StarDestroyer.Net BBS

A fanfiction by Daniel Pettersson(Doshniel)
STAR
WARS
The mirror of the past

Chapter 1. The Persuader
”There are plenty of limits in space, however there are no known limit to how many limits there are”
Admiral Piett

Admiral Isghert Hrobb looked towards the seemingly formless asteroid through the main screen in his personal control room and proceeded to order his Scorpion ship to fire. The enormous cannon on top of the Scorpion was instantly surrounded by blue power leaking out from various of it systems, shielding itself from the huge shot materialising within it’s chamber. The blue beam coming out of the Scorpions cannon was almost half as big as the huge asteroid itself and instantly turned it into dust.
Admiral Hrobb quickly checked all energy-related system aboard his ship. Some of them had taken minor damage due to the massive energy output produced by the cannon, but the shields hadn’t lost more then ten percent of it’s efficiency and the engine was still running. Had this been anything else then a prototype Hrobb might have disliked the way the ship behaved after firing, but at it’s current status this was more then he had hoped for. The ship had just turned from being a paper destroyer into becoming one of the most powerful of all ships in the fifteenth republic fleet and possibly one of the best ship ever created.

“ Not the most powerful of ships certainly, yet in it’s efficiency much better then a stardestroyer, at least when it came to ship to ship battle”, reasoned admiral Hrobb for himself.

That didn’t mean that the stardestroyer held no place in the navy any longer, after all a stardestroyer could carry a lot of fighters and bombers, while the Scorpion carried nothing but itself to the battle. The very reason that the imperial star destroyer was still being improved upon and that outdated models such as the Isd III got upgraded fast.

“However a lot of old ships such as the Nebulon B and the victory stardestroyer would become completely removed from military service, which they of course already should have been, but unfortunately this wasn’t the case”, thought Hrobb while continuing to monitor his screens.
The shield returned to its intended value and all power returned to the engines. The Scorpion could once again move with considerable speed. It wasn’t faster then either a Republic star destroyer or an Aggressor, which would have become most welcome especially since manoeuvrability was the reason that the Scorpions had been built. The recommendation for higher speed had already been written down and Hrobb only hoped that the current designers of this prototype would make the necessary changes. Hrobb was interrupted pressing through another few screens of data by a sudden incoming transmission. He immediately stopped what he was doing and immediately pressed to receive it, since it was coming through on one of the distress channels.

The call was a hologram, but without any direct link, which indicated that the sender wasn’t necessarily available to discussion at the moment, the probable reason for this was without doubt, that the sender was in hyper space by now. Military protocol for these messages almost always made it necessary to stay online while using this channel. In the hologram there was the intimidating councillor Trisk Meordo. Trisk who were a muun, was particularly tall and had an orange colour in his skin, although it looked mostly brown. His eyes were deep set within his oval head and due to his hard voice it wasn’t difficult to imagine the coldness which he considered anything he thought about. After giving a short but recognisable military greeting he started talking.

“Admiral Hrobb, the Thunderstorm has been found and it’s stealers have been identified”, said Trisk and sounded fixed. “ It seems to be somewhere in the vicinity of the planet lonely, not far from your position, it’s believed to be heavily armed and have at least three squadrons of interceptors and two squadrons of bombers aboard it. Your mission is to proceed to the edge of Sadal Bari system in the vicinity of the asteroid field and pick up a few necessary passengers, a few reinforcements, then proceed to engage and capture the thunderstorm. If any problems arise please contact fleet admiral Sedira about it, I will not be available for inquires”

The message was short and Isghert didn’t waste any time in starting to implement it. He pressed the necessary buttons to get his high ranking officers on screen and started to deliver specific orders to everyone of them. It was a rare command he had received and the reason for it wasn’t that they were relying on the scorpion as a good battleship, but rather that there were few other ships available for duty. Truth to tell, Isghert hated the idea to go up against a vessel with carrier capabilities without the backup of his own fighters. However it was possible that the aforementioned reinforcement really were interceptors, or at least Isghert hoped so. He didn’t know much about the thunderstorm except that it was a stardestroyer that had been stolen somewhere close to Korriban.
Some of Isgert higher-ranking officers protested against the orders, although they weren’t presented with all the information and the protests was not aimed towards the mission but rather against battle-readiness of the Persuader. The Persuader was the name of the Scorpion vessel that was under admiral Hrobbs command and although the ship had been tested several times before without any significant failure, it had never before been to a battle. This mission wasn’t a skirmish battle either, but a true one on one battle against another ship of the same size.

Isgert ignored most of the protests, but tried to calm everyone down with a few repairs. Most of those repairs he ordered would have been done anyway and the rest were mostly spare circuits or a backup system. The Persuader had a lot of backup systems and even a second bridge, but that was pretty much standard these days. Instead he called for his second in command, vice admiral Tetja Ren. She held to high rank to be a second in command and should have been given her own ship, preferably an aggressor, rather then the mon calamari 30 c, which she wanted to command. Many placed a good deal of hope to this new ship and it was promising against ships such as a star destroyer or an aggressor, but the Scorpion ship would deal nicely with that kind of ships as well. The future seemed to be carriers, interdictors, aggressors, star destroyers and scorpions.

Tetja came in through the side door, there were two doors into Isgert’s personal command room, one on the side of the room and one towards the ship’s stern. Isgert wasn’t facing towards the stern and therefore didn’t notice when she sneaked alongside his right side. If she wanted to assassinate him, she would have plenty of opportunity to do so. He trusted her, maybe more then he should. She was a long time friend and had been with him on his first command. For a while she had headed a carrier, but due to some run-in with a pirate she had lost the ship.
She was a gorgeous brunette, around her thirties but Isgert didn’t know her exact age, neither was he interested in knowing it. Her eyes didn’t carry the hardness that many commanders of her rank usually carried, but her body was strong. Isgert had noticed that she liked to display just a few of her medals, although in truth she had enough decorations to outshine his own. This was mostly because she had spent some time fighting pirates, while he had spent most of his time instructing young cadets. She was young for an officer of her rank that was something Isgert hadn’t noticed until recently.

He noticed her first as she lay her hands on the controls, but Isgert said nothing about it. Many a admiral would never have allowed this breach of military protocol, but Hrobb allowed it, since it didn’t really bother him. Co-operation depended on appreciation of each other and not loyalty towards cold protocol.

