flew open at this intrusion, angering him intensely.  He stood slowly, eyeing Qel-Droma as he stood in the doorway.  Torin dropped one of his imperial weapons on the ground, and kept the other holstered.  He smiled at the Bothan venomously.

“Shriin Kruaan, I’ve come to kill you.”  At that the Bothan bared his claws, running at Torin with an urgent show of ferocity.  Torin awaited the Bothan, staring him down the whole distance to him, and sidestepped the Bothan’s charge as he flew at him.  Shrriin was an expert fighter, and even with Torin’s sidestep, managed to sink his claws into Qel-Droma, ripping his imperial shirt off his back, and clawing marks into Torin’s side.  The Bothan came crashing into the wall, but was quickly on his feet again.  Seeing the tattoos on Qel-Droma, including the massive oriental dragon tattoo on his back, confused Kruaan. 

“You are no imperial.  You’re…” Torin pulled the blaster from his holster. 

“I was going to fight you like a man, but I have to move on, I have other things to accomplish before I leave this rock.  I’m sorry, but your death works best for your cause.  Consider yourself a martyr.”  The blast hit Kruaan square in the chest, knocking him through a table.  As he fell through the table candles fell to the ground, falling upon the dead Bothan.  Torin threw his other blaster to the ground and walked out of the Bothan’s compound. 

Imperial hoverscouts patrolled the rooftops carefully, watching for heat signatures that might indicate a sniper or something else on the roof.  The parade was already starting, and thousands of people lined the streets, watching the procession.  AT-STs and AT-PTs walked down the streets in line with one another, showing off their might, as marching groups of stormtroopers filed menacingly through the streets.  The day was even hotter than most, but the imperials took pride in their performance, knowing that the fear they were striking in these people would keep them under their control.  Torin lay on the rooftop he had been on as an imperial a day earlier, clothed from head to toe in a heat suit, able to generate the same level of heat as the environment around him.  His suit stayed at the same temperature as the roof he had situated himself upon.  He adjusted the scope of his rifle, aiming at a few people for practice.  A hoverscout repulsorcraft flew overhead.  Torin had positioned himself in the shadows, in order to hide, but chances are he would not be seen anyway, as the imperials in their sensor craft tended to monitor their computer screens more than using their own eyes.  He inserted a bullet into the rifle, using a traditional slugthrower instead of a laser rifle.  This he did for two main reasons.  For one, even a laser shot from a frequency invisible to the human eye could be seen by imperial sensors, and for two, a slugthrower was something more common to the people of this planet.  It would look like a resistance assassination.  He flipped a switch on the rifle to turn the silencer on. 

The crowd was going wild, cheering over the parade.  Most of the citizens had never viewed the machinery being presented, as line after line of imperial walkers marched down the street.  In the distance, the General’s hovercar was quickly approaching.  He waved to the populace, a big grin on his face.  Torin chuckled a bit, as he zoomed in on the general.  He was just about to pass through the city square.  “You cocky SOB, if you were smart, you wouldn’t be out in the open like that.  But you think you own this planet.  Well, we’ll see about that.”  Torin pressed back on the trigger slowly, releasing the bullet.  It struck the general square on the head, causing him to fall out the back of the hovercar, waving morbidly in a sort of farewell to life.  He was dead before he hit the ground.  The crowd began screaming, and the marching imperials turned to see their dead leader. 

The first shot killed the general, but no one really knows who fired the second.  Regardless, the imperials were soon firing on the people in the streets.  The people responded by charging the dividers, overturning them, and attacking the imperials.  Unfortunately, fairly unarmed, the parade goers were quickly struck down by the imperial machine.  As AT-STs and stormtroopers ravaged the people at the parade for retribution, word finally reached the media about the death of Kruaan.  Soon it was the imperials that faced massacre, as the resistance burst forth, attacking the imperials with hit and run raids.  3 hours after the parade had been shattered by one bullet, and 6 hours after the death of Kruaan, the planet of Lantare was thrown into all out war.  The media told of how an imperial had infiltrated the lair of Kruaan, assassinating him while he prayed.  This was only backed up by the finding of two imperial weapons and part of an imperial uniform.  Regular citizens who had never even thought of fighting, picked up their weapons in order to push this oppressive Empire off their planet.  The Imperials later found the assassination weapon that had taken their general, and decried the resistance, trying to blame it all on them, but it was too late.  The war for Minos had begun.

Torin Qel-Droma sat aboard an imperial shuttle that had evacuated non-combat personnel from the planet.  He looked at the others aboard the shuttle, most scared out of their minds.  He smiled a bit at first, but then just burst out fully into an all out laugh.  Those onboard figured it was just a way of letting go of the stressful situation they were all in.  Little did they know what he really laughed at; how one man had cut through the red tape of politics to ignite an all out war.  He looked forward to it.  In weeks he was sure his fighter squadron would be shipped out to the cluster, in order to “preserve the life of these people, oppressed by the Empire.”  He could see himself rallying High Command to vote for war in the near future.  There was no way they could back down now.

“We can’t let these people be oppressed anymore.  The Empire has killed their leader, and is now trying to eradicate them all, in order to take control of the entire planet.”  Torin was standing, now dressed a bit more formally than usual, hair short, spiked up a bit, and bleached blond.  He addressed the high command, pounding his fist on the table before him in order to stress his point.  “First this planet, then another, and then they will have the whole cluster.  We can’t let them do this.  We have to save these people and all others they try to oppress.  Please, vote to go to war, we can’t stay back anymore.  We’ve tried to, but now they’ve gone too far.  It’s time to bring this out of the realm of skirmish and into a true war.  We will push the Empire back until they have no where to go, and then we will crush them.”  The members of high command nodded their heads and voted.  The vote was near unanimous, with one vote going against it.  Regardless, the Rebel Squadrons were heading to war.  Still, the one vote bothered Torin.  This was a pretty clear-cut issue, as it had been presented to high command, and these were fairly pro war leaders.  In such a case of oppression it easily should have been totally unanimous.  Torin stared at the leaders, in their alcove above him.  “One of them knows what really happened.”

Two weeks later, the Rebel Squadrons were ready to ship out.  Torin stood in his room, getting on his pilot suit.  He was shipping out with Rza squad later today, and he couldn’t wait.  In his fighter he would strike at the heart of the Empire, with the best squadron in the Rebel Squadrons behind him.  He was elated beyond elated.  He had started a war using his connection to his past work in the Rebel Squadrons Commando Division, and was now going to get to fly, striking like a dagger into the heart of the Empire.  A knock on his door shook him out of his day dreaming.  The door flew open and a messenger appeared before him.  “This is for you sir.”  He grabbed the envelope from the messenger, and she left the room.  He read it slowly and carefully, and then ripped it up.  Someone did know, and was now proceeding to make his life miserable.

Colonel Qel-Droma,

You have served the Rebel Squadrons well in the past as both a leader and a fighter, but we are now requesting you to take up the first role once again.  We have created an expeditionary force to survey the Minos Cluster as the main fleet heads off to war.  You will be placed in command of the Mon Calamari cruiser Imladris, with a full crew compliment.  Your job will be to explore the Minos Cluster and discover that which is not known to us, so that in the future, we will know things that could help our war effort.  Your squadron leader has been notified, and you will ship out for the Imladris in the next hour.  You will receive more information upon arrival.

He threw the letter on the floor and spit on it.  “They’re trying to keep me out of the war because of what I did.  Well, they can try to keep me away, but giving me an entire ship is not the way to do it.”  With that he walked from his room.  The door closed and darkness fell upon it.  He was off to command a fighting force again.  And although High Command did not know it, Torin would very much become involved in the war.  He was determined to strike at the Empire, however possible.  The Imladris was not an X-Wing, but it would serve his purpose fine.  Now it was time to select his crew.

Torin “The Codyman” Qel-Droma, stood at a podium that had been erected inside the Imladris’s main hangar, looking out upon his new crew.  They were all dressed to perfection; standing likes poles, ready to salute him at the slightest provocation.  He scanned across the group, then looking back down at himself.  His hair was still short and bleached, but he wore no uniform, instead wearing slightly baggy pants and his usual wife-beater tee.  He laughed as he looked at the expressions on the crews’ faces regarding his very un-leader like appearance.  He addressed his crew.  “I’m just the guy who sets up the podium, the Colonel will be out shortly.”  The crew gave a stifled laugh, not really wanting laugh as the Colonel talked.  “No seriously, you might have noticed my casual appearance.  Well, I’m not much for showing my power through a clean uniform and some battle patches, I’m more for showing you how things go through my actions.  You don’t have to be cadets here, you don’t have to spit shine your boots, just do your job.  You can dress however you want, just do what you’re supposed to.  We’re all alone for the most part, on a big covert operations mission, so it’s not like the admiral’s gonna stop by and spot check your room.  You’re under me, and as long as you don’t piss me off, I’m cool.”  He sighed a bit, took a sip from the glass on the podium.  “So we ship out in a day.  After that, we’re a bit detached from the main body of the Rebel Squadrons.  We’ll be resupplied by smugglers, and basically expected to be 100% self-sufficient.  We head into the Minos Cluster, to help the RS get a bearing of what’s out there for them.  The war has been started at Lantare, and news of a possible super fuel on the planet of Dar’Telis has been spread throughout RS and imperial space.  We’re heading into all this, and beyond.  I plan to explore some of the imperial space beyond Minos.  We will strike headfirst at the imperial center of Aurora if necessary.  Which is why I christen this expeditionary force, Aurora Force.  We will strike at the imperials like dawn destroys the night.”  With that, he stepped down from the podium, and headed back to his office.

Torin “The Codyman” Qel-Droma calls the members that he has selected for Aurora Force into the Imladris’s main briefing room.  They take their seats, and he begins.

“Well folks, I’ve devised our first mission.  The Rebel Squadrons wants up to head into the Minos Cluster.  Of course, they never said where in the Minos Cluster we had to go, so I’ve decided that our first destination shall be the planet of Lantare.  As you may or may not know, war has recently broken out between the people of Lantare, and the imperials that had been garrisoning the planet.  Now word of this has only gotten out, and the Rebel Squadrons has been mobilizing for war in the Minos Cluster because of this, but they are still getting a combat force together, and one shouldn’t be sent out for about a week.  The imperials in that sector are still mobilizing as well, so we’re hoping we’ll only have to deal with the garrison force.  Anyway, I feel the need to help these people, so we’re going to be heading to Lantare in a covert ops mission.  Our Cruiser is gonna pull a quick hyperjump into the sector and dump us off in a beat up old freighter.  Due to the quickness of the procedure, and the fact that the Empire is a bit busy fighting a war down there, we’re likely to go unnoticed.  We’re going to be landing out in the desert, where we will be meeting up with members of the planet’s resistance.  We will be posing as members of the resistance ourselves, but will be using our superior skills and weaponry to help them sway the battle in their favor.  This is gonna be mostly a ground pounding op, so sorry for you fly boys, you’re gonna have to get your feet dirty on a planet’s surface for once.  You’ll get your chance to fly, trust me.  So basically, we’re going undercover.  When we get to the surface, we aren’t part of the Rebel Squadrons; we’re resistance members.  Least that’s what you’ll say if you’re captured.  We’re gonna hit the garrisons and imperial installations commando style, and try to weaken them enough so that the true planetary resistance can finish things up.  Their leader was recently assassinated by imperials, and they’re still in a bit of disarray.  We hope to finish things up within the week, and get picked up before the main RS fleet arrives to deal with things (or the imperial fleet for that matter).  So grab your gear, and get ready to board the ship.  Some of you have met each other, and some of you haven’t.  Get to know each other on the way to the ship.  The more we know each other the better we’ll function as a group.  See you on the freighter in one hour.  It goes without saying that you should probably wear things that don’t give away your New Republic identities.

Baron (BaronCoop1@aol.com)

So these are the people I’ve been sent to keep track of? I thought I was getting special treatment, but I guess I’m being punished. Oh, well. I still have a job to do, and I plan on doing it. Most of the people here are loners, moody, or possibly psychotic. In order to keep my own identity a secret, I’m gonna have to band everyone together. If i can make all these people trust each other, and especially me, then they won’t suspect that I’m actually spying on them. I’m just gonna have to be as friendly to them as possible. This could be a problem though, because we seem to have an inordinate amount of force-sensitive people onboard. I saw one of these floating down the hallway a minute ago, and DAMN, but he freaked me out. This weather is starting to get to me. I’ve lived on Coruscant for my whole life, and can make adjustments to space travel relatively easily, but heat? It’s killing me. I always heard of the disdain farm people show for the soft “city-folk”, but I always thought I was above that because I did things harder than they could ever imagine. I arrested entire gangs, I went undercover into Black Sun, and lived. I helped put an end to the Palpatine Counter-Insurgency Front. But I can’t take the freaking heat!!!!! I’m roasting alive, and the fact that air is sparse doesn’t help. No matter. I’ve got to make friends with my “coworkers”

I start with the tough-looking guy with the scars. I’ve seen that type of cut before. Coruscant gangs used to slice themselves up to impress their buddies. Most of ‘em made it straight to the morgue. Vibro-knives are not things to mess around with. As I approach him (I think his name was Jacob), he doesn’t even look at me. He just stares over the sand dunes. “Hey, man.” Nothing. “It sure is hot here.” Again, nothing. Sure, I could have come up with something more original, but the old ones make you look like you actually want to chat. I just sat there staring alongside him.

Finally, he turned to me quite exasperatedly, and said “You staying here a while?”

“Yeah, I thought I would. Nice view, huh?”

“Good.” He snorts, then turns and walks to the other side of the parked ship. Well, THAT didn’t go over very well.

Mike Bullian (KngCaldor3@aol.com)

The members of Aurora force bound for the planet Lantare gasped at the sight of the tall man in Coruscant Imperial Guard armor.  “Relax”  the tall man said, removing his helmet, revealing himself as Lieutenant Mike Bullian, “it’s only me.  You did say wear something that wouldn’t give away our New Republic identity.”  Mike approached his CO, Torin Qel-Droma.  “I went ahead and set up a meeting with a certain contact planetside, he’s with the resistance and he’s getting me a few spare parts and certain other items that’ll help our mission.”

“How dare you...” Torin said somewhat angrily.

“I figured it would help, besides, you would never have given me clearance if I’d come to you first.”  Mike replied, interrupting Torin.

“What’s done is done, how do you expect to keep mission security?”

“I’m meeting him alone, I know, that’s stupid but I can’t endanger anyone else”

Torin Qel-Droma (Codyman@aol.com)

Torin “The Codyman” Qel-Droma walked on board the rickety old freight, looking at his watch as he boarded.  Everyone seemed to be here already, but there were still ten minutes left.  He walked around, checking things out.  They really had procured a great ship for this operation.  This thing had to be only days away from the scrap heap, something that would blend in quite well on the planet of Lantare, a planet where slugthrowing weapons were still as common as a blaster.  He looked over his group.  There were a lot of force users in this groups, all very much willing to show off their great mastery of it.  It annoyed him a bit, the cockiness off it all.  Torin himself was a bit of a force user, although he let no one else in on the fact.  He no longer carried with him the lightsabers that the usual array of Jedi carried like neon signs.  He did not consider it proper, as he no longer considered himself Jedi.  He wasn’t very fond of Jedi anyway, and had refused to give any of the newer Force users in the group pointers.  As he walked along the ship’s passageway he noted Ravon Conall there, contemplating something off in one corner.  Torin approached him.  “General Conall, I do believe I’ve seen you somewhere before.  Where have that might have been?  I can’t seem to recall.”  Conall turned to him, giving him an odd look.  He regained his composure and replied.

“Well, I’ve done a lot in the Rebel Squadrons, you’ve probably seen me here and there at one point.”  Torin shook his head.

