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Those of you familiar with ASVS or Spacebattles may remember this. It's also posted there. If you're not familiar with this, then you'll want to read http://www.daltonator.net/fanfics/stori ... TW_7th.txt

(shameless bump)

I should have added the title image when I first posted, but anyway... Next chapter will be out in 1-2 days.

Crayz9000 wrote:(shameless bump)

I should have added the title image when I first posted, but anyway... Next chapter will be out in 1-2 days.

YAY!

Could you provide a quick synopsis; characters/setting kinda thing?

So this kinda takes place just before NJO with Voyager crew?

Crown wrote:So this kinda takes place just before NJO with Voyager crew?

More or less. The timeline is modified slightly, as you'll see below.

I'll provide my quick timeline; the full plotline (which I already wrote) contains far too many spoilers

I have one tiny little question. According to your timeline, the Lando Calissian trilogy and the Han Solo Adventures occur at the same time. In the stories, however, both characters own the Millennium Falcon. Were they trading it back and forth?

When is the next chapter Crazy?

Crown wrote:When is the next chapter Crazy?

Go to daltonator.net most of it is there, Book I is, plus parts of II and III

Sabastian Tombs wrote:I have one tiny little question. According to your timeline, the Lando Calissian trilogy and the Han Solo Adventures occur at the same time. In the stories, however, both characters own the Millennium Falcon. Were they trading it back and forth?

I was trying to rectify the official timeline with a timeline of events. The Vector Prime timeline lumped the entire collection together, even though Rebel Dawn is just before ANH and Han Solo at Stars' End takes place a few years before that.

Naturally, there are going to be some problems...

Crown wrote:When is the next chapter Crazy?

I meant to get it out a few weeks ago, back in August. Unfortunately, the start of school and some other things got into the way; I've been primarily working on the plot for the entire book in the meantime.

I'm going to try and finish Chapter 10 today, if possible. Just don't quote me on that

Oh, and about bits of Book Two being on the Fanfic Archive: Those are subject to an intense rewrite when I finally finish Book One.

Yeah, this took way too long. Damned writers' block. Anyway, maybe I can start cooking on this again.


STRETCHING AND YAWNING, Jacen sat up from the crude mattress lying on the ground and turned to look out the window. The blue-tinted sunlight was already starting to drift across most of the fortress, as he noticed through a window. He checked his chronometer; it was earlier than he would normally wake up on Yavin IV. Oh, well. He’d been awaking at sunrise every day since they came to Dathomir.
He looked about himself, and noted that Tenel Ka had already woken up and left. Briefly, he wondered where she had gone before he got into his utilitarian jumpsuit and wandered outside. Probably hunting with her clansisters, he decided. She’d mentioned that it had been years since she had last done that sort of thing, and they’d be leaving tomorrow...
As Jacen wandered outside the room that had been provided for them, a faint sound caught his ear, and he moved his head to see if he could identify the source. He frowned at the distance, squinting to try and see a little better. After a moment, he gave up and instead focused with the Force.
“Huh,” he muttered after a moment. “They weren’t supposed to be here until tomorrow.” Jacen spun around and headed back inside to wake his sister and Lowbacca.

Slightly less than an hour later, the four Jedi were assembled in the landing field below the fortress, where Kyp had landed his starfighter. Lowbacca was first to greet Kyp with a deafening roar as the group walked toward him.
“Kyp!” Jaina said. “You’re early. What happened?”
The older Jedi turned around from his XJ. “We’ve got to leave as soon as possible. Some new things came through while we were at base.”
“What?” Jacen’s surprise was clearly evident. “I didn’t think it was this serious.”
“Well, you know now,” Kyp replied sharply. “Where’s your ship?”
“It’s on the landing pad at the top of the fortress,” Tenel Ka answered.
“Good. Make sure that you can leave as soon as we’re done down here.” He caught his breath and continued. “Anyway, we got some more information on the attacks. One of the first victims was a guy named Urias Xhaxin, as you might recall.” Kyp paused for a moment to tell something to his astromech, then turned back to the group. “From the information I found, he’s actually a rather notorious pirate in the sector. His base of operations is a Nebulon-B frigate, which seems to have had a lot of illegitimate upgrades.”
“He’s a _pirate_? Jacen asked incredulously. “Then why send out a distress signal?”
“Lure another victim or two in, perhaps,” Jaina answered for him. “It sounds suspicious.”
“Normally, I'd agree,” Kyp stated. “But the odd thing is that he used his real name and identity in the distress call. Unless he suddenly had a death wish, that doesn't make any sense.”
“We should go in with our shields and weapons powered up, at least,” Jaina persisted.
“I know,” he replied. “We will, trust me. But there were some other things I need to tell you about. First, I talked with your parents, who told me that they’re sick of Coruscant and are going to be moving out this way, to some backwater called Sernpidal.” He handed Jacen, who was standing nearest, a datachip. “That has the coordinates for the planet, as well as the location of their new house.”
“Why would they do that?” Jaina interjected.
Kyp shrugged. “They didn’t give me much in the way of details, but I gathered that your mother was sick of politics, not to mention all the media attention following her resignation.”
The flat-domed R6 in the socket of Kyp’s starfighter chose that moment to interrupt the conversation with a loud twitter. Kyp threw the droid a glare and continued.
“I also talked with several Extragalactic Society executives, who informed me that they still haven’t received anything from ExGal 4. So, after we check out Xhaxin’s distress call we’ll be traveling to Belkadan. Sound good?”
“I... suppose so,” Jaina answered after several moments had passed. “In that case, we’ll rendezvous with your squadron up in orbit.”
“Good,” Kyp said as his gaze moved across all of them. “Just so you know, I really appreciate this. May the Force be with you.” He leapt to the top of the starfighter as the four Jedi watched him. With a high-pitched whine, the X-wing lifted off, accelerated, and vanished into the sky.
“I don’t know about you,” Jacen said quietly to his sister after Kyp had left, “but I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

