Crash and Burn

CHAPTER FOUR (ETA: Broken HTML tag fixed; that's why the chapter wasn't showing up properly)

One small shuttle departed from the Stellar Imperial Star Destroyer Eternity and sailed down through roiling clouds and lacy yellow lightning bolts. Then it angled towards a jagged cliff overlooking a stormy sea and disappeared into a carved-out cave on the steep cliffside.

It landed in a large square hollow and a ramp extended to the bay's obsidian floor. A man of perhaps nineteen or twenty years standard walked down first, with his heavy black robe trailing on the silvery ramp around and behind him. His gray-green right eye was set inside liquid yellow, and he had a ropy scar running from his blond hairline, across the empty left eye socket to his ear. The one lone eye moved slowly, taking in the metal walls and red-robed guards as he made his descent.

Three other humans followed him, in nearly identical black and gray uniforms. They stood shoulder-to-shoulder, all the same height to within three centimeters. The woman in the center wore four silver stripes on each tasseled epaulet; the men at her right and left wore three silver and four golden stripes, respectively. They stopped two meters behind the robed man and waited in still silence.

"The Empress awaits you, my Lord," the first guard said. "She gives her summons to you, and to Admiral Hocke, and to General Baclaw. The Colonel is to remain here in the shuttle."

The black-haired man with silver stripes raised his neatly shaven chin and his nostrils flared. The young Dark Lord waved one hand, and then the Colonel spun around on his heel and marched back up the boarding ramp, alone. The remaining two officers stayed their set distance behind the Dark Lord during the entire walk through the compound, through several sets of sealed doors and more than a dozen long corridors. After a half-hour, they got to a larger set of double doors surrounded by black and gold molding.

"Still no turbolifts," Admiral Hocke said.

General Baclaw raised her eyebrows, but said nothing. The doors then slid open to allow the fifteen of them through, and they closed again as soon as the hem of the last two guards' robes crossed the threshold.

Lady Lumiya looked, at first, like a doll sitting atop a doll's chair. The curved gunmetal gray walls gave the appearance that the long room was about one-fourth of the size it really was, and as the group walked towards her throne, she slowly grew to a more realistic size. Though she was still smaller than any of the entourage, the gradual and steady apparent growth served well to intimidate anyone who approached and make her seem larger than she really was. The woman who stood at the right of her chair was actually a head taller than Lumiya, but due to the contours of the room and tricks of the light and shading, appeared smaller. Lumiya's body-hugging metal armor - part costume, part life support system - reflected the torchlike lights above and around her, and she appeared to be something of a goddess on a divine throne.

"I am waiting for your report, Welk," she said.

"We successfully intercepted the Jedi spies at the junction of the Syrdia Route and Kalla Pipeline, Master," Welk said. "They were pulled out of hyperspace in the Marstill system and will never reach Dantooine."

"I hope you will tell me next that this is because they are dead."

Welk fidgeted. "Their ship made a second jump shortly after we caught it, but we were able to attach a homing beacon before their departure-"

"If your TIE pilots were close enough to deploy a homing beacon then they were close enough to destroy the ship," Lumiya snapped.

"Yes, Master. I apologize for the failure."

Her pause was heavy with danger, but it slowly evaporated. "Get on with it. Tell me what happened to the Jedi after they left Marstill, and you might yet redeem yourself."

"We followed the signals to a system that didn't appear on our star charts. It is a G0-class main sequence star, marked now as G0-CV. However, when we arrived, there was nothing to find. Our guess is that they found the beacon, removed it, and then left the system."

Lumiya stared at Welk for a few moments, clicking her silver fingernails together. Finally she turned slightly, facing Admiral Hocke. "Do you agree with this 'guess', Admiral?"

Admiral Hocke cleared his throat. "Your Imperial Majesty, much of the Jedi travel time was in realspace. They must not have a working hyperdrive, and there are no known inhabited systems close enough to G0-CV that they could expect to get there in a reasonable amount of time."

"None that we know of. I want every system in the area searched for survivors. Welk, how many Jedi were aboard the ship you ran into and lost?"

He lowered his head and said, "Four, Master. I felt four of them."