“ What are you doing?”, asked Isgert politely.
“ I’m checking the data about the identified thieves”, replied Tetja.
“ Anything interesting?”, said Isgert, although he was only mildly interested himself.
“ Background checks are very good insights to your enemies skill and expertise”, said Tetja.
“ I’m well aware of that vice admiral”, stated Isgert.
“ It seems to be force users aboard the ship”, said Tetja and looked serious.
“ Inquisitors, or just random force users?”, asked Isgert a bit more interested.
“ Dark jedi actually, it seems to be jedi master Jerec and his companions”, answered Tetja while she activated the holo display to show an image of the admittedly very scary jedi. He was a human with dark hair and some sort of eye protection, indicating that he was in fact blind. According to the background files he lost his eyes to torture by the now dead high inquisitor Tremayne.
“ Actually, I don’t think there’s any inquisitors left in the galaxy”, Tetja added.
“ So what happened to their area of the galaxy then?”, asked Isgert obviously surprised at this statement.
“ It’s been overtaken by pirates and independent systems”, replied Tetja.
“ Too many planets have deserted the republic lately”, stated Isgert.
“ It explains the passengers that we are suppose to pick up”, explained Tetja.
“ You believe them to be jedi?” asked Isgert almost directly.
“ So do you”, answered Tetja.

Isgert started going through reports getting filed in by the engine officer about the journey they were about to undertake. Meanwhile, The Persuader positioned itself towards the Sadal Bari system. Isgert didn’t order the jump to lightspeed, instead he preferred to just press the activation key as soon as the jump had been calculated. He scanned the screens for anything worth noticing, but his search only confirmed with he already knew, the Persuader was ready to make the first historical naval battle with a scorpion class ship.

Riktor Black was afraid, but then he was always afraid. He was afraid that Jerec would eventually get bored of him and just kill him. He was afraid the voices in his head would come back a whisper about endless torment. Mostly though, he was just afraid to die from any of the countless threats, or enemies that Jerec seemed to surround himself with. Riktor was convinced that Jerec was going to die soon and he only hoped that he would somehow be able to run away from him, before he would suffer the same fate. Most of his new underlings didn’t seem to think that way. Most of them knew what fear was, but just like Jerec it wasn’t one of their main feelings.

Jerec was mostly filled with desire and hatred. Desire for power and knowledge, mostly power of course. Jerec was a human too, but seemed too have lost much of his humanity along with his fear. The only thing Jerec and Riktor had in common was their love for artefacts of the force. Jerec collected them as furiously as Riktor and those that had been found on Lonely were especially interesting. Riktor wanted them. It was difficult to understand what they did and many of them looked more like jewellery then some artefact of great power. There was an interesting puzzle in there somewhere, if these artefacts had indeed been made by Jedi as Jerec claimed, then it seemed weird that they would create them from such beautiful material and shape. Despite the Jedi’s high regard for the force, they thought little of riches and owned just about nothing. Creating jewellery-like artefacts didn’t really seem to fit with that picture.

Jerec seemed to prefer the few Sith artefacts they found though, although they wear of very varied appearance, most resembling different torture objects, necklaces, staffs, swords, chains or the occasional crown. There were some that wasn’t wearable either, mostly globes, or big crystals. Some of it was easily recognisable, it was the usual trinkets, protection amulets, thought crystals, presence perceiver, summon stone, communications crown among the jedi artefacts. Among the Sith artefacts, Riktor didn’t know so many different kinds, but there were at least one sith talisman, a holocron, pain chains, mind watcher, emotion drinker and a soul crystal. The others were harder to identify and could prove to be something completely different then what they seemed to be.
Tremayne had taken Jerecs sight by destroying his eyes. Some claimed that Tremayne also turned him to the dark side, but Jerec himself said that he sought the darkness himself. It was his hatred towards all intelligent that threw him into the darkness. He hated people and their pathetic goals of justice, when there was none and goodness, when only wickedness and evil intent gave people, what they really craved. He was hungry for knowledge and power and the only way to satisfy this hunger was to give into it. He would devour whatever came in his way to reach his goal and then he would destroy it all. First he had to hold it though, then he could break it.

Once Riktor had realised this he had become very afraid of Jerec. He knew he had to get away from him, before Jerec consumed himself and everyone around him in the fire created by this endless hatred. Jerec’s breathing held contempt for life, his eyes pierced human souls without anything he cared for, anything worth saving.
Riktor on the other hand saw many things that he wanted. He wanted to own other intelligent beings, they were beautiful, just as art. Riktor wanted artefacts not for their power, but because of how expensive they looked. They were luxuries that could help him achieve perfect happiness and who in their right mind wouldn’t want happiness. Power, money and ownership, that was Riktors meaning of life. Not the destruction of it, for then there would be no happiness, there would be only nothing.
Jerec had gathered many other followers since his escape from Tremayne and Riktor had only been the first of the force-users now under his command and tutelage. Boc was also in the room with the artefacts, but standing behind Riktor together with Majhni. Maw was also there soaring above ground between them. Boc was an ugly male twi’lek and like most ugly twi’leks he hated everything beautiful and laughed at the very idea that there was a meaning to life. After all Boc considered his birth as something bad, since no good ever came from it, but there probably was more to it then just a broken heart.

Majhni was a human, just as himself and Jerec. She was quite beautiful although very dark and with sad blue eyes. She wasn’t that deep into the dark side and considered herself evil, only because she hated herself so much. She had tried to kill herself at least twice, as far as Riktor knew. It was a waste, especially since she was cunning and had a strong attachment to the force. She wasn’t a jedi to begin with, instead she was some sort of force witch from a distant place called Moencal. That was somewhere in the outerrim, which was in fact closer to the core then this forsaken world was.

Maw on the other hand was of some to Riktor unknown species. He looked like some vicious predator, but his skin looked more like a reptile. However parts of his skin didn’t look thick enough to be of much protection. Maw also looked frail because he was a crippling. Some jedi had cut off his legs after a run-in that they had on Vuhlam Mihl, some wild space planet with barely breathable atmosphere. He nowadays moved around with some sort of a flying device attached to his hips.
Lonely had its name for being the only planet around its sun. It had it’s own life, although it hadn’t been intelligent when it was found. Nowadays the planet was inhabited by the Kresnit a humanoid like xenomorph, who probably were distant relatives to either the Cathar or the Farghul. They were a very warlike race and kept mostly to themselves. They were experts in guerrilla warfare and they weren’t strangers to either chemical- or biological warfare, which made them into quite fierce opponents. However their technology wasn’t really up to date, so after bombarding them a few times, they had posed no real problem.

That wasn’t all of the force-users under Jerec’s command two of them were still down on the planet Lonely collecting a few more artefacts. Sariss and her padawan Yun wasn’t the most pleasant of people so Riktor didn’t really miss them, especially since their passage to the dark side was partly Riktors fault. He had helped Jerec to shatter Yun and then Sariss had followed swiftly. The reason for this was that Sariss had secretly been in love with her padawan, but never admitted to it. After forcing the confession from her, she soon learned that Yun did not share her feelings. That had angered her and made her hurt Yun most violently, since it was his fault that she had let herself be captured and tortured by Jerec. Sariss who also was something of a scientist had then heard Jerec’s plan.