* * *

Cathi stared blankly at the twisting maelstrom that was the ‘sky’ of hyperspace, her mind churning. She’d dozed off in the pilot’s chair the previous day, and when she woke up, she was naturally very surprised to find out that the freighter hadn’t crashed into anything yet. Her hand, rougher than one might expect for a woman of her age because of all the mechanical work she’d performed, hovered over the manual hyperdrive controls as she debated in her mind whether to drop out of hyperspace or not.
_No_, she finally decided. She’d just let it take her where it would, and not worry about it. _But_, another part of her mind said, _isn’t that what you decided yesterday?_ Cathi uncertainly reached for the hyperdrive controls once again, but stayed her hand before she touched them.
“What am I doing?” she wondered aloud. There was no guarantee, after all, that a bounty hunter would even find her in the first place. The galaxy was a big place for a lone smuggler to hide, and she could always change her name, have reconstructive surgery, or do something else to disappear. Still, her mind debated the issue for several minutes before she reached a conclusion.
“All right,” she whispered, and reached for the hyperdrive controls yet again.
Her hand was only halfway there when the navicomputer bleeped a warning and cut in the safeties, dropping the ship out. She quickly moved her hand and silenced the alarms, looking out the viewport to see exactly what the heck had happened.
“Wonderful,” she said to no-one in particular. “I ran into a black hole’s mass shadow.”
Cathi spent the next several minutes running diagnostics and checking things to see how badly her ship was damaged. Much to her surprise, most of the systems seemed to be intact. She silently thanked herself for not disabling the hyperdrive safeties.
As she was looking over the control panels, the sensor panel caught her eye. Most of the data related to the black hole’s emissions, but one thing stood out: a distress signal that was very close. She switched to audio and played it.
“Attention any nearby ships,” the recording began. “This is Outbound Flight Shuttle One requesting assistance. Ship is disabled and currently in degrading orbit of a black hole. Please acknowledge. Message repeats.”
Had her jaw not been attached to her head, it would have hit the deck at that instant. Of course she had heard of the Outbound Flight. Who hadn’t? Like most stories of lost ships, over the years it had garnered a great deal of mystery. Some people insisted that the Project had succeeded. Others, who had heard about Grand Admiral Thrawn’s involvement during that time, claimed that it had been destroyed.
And now she was hearing a distress signal that purported to be from one of its shuttles. For a moment she wondered if it was a quirk of the black hole, somehow preserving the subspace message through gravity. Her mind discarded it a moment later when she double-checked the sensors. They definitely showed a ship, by the looks of it an earlier Cygnus Spaceworks design, stranded in the black hole’s accretion disk.
Thumbing the comm to transmit, she picked up a handset and spoke into it. “Outbound Flight Shuttle One, this is the independent freighter _Headwind._ I have just received your distress call and may be able to provide the assistance you require. Please acknowledge.”
The reply came a little over five minutes later, and by its sound, the speaker was rather relieved. “Freighter _Headwind,_ I copy. My hyperdrive was blown when I went through the wormhole. What kind of assistance can you provide?”
Cathi frowned. What wormhole was he talking about? “I don’t happen to be carrying any spare parts for a hyperdrive of your age, but I might be able to give you a ride.”
“That’ll do,” the other person replied. “Can you dock with my ship?”
“I should be able to,” she said after a moment’s pause. “This is a Corellian YT-2400, and it has a standard docking ring. I take it yours has one as well?”
“It does,” the man answered.
“I’ll start the docking process immediately, then,” Cathi said. “Make sure your shields are down first.”
“They failed a long time ago,” the man said. “At least the hull blocks most of the radiation.”
Cathi didn’t bother to reply, but instead started jockeying her freighter toward the old shuttle. As she neared it, she nodded. It was definitely a pre-Clone Wars design, one rarely seen now.
Once she was next to the shuttle, she used the YT-2400’s maneuvering jets to line up with the docking port and finally attach. She could hear a slight clang as the two ships connected, and breathed a sigh of relief.
“I’ve finished the docking process,” she said into the comm. “You can come across the docking tube and I’ll meet you on my end.”
“Sounds good,” the reply came almost immediately. “I’m looking forward to seeing a familiar face again. Shuttle One out.”
The smuggler hesitated before leaving the cockpit, but managed to calm her fears and stepped out into the corridor that led to the access hatch. When she heard knocking from the other side, she drew her blaster and pointed it at the hatch, then activated the release switch. The hatch promptly irised open, allowing a surprisingly young-looking blond-haired head to emerge.
Her mind churned in bewilderment as the man took in his surroundings. It had been over fifty years since the Clone Wars had ended, and anybody from the Outbound Flight that had survived should have been in his seventies. Yet this man seemed to be only in his late thirties...
The unknown man paused when he saw her blaster. “You can put that away,” he said in a calm tone after a moment had passed. “I don’t think you’ll find me to be much of a problem.”
As an amazed Cathi watched herself put the blaster back in its holster, the man easily climbed out of the access hatch. It was then that she noticed his attire: a flowing brown robe that hung to the floor.
“Jedi,” she whispered before raising her voice. “You’re one of the six Jedi that were aboard the Outbound Flight, aren’t you?”
He nodded. “I’m Master Dellen, historian for the Outbound Flight. And you are?”
“Cathi Riclin,” she replied. “I’m just a freighter pilot, nothing special.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Dellen replied in a conversational tone. “So what’s a small freighter doing this far away from the major trade routes?”
“Long story,” Cathi muttered. When he looked at her inquisitively, she continued. “I got captured by some rogue Star Destroyer a few days ago. They took all of my cargo as well as the owner of this ship, but for some reason set me free shortly after.” She paused for a long moment. “Well, after that I didn’t know what to do, so I made a random jump into hyperspace and wound up here.”
He shrugged. “Random jumps are pretty dangerous. You must have survived because the Force wanted you to.”
“What’s that mean?” she asked, thoroughly confused.
Dellen took a deep breath. “It means that the Force works in mysterious ways. What might seem like a random chance may have actually been made that way by the Force.”
“Really,” Cathi managed to say. _So he’s saying that the Force wanted me to be here just so that I could pick him up?_
“That’s about it,” Dellen said, shocking her out of her senses. Seeing her surprise, he smiled. “You should stop thinking so loudly.”
Now she remembered why most smugglers detested Jedi. Well, there wasn’t much she could do now with one aboard her ship. “All right, so where do you want me to take you?”
“Coruscant,” Dellen replied almost without pause. “But I need to get my belongings out of the shuttle first. Why don’t you run the course through the navicomputer?”
“Uh...” She hesitated. “I suppose I can do that. Do you need any help moving your stuff?”
“No, but thank you.” Dellen disappeared down the tube, leaving her to mull over her thoughts. The navicomputer was fast enough that she could wait almost until they were ready to leave before starting the calculations.
Less than a minute had passed when Dellen emerged from the tube carrying a small crate. “Still here?” he asked in mild surprise. “I’m ready to go. The shuttle’s shut down completely and all my belongings are in here.”
“Already?” Cathi asked. “I thought you were carrying more than that.”
The Jedi shook his head. “I travel lightly.”
“Well,” she took a breath, “then let’s go. I need a copilot; do you mind?”
“Not at all,” Dellen said, holding up the crate. “Where should I put this?”
“Oh...” She thought for a moment before coming to a decision. “Just leave it in the sleeping quarters. They’re one door down on the left side.”
“Thanks. Why don’t you uncouple the ships in the meantime? I sealed mine already.” He was gone down the corridor in an instant, leaving Cathi staring at her hands and wondering if he’d tried using one of his Jedi tricks on her. She shook her head, sealed the hatch, and decided to disconnect the ships from the cockpit.