“No, I don’t think that’s it actually.”  Torin patted him on the back and began to walk away.  “But I’ll see you later.  I have some things to do.”  He walked off, away from Ravon.  Looking over his people, he noted Lt. Baron.  Torin was no stranger to intelligence, and using some key friends, he had found out Baron’s role on the ship early on.  He thought to himself.  New Republic intelligence huh…these guys can always be a pain in the butt.  Musta been sent here to watch me after what I pulled at Lantare last month.  I just can’t shake political red tape, can I?  He waked over to Baron and took a seat next to him.  “Lieutenant, I know why you’re here.  I have an agenda, and you are contrary to that agenda.  In fact, you’re contrary to the entire war effort.  I’m attempting something here that might not be New Republic sanctioned, but it’s doing something beyond sitting around wishing the Empire would just go away.  Come on, you NR Intel guys love war, and if it wasn’t for me, you’d still be sitting in your office waiting for something interesting.  Well, I’ve given you something interesting to work with here, so just go with the flow.  I started a war without NR consent, and now I’m attacking a planet guerrilla warfare style without NR consent.  I’m just trying to fight the Empire here.  The NR has sat around for too long without making a move toward ousting the Empire.  The Empire has been building up in that time.  I started something that will hopefully end that buildup.  If you wanna arrest me for wanting to stop the Empire, go ahead, but I refuse to believe the NR has changed so much since its rebellion days.”  As he spoke to Baron, he looked down at his watch.  It was time to move.  “Well, I’m sure we’ll be talking later.  I’ll see you then.  I’m sure you’ll be a valuable addition to the group.”  Torin smiled and turned from Baron to address the crew. 

“OK folks, we’re ready to roll.  There’s been a slight change of plans.  The Imladris has hypered in close to Lantare, but not close enough to be detected.  As we speak this beat up old freighter is leaving the Imladris’s hangar and heading out into space.  We’re gonna make a small micro-jump in system to Lantare.  We’ll be landing in the desert, where I plan to meet a contact.  He’s assured me that we won’t have to walk through the desert to get to the main city of Jaggerbund…but I don’t know exactly how he plans on us getting there.  Anyway, once we get to Jaggerbund, we’ll start conducting our operation.  So settle back, we’ve already left the mothership, we’ll be jumping in about a minute, and hitting the ground in about 30 minutes.

Thirty minutes later had landed, in desert much like that of Tatooine.  Torin walked down the landing platform, decked in a simple wife-beater tee and some khaki pants, blaster in a holster at his side.  The sand blew by him, hitting his face hard.  About 20 feet in front of him was a man, with rags over his face to keep the sand out.  Torin approached the man.  “So Brackus, how exactly are we supposed to get to Jaggerbund without walking so damn far?”  The ragged man waved his hand, and suddenly, behind him, 5 men burst fourth from the sand, dusting off three giant crates that they quickly uncovered.  Brackus, motioned to Torin to follow him, to a spot about 10 feet away from the ship.  He dusted off some sand to produce a large panel, and a flashing beacon that had been partially cover by the shifting sand. 

“This is a water pipe that goes to Jaggerbund.  It pumps water from the moisture farms to the city.  Since the war began, the water has been pumped to imperial installations only.  This pipe will take you to the palace where the current general is residing.  The crates I have provided for you have wetsuits, breathing apparatus, and packs to keep your equipment dry.  Torin opened the panel to find the water rushing by quickly, filling the entire pipe in diameter.

“All that for imperials only?” 

“Exactly.  That’s what we want you to help with.  If you could find the controls that determine water flow in the palace and shift them back so that the rest of the city can get water, that would seriously help the resistance.” 

“And I guess we should try and raise as much other hell as possible while we’re in this imperial headquarters.”  Torin thought about things and nodded his head.  “OK, get me a wetsuit.”

15 minutes later they were suited up, gear protected in waterproof packs, ready to jump into the pipe and let the water carry them to the imperial base of operations.  The water was flowing fast in there, and it was dark.  Brackus patted Torin on the back and turned to look at everyone else.  Brackus spoke with a deep, sand choked voice.  “What you’re doing is really helping my people.  I wish you luck.  Be careful in the pipe, the water is fast, and it’s dark.  I don’t quite know what else could be down there.”  As he finished his speech, Torin plunged into the cold, inky black water, a relief from the heat above.

Baron (BaronCoop1@aol.com)

I was shocked. When Torin sat beside me he shattered my years of confidence in NRI secrecy. “I know who you are.” It was all i could do not to fall on my back. The rest of his story was worse. “I started a war without NR consent...” I am sure my jaw dropped. I was too stunned to reply to his accusations of ....well, i can’t remember what he was accusing, or who. All I remember is that he told me more than he should have. General Cracken never told me about Torin starting all this. I don’t think he knew. Well, I know, and I have a direct link back to NRI headquarters. Yet something inside made me stop. If this guy knew who I was, then maybe he knew about the power I have (no, not another force-user). I have the power to turn this ship around. Wait, not THIS ship. I don’t know the right codes for the navicomputer! I glance down at my datapad, hoping I can download any info from my cabin aboard the mothership, only to find that the datapad I was using was not exactly compatible with my own back home. I turned it over, and on the back was an inscription. “Mac”. Damn. I’ll just have to wait till I can find a better one.

Later, planetside, I walk through halls, brooding and ignoring my earlier attempts to make “friends”. I almost ran into a small traffic jam along the way. It seems “General” Raven almost landed on top of some soldier. Kenta I believe was his name. After the usual apologies (unnecessary apologies too, Kenta got jumped on), I was about to come out of my hallway, when another person collided with the unlucky Kenta. I overheard some mumbling, and then caught the sentence “I am Hazzaren. I’m a Dark Jedi. Stay out of my way.” What??? I have NEVER heard someone utter those words. Why would any sane man tell someone he is a master of evil? It doesn’t make sense, and frankly this entire mission makes me start to wonder about Darth Vader’s legendary massacre of the Jedi. The man couldn’t have been all that good. I mean, he’s left behind a whole army of Jedi, and it seems that they are all right onboard this ship. Wait. That’s it. This is too convenient. WAY too convenient. This many Jedi in one place is just a recipe for trouble. The last time I checked, killing force-users was still a mandatory law under Imperial Doctrine. Was this whole thing just a set up to massacre more Jedi? Was the Empire conniving to lure us into a trap so that it could kill more of the biggest threat they faced, the Jedi?  And what about Torin? He already admitted he started this war. If I’m right, could he just be helping the Empire get rid of Jedi again? He seems to have no love of them, and after his confession (none of which I knew beforehand, but all of which has been seared into my mind), I just don’t like the guy. of course, I’ll have to pretend that I do, at least in front of everyone else. They must not know, if I’m gonna carry out my primary goal. Maybe Torin started this war for all the right reasons, but maybe he was played like a puppet to do so. Either way, I’ll have to be extra careful. Again, damn. Like I need anything else to worry about.

I hear we’re going underwater. Thank God. I am through with this heat. The cold (I’ll take hypothermic at this point) water will feel soooo good. Oh, and that guy with the Coruscant armor? I hate him. I really hate him. Or maybe I got the wrong impression. Coruscant cops, such as myself, never got along with the Coruscant Guard. They were the Emperor’s. We were the people’s. They got the best of everything (that armor was originally designed for us), we got the leftovers. Consequently, we never EVER liked them. Maybe I DO hate that guy, after all.

Mike Bullian (KngCaldor3@aol.com)

We landed on the planet Lantare as we all know, I decided to sneak off, knowing that I’d probably be detected.  Aw hell, we’d landed within ten klicks of the meeting I’d arranged.  I signaled Torin with the force, knowing instinctively that he was at least a little force-sensitive.  I let him know that I’d catch up in about ten hours with something that could provide a great psychological edge, or at least a good distraction.  Sensing the acknowledgment I proceeded to drift away from the group and as soon as i was out of earshot I activated my jetpack and rocketed off toward my rendezvous with my resistance contact/supplier.  Ten short minutes later i arrived at the rendezvous point to find that my contact, a small, dirty, middle aged man who is known only as Finder, had already arrived.

“Sure took you a while.”  he said as he uncovered the parts.

“a little personal trouble.” I said, using the force to mask any physical sign of the lie, i was never good at lying.

“this is going to cost you.” he said with a malevolent sneer on his face.

“How much?” I said, reaching into my pocket for my credits.

“fifty thousand.” he said, his sneer forming into a smile, if it could truly be called that.

“Fifty K,  a little steep.”  I said, knowing that that was all the money I had.

“It’s fifty thousand or you don’t get the parts.”  his smile grew a bit wider

“I guess its a deal then.” i said, paying him the last of my cash as he got in his landspeeder, keeping the top down.

“What did you want the parts for anyway?”

“You know better than to ask that.” i said.  As he sped away I drew my blaster, took aim, the sound of blaster fire and a quiet grunt swirled through my head as i thought  “he shouldn’t have asked”

I set to work immediately, assembling the parts of a Binary Load lifter, a couple 3P0 droids, an Asp Droid, and some scavenged Stormie armor.  I worked well into the night, yet well under my ten hour deadline.  When i finished the last touches i stepped back to survey my work.  I thought  “not bad for a bunch of spare junk”  when i saw the condition of my machine, a fully functional armored mechanical exosuit.  I checked the power levels and the weapons, two imperial stormtrooper light repeating blaster rifles and four local resistance type repeating slugthrowers, all arm mounted.  this should prove really distracting to the imps.  I contacted Kenta through the force and told him to tell Torin that I’m ready and I’ll be there within the hour.  At that i climbed in my exosuit and activated the jumpjets, rocketing toward Jaggerbund.

Baron (BaronCoop1@aol.com)

Ah, the water feels so good, right now. My wet suit keeps me dry, but it certainly doesn’t keep me warm. That’s fine. I would live on Hoth barefooted before I went back into he desert if I had to. I watch as everyone else jumps into the pipe, trying to be the last one in so I can make sure nobody stays behind, but about three other people are waiting, not all for the same reasons either. I shrug, and hold my nose in a mock gesture as I dive feet-first into the pipe. The current immediately sweeps me ahead, and I soon feel a wave of nostalgia. This is just like the “Pipe Ride” at that water park back on Coruscant I rode when I was a kid! Certain moves come back to me, as memories reemerge. With my arms folded back, and my feet kicking, I make my way past the others in my group. When I was 14 I came in 54^th place in the “Pipe Ride Races” Final. That’s good considering that I was on Coruscant, and there were like 10,000 kids in the contest. Anyway, I was pretty sure I could get in front of everyone else, and I was having fun doing it too! The others did not seem to be enjoying themselves nearly as much as I was. I came up to the front of the line, and expected to pass the lead man too, but was stopped by a rather powerful wave going backwards.

“what the?” But then I saw who was ahead of me. “General” Raven. He looked back at me and shook his head. Then he knocked me aside with another force-propelled wave. Arrogant bastard. He probably wanted to stay in front to use the Force to make sure that no threats were up ahead, but right now it just seemed personal. I let it go (How does one pick a fight with a self proclaimed Jedi master? In a tube full of water no less) for now, but I knew that this was another person I would have to watch. Carefully. This job was beginning to look hopeless. All of these people seemed to be loners who would not work in groups unless forced to. Or they were so powerful in the Force, that they thought they didn’t need anyone else to watch their backs (Even Luke Skywalker needed Han Solo to keep Vader off his back every once in a while) . Maybe this was a good thing. My main job has been to make sure that this crew doesn’t mutiny, but that seems unlikely now. I find it rather ironic that my job is to safeguard Torin’s position of power among his crew, and he has openly admitted to betraying the New Republic. Or has he? I’m still not sure about that.

We finally come across a point of light that slowly engulfs us, and sends us splashing into a pool of rather dirty water, at least twenty feet below our pipe. Raven falls first, but he manages to float away, so I assume that the ground is not that far down. You know what they say about assuming. I fall 20 feet, arms flailing the whole way. I’m sure I looked quite comical, but the only person able to see it would have been the “General”. This simply angers me more for some reason.

I bob to the surface to find about 15 guards (not stormtroopers, just standard guards) aiming their rifles at me. Then the next person falls out of the pipe, swinging just as wildly. Then another, then another, until the entire squad is floating around, not making any sudden movements. The guards (they weren’t Imperial. They looked like a homegrown version without commlinks) started barking orders to get out of the pool, but then they were no longer looking at us. They were staring in horror at their now melting weapons. As one they threw the useless and hot metal away, and were suddenly thrown backwards as the still-hovering Raven tossed them aside with the Force. He then proceeded to lift us out of the water one at a time to the edge of the pool. I was beginning to think I was wrong about the Jedi. That is until he “accidentally” dropped me back in the water again.

We walked to the door on the side of the room, the one that would take us to the palace, when something caught my eye. A wave, larger than the others, came out of the pipe that we had just exited. I looked over at Raven to see if he sensed anything. If anyone malignant was attacking us, he would be able to sense it. He was impatiently awaiting the unlocking of the door, but that was all I could see of his mood from here. It wasn’t exactly a big wave, but something about it.....

“Everyone in the pool! Now!” I screamed, and followed with my own prescribed action. I looked behind me and saw a squadron full of confused faces, and one General starting to understand. Even as I hit the pool, a huge fist of water erupted out of the pipe, and slammed into our group. It caught Raven and smacked him into the far wall. The rest of the squadron it just seemed to scatter (painfully) By the time I got back to the surface, the flow of water out of the pipe had lowered drastically. Still, the room was starting to fill up, and their were a lot of unconscious people in there. I had to remember why I knew the wave was coming. I am NOT force-sensitive, but I do know that any object traveling down a pipe full of running water makes a smaller wave travel in front of it. We used to refer to that as a “tattletale” wave. Hey, we were kids. I grab the nearest body (Damn, it’s Raven) and begin to float upwards with the rising water. I see the others in the squadron are helping the unconscious stay afloat, so I turn my attention to the General.

He is not breathing, so I attempt to resuscitate him. He sputters, and looks around the room, using the force to push me away from him. He looks at our only escape route, the now submerged door, and closes his eyes. A tunnel of air opens up from the ceiling to the ground, and one by one, the rest of the squad drops to dry ground surrounded by columns of water. It looks like something out of a myth.

Carlos DeLong (BodoBaasJM@aol.com)

The massive wave of water slammed the Aurora force around like rag dolls.  Carlos barely managed to keep himself from slamming into the wall.  Some of the other commandos were not quite so lucky.  The one called Shay was knocked unconscious, and was about to drown.  Carlos held her head above the water, and made sure that she was still breathing.  Raven used the force to shove the water aside and lower the Aurora force down to the ground level and safety.

Carlos watched as Raven tried to get the door unlocked, but was constantly kicked out of the access system.  After making sure that all the others were okay, Carlos headed over there to help Raven get the door open.  Catching a slightly perturbed glance from Raven, Carlos backed off.  He noticed that the Jedi was disturbed about something, and he did not want to make a Jedi mad.  Raven finally managed to bust his way through the lock, and the Aurora force stepped through the hatch.  Carlos watched as Torin shook hands with the man who met them at the hatch, whom he found out was named Deadmeat and had helped to keep the Imperials off of the assault force’s back.  When the Aurora Force had gotten out of their wetsuits, Deadmeat lead them down one of the corridors in the Imperial base.  Carlos saw a door labeled “Weapons Room”. At about this time, a squad of imperials showed up and had the Aurora force pinned down.  Carlos pulled out the blaster pistol he had hidden on his person, and tried to help blast through the enemy formations.  He quickly realized that this would get them nowhere, so he ducked into the Weapons Room to find some bigger guns.  A couple of seconds and five mortar rounds plus the motor cannon richer, he emerged from the room.  He loaded a single shell into the cannon.

“When I say duck,” he yelled, “Y’all duck!”

Carlos activated the mortar cannon’s laser sight, and aimed right for the center of the Imperial formation. 

“DUCK!!!!”

The commandos dived for cover as Carlos fired the mortar shell.  The compressed gas charge lobbed the shell with a WHOMP sound.  The sound it made when it hit the ground was a whole louder than WHOMP.  Bits and pieces of stormtrooper flew everywhere.

Jarrin (???)