Ever since hearing it, she had been utterly changed. She turned from someone confused, into someone determined. Riktor had interpreted that as an agreement between Jerec and Sariss or perhaps worse, that they shared the same goal, although for different reasons.
Jerec looked up from studying one of his strange red crystals that had taken his interest lately and smiled when he realised that Riktor was trying to avoid his eyes.
“We will soon be under attack again, I can see it”, laughed Jerec as he met each of his subjects eyes.
“Then shouldn’t we go into light speed as soon as possible?”, asked Riktor cautiously.
“No, we need Sariss and the artefacts she has collected, only once she’s aboard can we depart”, explained Jerec.
“ Boc, Maw leave and prepare for battle”, ordered Jerec and waited for them to comply. Maw and Boc gave no signs of disobeying and quickly left the room.
“ Will there be any jedis among the enemy?”, asked Majhni.
“ Yes, but since neither of us are pilots we won’t be meeting them in this battle”, replied Jerec.
“ Will we win?”, asked Riktor.
“ I don’t know the answer to everything, remember?”, replied Jerec with a question of his own. The question was rhetorical though and Riktor didn’t answer it.
“ You wanted to discuss something, that Boc and Maw knew little or nothing about”, stated Majhni.
“ Indeed, and the question is of course what you have to say about the origin of this Sith holocron?”, asked Jerec.
“ Hard to say, but it’s not Korriban and definitely not Yavin four, or any other Sith planet that we have visited lately”, said Majhni.
“ That tells me nothing”, said Jerec angrily.
“ It’s not so old, perhaps only nine hundred and it seems to have been made to store information of Sith weaponry and lost Sith abilities”, said Riktor a bit curious.
“ That’s why I suspect that it might hold the answer which we are looking for, a clue towards were Ruusan is located”, said Jerec and nodded.
“ The Maliant system is said to have a Sithfortress with a key reader, such as the one needed to dig trough the codes protecting the deepest secrets of it”, said Mahjni.
“ True, it could work out, I would have preferred one of the key readers on Korriban, but it seems unlikely that the Jedis will allow us a second visit to that planet”, admitted Jerec.
“ Shouldn’t the location be on one of the starmaps of say Coruscant, or perhaps even more likely Corellia?”, asked Riktor.
“ No, Ruusan is invisible both to the force and any other means of detection”, replied Jerec coldly. “ Otherwise the planet would have been found, ages ago, instead of being nothing more then a legend.”
Further discussion was interrupted as Viceadmiral Condo Lah spoke through the intercom: “ Enemy ship approaching and I have as yet not even identified what kind of type she is, but she’s being escorted by several A-wings, X2-wings, Tiex-wings and Hb-wings”

“ Make sure that we launch all our fighters as soon as possible, but don’t prepare to win this one, we only want to damage our enemies hyperspace capabilities nothing more”, said Jerec confidently.
Riktor knew that Jerec was careful of doing any predictions, but there was no question of the strength in Jerec’s foresight, few other jedi were as strong as him when it came to foretelling. He had little choice in the matter of course, since he could mainly see through the force.
Riktor and Majhni had no further business to deal with here and Jerec was needed on the bridge, though Riktor doubted it was because of his tactical ability. Jerec wasn’t a fool when it came to battle tactics, he more then outmatched anyone else among the force users, but compared to Condo he was probably not so impressive.

Isghert didn’t stay on his personal bridge for long, but instead moved to the main bridge were he could oversee some of his main officers, but not all of them. They were distributed all over Scorpion, but at least he could keep an eye on his sheild officer, his energy officer and his second in command. Tetja was probably likewise checking his orders as well. He wasn’t superior on all areas of combat and were his expertise was limited, Tetja usually knew a few things or tricks. Both of them were well versed in strategy- and tactics manuals, but neither one of them relied too much upon them for anything more then inspiration. Battles were all about experience after all.

The enemy didn’t seem unprepared on their taskforce coming out of light speed so close to their position, the reason they could, was because of small detection probes who had detected the exact whereabouts of their enemy, before they made the jump into light speed. There were no obstacles between them and their enemy, which suited Isghert perfectly.
The enemy commander didn’t seem to lack experience and immediately turned his hangar away from the scorpion, but no quite in an angle so he could avoid the HB-wings coming up it’s rear. The enemy took their chances and launched their fighters anyway, only to have some of them blown apart as missiles went exploding right in front of the hangar. It didn’t damage the Star destroyer in anyway since it’s shields were far too strong even for the more modern missiles. Isghert didn’t expect the enemy to lose much more then a few X2-wings or Tie avengers this way, but hopefully it would be enough.

Fighting the same kind of ships as your own, flying the same flag as your own was of course a bit odd, but pirates such as these dark jedi wouldn’t care about changing their colours to better suit battle. Indeed the fighters semmed to have a problem telling which side the different ships were on. Of course computers usually told you whether it was enemy you were firing at, or a foe, but relying on them was not completely without risks.

Isghert did not have to worry about any such risks though, he had Jedi with telepathic abilities helping his pilots. One of them, a green twi’lek was standing by his side this very moment. According to what the Jedi had told him, Jerec would be able to see his very thoughts if there wasn’t a Jedi close by him or some artefact protecting him. That wasn’t an encouraging thought at all, but Isghert didn’t mind the company of the strong, but slender and agile twi’lek in anyway. Her name was Shirori and she was probably rather young, though it was hard to determine, he believed that twi’leks and humans had about the same life expectancy, despite twi’leks different life cycles. She said nothing and probably knew nothing of either tactics or strategy and so far her presence had not disturbed him.

He had no more moments to spare watching anything else then the combat screen were the manuevering of the fighters and bombers became more and more advanced. The stardestroyer’s cannons were for the most part pointed towards the scorpion, despite the fact that they mostly tried to cover the hangar from any possible attacks. So far there wasn’t much damage on the scorpions front shields but he wasn’t very keen to see what happened when he started to shoot. There wasn’t much choice however.

“ Begin powering up the main cannon with as much power as possible and aim for it’s weapons systems”, ordered Isghert.
“ The enemy has at least four squadrons of fighters launched already, they are already engaged in battle with our fighters for the most part”, said Tetja as she was receiving data brought from the sensor officer. That was an estimate of course seeing on how the enemy had activated a lot of sensor bombs around their ship now to make it more difficult for the republics fighters to co-ordinate there attacks. The same was true for the enemy of course, but it was still a sound tactic since they were still launching fighters out of the hangars at random intervals to avoid any shots hitting the new fighters as soon as they left the hangar.