* * *

In less than a standard hour after they had met with Kyp, the _Rock Dragon_ was back in space, hurtling through hyperspace toward the last known location of Urias Xhaxin.
“What doesn’t make sense about this,” Jacen said as he walked down the short corridor leading to the cockpit, “is why anybody would conduct this kind of attack.” He waved his hands emphatically. “I mean, look at the targets so far: a scientific research station, a pirate ship, and an archaeological expedition on some unsettled planet.”
Jaina regarded him with a bemused look. “We don’t even know if Belkadan and Xhaxin are related to Bimmiel. As far as we know, ExGal 4 could have had a communications problem, while Xhaxin’s probably just trying to lure prey in. Maybe the aliens on Bimmiel are just some local pirate group themselves!”
He shrugged as they stepped into the transport’s hold (or lounge, depending on what it was functioning as). Neither Tenel Ka nor Lowbacca were there, but that was to be expected since both were still in the cockpit. “That’s a possibility, but...”
“We’ll find out when we get there, won’t we,” Jaina cut him off.
Jacen glared at his sister. “I’d still like to have some idea of what’s going on before we get into the middle of things. So far we’re only going on sketchy information.”
“I know - _We_ know, Jacen.” She paused for a moment. “I’m just as nervous as you are about this. But we don’t have any choice now; we’re going to arrive in a few hours.” Jaina gave him a friendly pat on the back. “Try not to worry about it. I’m going to head back to the cockpit and see if Tenel Ka or Lowbacca need to do anything.”
“That will not be necessary,” a voice behind her said. “The navicomputer will give us fair warning before we exit hyperspace.”
The twins turned about to face Tenel Ka, standing as alert as she typically did. She inclined a single eyebrow. “Of course, there is always the danger of pirates, but with the Dozen-and-Two Avengers nearby, I would hope that any would-be attackers might realize discretion is the better part of valour.”
“They wouldn’t even know what hit them,” Jacen jokingly commented. “At least judging by the attitudes of Kyp’s pilots,” he hastily added in response to a slightly confused look from the warrior.
“Ah,” Tenel Ka nodded. “Aha.”
“If they would spend as much time working on their piloting as massaging their egos, they would rival Rogue Squadron,” Jaina added derisively. “Brand-new XJs or not, I really wouldn’t want to fly in a squadron like that.”
“And I thought you looked almost eager when Kyp asked you if you wanted to join his squadron.”
Jaina spun about to face her brother, irritation clearly evident on her face. “Maybe I was, for a moment. You should know that I’ve always wanted to fly in a professional squadron... but the Avengers are really just amateurs with fancy hardware.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Have to admit, they’ve done a pretty good job against pirates for a bunch of amateurs.”
“Hah. Pirates,” she remarked scornfully. “They’re nothing compared to a professional military force.” Her tone changed slightly, gaining a worried edge. “Although that does have me concerned; if you’re right and this isn’t just some third-rate group that’s been causing trouble, then we are going to have serious problems.”

By the time the navicomputer signaled that reversion from hyperspace was imminent, the four Jedi were in their positions and the ship was ready, its deflectors and sensors already powered up and waiting. Jaina had taken over piloting, with Tenel Ka sitting in the copilot’s seat; while she couldn’t easily fly with only one arm, running the navicomputer and various other systems was far from difficult.
“We’re powered up and ready,” Jacen reported from the port laser turret. A Wookiee roar, which needed no translation, echoed him.
“Standby,” Tenel Ka reported, her voice sounding smooth despite the stress that all of them were facing. She waited for the navicomputer to count down...
The _Rock Dragon_ smoothly decelerated, the mottled sky of hyperspace gradually streaking and then turning into a field of points.
“Avengers, report in,” Tenel Ka said over the comm.
“We’re all accounted for,” Kyp’s voice responded. “Nothing’s turned up on passive sensors yet.”
A collective sigh of relief came from the four Jedi aboard the transport. “I’ll run a full-power scan,” Jaina commented, her hands flying across the console. “It should show anything that’s sensor-stealthed.”
After a short period of time, she spoke up again. “I’ve got what looks like a debris cloud, range about ten thousand klicks. No lifesigns anywhere. Transmitting the vector right now.”