The ride through the tube was fun.  But the Aurora Forcers weren’t here for fun.

Jarrin was cold… too cold in fact.  He considered urinating in his suit, only imps

were drinking this, what harm could it do.  He decided not to pee.  There were too

many force users here, he didn’t want to be the butt of anybody’s jokes.  The ride

ended in a drop and a splash.  FOOL!!  Jarrin thought as he swallowed a mouthful

of the water, he hacked and hacked.  One of the force users took out some guards.

Nice touch.  Suddenly the team, if you could call it a team, was hit by a

blast of

water.  The room filled.  Somebody created tunnels of water and they were

about to

exit.

After they exited the water room they found themselves against some stormies.  Somebody took care of them with a mortar.  The rest of the group took off, with raven in the lead.  Jarrin followed.  Diving against the wall for cover from enemy blaster fire, Jarrin had a funny sensation.  Something was weird.  He looked at the wall and elbowed it.  It made a hollow noise.  There was a room behind the wall.  Jarrin whipped out some plastique, and slapped it against the wall.  “CLEAR!!” he screamed.  He saw the Jedi already sensing his action had already started for cover.  Jarrin bolted around a corner with most of aurora.  The blast took out some Imps and revealed a room through the hole.

Jarrin turned pale as he saw the contents of the room…

Indy Bridger (IndyBridger@hotmail.com)

Indy rolled her eyes.  Men....  “Could you guys just stop arguing

about this and let’s get our asses in hyperdrive so we can get out of

here?”  On her feet now, she brandished her father’s lightsaber and her

hand blaster.  She points.  “Get it in gear!  Move it!”

Baron (BaronCoop1@aol.com)

“Yes, ma’am.” I said mockingly (but under my breath. the woman had a lightsaber after all), and began running after the rest of the group. I noticed that a good many of the force-users were fine, whereas a lot of the rest of us were limping or showing some other sign of injury. Personally, I had been grazed by a laser as I was ducking the first mortar shell. I never really wanted to be strong in the force, but now it didn’t seem like such a bad thing.

Up ahead, General Raven was leading our mad charge through the halls heading towards God-knows where. Suddenly he turned a corner, got a surprised look on his face, slipped, and fell on his back. A lot of people rushed to help him up, and to find out what could surprise a Jedi master, but soon, many of them began to get growing looks of horror on their faces as well. Not everyone. Some like me were just looking around at the other unaffected people with looks on our faces that practically screamed “I don’t know what’s happening, do you?”

“I can’t” Began General Raven, then he paused, confused. “I can’t feel the Force.”

“Neither can I, what’s going on?” Came the reply from the other stricken people in the group.

“It’s like something is blocking me out, not letting me see.” The others just nodded as they concentrated. Raven got to his feet and walked the way we came in. Suddenly his head snapped up, and his eyes cleared.

“There it is. I can feel it again.” He said, turning around. “Can the rest of you feel it....Ah, there it goes. Damn.” He had taken only one step back toward us.

“Let me get this straight.” I said walking toward him (and feeling fine, thank you). “You can feel the Force here” Waving my arm past Raven’s back, “but not here?” The other arm was in front of the General.

“Yes.” Snapped Raven, then he paused for a moment. He concentrated for a second, then exhaled sharply and shoved my arm out of his face the old fashioned way. With his hand. “And our main objective is that way.” He gestured the way we were originally going. The way that hindered half or more of our troops. The thought of going into battle with soldiers who lacked their main weapon, the force, was not an appealing one.

Ignoring him, I asked the group, “Does any one know anything that can block the force?”

Kenta Jelnor (OCSGAME1@aol.com)

Lt. Kenta Jelnor stepped forwards. “Well sir, that’s an easy one. Ysalamari will do it. Now, while I myself am somewhat force strong, I’m not nearly as powerful as the rest of these guys. That’s probably why I’m not staggering around with a headache. Of course, it may not be ysalamari, but my guess is that, if you shot a hole in the wall on both sides of the hall here, you’d find a cage full of the little buggers.”

To demonstrate, Kenta took out a fusion cutter, and carefully cut through the walls of the hall. Sure enough, each side had 3 ysalamari, each one bonded to its tree branch. “I’ll just put these somewhere,” he said, “they don’t mean to cause any trouble. We can go on our way.” And so they did...

Mike Bullian (KngCaldor3@aol.com)

Aurora force continued down the hallway, shortly later the hallway widened and there were stormtrooper bodies all over and blaster scoring on the walls, there was obviously a firefight.  Most of the Auroras looked around with a slightly shocked look on their faces, except a few who knew what probably caused this.  Needless to say they continued on, ignoring whatever that scene was although they were still thinking about it.  They soon came upon a window  and a few looked out, it was a strange scene, it was an interior cargo storage area, or maybe an unused lab and at least three stormtrooper squads were firing on something that was just below Aurora’s line of view, and strangely they were all dying.  Some of the Aurora members, Kenta, Mynok, Baron, and Raven to name a few were a little curious about it.  Whatever it was that killed the stormies back in the hallway was probably the same as what was killing these ones.  All of aurora’s curiosity was settled when the thing came out into their line of sight.  It looked like something out of a bad science fiction holomovie, a huge robotic monster shooting from its arms, and strangely not moving sluggishly as is usually expected from robotic things like this.  The force users in the squad suddenly got a sense from the thing as if it was trying to contact them.  A few, Kenta and Raven in particular smiled at the realization that this thing was the distraction that Lieutenant Bullian sneaked away to build, and that Mike was in this thing that was taking out most of the stormies.  Well, in the time that all this was going on Mike had finished off all the stormies, he turned toward the window and waved to the squad.  The force users got a sense that told them to get down to the storage bay, it was accompanied by a complete blueprint of the entire complex that Mike had obviously gleaned from a computer terminal, if Mike did nothing but what he had already done he would be worth his weight in credit chips to the squad, and from what they’d seen of his creation, the imps would never make the connection to the New Republic because the whole thing, the exosuit, looked like something that the local resistance would have worked together.  Aurora force worked their way toward the storage bay, coming across a few more stormtrooper bodies along the way.  When they got there the doors shut and locked, holding any stormtrooper reinforcements yet to arrive out so that the Auroras could regroup and plan their next action.

Shay (Shay@dds.nl)

Shay stumbled along with the rest.

Still a little groggy from the hit she had taken.

What exactly had she been doing here? Oh yes. A mission.

Two canisters filled with organisms. One meant to insert if the team would

not be successful in making the water, now exclusive to the Imperial

garrisons, available for all of Jaggerbund. The organisms in that canister

would attack the brain of humans -Imperials-, resulting in madness and

death. This canister was only to be used if the mission went omega, and

only just before the team would be evacuated. It would kill any human,

including the humans on the team.

The other canister was meant for if the team were successful, and water became generally available to Jaggerbund -and the rest of Lantare- again.  The organisms of this canister would cancel out any effects induced by targa, the drug that made up Lantare’s main economical means of existence.  The organisms were virtually untraceable, and anyone taking water on the planet would be affected. Traders, dealers and users alike. They would deem the targa as useless, the planet’s economy would collapse, or so the New Republic hoped. It would also protect anyone of the team from suffering its vile side-effects if targa was used, or forced upon him or her. Of course another side-effect would be, that the people addicted to the drug would suddenly be deprived of its effects. It would drive them mad, and if desperate enough they would overdose themselves on it in order to find their euphoria. All but the really hopeless cases who would choose targa before water, and they were doomed anyway.

Something had been nagging at her since the moment she had been able to think clearly enough. She sidled over to Kenta, one of her team-mates she knew well among this company of strangers. “Doesn’t it bother you, that punch of water that came out of the pipe? At the exact time most of us were standing right in front of it? Can an influx of water have so much force behind it so suddenly? At such a convenient time?”

He looked sideways at her thoughtfully. “It’s funny how you phrase that. I

happened to stumble into someone who called himself a Dark Jedi on the ship

earlier. But he isn’t part of our team.”

Oh, that was just the cream on top wasn’t it?

Now that not only they were having to watch out for Imperials up ahead...

Shay hastily ducked away from sudden blaster fire coming from the corridor

up ahead. But now they also had to watch out for some Dark Force

threatening their backs. And her target was yet to be determined.

Shay hit the floor in reflex when someone screamed “DUCK!!”

A mortar exploded, taking their opponents up ahead with it.

Hey, that went pretty smooth. Perhaps she was able to play this commando

thing after all.

After they rigged their exit, but somehow Shay didn’t suspect it would trick anyone using the Dark Force, they moved on again. All of the sudden there was consternation from several of the team. Force-blocked? What in the galaxy did that mean? Kenta seemed to be familiar with it, and he exposed three benign-looking animals behind a wall. Shay gathered they were able to cancel out The Force. Mother! With the Dark Side threatening them, and other means trying to prevent them from using the Force, the Force most certainly didn’t seem to be with them on this trip.

But they seemed to be all right for now, moving up ahead. And for a change help was up that way. One of their team had gone round the long way and had canceled any Imperial forces they were going to encounter.

The group gathered in the large storage room, around the big Lieutenant, who had been able to procure vital information about the installation. Shay moved closer. There was a blueprint there. She needed to see it. It would pinpoint the purification unit, where she would have to insert one of the canisters, that and the location of the pumping stations, where the shunting and relay systems were, that would allow the team to fulfill the goal of their mission.

Shay pressed her fingers around the canisters once more. It looked like they were getting close. This mission was not so difficult after all.  Then she noticed something felt wrong, empty...

She gasped and opened her hand. Only one of the canisters was there.

She quickly searched her pockets, anywhere on her body, but she came up

empty... The canister with the deadly organisms, meant for the Imperials

in the worst-case scenario was gone...

When???

Had it slipped out of her hand when she was knocked unconscious?

Did she lose it somewhere during the fire-fight? She couldn’t remember when

she last had it. Curse her lineage! He should have been more clear-headed!

And with that canister somewhere behind for the taking of whoever was

behind that fist of water....

She spoke up to the group, who had conferring over the blueprint, for the first time. “Errr... excuse me.” She backed up slightly now that all of their attention was on her. “We have to go back. Well, at least I...*I* have to go back. We...-I have to. It’s a matter of life and death for all of us.!”

Raven Conall (RavnConall@aol.com)

Turns to Shay, “No you don’t...” scans her mind fast. Then tosses her the canister he had picked up that was about to be stepped on by him when he stopped and picked it up. “Watch were you put those... You and I know what they can do...” Places a mental block for her and him so other Jedi couldn’t pry it from them. “Oh, and no one else will know... except Codyman of course....”

After they reached their friend in the window, Raven felt something.... He cloaked his body using the force and walked back to where the ysalimiri were. He stepped through the hole on the right side and pressed his hand where he knew he should after spending so much time with him. The secret door opened, he stepped through quickly and it closed very fast behind him, very quietly. He started walking down to corridor, He knew no one else in the group was anywhere near how strong he was in the force... After all he was the only one who had been a master in the force for over 5 thousand years... But that he’d explain later, possibly...

He reached the end of the corridor and the walls were closing on him, “Hazzaren’s up to his old tricks” he thought. He put his hands in the right places to stop the walls and open the door in front of him to reveal the council room of the Dark Jedi. “I knew it, I knew I’d find this here” he murmured.

Mike Bullian (KngCaldor3@aol.com)

“This is bad”  thought Mike as he motioned for Torin to approach him.  “I’ve got a big problem.”  Mike indicated his exosuit’s right leg, or at least the large hole in the armor and the blood seeping through.  “I’ve stopped the bleeding with the force and dulled the pain, but the leg’s gone.”

“Do you think you can go on?”  Torin said quietly, so as not to draw too much attention.

“Without the exosuit, no, but since the suit can still do the walking for me I’ll be able to hold out until we finish the mission”

“Good, we could sure use the extra help, just try not to take too much more damage all right.”

“Got it, CO.  Just tell me when to move out.”

“In about 5 minutes.”  Mike passed the time checking over the rest of his exosuit to make sure nothing else was damaged by the stormies, nothing but the leg and some more minor hits, it’ll pull through.  The order to move out came through, Aurora moved down the hall, Mike was the rear guard.  They came across another squad of stormies, but they concentrated most of their fire on Mike, so the rest of Aurora picked them off easily.  As it was starting to shape out the rest of their mission would probably be comparatively easy.

Raven Conall (RavnConall@aol.com)

Raven entered the great all and all the torches lit, as they should, they did at the last Great Hall of the Dark Jedi on Eos. He walked down the read carpet and there was his robe. It was the Robe of a Dark Jedi Master, It was black with a blue trim. His sash, medallion and Lightsaber was there. He removed his other clothes and packed them in his pack, and put on his robe, his hood up. He teleported his pack back to were the ysalimiri were. Then he put on his belt which had his old lightsaber on it, the one from when he was in the Imperials. The other was in his backpack. He also had a Golden Lightsaber secured to his belt. Given to him by Hazzaren. He found the other sash at the bottom of his stuff, it was silver, he also put that on, He looked on the alter right in front of where he was and there was his Diamond Sword, Emerald Dagger, and Ruby Scepter. He secured the Sword to his back, the dagger to his belt and held his scepter and looked around for the last thing missing. Hazzaren appeared out of no where, Raven felt him before he saw him and he bowed to him. Hazzaren returned the bow. “Looking for this?” Hazzaren said as he held up an Iron cross w/ Star of Immortality. Raven nodded “Yes Grand Master.” Hazzaren tossed it to him and raven secured it on his normal sash, because his silver sash was much more then the sash. Hazzaren smiled.

5 other Dark Jedi were watching Raven being re anointed back into the brother hood. Raven’s eyes turned black, instead of the silver they were. Hazzaren finished and said “Arise Dark Jedi Master Raven, and accept your new rank.” Raven knew this would happen as he stood and Hazzaren stared at him with eyes filled with brotherly love as he held out the Grand Master Cloak, sash, medallion, and staff. Raven accepted them and remembered not to bow. He changed into them and secured the sword to his back and the dagger to his belt and then secured the scepter to his back. Holding the staff and putting his hood up he looked at Hazzaren and Hazzaren fell and died, knowing his job was complete. Raven watched as his body disintegrated into a fine obsidian powder and then turned and said “Arise children of the Dark. And destroy the Rebels who have invaded our base.”

The Dark Jedi Knights left the hall and went to find the Rebels. When Raven entered the hall he was under Hazzaren’s control, and now Hazzaren entered his body to share his knowledge and power of the millions of years past.

Mike Bullian (KngCaldor3@aol.com)

Mike looks up in the midst of his suppression fire to evaluate the damage to his squadmates, Kenta and Mynok are down, looks like blaster grazes, nothing serious, but then he notices something odd.  “Hey, where’s Raven?”  he says, continuing his fire and picking off a couple stormies.  Baron takes cover and looks back.  “He’s right, Raven’s missing.”  Suddenly, all fire from the stormtroopers stops as a small group of darkly garbed men turn the corner, Aurora Force fires on them, but their bodies just absorb the bolts and they keep coming.  Noting this I fired my slugthrowers at them, but the bullets are deflected somehow away from them.  Figuring that i couldn’t stop them, at least in my Exosuit.  I fired on the stormies trying to take them out, more success on that front, but the dark men just kept coming...

Baron (BaronCoop1@aol.com)

This whole mission is turning into sithspit fast. Our group is making good progress in getting to the goal, when suddenly we come across five men in dark cloaks (I don’t know about you, but where I come from, black cloaks usually signify you are evil) backing up a small stormtrooper squad. We start firing at them, but the blaster bolts simply vanish. Vanish? Impossible, they must be....absorbing them? Even as the thought flows through my mind, another quickly follows. A curse forms on my lips.

“Sithspawn. Where the hell is General Raven??” I yell, as the others try to fend off the quickly advancing dark men (I assume they are dark Jedi?). I hope against hope that the recent bane of my existence, Raven, can hold them off until we find a way to beat them. Finally I see Raven coming up form behind.