Had their enemy been really experienced he would have had a lot more fighters circling the ship, already when they engaged it. The reason for not doing so, was probably due to carelessness, rather then trying to keep the ability of a quick retreat. The leader of the fighter squadrons was already winning over the already damaged enemy squadrons.
“ The main cannon is draining the shield”, warned the shield officer.
Isghert gave him a nod while he continued to watch the enemy stardestroyer. It was powering up its engines probably to switch into firing positions or possible to try how manoeuvrable their cannon was. If they could get the Persuader to miss its target mark with a couple of meters it could mean the difference between a direct hit and a glancing.
“ Withdraw power from the stern shields and proceed to put more power to the front shields particularly were the shield is getting weaker”, ordered Isghert still watching his enemy. The Scorpions fore was really made up of two different fronts, one for the main cannon and one for the ships moving body. Getting closer to the enemy vessel wasn’t something that was high on Isghert’s priority list, but he couldn’t quite figure out why the enemy was doing this. Stardestroyers weren’t fast in normal space and Isghert didn’t expect it to bypass him anytime soon, yet it was worrying.
“ Make a deep sensor sweep and look for something really small”, said Isghert suddenly convinced of the enemy’s intent. The sensor bombs were of course making that even more difficult and his sensor officer didn’t really have the time to spare for a proper deep scan of the area.

The Scorpion shot away its first shot towards the enemy vessel and the whole stardestroyer seemed alight by that single shot. Isghert ordered the cannon repositioned and made main power up again but not to the same level.
“ A few circuits have been broken, but we got a lot of spares and nothing dire has happened so far”, said the energy officer.
“ We believe the enemy is increasing their shields, reported Tatja.
The Persuader had a few Turbolasers of it’s so it wouldn’t completely depend on its main cannon but these weren’t making much of an impression on the enemy vessels shields. Isghert wanted another shot at maximum power at the stardestroyer, since that would definitely open it up for real damage from his fighters. They needed that.
“ Fire main cannon for the second time!”, yelled Isghert as soon as the energy metres hit the mark. The second shot was rewarded with a small explosion and had without doubt gone through a few decks in the stardestroyer, leaving a very huge hole, but it hadn’t gone through it. The innershields must have stopped it, which meant that his enemy commander valued the lives of those positioned around his weaponry stations. One of the enemy’s turbolasers stopped shooting and the others were visibly weakened. Isghert hadn’t hit anything too important and quickly decided for a new target. All stardestroyers came with a slightly different design so that destroying always was some guesswork, although there was a limit on how much you could change the original design. Some elite stardestroyer crews were known to have rebuilt their entire stardestroyer just to make it more difficult for the enemy to incapacitate their vessel.

“ The third shot should definitely bring down most of their firepower”, thought Isghert and started to relax a bit, although he knew he shouldn’t. The fight was far from over. Just as he took a deep breath, Tatja got an emergency message from the sensor officer. Tatja seemed to have lost some of her courage as she read the message.
“ Report now!”, ordered Isghert a bit harshly, but he didn’t want anyone under his command to lose courage during a fight, especially not his second in command.
“ Hyperspace missiles incoming towards the stern admiral”, Tatja answered quickly.
“ Quickly switch some of our shielding towards that area”, said Isghert to his shield officer.
“ Sorry sir, the main cannon isn’t stable enough for such an energy change for the moment, we could stop powering up the weapon though”, suggested the shield officer.
“ The enemy is launching all of it’s bombers, but none of our fighters are at the moment in any chasing position”, reported Tatja.
This left Isghert with two choices and neither one of them was any good. He could stop firing on the stardestroyer, which meant that they would soon lose so much of their shields that the enemy could make use of their bombers. That might mean the end of the main cannon. The hyperspace missiles probably fired by some lance frigate or other vessel with missile capabilities would tear his engines apart if he ignored the change of the shields. They might anyway since they weren’t weak missiles. Hyperspace missiles were expensive, so however bought them must have paid a heavy price. There were probably stealth missiles travelling together with them as well. A payload of so many missiles could probably get through even if he diverted all his shielding towards the engines. He didn’t need the engines though, he only mourned for those working in that part of the ship. He knew some of them and he wondered whether he would ever see them again.

“ Continue to fire the main cannon”, ordered Isghert, but his order was already being followed, after all his first command hadn’t been overrided.
The third shot was rewarded with a huge explosion and seemed to pass through the stardestroyer at one of its vital points in it’s fore. A lot of the enemy’s turbolasers went quiet and for a while the enemy looked beaten. Soon however the enemy started to turn the stardestroyer away from the Scorpion, pointing towards the rest of the galaxy. It’s engines were powering even further and the hyperspace engines followed swiftly.
“ They are trying to leave the battlefield”, acknowledged Tatja as she looked away from the screen towards Isghert.

Moments later the Persuader shook as missile after missile bore into its engines and other stern systems. The explosions seemed countless although they wear only about fifteen or seventeen of them. It was hard to tell the exact numbers, the computer registered the impacts, but soon the computer had very hard to tell due to the damage already caused by the missiles that had already hit. The damage reports were already coming in though and they confirmed most of Isgherts fears. It seemed that engines were more or less destroyed and they wouldn’t be moving anywhere, anytime soon. One hit had been close to the reactor, but hadn’t really punched all the way through. Several systems were out and the main gun was probably one of the few things still working on the ship. At least one hundred crew members had died in the explosions.
The Persuader continued to fire, it was too late to try and cripple the stardestroyer’s engines, so they continued to destroy weapons systems. It was partly because of revenge, but any damage to their adversary would mean that their capabilities to wreak havoc around the galaxy were weakened. The fourth shot blew off a big piece of the stardestroyer making it seem some huge hand had broken the top off it. It wasn’t any parts they needed to make the travel into hyperspace. The enemy’s fighters didn’t all have hyperspace capabilities and these quickly tried to fly into the main hangar. Many of them were destroyed. The enemy’s bombers were b-wings though and therefore had a hyperspace engine of their own. They took their time firing a few of their missiles towards the Persuader before they also turned to flee from the field.
The Persuader didn’t get a fifth shot before the enemy stardestroyer vanished. The powering up had taken too much time due to damage. Four shots were not enough and it was proof that the Scorpion wasn’t finished to do battle yet. The fighters managed to seize a few enemy fighters that had been disabled. There were a few prisoners at least, one of them might tell him were the enemy was going. The repairs would take time, no question about it, but since this was prototype, Isghert had plenty of repair droids, many times more then other ships his size. He would repair and reengage his enemy and this time he would do a more thorough search around the stardestroyer too see if there was any other ships in it’s vicinity. The question was if it was a lancer frigate of some later model or one of the newer. It didn’t matter much, lancer frigates couldn’t hold their own against any battleship and particularly not against a Scorpion.