As they neared the debris field, the Jedi aboard the _Rock Dragon_ heard a long, drawn-out whistle come across the com. “Looks like this pirate won’t be making any more raids.”
A reply came from Kyp almost immediately. “Those Nebulon-B frigates aren’t exactly easy kills,” he said. “At least for most ships out here on the Rim.”
Jacen stared out the forward viewport, wondering about the dispersed debris field. Whatever was passing through his mind was interrupted by his sister.
Keying the com on, Jaina spoke into it. “Avengers, this is Jaina. I’m going to use the _Rock Dragon_ to try and collect debris to obtain a serial number.” She switched it off, turning to Lowbacca. “Lowie, I need you to use the tractor beam. Drag in anything that looks promising.”
The Wookiee urfed a reply as Jaina got up, giving the controls to her brother. She turned to exit the cockpit. “I’ll be in the main hold. If there’s nothing on whatever you bring in, I’ll dump it back.”
“Got it,” Jacen replied, focusing on the debris through the Force, trying to see if there was anything that drew his attention. A few minutes later, he noticed a small piece that seemed mostly intact, and snagged it with the tractor beam.
“Good catch,” an excited voice echoed from the hold. “It has some numbers on it, but I'm not quite sure what it's from." There was silence for a moment. “Jacen, can you come here and take a look at this?”
Jacen stood up, leaving Tenel Ka and Lowie with the task of flying the ship. Moments later, he reached the hold.
"Take a look at these," Jaina commented, pointing towards a set of deep scratches in the plate. "I could almost swear that these are tooth marks."
He knelt down, inspecting the plate. ‘You’re right,” Jacen eventually agreed. “That’s kind of odd, though. I don’t think there would be any space slugs this far from an asteroid, and they’re about the only organic I can think of that could do this kind of damage.

* * *

The atmosphere was uncomfortably silent aside from the humming of machinery as Cathi and Dellen secured themselves into the cockpit. Finally, Dellen broke the silence. “I think we’re ready to leave. I’m not quite sure, though, since this navicomp is a little different from what I’m used to,” he admitted.
Cathi leaned over and looked at the display. “Yeah, it’s correct,” she affirmed. “Well, then, let’s get out of here.” She checked the status displays one last time to make sure that everything was good. Moments later, the ship jumped to hyperspace.
Far behind them, the shuttle continued its slow spiral toward the source of the gravity.

* * *

“That’s kind of an interesting idea,” Kyp mused. “Whatever it was, it was pretty thorough, I’ll admit.”
“So what’s our next stop going to be?” Jaina asked.
“I think Belkadan should be next,” the reply came. “Our fuel reserves are still good, but we should probably stop at Sernpidal afterwards.”
Jaina agreed. “That sounds good. I’ll program that into the computer.”

* * *

A fairly young human lieutenant entered the bridge of the ISD /Magistrate/, walked up to the Commodore, and snapped off a salute.
“Permission to speak, sir?”
“Granted,” the Commodore replied, still facing the windows. “Sir,” the lieutenant started, “we’ve received a signal from the tracer on the smuggler’s ship.”
“Good.” Mantrel turned around to face the lieutenant. “What is its location?”
“That seems to be the problem,” the lieutenant replied. “The signal traced to a location near an unstable black hole system. There is no record of any base being located there.” He handed the Commodore a datapad.
“Interesting,” Mantrel mused. “Captain Ollic?”
“Yes, Sir?”
The Commodore passed the datapad to Ollic. “Have the /Magistrate/ prepared for hyperspace. I want to be at these coordinates as soon as possible.”
“Yes, Sir.”

Another long delay, yeah, I know. But here's Chapter 11 for your reading pleasure. Not as long as StarCrossed, but there's a couple more chapters already done and waiting for the final revisions.


CHAPTER ELEVEN


A HEAVY silence descended over the conference room on Voyager as former captain Kathryn Janeway entered, escorted by several security personnel. Most of the other senior staff of both the Outbound Flight and Voyager were already assembled and waiting at the conference table.

"Well," Chakotay sighed, looking the information on his PADD over, "seeing that we're all here, I call this meeting to order." He waited for Janeway to take her seat, then continued. "The first topic on the agenda is what course of action we will take when we reach Federation space."

He waited for the room to calm down. "As all of you doubtlessly know, several of our own crew are not from the Federation. Given that two of those crew members are present now, I am interested in hearing your opinions on coming to the Federation."

Neelix was the first to speak. "Sir, as the ship's cook, you might be aware that..." He paused to wet his lips. "Several of the crew have suggested that I take I come to Earth to take cooking courses. I've seriously considered this, and after much thought I have decided that I would like to attend a culinary arts institute in Paris."

Some of the Voyager staff gave knowing smiles, and there was a weak attempt at applause. Chakotay merely nodded. "That takes care of one. Lieutenant-Commander Seven of Nine, what is your feeling on this matter?"

"I am amenable to returning to the Federation," Seven answered. "The Delta Quadrant no longer holds any appeal for me."

"What? No long speech?" someone jokingly commented.

She gave the speaker a cold stare. "That would be unnecessary," Seven replied.