“Thanks, we really need...” That’s as far as I got. Raven looked at me with strange eyes, and I was slammed into the wall. Hard. Even after he passed me, his force-grip held me, not letting me breathe. Others were on the ground, while the more powerful force-users were bringing lightsabers to bear on this new threat.

It was no good. Raven drew two lightsabers and brought them up in two simultaneous arcs, that swept the blades of the rest of the swords upwards, causing them to strike the ceiling. Sparks flew as wires were cut, and power dimmed. The only light remaining came from the laser fight still going on ahead (For once, I was glad that Mike brought that damned exoskeleton along) and the lightsabers screeching across each other.  I never fully appreciated what a fully trained Jedi Master was capable of until I saw one march in and wipe out a whole cadre of Jedi knights, trainees, and force users. It was amazing, and the whole time he was beating them senseless, he continued to have enough concentration to hold me up against the wall, helpless. I had considered myself lucky that I was in a group with so many people who were powerful, it never occurred to me that another group could be more powerful. But first things first.

I wasn’t entirely helpless. Directly underneath me, a branch of wood was slowly moving my direction. By itself. I glanced over to where Torin lay slumped against the wall, and saw him, eyes shut, concentrating. Torin? Torin was using the force? to give me a branch? I was confused. The sudden appearance of Torin’s force-capability, albeit small (he was concentrating rather hard to move a branch). Wait. He wasn’t moving the branch. He was pushing the branch with a long rod that had fallen from the ceiling. That confused me even more, until I suddenly fell.

Raven swirled around to face the drastic removal of his power over me, but had to turn back to face an onslaught of weakened lightsaber wielders. On the branch that was being pushed was a small lizard-like creature. The same ones that had blocked the force earlier. No wonder Torin had to push it with a rod. He couldn’t push the branch because it was inside the bubble of force-blocking power. And now so was I.

I picked up a discarded blaster and fired at Raven. Without turning around, he slashed behind himself with one of his lightsabers, and sent the bolt careening back into my leg. Stunned, I sank to the floor in agony, but I was soon able to get back up, probably through a combination of adrenaline, shock, and the terror of what would happen if I didn’t. I threw my gun at Raven in a futile gesture, and he slashed it to pieces, again without looking backwards. I have a brilliant idea.

I search the ground around me for the body of a soldier. Not a stormtrooper, but a local guard. I find one, and my search is suddenly worthwhile. I bring the new gun up and shoot at the mad general. Again, and again. Predictably, he slashes backwards to fend off the blaster bolts without turning around. Only there are no blaster bolts. The slugs that I shot are instantly melted by the lightsaber, but continue on their course, and land home into Raven’s back. The bullets do not need a special shape to injure badly, and the fact that they are molten probably adds to the pain the General is now feeling. Falling on his back in agony, the others quickly take advantage of the situation, striking home with their lightsabers. Suddenly the body bursts in a blinding flash of light and is gone.

I feel relief as the danger is past, and sag against the wall, as do the others. Until Mike comes crashing through the hall, and lands in a heap, broken, and no longer functioning. sithspawn, I forgot about the other Jedi(?)! Here they come, marching into our weakened group, and begin fighting with their own lightsabers. Our Jedi have no chance in their battered state. I fire my slugthrower into the dark men, but they had learned from the recently deceased (I think anyway) general. They simply catch them with the force and throw them back, again hitting me. I have got to stop shooting myself like that. Agonizing, and in need of medical help, I fall over. Again. Directly in front of my face is a canister. Wait. The med was carrying two canisters. Meds don’t carry canisters like these. I had seen those canister types somewhere before. On....Coruscant. That’s it! they were biohazard canisters!!! We broke up quite a few terrorist organizations attempting to use them! I grab it and rolled it toward the dark Jedi. They apparently did not consider it a threat, for they kept slicing at our Jedi.

I grabbed my slugthrower and shot the canister. It exploded. Violently. Air hissed out of it, and the Jedi began to look down and gasp for air. Right before they fell to the floor convulsing. I considered this a victory, until I started to feel my own breath wheezing. Uh oh. I gotta breathe this stuff too?

Kenta Jelnor (OCSGAME1@aol.com)

Oh, this is great. This is just great. Everyone’s choking but me. Why am I not choking? Because I always carry a breath mask. So what to do first. There’s so much cleaning up to do. As I watch, all the people in the passageway pass out. Not good. Hmm. I decide to pull our people out of harm’s way, further down the passage. I find a medkit, and administer anti-toxin shots to the passed out Jedi, and the non-Force users. I then go back to the battlefield, and grab the ysalamari. I set them up in the passageway between our group and the still unconscious Dark Jedi.  Then I put up a line of IM mines on both ends of the passageway, with our people safely in-between.

Slowly our people began waking up. Codyman was first, then Shay, and then everyone else. Everyone except for Mike. He was looking real bad. I handed him over to the medic. Then I heard some booms from the unexplored end of the passage. I looked, and a bunch of Stormtroopers were lying dead there. Then I saw the squad of troopers behind them. Oh great, where do they get all these guys from? I call everyone over, and another firefight begins...

Raven Conall (RavnConall@aol.com)

Raven’s spirit wandered and Raven realized he died again for the 5000^th time in his life, he walked over to where his pack was and pulled out a canister. He then opened the canister and out fell a small action figure type thing of Ulic Qel-Droma. He moved into the body which had a brain and all the other systems a human needs to survive. In this he morphs into a larger of Ulic Qel-Droma his actual self and teleports his Sith cloak and etc. to him, He put the cloak back on and had a whiff of the canister that was broken in the corridor.. “SITHSPAWN!” Raven pulled out a breath mask along with just enough for the rest of the group and ran, his hood down.

Raven reached them all, most were ½ dead, he put breathmasks on all of them  one by one then, restarting their vital systems and starting up a healing mechanism all of them had, but most didn’t know they could use. Then he set off on the objective again, breath mask on and he picked up each of the dark Jedi along the way and teleported them also outside.

As raven walks through the ST squad he has his hood up, all the ST’s part out of reverence for the Dark Jedi Master, none even point their weapons at him, for fear he’ll kill them on the spot.. He keeps walking down the passage using his staff to help him along to get used to his new body, he keeps looking around for the main objective.

Raven was looking around when all of a sudden his back when rigid and he was inhibited by the previous Grand Dark Jedi Master Hazzaren. Raven fought him for control of his mind, he was a lot stronger then Hazzaren, he knew it.. But the Grand Dark Jedi Master had too much hold of his mind already... Raven lost.. The Dark Jedi master pulled 5 breathmasks and summoned the dark Jedi Knights back. He gave each a breathmask and a shot. Then he gave himself and shot and they Charged back down the corridor.. Raven on the other hand teleported back to the Great Hall and started meditating for the victory of his Knights. Which increased the Dark Jedi Knights Moral and every attribute about them.

Baron (baronCoop1@aol.com)

The darkness slowly became clear, and I shook my head. It hurt. A lot. But then I didn’t even notice my head. My leg began throbbing where the blaster bolt smacked me around, and my chest was bleeding profusely from the bullet wounds I sustained. Remind me never to shoot at a Jedi. Ever. I began to hear things again. I groaned. The unmistakable sound of lightsabers being ignited hummed through the room. Damn it! Don’t these dark guys know when to just give up and DIE? Suddenly they attacked. They turned the corner pursuing our own visibly weaker Jedi without a sound. Raven was leading them, at least I think it was Raven, it looked a lot like him.

I was extremely angry. I had been shot, pinned, and beaten. And they didn’t have a scratch on them. Whatever. Time for some real pain, cause I’m going after them again. Wounded even. I grab the nearest force-blocking lizard and hurl it at the dark Jedi. It hit one square in the chest, and the resulting absence of the force caused him to express the first emotion I had seen one of them take. Fear.

Immediately one of our own force-users slashed down with her lightsaber, slicing the dark man in two. A purple energy wave ripped out of the man’s corpse, and knocked me down. AGAIN! I was getting sick of this floor.

The force-blocker dropped to the ground amid the rest of the dark Jedi, and seemed to confuse them. All except Raven. Raven. Didn’t I just shoot him? Repeatedly? Oh well, if it works one time....

I bring the slugthrower out from under me, take aim, and fire. Raven does not even attempt to knock my bullet aside, as he is inside the force-bubble, but instead uses an old-fashioned trick. He grabs the nearest of his followers, and shoves him in the bullet’s path. Having been trained as a cop, I’m a rather good shot, so this bullet smacked right through the man’s head. No force could prevent that man from dying. However, Raven manages to whip one of his lightsabers out, and simply slices the lizard in two. He smiles, and looks towards me. Uh oh.

Remembering my own sage advice about shooting at Jedi, I throw the gun down and try to hobble for the nearest exit. The rest of Aurora Force is ahead of me, as none of them got shot. Repeatedly, and painfully. Yes, I’m bitter. I know that I cannot make it to the door before the dark Jedi reach me, but looking back in dread, I saw that they were still in pursuit, but they couldn’t use the force. The confused looks on their faces proved that to me. Glancing around, I realized that the entire hall had to be laced with Ysslarmmi. This must have been some kind of anti-Jedi measure. If it was, it was doing its job just fine.

I rounded a corner that had a window on the side and looked down. It was the same pool of dirty water we arrived in. Perfect. Being an NRI undercover agent assigned to make sure that no one attempted a mutiny, I was equipped to do a proper demolition job. I pulled out a small orb. It looked like a standard Thermal Detonator, but was actually much stronger. I know that I would probably not make it out alive, but I was willing to take my chances. I placed the grenade on the floor near the wall, where the passing Jedi would not see it, or sense it as the Yslarmmi would block that, then set the timer for five seconds. I dived out the window, and the last thought I had before the heat and shock wave hit me was “Let’s see that bastard get out of THIS one. I don’t care how many bodies he has, or souls, or lives. He’s dead, and so are his....” Then it went black.

I awoke seconds later as I hit the water. Hard. Everything about this mission was hard. Why can’t I get anything soft? I regretted blowing things up immediately. The rest of Aurora Force was still upstairs, so they had no idea I was still alive. That and the wreckage began raining down on me. And it wasn’t soft. A black cloak hit the water beside me, stained with blood, and on fire. I smiled before blacking out again.

I remember nothing of the next... I have no idea how long. I simply woke up, and I was back up on dry land beside the pool. Did I crawl myself up? I doubt it. Did I dream all of that? One quick attempt to move proved that false. Where was everyone else? The firefight had eased off, and all I heard was silence. I painstakingly arose, and tried getting back home. I had just about enough of dark Jedi for one day. This was not going to be fun, getting back in touch with Aurora Force, but to stay would be suicide.

Raven Conall (RavnConall@aol.com)

In Raven’s mind

Raven fought Hazzaren, but something was different.. as if he was being backed up by a different Dark Jedi.. Hell he was! But don’t worry about that now.. Raven slashed with his lightsaber and Hazzaren parried and jabbed. Raven Side stepped and slashed from lower right to upper left. Hazzaren rotated his wrists and blocked the blow. then dropped and spun in a maneuver that would take out raven’s legs. Raven jumped up in the air and tucked his legs into his chest to avoid the sweep, then came strait down. Hazzaren lifted his blade up and blocked, then stood up and made a ripping motion from groin through the head. Raven Jumped over Hazzaren and spun and withdrew his emerald dagger and stabbed at Hazzaren’s back right into where his heart should be. Hazzaren couldn’t turn fast enough and didn’t expect that and the blade when strait to his heart, raven puled up and twisted, tearing an heart tendon. It knocked Hazzaren unconscious immediately and in 5 second he was dead. Raven withdrew the blade put it in his belt and entered his mind... Free of Hazzaren.. But someone else was there.. controlling his mind.. Raven pushed him easily out of the way.

Outside of Raven’s mind.. in the Dark Jedi Hall

Then Raven struggled, he got to the closest ysalimiri and put it on his head, removing the other sentient mind from his body... He sighed with great relief.

Deadmeet (Bubbakidd@aol.com)

“They will be back, Raven,” i said as i walked to were raven was sitting blissfully with a ysalimiri sitting on his head, I hate those slimy things, makes it impossible for a true fight with a dark Jedi. “Yea they probably will, but I thought that was why you kept that other guy from my mind long enough for me to get to this slimy creature?” I smirked, “So you felt my little encouragement did you? Well I just figured if someone is going to be a true dark Jedi they don’t need any of Acturus’s lackeys like hazzeran fucking with their heads.” After a moments pause I bent down and picked up Raven’s lightsaber from were he dropped it in front of the ysalimiri. “You may need this later. I presume you know of the great force here and I presume you won’t tell the others till the time comes, and that time is after this mission is done, work first pleasure later.” What was that on Raven’s face! Was that a smile? “Yea,” he replied, “Work first.” So down we went to see the havoc of the sithspawn.

Baron (BaronCoop1@aol.com)

I painfully get up and look around. Burning debris floats on top of the water. Suddenly I don’t notice it anymore. I guess the fact that I was hit with a blaster, shot several times by bullets, smacked around by dark Jedi, inhaled some form of toxin, blown up, and slammed into a pool of dirty water finally caught up with me. The pain was excruciating, and I fell down, writhing. I was relieved when I passed out. Maybe someone will come get me before I bleed to death. At least maybe someone will remember me when it comes time to read my eulogy. Maybe.

Raven Conall (RavnConall@aol.com)

I lost this section, Raven heals Baron and rejoins Aurora

Mike Bullian (KngCaldor3@aol.com)

Mike turned around, he was playing rear guard again.  He saw a figure running towards them.  “Hold it Raven!”  he yelled as he raised his weapons, “You’re not getting any closer!”

“Relax Mike, it’s me again!”  he said quickly in order to keep Mike from firing on him, again.

“You have ten seconds to explain”  Raven took in a breath

“I went searching for a room, the dark Jedi council chamber, i found it and the spirit of the dark Jedi master Hazzaren took control of my body.”   Mike reached out with the force.

“I can’t read you, why, and how do I know you’re not lying?”

“I have an ysalamir in my pack to keep Hazzaren out of my body, and you don’t know whether I’m telling the truth or not.  Deadmeet and Baron can vouch for me/”  Mike thought on this, he’s either telling the truth, or a really good liar, because Mike could usually tell when someone’s lying to him, even without the force.

“I’m gonna let you back in with us, but if you make one wrong move you’re vapor.  Oh, and stay away from the other force users with that ysalamir.”

In the meantime a lightfight had broken out ahead, local imperial guards had turned the corner up ahead.  Mike just made it up there as the auroras were finishing them off.  Before dying one of the last imps got a single shot off, striking an Aurora in the side of the head.  Mike got there first, because the rest of them were still busy with the imps.  He inspected the downed trooper, Shay was her name, she was dead, killed instantly.  Mike picked up her body, tossing her over his exosuit’s shoulder, thinking “She at least deserves a decent burial.”  He fired a few angry shots at the last couple of imps, taking down one of them, the last one died with a vibroblade protruding from his eye socket, one of the ones that Raven was carrying.  Mike looked over to Raven and saw something different, a smile.  Either it was a smile at the thought of avenging Shay, or he actually took pleasure in killing.  At this time Mike thought to go with the former and give Raven the benefit of a doubt.  With this imp unit out of the way the auroras carried on, they still had a mission after all.

Raven Conall (RavnConall@aol.com)

Raven smiled as he aimed at another imperial and threw the knife at the Imperial, the knife went strait through the armor of the stormtrooper and killed him, some of the knife sticking out of the back of the stormtrooper’s head with blood dripping to the floor. Each time he threw a knife the other hand would extract and throw one, so it was a continuos blur until he used all 15, then the took his light saber ignited it on both sides and threw it in a spinning motion, this cut down 6 troopers before it fell to the floor and deactivated it. By then a few of the Jedi had extracted the knives using the force and had set them at his feet were he resumed throwing. It was a continues motion, throw the knives then the saber. The Imperials did notice raven, but each time they shot at him he stepped just enough to get out of the way of the blaster bolt. the Imperials couldn’t figure out how he did it, and he did it extremely fast. That’s when the 5 Dark men returned in the back. Moving forward through the Imperials silently. “OK! All the Jedi take one of them.. But the one with the Golden lightsaber is mine.