So here are my forewords or something, becuase it really ain't that formal. I started out this fanfic without one, but seeing how that might be a bit confusing I will explain what this fanfic is about, but not in detail so to speak, so this ain't a spoiler and second chapter is in the works. Soon finished, just needs some polish.

First off I've changed nothing when it comes to the storyline with either of the six movies. All of the movies still happened just the way you saw them happen on screen. I've changed nothing in the story when it comes to the movies. Instead I've cleaned some parts of the eu. Mostly the emperor reborn, since I can't stand the bastard or the weird storyline and I won't even mention what I think about the superweapons from around that time. No Suncrushers! NO bloody devestators! and probably no to at lot of other things. If it's too geeky, it's not in the story.

So now that I had my rant, I've also remade some other parts of the story, but there will be enough to recognise part of the eu-material. First the timeline looks way different, then the official one and many things has been redone, especially to the storyline about Tremayne, which is now a lot longer. Tremayne starts as one of Lukes padawans in this story, but accepts a lot of promotions from a guy called Snortzenigger.
( He's from another fanfiction, so basically he's stolen, but remade. This is to honour that authors best character, but I still don't recommend reading most of it. Some of it is good though and I'm sorry I don't remember it's name.)

These promotions keeps him from being a good Jedi, since he'll have to handle the greyzones of society, parts of the society were Jedi shouldn't be. Therefore the reason that a Jedi as an individual don't own anything, while the Jediorder is simply extremly rich. Anyway, he turns bad, then tortures Jerec and Jerec turns bad. Jerec is the guy from the game Jedi knight.

Aggressors are not my idea either, but comes with the pc game Forces of corruption and Scorpions are the natural step after Aggressors.

Technological advance has been kept very slow in this fanfic, of course a lot weapons have become unefficent, redundant, but mostly many of the old ships are still in there. Not in production though. This is because feel that the starwars galaxy has a slow technological process, due to the many different components that are manufactured through out the galaxy and probably some research problems, such as inadequate cooperation between the species and so on.

Lastly you will miss some alien species in this fanficition, especially those who seem really lame, such as the Lapinotis, or whatever the names are, who are basically green rabbits. I don't like green rabbits, that's why they aren't in the story. Neither are the Miraluka, first they are dead and secondly they are lame. They are just blind humans with some force abilities not an entire different species...

Yeah and comments welcome, please feel free to say something, unless it would be too much pain for you. The update and next chapter will be coming this week. Maybe even tonight...

Thanks for reading it, hope you enjoy it!
/Daniel.R.Pettersson

And yeah just to be on the safeside, with all things these days, I'm going to change Snortzis name to Snortzenejer. That way no one is going to puzzle it into something it ain't, even though I find that kind of puzzling, very puzzling.
=D

Chapter 2. Finding the past

“We grow as time pass us by, but were it really me who was growing all that time. I who at the beginning knew nothing about pain or pleasure, have now got bored with both of these things. I who was filled to the very brim with passion, desire and ambition, now have only emptiness. What do I have in common with what I once was?”
Darth Condelesco before his final battle

Riktor Black still shook with the hatred born from the fear he had felt on feeling the presence of the Jedi. The Jedi wouldn’t leave him or Jerec alone. Hopefully they only wanted Jerec though and not him. Riktor wanted to kill the Jedi though, they deserved it, they weren’t good and it was they who had made him into what he was. They were at fault, hadn’t there been a jedi who had looked him into that tomb, he would never have become so dark, so afraid. He had to sacrifice the girl, otherwise how would anyone of them get out of that tomb. The voices demanded a sacrifice. If he had only given them one, they would have been satisfied and nothing more would have happened.

“ Warm creature of life spill blood to live, to survive or join us”, the voices whispered.
“ I’m not listening, I don’t listen to voices, because I’m alive fools!”, screamed Riktor right back at them.

The girl in the prison cell next to him reacted on his strange screams. They were frightening her, although she was already quite frightened. Selone was the very girl from those nightmares, she had been the one he tried to sacrifice. But the mercenaries had stopped him and once he had defeated them, then the Jedi had stopped him. Kornei, that had been his name. He had rescued Selone and the mercenaries from the clutches of the dark spirits in those tombs, but Riktor had been sealed within them. Kornei had sealed the door before he left the temple, knowing full well what fate he left Riktor to. It was all Kornei’s fault and Riktor hated him for it.

“ Don’t cry Selone, I’m here to comfort you dear”, said Riktor and smiled towards her through the bared window of her cell. She didn’t want his comfort though, his feelingsreader told him that. It was a funny little red jewel and it probably wasn’t called feelingsreader, but it was the name that Riktor had settled for. It described one of its many uses although it could also be used to sneak in, feelings that you wanted in the subject. That was the prime reason for using it on Selone though. He wanted her to like him, despite that he hurt her. He needed to punish her for all the times he had been hurt by her friends and her Jedi ally and now lately by Yun. Yun liked her, wanted her and was protecting her from him. She had to be his possession. He had captured her.

Just as he was to enter the cell and attend to her, Jerec approached him. Riktor had a good force sight and knew that Jerec was approaching him before he appeared. Most of Jerec’s other apprentices didn’t have such good abilities with the force. Or rather their expertise was in things like lightsaber combat and acrobatic movement. Extraordinary speed or strength had never been Riktors expertise, still he knew many things most Sith and Jedi did not. Calling Jerec Sith was probably not right though, he was more just a dark Jedi and he called his followers: Those bound by vision, or the Vision bound. The symbol was two eyes bleeding, Jerec’s eyes.

Jerec was as usual dressed in black, as were most in his crew. Black was a colour that suited him, but Sariss and Boc probably would look better in other colours. However everyone wanted to blend in and the colour of Riktors robe was black, although he wear grey underneath it. He liked grey better, after all he was no Sith and no Jedi either. Although he lacked eyes, his gaze could still fall upon you and his vision could still tear into your very mind or soul. Jerec saw much and it was because of that and not because of his battle mastery or his powerful magic that Riktor feared him.

“ The Sith citadell on Maliant is huge so searching through it might take some time”, said Jerec as he Riktor quickly stepped away from his favourite prisoner.
“ Surely there’s no reason to hurry, I will of course attend to some of the searching, but I’m also needed here to better understand the artefacts that we have already acquired.
“ Unfortunately we don’t have any such time, the Jedi will soon find us again”, explained Jerec and smiled for some reason. He liked fighting, especially when he got to kill someone. Riktor didn’t like fighting, fighting could get you killed.
“ Will the Jedi never stop hunting us?”, asked Riktor rhetorically.
“ When we reach Ruusan they won’t bother us anymore”, said Jerec confidently.
“ What’s on Ruusan that you want so much?”, asked Riktor.
“ I would prefer it, if you also called me master, have I not deserved that?”, said Jerec with a cold voice.
Riktor immediately went to down to one knee, before speaking again.
“ Indeed you have master”, replied Riktor.
“ You will see what I want on Ruusan when we get there and then we will also have other allies with us, the Jedi will have no chance of defeating us then”, explained Jerec. “ Now come, for we must prepare for the journey towards Maliants surface, so that we may get to Ruusan more quickly.”
Somehow Riktor knew that the darkside spirits on Maliant was already expecting them, they knew of their arrival and they were calling in their ancient language for them.