Chakotay, ignoring the side conversation, turned his attention toward the Republic personnel. "So that's settled, then. Now..." He paused to recall the correct title for the Jedi. "Master C'baoth, what are your own plans for when we reach Federation space?"

"As I have stated before, we will open talks with the Federation on behalf of the Galactic Republic. My hope is that those talks will be successful in creating mutual amnesty between the two governments."

"That's all good and well," Chakotay agreed, looking past C'baoth to one of the other Jedi. "But what will you do if you can't get into contact with the Republic?"

The room was silent for several long moments. Then, finally, Master Fernas spoke. "That is a possibility that we have always been prepared for. However, as some of you are no doubt aware, two weeks ago I sent Master Dellen back through the wormhole to contact the Republic. If all goes well, he will be able to bring the information I gave him to the Council and the Senate. Then it is our hope that they are able to mount a resupply mission for us."

C'baoth cast a thoughtful glance at Fernas. "Providing that the instabilities in the Republic have not overwhelmed it in the seventy years we have been absent, of course. You certainly remember the incidents surrounding the Trade Federation and Naboo."

"Naturally." Fernas folded his arms on the conference table. "But what is done is done, and now we may only hope that Master Dellen has reached Coruscant successfully."

After Chakotay had determined that further discussion had ended, he continued, turning to the Doctor. "Now, we need to move on to the next topic: what we will do about our Captain. Doctor, I believe this is your area of expertise."

"Indeed it is," the hologram, who to the Jedi seemed a little too at home in the conference room, replied. "Given the Captain's earlier behavior, I am inclined to keep her in Sickbay for further monitoring, but you did make the point that further confinement may only worsen the situation, and suggested that we merely keep a security detail around her. I have considered this, and it is my conclusion that perhaps we should have one of the Jedi keep watch over her. A lone Jedi should be far less intrusive than a team of security officers."

Chakotay was silent for a while, deep in thought. Finally, he turned toward Master C'baoth. "What do you think of the Doctor's proposal?"

"It would be possible, given that the duration is only a week," C'baoth said. "However, it would be more appropriate for a woman to watch her, which leaves only one person. Master Foornil, what is your response?"

The attention of everyone in the room shifted to the black-haired Corellian, whose appearance seemed more suited to the exotic fashions of an entertainment diva rather than the dull robes of a Jedi. "Better than sitting around another week, I suppose," she nonchalantly commented. "I can do it."

The Doctor looked at Janeway. "And what does the patient think of this?" he asked.

Janeway sighed. "I can live with it," she said, but there was no mistaking the doubt and resentment in her voice. "But I still think this is completely unnecessary."

"If you had not broken out of Sickbay, hijacked the Delta Flyer, and then destroyed it in the asteroid field, we might have gone a bit easier on you," Chakotay said in as calm a tone as he could manage. Paris was still angry with Janeway for destroying the Flyer, and Chakotay didn't blame him. "However, given your actions, we have no choice according to Starfleet regulations."

"That I understand," she replied. "What I am questioning was the original decision that you and the rest of the command crew came to when I ordered that we break contact with the Republic diplomats. My decision was well-grounded, and as far as I am concerned, sound."

Chakotay held up his hand. "We discussed this in private before, Janeway. I would prefer not to have a repeat of that discussion. The fact is that, thanks to the assistance of the Republic ship and its crew, we have only a week left before we reach Federation space. If we had followed your orders unquestioningly, it would still take us over fifty years to return."

"That's beside the point and you know it, Chakotay. Our engineers fitted a warp drive system to one of the Republic shuttles, which is a clear contradiction of the Prime Directive. Not all of your decisions are sound."

He sighed. "Janeway, you may have noticed that the technology level of the Republic is far in excess of our own technology, at least where drive systems are concerned. After looking through the historical databanks aboard the Bulk Cruiser, we found that a form of warp drive was used in the Republic several thousands of years ago, before the invention of their hyperdrive. Therefore, we were not violating the Prime Directive by repairing a shuttle."

After a long pause, C'baoth spoke. "Captain Janeway," he addressed her by her formal title, "I understand your concerns about us. However, your laws bind you as our laws bind us. My crew had nothing to do with the decision of your command staff, and we cannot change their minds. Please accept their decision."

"Very well," Janeway said after a long period of silence. "I accept the consequences of my actions."

Chakotay nodded. "Then this meeting is adjourned."



Several hours after the meeting, Captain Avin found himself wandering toward the turbolift, the recent issues pressing in his mind. "Level 17, Computer Operations," he instructed the turbolift in a rather uninterested tone.

Moments later, the door slid open into the computer operations center. Dozens of droids of various sorts were moving about the room, while a couple of technicians sat at consoles working on various projects... or playing games, Avin decided after watching one of them for a few seconds. He walked across the room, avoiding the whirring and whizzing droids, and entered a low hallway slung with data cables of various sizes and lengths. Finally, he came to a metal door with a rather prominent "DO NOT DISTURB" sign affixed to the outside of it. Ignoring the sign, he knocked.

"Go away," a muffled voice within said.

"This is Captain Avin," Avin addressed the person inside, "and you'd better open that door unless you want a courtmartial effective now."

The door immediately slid open, and Avin stepped into a rather badly lit room-or, as he ducked some more cables, perhaps closet would fit it better. The air smelled of burned circuits, and a thin haze of smoke seemed to cover the place. Packs of datachips were scattered around the room, along with various other bits of equipment that Avin could only guess as to the origins of.

"Sorry, Sir." Moments later, a black-haired head emerged from behind an equipment rack. "I thought it was one of the junior techs. They've been bugging me all day." The person, a rather short and light-skinned human, stepped out and brushed his hands off. "What brings you here?" he asked informally.

"Just business," Avin ambiguously answered. "By the way, Lieutenant Reco, what is that smell?"