Mynok (Mynok9985@aol.com)

This was getting out of hand.  Imps dropping left and right.  Dark Jedi coming at them he had to act quick.  Mynok quickly drew his lightsaber as he activated it the dark emerald blade seemed to throb with the force.  He reached for the blaster pistol at his side.  He fired three quick shots and the blaster died.  Ohh well he charged at one of the Jedi and began hacking a way.  He could feel the dark side coming and he had to suppress his fear.  For he would become evil if he acknowledged it.  He could see Raven fighting the other Jedi with the golden lightsaber.  He was as quick as a cat.  Some day Mynok wished to be that powerful.  He was suddenly shocked to find a lightsaber from his enemy whiz right passed his ear.  This was going to get tough.

Raven Conall (RavnConall@aol.com)

The last imperial fell and Raven threw his 15^th knife threw his head. The 5 dark men were approaching. Just slowly moving forward. A few of Aurora Squad’s members tried their blasters again, the dark men just absorbed them. Then all 5 extracted their lightsabers at the same time. The one in front had the Golden Lightsaber, his name was Rukie. He was Raven’s old nemesis from back then. He ran at Raven with extraordinary speed. Raven withdrew his oldest lightsaber and turned on both sides to make the saber shaft. Then Rukie entered the Ysalimiri bubble and stumbled, Rukie was supposed to be the Grand Dark Jedi Master, till Raven came back. Now Rukie wanted his position, but he used the force as a Giant crutch, one he never learned to give up, or not hold anything but all his weight on it. He looked at Raven and Rukie’s saber wavered. Raven threw a 1-2 slash buy bringing the top of his lightsaber down across from upper right to lower left and then taking the bottom part and taking it from head to toe. Rukie didn’t expect it at all the both slashed hit, creating cuts , nothing serious. “Now who’s better Rukie? Huh?” Raven said as he smiled. Rukie stared at him dumb founded “Raven.. You have won, you have beat me in the eternal battle.” Rukie dropped to his knees and held his head down. “Take my life, cut off my head” Rukie said. Raven looked at him shocked and Rukie slashed at Raven’s ankles with his lightsaber. Raven jumped over him and brought the lightsaber to the right side of Rukie’s neck. “Rukie, join me in the Light Side. Together, we can join forces, we can be together again Jedi brother. We don’t have to be Dark Jedi. We can be light and not harm people, but heal people.” Raven said. “NEVER!” Rukie yelled and jumped to his feet and spun and slashed, trying to cut Raven in to. Raven stuck the lower part of his lightsaber down to block it and brought the top part down with extraordinary speed. Rukie never saw it coming as Raven cut him in two. Raven turned off his saber and clipped it to his belt and removed Rukie’s saber from his hand, turned it off and clipped that one to his belt to. Raven then dropped to his knees and cried. He held what was left of Rukie in his arms. “Rukie, my son... My son..... He never knew it, and even in the end I couldn’t tell him.. Oh God! Why didn’t I tell him..” Raven couldn’t stop crying.

Mike Bullian (KngCaldor3aol.com)

A few seconds after noticing Raven’s painful situation Mike heard a clanking sound coming from the main coordinating motivator in his exosuit, feeling that this was trouble he quickly ran a bit down the hall and bailed from his suit, a second later it exploded, throwing him back toward the rest of aurora.  Some of the Auroras noticed him moving sluggishly of late, but none of them had known the extent of his injury, except Torin.  To Mike’s great relief he saw that he had dropped Shay’s body in the rush to evacuate his suit so that he could still give her a decent burial after the mission.  Knowing that he wasn’t injured further than the already missing leg he dragged himself toward the greatly pained Raven and laid his hand on his shoulder in a comforting manner.  “I know it’s not nearly enough to say, but I’m sorry man” He said, tears beginning to well up in his eyes.

Indy Bridger (IndyBridger@hotmail.com)

Indy tiredly raised her father’s lightsaber, despite how much her

body ached.  Now that Shay was gone, she was going to have to join this

fight as far more than a trooper—as a Jedi Knight.

The indigo blade she lifts as she stepped forward to face the Dark

Jedi sparks something within her.  For a moment, she can’t remember what

it was.  Then, she does, but the hazed memory is not hers—it is her

father’s.

*”Valin, Corsem, get out of here!”  The slender man who wields the

silver blade is Mickie Bridger, who glances at his brother, Davil, who

holds the indigo saber.  “You too, brother!”

“Mickie, I can’t leave you!  Not like this!”

“You can’t face them!”  Mickie shouts.  “Corsem, take him.”

The young and slender man who is Corsem Rendar grasps his dear

friend’s arm.  “He’s right, Davil.  We can’t.”

Mickie flashes a smile at his brother.  “Go on, Davil.  You know

damned well I’m not going to abandon Nadia.”

Davil Bridger frowns, but deactivates his saber like Valin and

Corsem, then runs.*

Indy blinked, then set her jaw.  I won’t run, Dad, she thought. 

Not like Uncle Mickie made you do...  She advanced on one of the Jedi,

and began her duel, praying she would be good enough to avoid death.

Morcant (Morcant@planetvenus.swinternet.co.uk)

As Aurora Force spend a few minutes preparing themselves before

continuing on their advance they hear the hiss as the communications

systems for the base come on line. The speakers mounted in the walls

around them hiss as the channel to them opens. A voice somewhat muffled

starts, “Rebel scum. If you surrender now you may not be put to death.

You are trespassing on private military property and as such the

sentence for your crimes is ours to deliver. Stop killing our bloody

Storm troopers and kicking our arses generally and we’ll let you go.”

Towards the end the listeners realize the voice deviates somewhat from

standard imperial statements.

“Oh well. So much for my great imperial impressions. Morcant here, anybody want some help?” A smile spreads around those in the corridor as they realize somebody in the mission is having a bit more success than they and that this will make the mission even easier. That is assuming that the fact that Morcant hasn’t already sorted out the water supplies.

“I can’t do too much from here. Dengar and I have started blocking all radio communications in base. Sorry if it messes you up too much but believe me the imps suffer much more. In addition to this we have locked down all blast doors in the area. We know were you are and we’ll try to clear a path through to the hydronic dispersion controls. Can’t guarantee anything though. We would do more but information is the only other thing we have for you. We are in one of the minor computer control rooms using the supervisor’s access controls to get into the imperial systems and do what we are doing. We are bouncing sensor echoes of you around the base as well so they will have a lot of trouble finding where you are. We have scrambled the computer systems enough so that they can’t easily tell where we are but they will do eventually so we are on limited time. And one more thing. The light of Dawn is going to come make your lives easier for the get out. We can either blow the side of the base away or provide a diversion whilst you get away. Hangar on the roof seems like a possibility if there are enough fit pilots amongst you. 4 eyeballs and a shuttle. Possibly another ship up there unofficially as well but we have no records as to what that is. Rarlrra and Una are trying to take out local fighter defense as well so that we have a free getaway. Failing that try to get to co-ordinate set Gamma-Delta-One for dust off and we’ll get you there.”

At this Torin turns to the others and gives them details of where the evac point is. “We might get separated in here so if we do get there separately or whatever. We just want as many survivors as possible from this mission,” finishes Torin.

The blast doors around them have all slid down by now but one slides up a fraction and then a fraction more. It grinds to a halt with a 3 foot square opening in the middle of it. “Sorry guys,” comes Morcant’s voice again, “It seems that we can’t release individual blast doors the way we got things rigged at the moment. This is the best we can do but we have as good as fried computer control on all base doors by trying that.  You’ll have to get somebody to jimmy the doors manually. Its the only way that they’ll open. Just remember that the officers around here have clearance codes to get the doors open easily.”

“Go give ‘em hell. Go kill the imps. Do some damage,” and just before the channel closes and the background hiss leaves the speakers Morcant’s voice comes over quieter, obviously a comment under his breath not meant to be heard by others, “for Alderaan”.

There is silence in the room and it is broken by Mike slowly standing up, using a stormtrooper rifle as a makeshift crutch, “You heard the man, we’ve got an opportunity now. The imps will be off our backs for a while and we can get this mission finished and get back to the Imladris.”

The mission seems more hopeful for them than it has been for a while.  The imperials would be off their backs for a while at least. They know they have backup and help and the thought of the evac ship is still in their minds. The morale had been steadily dropping as the injury count rose but now they were filled with a weary hope.

They all struggled to readiness again and the mission continued...

Orian (EricFlameG@aol.com)

It was too quiet for him. It had been quiet for a while. Sure he had picked off several of the stormtroopers as they plowed in, but that didn’t number up to any good number. By now there should’ve been at least, what, a thousand? Two thousand? Why only thirty-five now? There was something about this whole situation he didn’t like.

Orian did his best to keep up. Mentally and physically. While firing and staying alive, he had thought to himself ‘I could swear this was covert-ops. Why’re we making all this noise? And how’re we gonna get off this planet?’ He hated it when he never knew anything. He was about to take out his frustrations on something. What it was he didn’t know.

So, for the time being, he just followed along, keeping generally to himself. There had been a lot of commotion over that odd little suit, though. And it made a lot of noise. Despite the fact that it was a good defense for him and his “friends” he was glad it was gone. It rather annoyed him. Breathing a heavy sigh, Orian looked about as they trotted on. It seemed to him that they were going through the same corridor every single time. The same doors, the same signs. Like a giant labyrinth and they were going around in circles. And this, too, was annoying him.

“Dammit, I’m tired of this!” Plucking off a pair of thermal detonators, he flung them down the hall behind them, right next to both walls. In a loud bang and bright flash both walls conveniently opened up. Just out of idle curiosity, he went to check out the damage he did and what happened.

...a medbay and a supply room. Perfect! “Hey ... y’all should see what I just found.” He glanced back over his shoulder to the others to see if they were paying attention. Unfortunately for him he didn’t see the medic robot—armed with a blaster—start to whir about the corner, ready to fire. Why a medic robot had a blaster was unknown. It’s one of those things, like when you find a pair of slippers in place of your jumpsuit or helmet. At any rate, it was closing in on him and he didn’t even know it ...

Baron (BaronCoop1@aol.com)

As I was lying on my back trying not to breathe (have you ever been shot in the chest? If you do, try not to breathe. It hurts.), I pondered the more serious questions of my day. Why the hell did Raven help me? After I killed him? Twice? Why am I feeling much better? I should be dead. How many licks DOES it take to get to the center of a .... What? I’m bored okay?! I’ve been lying on my back here for an hour or so! Morcant’s voice came on over the loudspeaker in the room I was in. He repeated the instructions that I’m sure you already know. There was going to be a ship on the roof!

I had assumed that the rest of the group was gonna come back for me and leave the way we came in. You know what they say about assuming. I looked at my situation. I was in the basement. They were going to the distribution center, then the roof. They were probably not going to jeopardize their mission to rescue me. That meant I, in my frail, weakened, bloody, and generally shot to hell condition, had to make it up to the roof by myself. Perfect. I better receive a freaking medal for this.

If I run into any stormtroopers on the way, I have to hope they don’t see me. Stormtroopers may seem like walking, harmless targets, but I knew better. They were well-trained crack soldiers. We simply kept shooting them in rows as they advanced earlier. I didn’t stand a chance against one right now. I had better get started and hope that I make it to the roof before the rest of Aurora Force leaves. I know I won’t get much medical help (which I oh, so desperately need) from the remaining Imperials. Now where was that door?

Raven Conall (RavnConall@aol.com)

Raven turned to see Orian near two holes in the wall and his mouth dropped wide open. He extracted a knife from his sleeve and yells “ORIAN DUCK!” Orian hit the floor with a solid smack, and Ravon threw the Knife at the medical droid behind him. The medical droid took aim and shot the knife out of the air, a hole right through the middle of it. Ravon’s jaw dropped again as he attempted to extract his blaster only to remember that he gave it to someone else. he thought fast and took out three knives and threw them at the same time. The droid shot two of them. but the third his home and it went through it’s main processor and it’s robotic eye. When it turned on it’s other processor he one more knife that hit it in the second processor. The droid slumped over dead. Orian got up slowly, brushing himself off and said again “I Found a Storage Room and a Medical Bay.” Ravon nodded and brought Mike to the Medical Bay.

Five minutes later Ravon had found, fitted, and attached a temporary robotic leg to Mike. He slapped the power pack into the leg and powered it up. “Good as new.” Then he turned around and almost fell when he saw a Stormtrooper standing at the whole in the wall. Orian removed the helmet and said “Hey guys check out what that rooms filled with! All sorts of Imperial Uniforms and equipment. No weapons though.

Orian (EricFlameG@aol.com)

The suit was a tad bit too tight for him, but it would manage for now. In fact, he had a neat little plan ... “If we can suit everybody up, I don’t think we’ll have much of a trouble sneaking in to wherever it is we’re sneaking into. ‘Cause I wanna blow this place.” And with about eight thermal detonators placed in the right place, it wouldn’t be that hard.

He stood by the hole in the wall—like it wasn’t obvious—guarding it until everybody got ready and situated. Orian didn’t feel exactly up to wearing the silly suit, but to get where he wanted to get to there wouldn’t be any other option. The suit was hot, and the humid air of the planet didn’t help it much.

Another glance over his shoulder and he noticed everybody seemed ready. He stepped aside and gestured towards the equipment room. “We should all get suited up. It’ll make it a lot easier on us. We’ll just say that we’re heading towards wherever we’re heading to ‘cause there’s a bit of a commotion there.”

He glanced down the halls again.

Raven Conall (RavnConall@aol.com)

Ravon got into his Stormtrooper outfit in less then a minute, which was faster then most, except Mike, he was in it at the exact same time as Raven, after all, they both were used to getting into these things. Then Raven realized and then said “I Hope everyone has an E-11.. otherwise you have to go back to the weapons room way back from were we started.” A few people went off, then he realized he forgot his too and he had to head off that way to. Raven grabbed the rest of the equipment he needed and started running back, with his helmet off.

He turned around the corner into the great hall and Baron slipped out of the shadows. Baron said “Watch it, there a bunch of Stormtroopers that went back that way. Raven smiled and explained to him about how they’re dressing up as Stormtroopers and etc. and then Raven said “Wait here I’ll grab to E-11s, one for me and one for you.” Raven ran off to the weapons room grabbed the two E-11’s and ran back. Then he helped baron to the med room were he fixed him up better this time and then brought a Stormtrooper suit to him. As Orian was walking by and looking like he was cooking Raven said “You might wanna turn on the mini AC in that thing.” And pressed the appropriate button in Orian’s back. Orian said “Thanks” and moved on.

It took Baron a little while to get the Stormtrooper suit on, but he did and he picked up the E-11 and they all set off down the corridor. Raven still have the ysalimiri, but it was on his back, that way he could say that they were told to bring one Ysalimiri for each group to protect them from the powers of the Jedi infiltrators.

Indy Bridger (IndyBridger@hotmail.com)

After a long few minutes of silence and stillness, Indy turned

toward Raven.  In her hand is her father’s lightsaber.  She shoved it at

Raven’s chest.  “Take this.  I never asked for this blasted talent I

have, and I sure as hell don’t want it.  All it’s doing is making my

life a living hell.  Take this, keep it for me, for the time I’m

actually ready to wield it.”  The teenager spun on her heel and headed

off, dressed in her stolen Imperial uniform from the storeroom.  She

glanced at Mike for a moment.  “You still need someone’s help, Mike? 

‘Cause Tag’ll kill me if she finds out that I left you hanging.”