----------------------------------------------------------

Maliant was a red world, due to the composition of its atmosphere and its distance to its sun. It was filled with storms, tidal waves and earthquakes often making it very inhospitable. That was the very reason to why the Sith had built one of their tombfortresses on it. It was meant to not be disturbed and had many guardians around it and within it, Although none of them living. In its many chambers fantastic treasures could be found as well as horrors few had known. Korriban had likewise once been just as dangerous as this very building and then just not the temples, but all of Korriban. Due to war, constant raids from Jedis and through plundering Korriban had become tamed and without threats to it surroundings and some even saw the tombs on Koribban as little more then tourist attractions.

Inside tombfortress there was special treasurechamber that contained sith holocrons. A place that had never been plundered for different of reasons and within them rested the souls of some of the most famous Sith spirits in history. There was the sith spirit of Darth Ognen, Darth Bane and Darth Speculeum. Darth Bane hated Darth Ognen and their discussions were often very short. Darth Bane believed Darth Speculeum’s holocron to be empty, because he had never seen his presence in it. That was odd, but mostly Bane was glad over that, he didn’t enjoy company of any Sith that didn’t have his believes. Bane could feel how knew darksiders were coming and hoped they would found their way down here, so he could recreate the Sith order exactly the way it was.

“ Come Riktor, come Majhni or come Jerec”, whispered Bane and manifested as a sithspirit next to his holocron. Ognen tried to the same but Bane quickly used his spirit powers to prevent him from doing this.
“ You are too weak Ognen, besides you have no teachings to give to these would-be Siths”, said Bane coldly and watched as the other Sith fell asleep.

That’s when Speculeums holocron suddenly came to life. It was not in the normal way at all, the presence was just suddenly there. The probable reason for this that was something that Bane had already guessed. Speculeum was no revenant, he hadn’t come back from the great darkness beyond and instead he probably had stayed somewhere else then in his holocron and only now made his way back. Bane was too clever to try the same thing he just had done towards Ognen against Speculeum, after all Speculeum had been a soulsorcerer and using the same trick on him wouldn’t work.

“ Neither do you have anything close to my philosophy either, so just go back were you came from, you old fool”, ordered Bane.
“ You always were an ignorant creature Bane”, replied Speculeum. “ After all, if you had but bothered to check history you would have known that there had been many forms of Sith and many ideas and philosophies behind them.

“ Whatever, none of them worked, except mine”, answered Bane. “ The disruption of the Sith would always destroy anyone who shared power, instead of mastered it. Power can only belong to one master and there can only be one desiring it. That brings control.”
Speculeum answered with a mere laughter. It was no bitter laughter either and the reason for it was obvious, even though Bane had ignored most of Sith history, after all why bother about the old, when constructing the new.

“ Now I remember, your master Darth Anarchy didn’t really like order, so I expect you not to understand the value of it either”, reasoned Bane and tried to figure out some way to distract this Sith from being awake when the other darksiders arrived.
“ You don’t control power, power controls you”, claimed Speculeum. “ That’s why power has to be destroyed, it serves only your own needs and not the greater need of the darkside.”
“ The darkside, that is simply a tool a means to end, for us to achieve power, not an end in itself”, answered Bane most angrily.
“ To someone as orderly as you perhaps, but then your entire idea is foolish”, said Speculeum.
“ Whatever was wrong with it, the idea brought the entire galaxy to its knees and wiped out the jedi, that’s proof of it strength”, mocked Bane.
“ Now that line has been broken, since the chain was only two Siths thick, you are lucky it didn’t happen by accident far before the time it actually did”, answered Speculeum.
“ You were nothing but a coward yourself who fled life by becoming part of holocron, instead of living it to its end”, said Bane and tried to ignore Speculeum without much success.
“ I choose to do so, so that I could always rebuild the Sith whenever some foolish Sithlord decided to wipe themselves and all their heirs out”, explained Speculeum. “ You might have noticed that I don’t linger in holocrons the same way that the rest of you do, I know many secrets of soulmagic that makes my holocrons more powerful then any of the others.”
“ Then help me, spread the one lore that can make us victorious”, demanded Bane.
“ What makes you so sure that you are right?”, asked Speculeum this time sounding as angry as Bane. “ Would Kreia think that you were right?, Would Darth Inanis?, Darth Ghore perhaps?”
“ Exar kun would have understood, Markos Ragnor would have agreed”, replied Bane a bit unsure of himself which only served him to become more angry.
He could feel the presence of the darksiders now, they were just above the planet now. Soon they would come down and then he would call on them. They would listen and remember that Darth Bane had created the most dangerous Sith order and ignore Darth Speculeum who no one had heard of. Now that he thought of it most other Sith of the time around Darth Kaan hadn’t heard about Speculeum either, but the reason wasn’t so strange, Speculeum was really old, even older then Kreia.
“ Now would they?”, said Speculeum rhetorically.
“ Darth Condolesco would have agreed as well, besides everyone hated that foolish theory that Anarchy came up with, for what purpose does it serve, this purpose of the darkside?”, asked Bane now a bit uncertain.
“ There’s no purpose to anything in this universe and your power doesn’t guarantee darkness in any way”, explained Speculeum. “So it's a dark rule, but once its cast off, everything returns to light quite easily and even when Palpatine did rule there was still more light in the galaxy then darkness”
“ Fanatic, you do everything you do just to increase the darkness, that creates no order, only chaos and nothing comes out of chaos”, answered Bane.
“ Kreia wanted the death of the force, Inanis wanted to become everything and Ghore wanted to destroy all lightsiders”, replied Speculeum. “ The real question is what made you into the only interpreter of the Sith order. What made you believe that the perfect Sith order only could be the rule of two, when two means that the chain can be cut most easily. You buy an advantage for a weakness and that’s how you always buy advantages.”
“ In that case all roads would have the same value”, said Bane coldly.
“ In a way they do have the same value, otherwise there would be no limits in this reality, but I don’t expect you to comprehend that”, said Speculeum.