"Oh, that." Ph'ngu Reco tried to laugh, but only wound up coughing. "One of the droids blew its motivator. Running for around sixty years without any maintenance did wonders for its circuitry. Anyway, I've ordered the rest of those droids to be checked."

"Good call," the Captain agreed. "You ought to get some better atmosphere circulation in here, though."

"It doesn't bother me too much, Sir," Ph'ngu replied with another cough as he stuck a fan in the doorway and turned it on. "I might as well save the air recirculators for the more populated parts of the ship."

"I see." Avin looked down at his feet, which had accidentally become tangled in a coil of wires. He shook the wires off and stepped into a clearer area. "And you might want to see about tidying this place up, too."

"Yes, Sir. But I don't believe that tidyness is what you came here to talk about."

"No, it's just something I noticed," Avin replied in a less-than-happy tone. "There are no taps here, right?"

"As far as I can tell, no," Ph'ngu replied. "Why do you ask?"

The Captain walked back to the door, moved the fan inside, and closed the door. Turning back to the tech, he spoke. "I want you to slice Voyager's main computer. I'm only interested in information on their former captain. And do nothing that might alert the attention of their officers."

"I can probably do that," the slicer answered in a tone that suggested that cracking alien computer systems was something he did every day. "How soon do you want the information?"

"As soon as possible," Avin responded. "We drop out of hyperspace about a week from now, so you'll have to at least finish it by then."

Ph'ngu nodded. "That should be possible, but don't take my word for it. I've got a bunch of other jobs to finish first. For sure, I'll have it by the deadline."

The Captain turned around to exit. "I appreciate your efforts. And for the record, we never had this conversation."

The slicer smiled wanly. "I'm used to not having conversations. Don't worry about me."


* * *

Leading the taskforce was a spacecraft that had perhaps started off life as a Rendili bulk freighter, although it showed little resemblance to its roots now. Warship-grade armor plating had been welded on in many critical places, lending the hull a patchy appearance. A large hangar bay had been built into the ventral hull where the cargo retainers had once been, and extra turbolaser cannons dotted the hull at seemingly random intervals.

Most of the other ships in the group looked no better; if anything, many of them looked worse. Four appeared to have once been corvettes or perhaps gunships of Corellian origin, although of hopelessly outmoded design. They, too, had been extensively modified with almost current galactic technology, armor and weapons. Rounding out the taskforce were ships no larger than a typical medium freighter, ships that may have been mistaken as belonging to smugglers were it not for the strange insiginia appearing on all of the ships.

In stark contrast to this motley group, the force that they were approaching was much cleaner and newer. In a tight formation around a comet, it consisted of a recent-manufacture Rendili Star Dreadnaught, a couple Loronar frigates and eleven corvettes, all anodized the same matte gray. The anodization was reminiscent of the recently vanished Dark Force, and it was entirely possible that the Dreadnaught at the core was from that ill-fated fleet.

The first force, while ragged in appearance, was anything but ragged when it came to coordination and thus drew inexorably nearer to the second force. Whether this was the comet or the other taskforce remained unknown... for the time being.

Once the attackers had closed to a range that could be measured in the hundreds of thousands of kilometers, they suddenly did something that at least seemed unexpected by the other force: they jumped to hyperspace. Mere microseconds later, chaos broke out in the formerly composed black taskforce, as the bulk freighter and its escorts re-emerged from hyperspace around the comet and inside the other force's formation at point blank range, guns blazing and starfighters launching. Not all of the attackers were lucky or coordinated enough to escape damage, however; one Loronar was surrounded in a blossoming fireball as a medium freighter came out of hyperspace on top of it. With its bridge and upper hull plating shorn off by the violent collision, the frigate somewhat ponderously went into a collision course with the comet's nucleus.

By now the battle was in full swing. With only a token starfighter defense, the defenders found themselves hard-pressed to ward off the strange attackers. Although they managed to destroy several of their adversaries, it soon became apparent which side the battle was tipping in favor of. Finally, with the hull of his command ship breached and the rest of his force devestated, the commander surrendered.

This surrender came as a surprise to many in the attacking group, but there was one person who was never surprised by anything. This person was now standing on the bridge of the Dreadnaught, having boarded it a few minutes before with many escorts.

This person was known in his native tongue as Syndic Mitth'raw'nurodo.

Mantrel followed Thrawn down a corridor, accompanied by a squad of charric-wielding troops. They eventually reached the bridge of the Dreadnaught, which had already been secured by the Chiss soldiers. In a show of courtesy, Thrawn inclined his head slightly toward the defeated commander. "Your crews put up a worthy fight, and I commend you on that," Thrawn said in almost imperceptibly accented Basic. "As my name is very difficult to pronounce in your language, you may know me simply as Thrawn."

The other commander blinked, his face clearly displaying shock. Eventually he gathered enough nerve to speak. "And I am Kinman Doriana of the Galactic Republic."

Thrawn immediately got down to business, as Mantrel was used to him doing. "In that case, what brings a commander of the Republic Navy so far away from Coruscant?"

Doriana nervously licked his lips as he prepared to speak. Mantrel, inexperienced as he was, could tell when somebody was relying on their last gambit. "We have been tracking several wanted fugitives of the Republic," the commander went on to say, "and with some advance knowledge we had set up an ambush at this location."

"Thus explaining the comet," Thrawn concluded. "Although it seems to have backfired on you."

The Republic commander gritted his teeth. "Indeed it did. Our quarry is still two weeks away from here. If you are planning on giving them refuge in your territory, I'm afraid that you've succeeded."

"Far from it," Thrawn replied, noticing the commander's eyes widen slightly. "We are part of the Chiss Expansionary Defense Force, and are tasked with destroying any unauthorized intruders into our space, no matter where their allegiances lay."