Mike Bullian (KngCaldor3@aol.com)

Mike turned at the sound of her voice and replied, “No thanks, I’ll do just fine with the leg Raven attached, just watch my back and I’ll do the same.”  saying that, Mike smiles warmly as he dons his “borrowed” stormtrooper helmet, “too bad this Stormie armor’s not as good as the plating on my exosuit was”

Indy Bridger (IndyBridger@hotmail.com)

Indy closed her eyes for a moment, thinking over what’s happened so

fast.  How long have I been with them?  A week, maybe two?  Silently,

she shook her head.  Seems like so much longer.  For the umpteenth

time, she has to wonder whether or not this was a good idea.  She

gripped her blaster tightly, knowing that this weapon, and not the one

that she has given to Raven, is the one that she needs to use—the one

she is meant to use.  *Dad, I know you told me about my talent for a

reason,* she thought.  But I’ll be damned if I ever use it.  She

swallowed hard.  “Guys, we need to get this mission completed.  We all

know that.”  Her gaze took in them all in turn, a certain determined

flame filling her eyes.  “What’s our next move?”

Baron (BaronCoop1@aol.com)

I now know what a heart attack feels like. I thought I had avoided those stormtroopers nicely, then I stepped out of the shadows, looked around, and here cam another group of them! I almost fell down again (I hate falling in this damned place), but managed to catch myself. The pain had increased considerably since I left the “safety” of the pool room, but I knew that if I stopped, and didn’t make it to the roof in time for the evac, the Imperials WILL capture me, they WILL torture me, and the WILL kill me as slowly as the can. I really don’t want to die, so I made it this far (don’t know for sure, but I think I’m halfway there. Maybe?). I had a second heart attack when I saw who was leading the stormtroopers... Raven!

“Not again!” I groaned, sure that he was insane and out to kill me ....again. But he smiled at me, and told me of his plans to infiltrate further in (actually, I think it was Orian’s idea). This all sounded familiar, but I couldn’t quite place where I had heard it before. Maybe one of those old holovids? Oh, well. I think they made it out alive, so it was worth a shot.

I managed to get up to the medical room. Thank God! I was delirious at that point, and would have accepted a brain transplant if it meant the pain would go away. The first thing they gave me was a pain suppressant. A POWERFUL one. Wow. I needed that. I fell in love with the universe. I didn’t want to kill anyone. I just wanted to sit there and be cool. Then they lowered the dosage.  Oops.

They (I’m not sure who “They” are, but I’m not complaining either) performed some type of low-level operation. I’m not sure what, but I do know that they didn’t cut into me, I think it was kind of like a splint, but for my whole body. I don’t know what it was, but it felt better than before, so I was happy. I finally managed to squeeze my battered, broken, and shattered bones into a stormtrooper suit, and we started toward our destination. I was VERY afraid that my lingering limp would give us away, but I didn’t say anything. Despite what everyone thinks, simply showing up at a hospital doesn’t heal someone. Time is the only thing that can heal. Doctors can stop bleeding, erase pain, and even give a bacta bath to speed the process up, but it still requires time. And I hadn’t been given any.  Oh, well. I can hope we make it through without incident right? Yeah, sure.

Mike Bullian (KngCaldor3@aol.com)

“We have just a slight problem.”  Mike said, indicating Shay’s body.  “We can’t take her with us, so how do we dispose of her?”  At this Raven popped in to Mike’s head  “We have to destroy the body” raven sent a detailed sequence of events along with those words.  Mike lifted Shay’s body on to a table and closed his eyes in concentration, Shay’s body started to expand slightly and then began to fade.  Mike said as he finished “A fitting burial, if you could call it that.”  a single tear formed in the corner of his eye, but no one saw it through the cold skull-like mask that had for now become his face.

Raven Conall (RavnConall@aol.com)

Raven looked at the Lightsaber and wondered why she gave it to him. He just extracted it from it’s hiding place as they walked down the corridor. He studied the beautiful Lightsaber wondering why she would ever want to hand it to him for a while. Any Jedi would want it.. Maybe that was it.. He sensed the turmoil in her before he put the Ysalimiri on his head and had a feeling that it was over the Jedi. Something to look into. He remembered his past and thought of what it was, he must change that state of mind of hers. She must use this gift.. he hid the lightsaber fast as they moved past another group of stormtroopers. That was close... I’m not taking it out again until I talk to her...

Morcant (Morcant@planetvenus.swinternet.co.uk)

Morcant and Dengar look around the control room. It is not a major one.

They don’t have control of much but it is enough to do some things.

Within minutes they would have isolated the room. And it could take

anything from minutes to hours for them to slice through Dengar’s

encryption algorithms which are constantly increasing the security the

longer they are running. It did mean that they couldn’t do much either

though. The trouble is that they had telegraphed their position

perfectly to the imperials. There are two groups of rebels in the base.

one at an unknown location and one at a very definitely known location.

Getting the hell out was the first and top priority.

The room was littered with the bodies of the technicians lying next to

their seats where they fell as they were shot. And the controlling

office lay in the middle, face down, still where he had fallen as

Morcant cold-bloodedly shot him in the head. He had been promised his life

in return for his co-operation. He had done all he could, codes,

information on the computer capabilities and a few hints on security

procedures, all that he knew. And Morcant had taken his gun, put it to

the back of his head and calmly pulled the trigger and muttered to

himself, “Still many millions to go”.

The computers themselves were not the showy display things that were often used in the main control rooms for the Commanding officers. These were the proper tech’s computers. The simple and more versatile text interface with an optional graphics mode for when it became necessary.  After all everything in the computer worked on text strings rather than with pictures. The computers were all lying as they had been before the violence broke out in the room. Only three were different the two that Morcant and Dengar had been using to manipulate the systems and a third in a corner. A graphical display had been opened and a security test screen was displayed. A signal was going off indicating that there had been a security breach in this room. And another message in a window indicating a terminated connection to the system. The rooms computers were isolated.

Morcant stood up from where he was buried in the insides of the computers. It seemed that he might be doing one of many things. He could have been reversing the inputs on the systems such that sensors would be misreporting. He might be crossing the power cables with the earthing cables to give a shock to the next person to try to use it. The reality was different though.

“Right. I’ve ripped out just about everything that I could find in there that was removable what do we do with it now?” Morcant inquired as he crawled back out of the heart of the room.

Dengar turned and smiled, “What do we do with it? Well, we take this, this and this. And then we leave that,” a small thermal detonator, “as a present for whoever turns up. They get to see their control center go up in a magnificent burst of light. Much more fun than just torching it all now. Next thing is to break into the lift shafts to make good our getaway”.

They made their way to the nearest lift opening where they pried open the doors. Morcant climbed in first and made his way around the walls with the help of magnetic gloves and the various pipes and wirings which covered one of the walls. As Dengar climbed in he let the doors slide shut behind him and connected a small device to a series of wires. Below them a lift started to rise rapidly, called to the floor below them. It slowed to a halt, its top three feet below their feet. Dengar tapped a few buttons on his control as Morcant dropped to the roof of the lift.  As the lift started to rise Dengar dropped onto it too and felt its acceleration pushing at him. By this time Morcant had his gun out and had lifted the maintenance hatch on the top of the lift and checked the inside, empty.

The lift rapidly rose to the second to top floor and as the two scrambled to the walls again the lift paused for a few seconds and then started to plummet back into the base. The doors next to them were pried open quickly and the two made their way out onto the rooftop. In a few minutes the security cameras would come back on line. They had to get them off-line at the source before they caught anything. Hopefully then they would assume they were just having trouble getting them back on line. Hopefully.

Within minutes they had snipped cables for all the cams. They secured all entrances to the roof and lay down in the best positions to cover all hatchways and each other. Hopefully the rest of Aurora Force would be not far behind. Once they were there it just remained to signal the rest of the team, Ralrra and Una. Then extraction would happen.

Carlos DeLong (BodoBaasJM@aol.com)

Despite the stormtrooper armor (he was getting WAY too much experience in dressing like a Stormie), Carlos DeLong did not look like a regular stormtrooper.  The jet black dagger that hung at his side and the silver-white Dark Trooper sword that hung at his back made him look more like something from those cheap holovids that featured far fetched plots and too many Jedi.  Sort of like the mess that he was in.  Not that he had anything against Jedi.  Some off his best friends in the RSCD were Jedi.  It was just that the situations that they had to handle had made him feel so useless. 

It was not a feeling he cherished.

Shay’s death had troubled him as well.  He had sensed that something was troubling her from the moment they had stepped aboard the shuttle craft.  He had hoped to talk to her about it, to try and bring her some peace of mind.  Then she had been shot, troubled and pained as ever, and he hadn’t been able to help.

But he could not dwell on such things.  The group was pretty much back together.  They were headed for pick up, and were also planning to blow the base.  Carlos turned to Galadriel, who was standing next to him, and asked:

“Mairin,” he said using Galadriel’s B&G nickname, “Do you know what Codyman plans to have us do after we blow this bantha pad?”

“I don’t know Carlos.  I think he said something about hooking up with the local resistance and teaching them some, ah, advanced tactics.” 

Carlos grinned at that one.  Teaching a new bread of desert commandos.  That was something that he could do.

Baron (BaronCoop1@aol.com)

My worst fear came true. As we were hurrying along on our way to the distribution center, my limp grew noticeably. Of course, the medical room helped immensely, but it would not heal me without a bacta bath, or time. I had neither. Finally, as we passed yet another stormtrooper battalion searching for us (there sure are a LOT of these things out here). The CO of their squad pointed me out and asked Torin “What’s wrong with that trooper?”

“Which one?”

“That one.” He repeated, pointing directly at me.

“Oh, him? Nothing. Nothing is wrong with him whatsoever.” Raven cut in, his voice sounding vaguely concentrated. He paused a moment, then swore softly under his breath. The yassilarmi on his head was blocking his use of the Force to convince the weak-minded. Damn. I was so screwed.

“Sorry, sir. I was injured fighting the intruders.” I replied, hoping that would persuade the leader to let me go ahead. That was not the actual effect. Instead, his head spun toward me at lightning speed. He was smart.

“What? Where are you headed for? Give me your identification number!” The stormtrooper demanded. Profanities ran through my mind. We were supposed to be searching for the intruders, we shouldn’t have fought them already. Our cover looked like it was about to be blown.

“You don’t need his identification number. Everything is just fine.” It was one of our other force-users (I’m not sure which one, they were all in disguise), but they were obviously straining to use the force effectively. Either they were not all too experienced at using the force, or the yassilarmi was giving them trouble. Raven was slowly sidling away from us to allow the Jedi or wannabe the most room outside of the force bubble to work in.

“I don’t need his identification number?”

“No. You already have it.” The voice was straining less, but it was obviously concentrated. Jedi might be useful after all.

“I already have it.” The stormtrooper acknowledged. Then turned to the rest of his squad. “Get trooper 9305782 here to the medical bay for immediate attention.”

“He does not need to go there. He is fine with us here.” The strained voice was almost pleading.

The stormtrooper officer swirled around. “You.” He snarled through his comlink “Do not have the authority to tell me that, Trooper.” He loaded the last word with enough sarcasm to make a normal man bow. Obviously the force could convince weak minds, but it was slower to convince stronger minds. Either way, the real stormtroopers were almost dragging me through the halls back the way we came. They must have thought they were doing me a favor. Ironic.

Indy Bridger (IndyBridger@hotmail.com)

Indy swore under her breath.  “Oh, frig.”  The hall was clear

except for them.  “I’m going after Baron.  Who’s with me?”

Carlos DeLong (BodoBaasJM@aol.com)

Carlos turned to Indy.

“Count me in.  We’d better hurry before they get to far away from us.  Anyone else want to join this little party?”

A few of the Auroras, Torin included, oddly enough, decided to come and help Lt. Baron.  Torin ordered Troy and Galadriel to take the rest of the Auroras and go and blow up the garrison’s central reactor, and then meet up with Morcant and company.

The party marched down the corridor trying to find the stormtroopers that had “captured” Baron.  All the while they tried to figure out a way to convince the Imperials to relinquish Baron into their custody.  Hopefully they could get out of this jam through guile and cunning, but Carlos kept a hand ready to draw his double bladed sword at a moments notice.

Galadriel Astoris (g_astoris@hotmail.com)

Galadriel shouldered her blaster rifle and nodded smartly. Her hazel

eyes followed the rescuers away down the corridor and then she blinked a

few times and turned back to the main group.

“OK, guys,” she said. She pulled off her storm trooper helmet and flashed a quick smile. “Let’s move it on out of here. There’s a reactor waiting for our thermal detonators.”

She dumped the helmet in the corridor. “Phew,” she hissed. “That thing was starting to get too heated for me.” Galadriel cast another glance back over her shoulder.

“Yo, come on, people,” she said. The rest of Aurora were lingering a little too long for her liking. “Let’s blow this dump and clear the hell out. Now move. That’s an order.”

She headed off down the corridor.

Orian (EricFlameG@aol.com)

Orian was one of those that voted to head on over to the reactor—he wasn’t into rescue missions. He liked those “blow-em-to-hell” operations. And with a belt of thermal detonators wrapped about his waist, it wouldn’t be too hard. But a thought did come to mind. He pondered over this question as he glanced the dull brown glance to Galadriel, following her down the corridor.

“I like the idea of blowing stuff up, yeah, but if we blow up this reactor, isn’t there a slight possibility it could start a chain-reaction and blow this whole place up, taking those that are going after Baron with it?”

Carlos DeLong (BodoBaasJM@aol.com)

Carlos had pretty much the same thought about a minute after they had left to go and rescue Baron. 

Oh well, he thought, If we do this right that shouldn’t be a problem.

However, he did spread his bets by pressing a small call button on his comlink.....

On board the Imladris, the Surronian assault ship Peregrine’s Claw powered up and left the hangar bay for the planet’s surface.  The Claw activated the systems that protected it from Imperial sensors (It was usually used to smuggle NRI agents into hostile territory, but was currently on loan to Carlos), and reviewed its mission orders.  Scan the complex.  If the rescuers were not off the garrison by the time the core was destroyed, the Claw was to blast a hole in the garrison wall and extract the team.

Galadriel Astoris (g_astoris@hotmail.com)

Galadriel winked brightly at Orian.

“Not to worry,” she said, mischief lighting her features. “Cody’ll have everyone out.” She paused for a moment, looked him up and down.  “Trooper,” she added, her tone teasing, mocking the storm trooper outfits they all still wore.

Her face hardened almost instantly. The mission was fast turning into a catastrophe, with the group separated from each other. Hardly what had been planned. She muttered a soft curse.

“Hold up, gang,” she said as they approached a T-junction in the corridor, holding up a hand for extra emphasis. Her voice had dropped to a whisper. “Little... uh... complication up ahead.”

She grinned widely, stole a glance around the corner and shrank back almost instantly. “Hmmm,” she murmured. “Everyone ready?”

Indy

Indy glanced at the few people that had decided to tag along with

her on her little “mission” to rescue Baron from the stormies.  She’d

stopped them all in an alcove and stripped out of her armor in that

secluded place, down to the plain gray jumpsuit that she wore over her

old CorSec uniform.  “OK, the way I see it, we play an Imp Intel team

that was scouting the defenses of these Imps.  I’ve got some ID that

should work.  Keep your mouths shut and let me talk.  I’m good at this

sort of stuff.”

With that, she marched them all off toward the medical area.  As

they entered, several stormtroopers had their blasters aimed at Baron’s

head as he half lay, half sat on a bunk, partially stripped out of his

armor.  Indy fell into the accent common to most Imperial officers. 

“Trooper, what are you doing?”

The head trooper whirled, staring at her.  “Uh....”

Indy yanked her ID out of her pocket.  It was a standard Imperial

Intelligence ID.  “Major Tasha Calyen, Imperial Intelligence.  Let my

man go.  His work’s not done.”

“Uhm, I need clearance.....”  Somehow, stormtroopers always managed

to act stupid in these sorts of situations, Indy silently observed.

Indy’s voice was harsh and cold.  “With every moment you waste my

precious time the Empire is sapped of a bit more strength.”  She glanced

at the other Auroras with her, as they stood-stock still.  She eyed the

closest to her.  “Lieutenant Jannen, please help our good officer.”

Torin nodded.  “Aye, Major.”  He walked over and hauled Baron to his

feet.