After those words both of Sith fell silent, it was obvious then none of them would be able to convince the other. There was only one thing to hope for, that whoever came to find them would pick up one of the holocrons but not the other. And so they waited and Bane prided himself with having mastered the art of patience.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Shirori watched the other jedi as they spook to each other on how to best catch Jerec. There were five of them except her and according to what she had learned from Mijemi Skywalker a few of them would soon die. They didn’t know it though and Shirori had seen no reason to tell them. Her five companions were Kyle Katarn, Najindela, Kash, Taihrinn Mirlow and Siraku. Taihrinn Mirlow and Kyle Katarn were humans, Najindela was a catharian, Kash was a Trandoshan, the only one in the jedi order and Siraku was a quarren. It was a nice mix of species, although thinking that way was wrong. They were all Jedi and that was the only thing that mattered.

Shirori all liked them, but no one of them especially well. She was a Twi’lek after all and it was only natural for her to be interested in what kind of people they were. Kash was by all means interesting, but a bit intimidating and lizardlike creatures such as the Trandoshan were strange in their behaviour. Siraku was the silent type who liked secrets, almost to the point that Shirori believed he regarded her with some lack of respect because of her more honest and open ways.
Kyle was the typical loner, always afraid of getting to know people. He didn’t want them to get hurt and saw himself as a magnet for troubles that got people hurt. He wasn’t a very good friend with Shirori and she didn’t really want to change that either.

Tairhinn Mirlow was an old fellow; he probably should have been a jedi master by now, if he had bothered about it. He didn’t though; he lived mostly in the past. He had found memories of the time when he was a pilot and some memories that he was not so found of. Shirori liked him, but never really relied on him in the heat of battle, which was sad in a way.

Najindela had been her companion for a really long time and had earned both her respect and her admiration. She was cunning, beautiful and smart. Najindela was a better warrior then herself and had survival skills like no other jedi Shirori knew. She was a bit too aggressive for her own good though.

“ All right as soon as Isgert gets his ship together we will have to start figuring out were in space that ship went”, said Kyle still determined to find his adversary once more. Jerec had murdered his father and shouldn’t have been on the mission. Shirori had reported it, not because it was her duty, but for Kyle’s own good. The person she told it had been Klyss, not Mijemi Skywalker and that might have proven a mistake. Klyss had ordered that Kyle could go anyway, probably because he saw it as a matter of pride. Kyle on the other hand regarded it as pure and plain revenge. Shirori had to talk about that with him, she was the strongest empath in the group after all, but she didn’t like it. It was a typical twi’lek role and Shirori hated to be the typical twi’lek.

Shirori signed to Kyle with her lekkus that she wanted him to follow him alone into the next room. First Kyle was stubborn and didn’t really want to follow her anywhere. Shirori could hardly imagine why and hoped that he wasn’t angry with her for some reason. After a while he agreed and excused himself from the conversation that the other jedis were having about ways to track their enemy. It wouldn’t be doable through the force at least not until they knew more about the temples on Lonely, until then it would only be wild guesses. If they could learn what their adversary had been after it would have been much simpler. Najindela, Kash and Siraku would find out by taking a transport to Lonely’s surface. Kyle wasn’t needed down there, he had no skills that was necessary for that expedition and they would already have a lot of technicians and workers down there, provided by admiral Hrobb.

The room they walked into was something of a rest room and was very comfortable, with nice cushions and chairs. There were also several nice looking tables and a few hologames, like Creature chess and Star fleet war. There also access to some downloaded news and stuff like that from holonet located in the computer being linked to the main frame computer in this room as well. Shirori preferred to remain standing and so apparently did Kyle.

“ What’s this about Shirori?”, asked Kyle with a bit of harshness in his voice.
“ I know that you are after Jerec for personal reasons only and I want you to resign this mission”, explained Shirori.
“ I had a green light from one of the council members, shouldn’t that be enough?”, Kyle almost shouted.
“ No it’s not enough, it’s never enough when the hatred is seemingly bubbling out of you”, answered Shirori with a little anger of her own. “ Look I care for you and when I stretch out to feel your feelings I feel bad.”
“ Then keep out of my mind and my feelings and mind your own life”, said Kyle and pointed at her with an accusing finger.
“ Well, I don’t have a bad life like yours, mine is pretty good, except that I have to hunt criminals such as Jerec for a living”, said Shirori and brushed her leekus behind her, since she didn’t want them caught in the fight.
Those words made Kyle stop screaming at least. Which was all good and well because Shirori didn’t know what she was suppose to do, to make him stop being angry. She looked at him with her eyes and tried to meet his. To reach some sort of contact, they were friends after all, but it seemed almost impossible. Kyle wouldn’t look anywhere but down in the ground or way past Shirori.
“ Look, I’d do anything to make you feel better if I could, but I still don’t want to allow you to take revenge”, explained Shirori carrying waves of sympathy in her voice.
“ But it’s all that want”, whispered Kyle and made almost sound like a hiss.
“ What about Jan Ors, can’t you just take her with you and go back to the academy for a few days at least”, suggested Shirori.

Kyle sighed and shook his head. Shirori closed her eyes and looked down towards the floor herself. Shirori was going to say more, maybe try and comfort him at the same time. Of course giving him a hug, might not be at all what he wanted. Neither did she know how Jan would regard such an act. She had already told Jan to comfort him, but for some reason she didn’t want too. She wanted him to extract revenge if he really needed it, but that wasn’t what Kyle really needed. What he needed was her, not vengeance. Kyle never gave Shirori a chance though, he left the room instead and thereby gave a clear signal that further talks would get them nowhere.

Shirori wasn’t going to stay in recreation room either. She walked towards the main control room. Only a few of the officers were still there, maintaining watch so that nothing unexpected happened. Shirori wasn’t all that familiar with the controls in here, but she could read the sensor screens without much problem. She could however see that Kyle was already preparing a ship to take him down to Lonely. Obviously he wanted to see this Sith temple with his own eyes and was probably just as determined to find some evidence that the enemy had left behind.
Shirori became very sad at seeing this. At least he was taking Jan Ors with him down there, that was always a comfort, but in the end Kyle risked everything by behaving the way he did. Shirori was powerless to stop him though, unless she would be willing to call this entire event to the attention of at least three council members, which could take considerable effort considering what workload the council was lifting these days. They tried not to neglect the simple knights of their order, but there were just too many things to do.

The door opened up behind her with a sound, but since she was a jedi with at least some awareness she wasn’t surprised by the admiral’s sudden arrival on the deck. Instead she turned to meet him with a proper greeting. She tried to seem glad, so that the admiral wouldn’t notice that something was amiss. He probably wouldn’t notice anyway, but twi’leks had a hard time hiding their emotions, since they rather expressed them freely. Admiral Hrobb returned her greeting although according to theory he outranked her. This was however seldom or even never used in practise, especially since the Jedi had stopped being under the leadership of the government or any other form of administration except the Jedi council. Some claimed that this wasn’t really favourable to the Jedi and that the Jedi always had been part of the government, but they were wrong.