Hope began to dawn on Doriana's face. "Then you will also destroy these fugitives?"

"Since you were so kind as to mention it, that will likely be our next priority," Thrawn answered. "Tell me more about these fugitives."

"They are wanted by the Republic for various war crimes, and are highly dangerous. They commandeered a recent model Bulk Cruiser from the Sluis Van shipyards, and the ship has a fair amount of weaponry so it would be advisable to be wary. They are also highly unpredictable."

"Thank you," Thrawn said, his face remaining unreadable. In a cool and professional tone, he continued: "Do you have any last requests?"

Doriana's hope suddenly turned into panic. "I must verify that these fugitives are destroyed and report back to the Supreme Chancellor..." he said in a rush.

Thrawn smiled wanly. "I'm afraid that won't be possible." He then spun about and began to walk away from Doriana, who stood, eyes flickering wildly as he attempted to find something to save himself.

"Wait!" Doriana exclaimed in desperation. "You're missing something. I'm the Supreme Chancellor's aide. I can get you anything you want in the Republic. Ships, men, a position in the Navy... anything you want."

The Chiss commander stopped and turned to regard Doriana. "Ah," he said. "An interesting offer. However, if I let you go, how do I know you will keep your side of the bargain?"

Doriana stuttered something, but Thrawn cut him off. "If it humours you, I have no objection to allowing you to watch the demise of the fugitives." He motioned to several of the troops, who then proceeded to bind the former commander and take him away.



Mantrel was shaken from his recollection by a door chime. He already knew who it was, and activated the door switch.

"Commodore," Captain Ollic began, "we have arrived..."

"Yes, Captain," Mantrel replied somewhat impatiently. "I am aware of it. Our smuggler friend has already left the system."

Ollic hesitated, slightly uncertain. "What will we do next?"

To answer the Captain's question, Mantrel tapped the comm on his desk. "Lieutenant Opgard, have an active sensor sweep run on the system. Leave nothing unreported."

"Yes, Sir," the brisk reply came.

Meanwhile, the Commodore came to his feet and strode over to Ollic. "Are you aware of the significance of this system?" he inquired.

"No, Commodore," Ollic replied. "There was no mention of it in any Imperial databases."

"No mention in any public Imperial databases, perhaps," Mantrel said, "but there is an entry in the database on Nirauan."

Ollic looked up, slight surprise on his face. "Nirauan? The location of the Hand of Thrawn?"

Mantrel responded with a nod. "Indeed. But that is unimportant at the moment. What is significant about this system is that this marks the location where Thrawn ambushed the Outbound Flight Project." He paused. "I was there. The sensor sweep should turn up, at most, some battle debris but nothing more. Thrawn recovered several of the hulks for salvage and vaporized the rest." The Chiss turned around and walked back to his desk, activating a holographic display of the system. "As a result, I find it rather interesting that the smuggler ended up here. There are no planets of note, no large asteroids that you could build a base on."

Captain Ollic scratched his chin thoughtfully. "Perhaps she was looking for the battle debris?" he asked.

"Doubtful, but nonetheless possible," Mantrel replied. "Only the Supreme Chancellor and Thrawn's force knew about what happened in this system, and neither Thrawn nor Palpatine were known to have loose lips." Turning, he sat back down at his desk and awaited the scan results...



"Lieutenant Mantrel," Thrawn commanded in his native tongue, "concentrate all fire on the bulk cruiser's engines."

"Yes, Sir," the young (in Chiss terms) lieutenant acknowledged, relaying the order to the soldiers who had replaced the human crew. The Dreadnaught and the remaining ships of the Chiss taskforce re-orinted themselves so as to present the most guns to the weak Bulk Cruiser. Under the suddenly refocused bombardment, the aft shields quickly fell, and the turbolasers began ripping into the hull. There was a slight explosion, a mere gout of plasma really; then the ship seemed to elongate in a flicker of pseudomotion as it vanished into hyperspace.

Doriana, bound and standing off to one side of the bridge, sighed audibly. "I warned you that they were not fools."

"And what did you expect me to do?" Thrawn snapped. "Move the comet's mass shadow to a more... convenient location?" He turned to Mantrel again. "Run a trace on their vector immediately."

"The computer reports that they were on a collision course with the singularity," the Lieutenant replied after a silent moment. "Scanning the area surrounding the black hole right now."



Commodore Mantrel leaned back in his chair aboard the Imperator-class Star Destroyer and sighed. The scan of the black hole, so many years ago, had only turned up some heavily ionized hull plating, which they had recovered and scanned. The plating had come from their quarry, which satisfied Doriana. Then Thrawn had ordered the Republic commander to be executed. From what he recalled, only a single hypercomm message made it back to Coruscant, and that had been a panicked message from Doriana to the Supreme Chancellor.

So what then, he pondered as the holodisplay flickered on to show a Cygnus Spaceworks shuttle from the Clone Wars era, could this mean? He was well aware of the strange phenomena that surrounded black holes, but what seemed to be a shuttle from the seemingly destroyed Outbound Flight...

"We are now in tractor beam range, Sir," a Lieutenant informed him over the comlink.

"Excellent," he responded as he came to his feet. "Captain, come with me to the hangar bay."

edit: double-post? WTF?

You know, you guys ought to prod me about putting out new chapters of this. I had Chapter 12 finished but forgot to post it all this time...


CHAPTER TWELVE


JAINA NEARLY put her fist through the comm panel, but thought better of it. "It's the third time," she complained, "and I still haven't heard anything from ExGal 4."

"What about the scan?" Jacen asked from the rear of the cockpit.

"One humanoid lifesign, and not much of anything else." Jaina turned around in her chair, frustration obvious on her face. "So, what do we do now?"

As he put his boots up on a side console and leaned back, Jacen shrugged. "Knock harder?"