Indy continued to stare at the trooper.  “Trooper, what is your

service number?”

The trooper ulped and rattled off a number.

Indy gave a curt nod.  “That is all.”  She spun expertly on her

heel, and marched off with the other Auroras and the injured Baron.  As

they marched, she smiled, and lead them back to the alcove.  She pointed

to the armor she had shed.  “Put it on, Baron.  I can stay in this

character for a while longer.”  She grinned at them.  “Shall we slice

into the central computer before we go?”

Orian (EricFlameG@aol.com)

“’Scuse me, ‘Trooper’.” Giving her a somewhat crooked smirk, he only followed along, keeping a wary eye out ahead. Things weren’t turning out all that great indeed. Too much was happening, too many stops along the way. It was ruining his plans, which consisted of getting in, blasting it, and getting out in under a half-hour time frame.

By now he should be resting casually in some nice room, lying in a bed. But no, he was on this mission to blow something up. That wasn’t half bad in itself, but it was just taking too long for him. Orian made his concerns known. “I say it’s about time we blew this popsicle stand.” How ironic—it was in the middle of a freaking nowhere desert.

He then stopped at Galadriel’s warning, readying that silly little Stormtrooper’s Rifle he’d been carrying. How he hated those things:  the aim was pathetic without a semi-decent scope! And how coincidental he didn’t get one. “What’s up?” His voice was quiet as he stayed back.

Galadriel Astoris (g_astoris@hotmail.com)

Galadriel uttered a muffled curse, casting yet another glance around the

corner.

“Storm troopers,” she said. One of her eyebrows flicked upwards with a swift burst of amusement. “Real ones,” she added dryly. She checked her blaster rifle.

“Set to maximum power,” she snarled. “I don’t want any of these little toads left alive.” Before anyone could question her order she held up her hand for silence. “Dead men,” she murmured, tones cold and calm, “tell no stories.”

Orian (EricFlameG@aol.com)

There was something about blowing things up that appealed to Orian. Either the loud noise, or the sailing of debris, or the fact that it just makes a lot of destruction. But there’s something about blowing up people that appealed to him even more.

Without asking for permission or whatever a soldier was supposed to do, he plucked a thermal detonator off of his belt and casually lobbed it down in the direction of the troopers, giving a glance to Galadriel as it flew towards the troopers. “This should be fun.”

As soon as his sentence was said and over with, there was a bang. A really loud bang. And a powerful blast to go along with it. Bits and pieces of trooper armor flew from the direction of the explosion, and not giving the sure-to-be dazed troopers any time to think, he rolled out from around the corner and started blasting. What fun!

Raven Conall (RavnConall@aol.com)

Raven looked around, they were near the reactor, at least that’s what they should be near. Yes they were the same turns everything was like it was before, on different worlds, but the same setup. He reached into his pack and extracted to wrist bands, they were very delicate, because they were C4, but packed enough punch to blow that reactor. He slipped the bands on, and since they didn’t expect any fighting anytime soon he just walked normally, and his wrists just looked a little big. This was going to be fun.

Morcant (Morcant@planetvenus.swinternet.co.uk)

Morcant and Dengar look around the control room. It is not a major one.

They don’t have control of much but it is enough to do some things.

Within minutes they would have isolated the room. And it could take

anything from minutes to hours for them to slice through Dengar’s

encryption algorithms which are constantly increasing the security the

longer they are running. It did mean that they couldn’t do much either

though. The trouble is that they had telegraphed their position

perfectly to the imperials. There are two groups of rebels in the base.

one at an unknown location and one at a very definitely known location.

Getting the hell out was the first and top priority.

The room was littered with the bodies of the technicians lying next to

their seats where they fell as they were shot. And the controlling

officer lay in the middle, face down, still where he had fallen as

Morcant cold-bloodedly shot him in the head. He had been promised his

life

in return for his co-operation. He had done all he could, codes,

information on the computer capabilities and a few hints on security

procedures, all that he knew. And Morcant had taken his gun, put it to

the back of his head and calmly pulled the trigger and muttered to

himself, “Still many millions to go”.

The computers themselves were not the showy display things that were often used in the main control rooms for the Commanding officers. These were the proper tech’s computers. The simple and more versatile text interface with an optional graphics mode for when it became necessary.  After all everything in the computer worked on text strings rather than with pictures. The computers were all lying as they had been before the violence broke out in the room. Only three were different the two that Morcant and Dengar had been using to manipulate the systems and a third in a corner. A graphical display had been opened and a security test screen was displayed. A signal was going off indicating that there had been a security breach in this room. And another message in a window indicating a terminated connection to the system. The rooms computers were isolated.

Morcant stood up from where he was buried in the insides of the computers. It seemed that he might be doing one of many things. He could have been reversing the inputs on the systems such that sensors would be misreporting. He might be crossing the power cables with the earthing cables to give a shock to the next person to try to use it. The reality was different though.

“Right. I’ve ripped out just about everything that I could find in there that was removable what do we do with it now?” Morcant inquired as he crawled back out of the heart of the room.

Dengar turned and smiled, “What do we do with it? Well, we take this, this and this. And then we leave that,” a small thermal detonator, “as a present for whoever turns up. They get to see their control center go up in a magnificent burst of light. Much more fun than just torching it all now. Next thing is to break into the lift shafts to make good our getaway”.

They made their way to the nearest lift opening where they pried open the doors. Morcant climbed in first and made his way around the walls with the help of magnetic gloves and the various pipes and wirings which covered one of the walls. As Dengar climbed in he let the doors slide shut behind him and connected a small device to a series of wires. Below them a lift started to rise rapidly, called to the floor below them. It slowed to a halt, its top three feet below their feet. Dengar tapped a few buttons on his control as Morcant dropped to the roof of the lift.  As the lift started to rise Dengar dropped onto it too and felt its acceleration pushing at him. By this time Morcant had his gun out and had lifted the maintenance hatch on the top of the lift and checked the inside: empty.

The lift rapidly rose to the second to top floor and as the two scrambled to the walls again the lift paused for a few seconds and then started to plummet back into the base. The doors next to them were pried open quickly and the two made their way out onto the rooftop. In a few minutes the security cameras would come back on line. They had to get them off-line at the source before they caught anything. Hopefully then they would assume they were just having trouble getting them back on line. Hopefully.

Within minutes they had snipped cables for all the cams. They secured all entrances to the roof and lay down in the best positions to cover all hatchways and each other. Hopefully the rest of Aurora Force would be not far behind. Once they were there it just remained to signal the rest of the team, Ralrra and Una. Then extraction would happen.

Indy Bridger (IndyBridger@hotmail.com)

Indy found a terminal in an empty conference room and grinned. 

“This will do nicely.  Carlos, watch the door.  I’m going to download

their database then crash the system.”  As she spoke, Indy was rapidly

setting up a small portable computer and plugging it into the terminal. 

Within no time, she had sliced into the database and was downloading. 

“Come on, come on,” she muttered, waiting, knowing the time that they

had was unbelievably short.  Finally it finished, and she began

inputting the garbage code that would crash the system.  Klaxons began

blaring.  “*Shaavit*!”  she swore, and finished inputting the code.  She

yanked the leads from the portable out of the terminal and tossed it

into her pack.  With an air of forced cheer, grabbing an extra rifle

from someone, she said, “I think we should go now.  What about you?” 

She checked the power gauge on the rifle and grimaced.  She had a dozen

shots, at best.  She’d just have to make them count.

The small group headed out.

Carlos DeLong (BodoBaasJM@aol.com)

Carlos was busy studying the chin controls on his helmet as his half of Aurora force headed toward the meeting with the other half.  He recognized all but one of the controls.  It wasn’t a stealth viewing control, like the ones on Terrac III, but there was something about it that set off warning bells in his head.

He was just about to press the control, just out of curiosity, when he noticed the walls of the corridor that they were in open up.  The Dark Trooper Phase 2 standing behind the wall immediately to his left got off one shot from its assault cannon.....and was promptly hit in the head by its own shot as Carlos brought up his wrist shield that he had confiscated from a Phase 1 Dark Trooper on Terrac III.  At least there were none of those around.  The DTP2’s assault rifles could at least be blocked by the limited personal shields all commandos are issued, but those swords that the P1’s used completely bypassed the shield systems.  During this thought process Carlos dived forward, and reached behind his back to draw the double bladed sword that he had confiscated from the P1 on Terrac III.  His first slash cut through the P2’s gun arm, and his reverse stroke, using the secondary blade, cut through the P2’s main power core.  He turned from the now dead DTP2, and leaped into the fray to help his comrades.

Deadmeet (Bubbakidd@aol.com)

His helmet was sweaty  and he could swear that the last piece of imperial armor was rusted when he finally peeled it off. “Thank god i polished my saber before this trip” Deadmeet thought, as he pulled his saber out and studied it. Everyone else around him were catching their breath, running through corridors and dodging imps is exiting but only after the first 3 minutes, after that it’s just plain exhaustion. Even some of the force users were breathing heavily, including Raven, who still had that damn lizard on his head. The saber was only gold plated but he didn’t care, it was given to him by his master. Gobeski was a good man, he died killing a dark Jedi, he died with honor. Even after a 5 years he had never noticed the second switch near the bottom of the saber, it didn’t do anything when it was flipped so he left it on and forgot about it. But, the next time he turned the saber on a second blade came out of the bottom.  Using the crystal from the second blade he was able to make a wide array of weapons. Shurikins, daggers, anything. He had even thought about using and ancient rocket propelled gun he thought about converting the bullets to have a miniature saber come from the capsule, the result would be deadly, if not costly to build. But he had done it, it took nearly all of the crystal he had left to make a self sustaining generator for the gun but it was ready to use. It was about half the size of a Stormie rifle, kind of like a bryar’s but with a small circular plate at the end were the bullets get the charge. When he was playing with his new toy in the short break Raven asked what it was and he explained. Raven was astonished by in ingenuity and Deadmeet said he could build another one for him, Raven excepted. But now was not the time they had all caught their breath and they spotted the other group not far ahead of them, Deadmeet noticed them because of the distinguished limp of Baron’s leg. When they caught up and heard of the clever tricks they pulled everyone headed to the launch pad. They only found a few stormies along the way which to his pleasure fell easily to Deadmeet’s toy,” I wonder what I should call this thing?” Raven gave a suggestion,  ”How about “the punisher”?” “Sounds good to me,” said Deadmeet holstering his punisher. Then just as the turned the corner they found the blessed door marked “LAUNCH BAY” Deadmeet spoke,” People I know you want to get the hell out of here, but let me tell you, sometimes there are also cannons so be ready,” at that response the force users or just people with them, withdrew their sabers and had them ready. But as they opened the door the turrets were just sitting there and there was nothing else in the room but the transport ready to take them out of there. Then he spotted Morcant in a coming out of a corner saying,  ”What took you so long?” But only Deadmeet said,  ”Ok who has the detonator?” They laughed as they started to board the transport.

Indy Bridger (IndyBridger@hotmail.com)

The power pack in Indy’s blaster had been depleted, and she was now

reduced to using the rifle as a club.  For a few moments, she regretted

giving Baron her armor and her blaster pistol with it, but then was

glad.  She was good at unarmed combat—better than both of her parents

had been.  Besides, she thought as she pulled a vibroknife from her

boot, I can always use the exercise....

She slashed the knife across one of the trooper’s throats, and as he

fell, he opened up a way out of the fight.  “I’ve gotta find the

others!”  She shouted, not quite ready to break comm silence by using

her commlink.  She dashed down the hallway, finding not the other

Auroras, but something just about as good—a way out of the base.

“Let’s get out of here!”  She shouted.  Suddenly, the klaxons died,

and she smiled, knowing her garbage code had worked.  “They’ve got no

comm now!  Let’s go!”  Soon, she knew, the entire base would go up in

one nice big fireball.

Indy realized that her comrades weren’t following—some were actually

heading in the opposite direction.  She hoped they’d find a way out as

she ducked through the door, which loudly clicked shut behind her,

locking.

She found herself in a huge hangar with a single craft—a TIE

fighter.  She sighed.  I don’t know how to fly one of those things.... 

“*Shaavit*, now how am I supposed to get out of here?”

Mike Bullian (KngCaldor3@aol.com)

Indy turned her head as a thud sounded from the door, Mike entered, nursing his injured nose.

“You had to hit me with the door, didn’t you”  He said, smiling slightly, at least until he saw the expression on her face.  “problem?”

“You could say that, you know how to fly that thing?”  Mike laughed heartily at that  “what are you laughing at?”  Indy replied, a slight look of confusion on her face.

“Do you keep up with the PBF, if you do, remember the last mission reports, just who was the top gun, could it be, uh, me?” mike replied, stifling another chuckle.  “In other words, you bet your shapely ass on it.  Come on, let’s get out of here.”

“But isn’t that a one man fighter?”  she said, the confusion still showing

“It is, you’ll just have to sit on my lap as I fly us out of here.”  An explosion sounded and the door mechanism shorted itself, freezing the door in place.  “Besides, from the look of that, we don’t have another choice.”  Mike climbed up on the port solar panel support strut and opened the cockpit cover, “need a lift?”  he said, reaching down to help Indy up.  With her on the support strut he climbed into the cockpit and quickly checked the systems.  “All green, you can get in now.”  Indy climbed carefully into the ball cockpit of the TIE, trying not to step on anything sensitive, either on the fighter or the pilot.  Mike fired up the engines and repulsorlift and eased the TIE out through the tunnel from the hangar to the surface.  As they reached the surface the CMD beeped and showed a squadron of TIE’s coming in on their location.  “Hold on tight, we’re really flying now.”  he turned on the inertial compensators to full, even though he preferred them at about half, whipped around and unloaded a volley on the incoming squadron, three of them exploded instantly, and four more spiraled downward.  “Five to go.”  He dove toward the ground and rolled, pulling up just in time, unfortunately for two of the eyeballs chasing them, they didn’t.  “There’s three”  He rolled the TIE quickly to the left and whipped around so that he was facing the other TIE’s and flying backward.  he fired, taking two more out.   “One left.”  Mike whipped the fighter upwards, directly toward the sun and reversed his direction as he had earlier, “Where was the TIE.  There, coming in from the side, mike whipped around as the TIE wasn’t meant to, at least in atmosphere.  the ship shuddered, but held together as he unloaded the last of his laser energy at the last eyeball, it blew.  “You all right?” Mike said to Indy

“Well, considering that’s my first starfighter combat experience in an eyeball, I guess.  is there a barf bag in here?”  Indy said, starting to turn green.  Mike kicked off his left boot.

“Here, use that for now, I’m going to get us into vacuum and maybe back to the Imladris.”  Mike switched the comm on to the Calamari Cruiser’s frequency.  “Cruiser Imladris, this is Lieutenant Mike Bullian, i need a pickup.  I’m approaching in a TIE Fighter and it’s a long ride to the edge of the system, could you send a shuttle. it’s getting crowded in here, these things were only meant for one person.”

“Lieutenant, This is the Imladris, Shuttle Pickup on it’s way, welcome back.”

Morcant (morcant@planetvenus.swinternet.co.uk)

Una and Ralrra were there to try to make the getaway as smooth as

possible. There was not enough time to do anything really decisive or

dramatic. It was going to be a quick fix attempt. There was going to be

no way to get easily into the hangar facilities, especially for a

non-human and Una didn’t like the thought of going in on her own. This

meant there was going to be no sabotage of the fighters themselves or

even stealing them which would be good for the squadron but not good for

their health. This meant they had to find some other way of preventing

them taking off. The facilities for the fighters were not particularly

good, being just the leftovers from when the empire left 24 years ago.

The empire had requisitioned them and refitted them slightly for fighter

use.

This was the way to neutralize the fighter systems. The older starport facilities had not been maintained very well according to one of the technicians who works in the commercial area. The vital systems were still in tip top condition but some of the secondary systems had been left to fall into disrepair since they were expensive to maintain and unnecessary. The weakest link in the chain was the power supply. The power regulators in the hangars were not even there any more. They had been taken out to use in more vital systems and patches put in to replace them. They weren’t important since the power stations were under imperial control and the supply regulated from there.