“ As soon as your search teams arrives back to this ship and enough repairs has been done, we will proceed to pursue our enemy”, said admiral Hrobb confidently.
“ We don’t know where the enemy is, admiral”, replied Shirori and signed the word regretfully with her leekus. He probably didn’t know lekku, but Shirori did it out of habit.
“ Yes, one of the prisoners chose to talk and has provided us with their next destination”, explained admiral Hrobb.
“ How do we know that the man speaks the truth admiral?”, asked Shirori curiously.
“ We don’t, but I willing to take that risk, because the guy sounded sincere enough”, replied admiral Hrobb.
“ What did you do to him, to make him tell you this position?”, asked Shirori thoughtfully.
“ I didn’t torture him, I bribed him and the money will do him no good if it proves wrong”, said admiral Hrobb.
“ What use are money in a military prison?”, asked Shirori.
“ He won’t stay there for especially long, he’s claiming he only followed orders and were afraid to be put to death”, replied admiral Hrobb. “ That said, I can still imagine that he will get a year, maybe half a year in jail since he didn’t desert those pirates.”
“ Good, I’ll tell them”, said Shirori.

----------------------------------------------------------------

Maliant had already proven to be a very dangerous place as soon as Jerec ships had landed. There were all kinds of predators rooming the area, many of them twisted by the dark side of the force, making them into monsters. After dispatching at least ten of them, to the prize of four soldiers, they started to run into traps. Jerec made use of droids to walk into most of them, but sometimes he had to use soldiers instead. A few times the traps were disarmed before any harm was done to anyone and sometimes the traps killed up to three soldiers. The traps varied in size and sort. Some were simple hidden blades activated by a floor tile. Others were laser-controlled explosives or blasters.

In one of the chambers it had been gas and it the last chamber they had just been, before the one they just entered there had been a room with vacuum inside it. Those who had opened the door had fallen into the room and died instantly, since the air built an enormous pressure on the backs of those who opened that door. That chamber had been the tomb of some admiral who had served sith during some civil war, thousands of years ago.

Riktor had followed Jerec closely through out the labyrinth of rooms and corridors. Jerec seemed to know were they were going or at least that is what he said. Considering which path they had taken so far, there must have been a more optimised way into the chamber of the keyreader. The keyreader was for some reason placed in a sacrificial ground, with a holocronenergiser installed into it. The energiser could be used to produce any number of artefacts and refill them with power, not just holocrons, but the original had been forgotten and upon rediscovering the energisers, it had been mainly used to power holocrons. Not that there were that many in the galaxy. In fact so far they had found only two, despite all the raids and discoveries that Jerec and his followers had done.

Sariss was exploring some side trail trying to find some other artefacts to plunder, but had so far only managed to kill more troops. Riktor had followed Jerec so he could translate some of the ancient Sithrunes in this place, but also so he could help Jerec use the keyreader. It hadn’t been an easy task but once the holocron was in place it didn’t take that many minutes to get the right combination for it’s opening. Once solved the holocron showed an interesting star map and had access to multiple codes and weapons designs. None of which would be easily used at this point, but it promised much, especially the soulcannon and the intimidationscreen.

Jerec hadn’t been interested in the weapons though, he was only interested in the location of Ruusan. Ruusan was marked on the starmap and therefore easy to find. Jerecs smile when he learned this was priceless. It appeared that the starmap worked perfectly with forcesight as well so hiding the fact would have been perilous. Riktor had come so close to lying about it, that he swallowed once he realised that it had all been a test towards his loyalty. Ruusan was a fantastic treasure, beyond Riktors wildest dreams, yet he had no lust whatsoever to go there. This Jerec knew, he knew that Riktor hated the idea of actually finding this treasure.

He loved treasure and would have gone any distance and fought almost any peril to get treasure, but not together with the company he had now. He wanted to be superior, now he feared that he would soon be stabbed in his back. He didn’t believe that many of Jerecs companions wanted to share anything not even a really big fortune. Not once they realised that Riktor didn’t have much further use. He didn’t trust Jerec either, whatever Jerec sought it wasn’t merely power, it was insane amounts of power. Perhaps there was thoughtbomb still on Ruusan, or maybe a really big soulcannon. Otherwise the armour and the sword of the Sithlord Kaan would undoubtedly make him an impossible opponent in melee fighting. However Jerec couldn’t take control of the galaxy in a melee, so that probably wasn’t the reason he sought Ruusan.

There were other rumours and clues that Riktor could puzzle together. Jerec had taken every forceassembler, forceredirector and force crystal they had encountered. He was trying to control vast amounts of the force. Ruusan had enormous amounts of force circling around all the dead jedi and sith on that planet. Force just waiting to be collected. Enough force to turn someone into a god literally. That thought instilled fear into the very core of Riktors soul. He wanted no one to have that much power and especially not Jerec. It wasn’t up to him to stop him though. He couldn’t stop Jerec he wasn’t powerful enough. That was the jedis job. He had other things to do.

Riktor would salvage enough treasures from these planets so that he could buy himself a spice fleet and with it, build a criminal empire. Then he could retire somewhere safe, somewhere far away from here.
Jerec didn’t seem to pay Riktor any attention as he looked through some sith markings written on a wall not far from the energiser.

“ It seems to be some sort of warning, telling any plunderers to keep away or feel the true wrath of the sith”, muttered Jerec.
“ The true wrath of the sith, whatever could that be?”, asked Riktor.
His words had not gone unnoticed by the ten soldiers who had followed them inside this room. They started to move around looking for trouble. Riktor wanted them to stay put, unless they would set off another number of traps.
“ No matter, no wrath shall frighten me, continue the plundering I want as many artefacts as you can get”, instructed Jerec.
Riktor simply nodded as a confirmation to that order. He watched the men continuing their search for more artefacts. Suddenly the comlink in Riktors hand sparked and he received an incoming call from Majhni.
“ I think I’ve found some sort of archive down here, there’s even a chamber with holocrons”, said Majhni with great excitement.
“ Tell her not to touch the holocrons some of them are very dangerous even to a powerful force-user such as me”, said Jerec. “ I’ll be there to collect them unless something else comes up.”
“ We already have a lot of artefacts Jerec”, said Riktor cautiously.
“ Are you afraid that our enemies will attack us soon?”, mocked Jerec. “ Don’t be, I have hidden the stardestroyer and its hard to feel our presence in this fortress. They will have to go down here to even locate us and by then we will have already made our escape and made our meeting with the thunderstorm.”

So that's chapter two, please feel free to comment, even if you don't like it. Chapter three will probably take some time, but might be delivered within this week. Questions are also appreciated.

The update is still planned, but has become a little late. I would sure like some comments on this fanfiction. If someone would be so nice as to post one comment the update might come a lot faster.