"Then I want proof of four deaths. The Jedi are persistent. They may continue to try to reach Dantooine, which is still under quarantine. We cannot let anybody in or out, especially out, and I don't trust those in charge to be able to keep four Jedi in once they've infiltrated the system."

"Infect them and let them in on our plans, Empress," the shadowed woman at her side said. She pulled back the hood of her own black robe, and showed her face - one very similar to General Baclaw's, but more aged, despite the fact that she was actually four years younger. "They will not risk spreading the contagion."

"If you are so eager to go, Inferna, then go to Dantooine and keep watch for them until I give you permission to leave - Senate meeting or none. Leave at once." Lumiya dismissed the second Baclaw sister and then focused her attention on the elder and Welk and Hocke. "As for the three of you - Admiral, you will return to the Eternity and resume normal patrol duties. General, choose twenty-three of our best soldiers, eleven Force-trained, twelve common. You will take them with you as you and Welk search the systems in the CV sub-sector for the four missing Jedi. Welk, what did you learn of who they were?"

"Nothing, except that intelligence reports have yielded a partial list of Jedi who were assigned to other jobs at the time of the Marstill skirmish. Between that list and those who have already died, the four we found could only be from among eighteen."

Lumiya nodded and leaned back in her chair. "Any of note?"

"Jedi Master Corran Horn, several senior Knights, all three of the former New Republic Chief of State's children-"

"Proof of death, Welk. I want proof that all four team members are dead and therefore not to bother us again. Come back with the evidence or do not come back."

The walk back to the shuttle also took a half-hour, but this time the anxious anticipation was replaced with heavy-heartedness and simmering anger. Welk knew that he had displeased Lumiya, and that it was unacceptable, no matter how good a reason he had.

Once in the hangar bay, Baclaw separated from Hocke and Welk, heading towards the satellite space station where the commando barracks were located. Any time wasted was time that the Jedi could use to get further away and harder to find, so they hurried, and the Eternity departed for Marstill once more and the smaller Stellar Imperial corvette, the Flamebringer, headed for G0-CV with its crew, Lord Welk, General Baclaw, and the twenty-three selected warriors.

Six TIE pilots sat in their cockpits, ready to be sent out at a moment's notice. The Flamebringer, before modification as a troop carrier, could carry up to two full squadrons, but most of the bay space had been rebuilt to accommodate a single troop transport. Baclaw ordered the other commandos onto the transport and met Welk on the main bridge as soon as they entered the system.

"This is quite ridiculous," he said. "No one is in the system. We detect nothing but three planets, their seven moons, and some stray pieces of space rock. Anyone who may have been here two days ago is gone."

"No ships are within a traversible distance by sublight, Lord Welk," one of the data technicians added.

"There is not any trace of ejected radioactive ions from a hyperspace jump, either." Baclaw peered at a grid on a nearby datascreen. "The two possibilities are that the Jedi blastboat traveled at least thirty-eight hours by sublight and made a hyperspace jump out of the range of our sensors, or that no one left this system." She pointed a finger at a lopsided ring of faint dots that marked bits of rock floating in space. "The velocities of pieces in this cluster do not match what would be expected from gravitation in the system, unless their trajectories were disturbed recently. The change suggests and explosion approximately fifty hours ago - as few as forty-seven or as many as fifty-three. If the blastboat exploded, then that would explain why we lost our connection with the homing beacon."

Welk nodded and rubbed his chin. "We lost the signal fifty-five hours ago."

"Then the detonation came later. A blastboat is too small to hold starfighters - at least, the one we found at Marstill was - so they must have escaped in emergency pods, and with no evidence of other ships traveling through the system, they're still here or no longer exist."

Aha, now they were getting somewhere. "Can you find out anything about destroyed pods?"

"They're too small to change space debris velocities to an amount that we can read with corvette sensor equipment, and would only show up as objects on our screens if whole or in few pieces. It would probably be better to run a scan on the planets and moons."

By the time the scans of the third planet were done, Welk was exhausted. He drew upon the Force to ease his fatigue, to some benefit. GO-CV's third planet and its four moons were barren of anything he could sense and the ship sensors also picked up nothing. They still had two planets and three moons to check, though, before the job would be complete.