Timing would be crucial. Since the power knockout that they were planning could knock out the entire base they had to make sure the Light was not stuck as well. So in the time between the Light launching and the imperials realizing that they weren’t leaving the system the power had to be disrupted. The current plan was a large but compact capacitor pack and a microfusion generator. Set up the generator for maximum output and put the capacitors on the power lines. The capacitors would draw off some of the power and store it and then it would be possible to hook up them and the generator to deliver it all at once into the starport. This would hopefully have the effect of overloading at least one of the power routers straight off and then it would be a matter of seconds before the power cascaded through the other systems and shorted out the entire base. The back up generators also go through the non-regulators and so they should be no help to any of the major systems.

That was the plan. The reality was not working quite that smoothly. The power supply was not easy to access. The cables ran underground and the end points were both under guard. This meant trying to find some way to get into the starport power facilities. Not an easy task really. Not easy at all.

Una had gathered her equipment together and was ready to go. She had a micro welder, small blaster with spare power packs, grappling line, fake ID and of course the capacitor pack and the generator. The plan was to try to get to the outer walls and cut through to the insides, hook up the equipment and then get the hell out. The approach to the compound was easy enough. As she stood next to the outer fence looking around she wondered what was happening. The security seemed to be even lower than she expected. Then she realized; it must be due to what was going on at the main command center. They must have moved some of the troops up to the base to help defend it. Well, at least that implied that her friends must still be at large if they needed extra guards to deal with them.

She decided for the direct approach. She secured her equipment about her, managing to hide most of it so that it was not visible. It meant that she no longer had her flattering figure but she wasn’t trying to impress anybody with it so it didn’t matter. She walked towards the main entrance checkpoint and as she got closer she removed a small tube approximately seven centimeters long and one across. There was one guard at the gate. He stood ready and alert.

“ID,” he ordered as Una approached.

Una walked up to the man her right hand going to her pocket and prepared to bring out ID. As she handed it over the trooper moved to scan it. As he turned, Una, with just a slight movement of her hand, pressed the mechanism on the tube. The guard’s hand went to his neck where a small dart now protruded.

“Don’t move!” said Una quickly before the man could do anything else.  Immediately he stopped moving, frozen in place. “Take the dart out of your neck and pass it to me carefully”. The guard complied immediately with her request. He had no choice in the matter. The dart had put a potent and fast acting drug into his system. The overall effect of it was to make him susceptible to any suggestions made to him. If somebody told him to do it he would do it without question. Well, there were a few things he wouldn’t do. His own self preservation instinct would prevent him from killing himself and he might not kill friends either.  However he would definitely let Una through the checkpoint without asking any questions or stopping her. The only trouble is that he would obey anybody’s commands so if anybody hailed him on the comlink and asked him he would immediately report Una’s actions. Unless ordered otherwise.

“You will tell nobody about what has just happened. If anybody asks about my passing you will tell them that you received ID telling you that I was an authorized imperial intelligence officer checking your facility. You were ordered not to reveal my presence since it is a surprise inspection. You will only reveal this information if specifically questioned. In other circumstances you will report that your post is fine and that there has been no trouble. Put it in your own words though so it doesn’t sound artificial. And do not obey anybody’s orders except my own.” The last would not stop him but it might give him a slight hesitation. Might help in some way, certainly it wouldn’t hinder her at all.

She strolled into the base looking like she owned it. If she acted like she should be there then people would take that and the fact that she was inside the security zone and assume she was meant to be there. She moved towards were she knew the power facility was. It was a large building with no unauthorized entry and another security check. But this was why you bought equipment with you wasn’t it?

She moved round the back of the building, still following a route where each part was plausible. If anybody looked at her whole route they would realize that there was nowhere she should be taking that route to get to but there was no reason that anybody would wish to follow her that far.

Nobody was seeing any more than a part of her route. As she moved round

the corner to the back of the power facility she quickly took from under

her clothes were it was concealed her grapple. She checked quickly that

nobody was looking and shot it to the top of the building and its

molecular adhesive attached it firmly to the lip of the roof. She

activated the winch and began to rise rapidly, supported by the harness

around her legs and waist.

As she reached the top she expertly grabbed the lip and flipped herself over. She then released the grapple and started her entry work. There were ventilation outputs on the roof near her. She investigated and to her joy found that they were not connected to a long ventilation system but were merely grills over holes in the roof. The room below contained large pieces of equipment, power routers and converters along with the sub generators and the controller systems.

Una selected one of the roof hatches that would allow her to descend into a clear patch of floor and started to burn away at its hinges with her welding torch. She had quickly cut the hinges away allowing her to slide the grill out of its locking mechanism. She attached her harness and cable to the sturdy locking mechanism and descended so she could see inside the room. As she looked around she saw only one person. He was crouched down working on the computer systems in here. She decided he was not a major threat and silently descended the rest of the way to the ground. He was not an immediate threat but still needed to be dealt with.

She pulled her blaster and set it on stun. She started to creep up on the man but when she was still about ten meters away he turned to face her. Whether she made a noise or whether he was just getting another tool she wasn’t sure but she pointed the gun at him and he realized that he shouldn’t try anything smart. His hands went up without her even asking and he started shaking.

“I’m meant to be here. I’ve got my papers here if you let me show them to you. Please don’t shoot me. I’m a repair man. I’m repairing the system.” The man’s words died off as he saw that Una was still approaching and still pointing the gun straight at his heart.

“Show me your papers and don’t try anything clever,” Una replied, relaxed now but with the gun still pointing at him. It was still on stun but he didn’t know that. The papers told that the man worked for a local company and was here to try to recover data lost in the computer system.  Una relaxed slightly and lowered the gun. She still had it ready to shoot but it was no longer pointed at him.

“Why are you so jumpy?” she inquired.

The man lowered his arms slightly but was still keeping them well away from any pockets or places were weapons might be concealed. “I heard that the base was on full alert here and one of my friends was shot for treasonous activity when he was found repairing equipment during a training exercise.” The man’s nervousness was clearly showing as he wiped sweat from his forehead. He then realized what he said and quickly added, “I’m sure you had good reason to shoot him though. I wasn’t meaning it was unfair but I want to make sure you didn’t make a mistake.”

Una worked out what the situation was and her mind worked quickly. “You got any connection with the underground here? Oh, and don’t worry. I’m not an imp. I came in through the roof,” she said, gesturing at the broken whole in the roof with the cable just visible dangling from it.

“I’m just asking since you will probably need to go into hiding after today. You see I’m here to disrupt the power supply and they are going to blame you if you were the only one known to be working in here. You copy?”

“Y-Yes” stuttered the man trying to get a grip on what was happening.

“So you’re with the rebellion? It’s your friends up at the base there?”

“Yep. Now I’m afraid that I still don’t trust you so I’m going to ask you to remain in sight at all times whilst I am doing this. Sorry but that’s the way it is. Now come over here.” Una was slowly moving towards where the power regulators used to be. There was now just heavy cabling running the power straight between through.

Una started her work, always keeping a cautious eye on the man who had revealed his name to be Amatri. She put her equipment together and was ready to hook it up. The capacitors had an initial charge time of 20 minutes but after the micro generator kicked in that time would reduce significantly to about 30 seconds. This would mean that their power system would flux every half minute and send a surge of power through the systems, any that were still running, making operations of any high current devices very dangerous.

She hooked up the first connection and as she was about to hook up the second Amatri said in a nervous voice, “Errmm. If you are doing what I think then don’t you think it would be better to have a more variable pulse frequency. Another seven or eight capacitors hooked up appropriately would give a more erratic and thus harder to compensate for frequency.”

“Good idea,” replied Una, “but I don’t have any on me and I’m sure as hell not going out shopping for more at this time.”

“Well, my toolkit has some capacitance circuitry in it that might

help...” Amatri replied, “I’ll get it if you want.”

“Go on,” said Una, her gun at the ready again.

Amatri was true to his words though and went and got his toolkit and retrieved several pieces of circuitry from it. Una took them from him and nodded and smiled, “This should do nicely. The capacitances are a bit low to work directly but if I couple this into a switching mechanism and hook that up to the micro-generator then I should be able to direct the power in a seemingly random fashion between the capacitors and the main system. That will mean that the capacitors don’t charge at a constant rate and thus they won’t be able to predict when the next surge will come.”

Una quickly hooked the new circuitry in and rearranged some of the existing couples. “Right ready to go...” The machinery was attached and the lights winked on to activate activity. “Good, it’s holding. You should come with me now.”

Una led Amatri back to the roof hatch and connected herself via her belt clip again and said “Get behind me and hold on tightly and when we get to the top you’ll have to climb out first.”

The getaway was made even easier by Amatri’s papers. Fifteen minutes later Una and Amatri had bid each other farewell. Amatri was going to find some members of the underground to get protection and disappear from imperial eyes. Una was heading back to the Light of Dawn were Ralrra was waiting for her.  As she arrived back she found Ralrra starting the warm up sequence on the ship.

Una smiled as she walked into the cockpit. “I made it. Only one problem.  They won’t be able to launch any starfighters but I didn’t see their turbolaser systems anywhere. They may still have their STA defenses still operational.”

Ralrra growled his approval. The surface to air weaponry may be problematic but only while you were in its sights. It’s easy to avoid so shouldn’t cause problems. The pre launch was complete. In one minute they would lift off and try to retrieve as many of the main force as they could before having to bug out. Ralrra was at the main controls and Una had withdrawn to the gun turret ready to defend against anything that needed defending against.

Raven Conall (RavnConall@aol.com)

Raven turned around the corner and found two things. One an exit, and two a pilot ready room, and only one guard guarding it. Raven was looking through his scope at the very far end of the corridor when he saw these two things. Raven smiled as he lined up the shot, his scope automatically adjusted for everything and all he had to do was point the rifle at the stormtrooper’s head and pulled the trigger. The Rifle made no sound and only kicked a little as the projectile left the barrel at high velocity, penetrated the Stormtrooper’s helmet and head, and bounced around, chewing up everything inside. The Stormtrooper in turn, hit the floor. Dead. Raven jogged up to the ready room, and packed everything in a stow away bag, and dressed up in Imperial Tie Fighter gear. This was going to be easy. Raven pulled out the rank insignia from long ago which designated him as a General of Intelligence, Of course he wasn’t, but Imperial Intelligence made it for him way back when and it should still work.

Raven ran to the entrance to the Landing area, his stow away bag over his shoulder, his helmet under his arm. Raven handed the man his rank cylinder and said he could move along, Raven expected more security.. especially when that rank said he was a general.. No time to argue now he thought and ran off to the TIE Fighters. He picked out the only one there that looked remotely safe to fly, a TIE Defender and he prayed to God that his access code still worked. He jumped in and tossed his bag behind his seat, strapped on his helmet and made sure everything was secure. As he started the warm up he installed a little device that broadcasted his IFF as Republic Shield, which of course was close enough for now.. He noted he needed a new one, seeing as their name changed. After he installed it all warm ups were green, he made sure the IFF changer wasn’t on, because if it was, it would screw up everything. He hit the throttle and took off, heading back to the ship. Not until his left the atmosphere and was in Hyperspace range did he turn the changer on. He punched in the coordinates back to the Aurora Force’s Capital ship, double checked his calculations in his head, which only took a couple seconds, and hit the hyperspace.

Morcant (morcant@planetvenus.swinternet.co.uk)

Morcant and Degmar were still waiting nervously on the roof. They had hoped that the rest of the team would have made it up here by now. But there was still no sign of them. Where could they be? Their commlinks were not working; it seemed that the imperials were jamming their frequencies to reduce their co-ordination.. They had no choice but to wait. If nobody was here before Ralrra and Una arrived with the Light then they would have to abandon them. That’s the way it is.

As the minutes added up Morcant started to become agitated, “I suppose they must be dead or captured then.”

Degmar turned to look at him, “We have no reason to believe that. Its not a quick job to get through an imperial base to a pick up point without being tracked. They’ll be here. Just give them time.”

“You saw them though. I’d be surprised if they did make it. They were

looking in a pretty sorry state when we did our bit. God knows how

they’ll make it through it all. And we get to go home and deliver the

good news. They’ll probably…”

As Morcant was mid way through speaking both men suddenly froze and flattened themselves even closer to the ground. Two ships had just left from hangars not far below them. One was a Tie Defender and the other was a transport craft. The two shot up into the atmosphere, vectoring to leave the system towards the Imladris which waited just a short hyperspace jump away. A minute or so later a squadron of ties was seen on the horizon. They initially looked to be running for an intercept course for the two fleeing ships but suddenly veered towards the base.

“If those eyeballs do a flyby of the roof up here then they can’t really miss us. We might have to go back down again. Presumably the transport and Defender had the rest of the mission on board. It means we don’t need to worry again.” Now that there was action again Morcant’s worry drained out of him. He picked up his dropped gear and prepared to head back into the rest of the base.

Before he moved too far he saw another Tie Fighter streaking out of the base. It headed on what appeared to be a suicidal run towards the squadron that was obviously meant to intercept him. However the suicide turned into a homicide. The single Tie opened up with its lasers at long range and started spraying the squadron. The squad in close formation couldn’t easily avoid the laser blasts. Three took shots that caused explosions. Two took shots in a wing that sent them spiraling out of control and another two were hit by debris from the explosions. Seven Ties in one go. Not bad shooting from whoever was at the controls. After a matter of moments the rest of the squadron was out of commission and the victor rose up into the atmosphere, following the path that the other ships had taken before him.

With timing that made it look almost planned another ship came in from the opposite direction. As the two turned to look a smile came to their face. The Light was approaching victory rolling as it came. It came to a halt upside down above the roof. Two lines were dropped from the top hatch and fell to where they waited. Degmar attached himself to the line with the harness and once he had done so a winch rapidly pulled him up to the ship. Morcant meanwhile had tied himself on to the other rope.  There was only one harness so he couldn’t be pulled up but he hung on until Degmar had sorted himself out.

The ship started to pull away and was rising into the sky by the time the harness came back down and Morcant was able to board as well. He moved immediately to the cockpit where he took the controls from Ralrra.  Ralrra growled a message to him. It seemed that the communications relay had a final message for them. The team except for Mike and Indy had made it off in the transport and the Defender. Morcant desperately hoped that one of the two was in the Tie. The other would presumably be a casualty.  There is no way anybody should have left her alone in the base.

After a few minutes the Tie appeared on the Scanners. Without even being asked Degmar had flicked the necessary switches to transmit to the Tie Fighter.

“Unidentified Tie Fighter. This is Morcant of the Light of Dawn.  Identify yourself and your destination I might be able to give you a lift,” said Morcant with a smile.

“The service is awful around here you know? Its Mike and Indy in here.

You able to give us a lift back to the Imladris then?”

“Your both in there? That must be very... friendly. Having fun?” Morcant

didn’t know if anything was going on but a joke would do nobody any

harm. Especially not now when everybody was still celebrating being

alive. “Cut your engines and we’ll clamp you on.” He turned the in-ship

com on and said “Una, suit up for ship attachment: Standard Tie. Degmar,

check that they won’t mess up our flight too badly. Especially the

hyperspace”

Mike signaled Shuttle Pickup that they’d got a lift now and waited patiently for the hook up to be completed. As he and Indy were waiting they suddenly heard a knock on the front view pane. They jumped slightly before realizing that it was Una. She was still attaching some of the cables necessary to fully secure the ship for high acceleration and the jump to hyperspace. She gave them a wave before going back to what she was doing.

Fifteen minutes later the Light exited hyperspace. As she dropped out the Imladris was directly before them. With a flick Morcant released the hold that their ship had on Mike and Indy and they gradually drifted away, the cables flowing towards them from the Light as if trying to pull them back. Another switch a few seconds later pulled the cables in.  They weren’t properly stowed but they wouldn’t get in the way of the imminent landing.

Back | To The Black Sky Incident (Part I)