"I found something!"

Welk ran to the tech's data console. A grid of the second planet slowly rotated, it surface shown with shaded polygons of varying tints of green. There was a small red dot in the center of a pale lime-green square. "What is it?" he asked.

"Electrical output, Lord Welk. Too small and too steady to be a storm. It's about sixty percent of what would be expected from a standard CCR-8 escape pod, or a hundred percent of one that is partly powered down or damaged."

Got them, Welk thought. He smiled and bared his filed teeth. "General Baclaw, come here, and tell me something. What do you sense down on G0-CVII? Use the Force."

"My training does not equal yours, Lord Welk," she said frostily. "My sister has more of the gift than I do, and I have been trained for only one year."

"Surely you could feel something."

Baclaw sighed and closed her eyes for a moment. "One survivor," she said. "Very strong in the Force."

"Two survivors, a little less than 'very strong,'" Welk corrected. "They feel similar, but not quite the same. Ensign, give me the list of the missing Jedi."

Welk studied the names that scrolled onto the screen and pointed to three pairs. "Selly and Loren, the mother and daughter from Bakura? Possibly the Horns, Corran and Valin? Or we might be facing two of the three children of Han Solo."

Baclaw's brown eyes lit up. "I have my hopes, but we will find out soon enough, Lord Welk."

"You speak the truth. We will go to the surface. Try to capture them alive, but do not hesitate to use lethal force if necessary. I will go with you and Lieutenant Odact to coordinate the search and capture."

"I was 'coordinating' attacks on New Republic outposts when you were still a tingle between your father's legs," Baclaw hissed.

Welk stared at the fortysomething General. He was never particularly good at intimidating older women, and she must have picked up on that. He had narrowly escaped slavery on his homeworld of Dathomir four years earlier, but ended up as a virtual servant of his late Masters, Tamith Kai and Lomi Plo. Nonetheless, here and now, he could use his rank to his advantage. "I," he said firmly, "am the apprentice and right-hand man of Lady Lumiya. Our Empress Shira."

"You flatter yourself, my Lord. Darth Inferna is at Empress Shira's right hand."

"How sad, that you live vicariously through your little sister, lacking anything of value except an unremarkable history of military service." Welk gathered a ball of energy to his fingertips and hurled it in shards of weak red sparks at General Melany Baclaw.

She visibly steeled herself and ground her teeth, withstanding the light charges in controlled discomfort. "Point made, Lord Welk. I follow your words. Please allow me to use my experience and less visible skills, with my judgment, where it does not conflict with your divine commands."

Welk couldn't react with appropriate rage. He instinctively held it back, half-expecting her to pull out a rope of whuffa hide and loop it around his neck. "Remember your place, or I will make you remember it, and in a most unkind way." His hand dropped to his hip and he fingered the control buttons of his lightsaber. "This is your last chance. Gather the commandos. Now!"

Smiling triumphantly, Baclaw bowed and turned to the intercom.

Twenty-five Stellar Imperial agents landed on G0-CVII. Twelve of them wore black Special Ops uniforms, with black and red helmets and high-powered blaster rifles. The other twelve wore the all-gray armored uniforms of the elite footsoldiers. General Baclaw and Lieutenant Odact led the lines of troops, with Lord Welk walking between them.

"They're up ahead, my Lord," Baclaw said. "At about twenty kilometers."

"Two males," Welk added. "The Jedi we're looking for are the Solo brothers."

Baclaw turned to him with a feral grin. "Han Solo has been a thorn all my life," she said. "My father, rest his loyal soul, spoke much ill of General Solo when the man was still a nobody. Father died on the Death Star, and Solo - as well as the brats' mother and uncle - are responsible. Payback can be a vengeful witch."

"Don't get too arrogant. These are Lord Vader's grandchildren," Welk warned.

"About to be dead in any case. I await your orders, Lord Welk."

"Very well. General Baclaw, Lieutenant Odact. Capture the Jedi. Preferably alive, for one can't torture a dead man for information, but dead if there is no other way."

Baclaw and Odact accepted their orders with only an "Acknowledged, Lord Welk," and they all began their march towards the crashed pod.