"I guess that could work." Jaina spun back around, immediately reaching for the controls. Then, as if something had stung her, she pulled back. "Hang on. Is the atmosphere even breathable?"

The cockpit was silent, save for the hum of computers, for a long moment. "Yes," Tenel Ka eventually said. "Marginally. There's a lot of carbon dioxide, methane, and sulfur dioxide floating around. There are also intense storms raging across the planet, although none are near the station so far. The situation seems to be calming down, however, and according to the computer the atmosphere should be back at normal levels in another month or so."

"So you're saying that it smells like a cesspool. Wonderful."

She looked at Jacen with an incredulous expression. "What are you talking about?"

"Nevermind. Just page Kyp and tell him that we're going in. He'll probably want to come as well."

Jaina checked some settings on the panel. "Sounds good to me," she said as she reached overhead and turned on the comm. "Rock Dragon to Avenger Leader. Kyp, there hasn't been any response, so we're going to land and take a look. What are your plans?"

The comm was silent for a moment as Kyp talked to his squadron mates. "I'll come with you. Miko and the rest of the squadron will stay in orbit and keep us informed of anything."

"Will do," she acknowledged, switching the comm to standby and grabbing the yoke. The Hapan transport responded immediately, diving into into Belkadan's atmosphere at a shallow attitude. Less than a minute later, they were skimming over the treetops-or rather, what was left of them.

There was a slight stir as Jacen stood up in the back of the cockpit and walked forward so as to get a better view. "Blaster bolts!" he exclaimed as soon as he saw the jungle. "I knew the 3GS data was out of date, but I had no idea it was this bad..."

"There's ExGal 4," Tenel Ka stated, her arm pointing to a rapidly growing speck on the horizon. "We'll worry about the jungle after we land. Lowie, anything on the short-range scanners yet?"

By the time the Wookiee barked a negative and waited for Em Tedee to translate it, the Rock Dragon was already circling over the science station as Jaina attempted to find a suitable landing zone. The search didn't take very long, and soon thereafter both ships had touched down on what passed for a landing pad.

As the landing ramp unfolded, Jacen was the first one down, holding his lightsaber in one hand just in case there was any wildlife looking for a quick snack. However, it wasn't wildlife that assaulted him. It was the smell.

"Phew. It's like rotten vegetables," Jaina remarked for him as she came right behind him on the ramp.

"No kidding." He stepped onto the stresscrete pad, looking down when he heard his boots crunching on something. The ground was covered evenly with small, rounded, two-centimeter brown objects that looked, for all extents and purposes, dead. He picked one up and turned it over in his gloved hands. "Hey, take a look..."

Jacen was interrupted by a loud bellow from Lowie, which was promptly followed up by a remark from Em Tedee. "A pity that you can't shut off your olfactory sensors."

The Wookiee snorted and chuffed something in response.

"What? No, you wouldn't do that. Would you?"

Lowie grabbed the small translator with a meaty paw and held it up to his face, then bared his fangs in a slight grin.

"I see your point," Em Tedee said in a rather humiliated tone. "Can you put me back now?"

The Wookiee did so, then strode across the pad to where Kyp was lowering his R6 astromech. The other Jedi were already gathered there and talking.

"I wonder what happened to this jungle," Jacen was saying. "I mean, we've got these dead beetles strewn all over the place, and everything else seems pretty dead to me."

"The person inside ExGal 4 might be able to answer that," Kyp said, turning as Lowie approached. "Good, we're all here. Lowie, would you mind taking R6 here back to your transport and staying there to alert us in case Miko finds something?"

Lowie bellowed a 'yes,' then walked back to the ship with R6 in tow as the other Jedi went for the nearest entrance to ExGal 4.

"Well, this would explain why they couldn't hear us," Jaina observed as they stopped in front of a fallen communications tower. "Completely sm... wait, there's someone trapped under it! Help me get it off."

Several lightsaber strokes later, they rolled the top of the tower off the body, which was wearing a badly torn envirosuit. Jacen gingerly reached down and pulled the hood off the body, revealing a crushed skull that was covered in more of the dead beetles.

"I wonder how long he's been there for," Jacen said, grimacing. "And whoever's inside didn't even come out and check... some teamwork."

"Maybe he couldn't get the tower off," Tenel Ka remarked, fingering her rancor-tooth lightsaber. "Or else whatever hit this planet made him stay inside."

By now the group had reached the door, and Kyp pressed the control panel to no avail. "Security lockout," he remarked, distaste obvious on his face.

Then the heavy door slid open. Standing behind it was a black-haired human male, who looked to be in his middle 30s.

"Welcome to ExGal 4," the man said in passable Basic. "I take it you're the rescue party? We've been expecting you for over a month."

Confusion momentarily flashed across Kyp's face, although he quickly recovered. "Yes, we were sent by the Extragalactic Society when they received your distress call. It seems we came too late, however."

"Too late for Tomri or the rest of the station crew, perhaps," the man said as he gestured to the body lying next to the tower. "But I am still alive."

'He didn't even seem to care about Tomri,' Jacen thought.

"True," Kyp said, extending his hand. "But I don't believe we've been introduced yet. I'm Kyp Durron, and these are my assistants."

"Yomin Carr," the man said as he somewhat hesitantly took Kyp's outstreched hand. "A pleasure to meet you."

Kyp immediately took charge of the situation. "Can you show us around the facility so we can assess the damage?"

"Certainly," Yomin Carr replied. "Follow me." He began walking down the hallway, stopping at the first door he came to and unlocking it. "This is, or was, our hydroponics facility," he said as they stepped inside. "After the storm, one of the trees overhanging the facility fell over and smashed the upper windows. Fortunately none of the plants were attacked by those beetles."

Jacen looked around the room, which was, just as Carr had said, now open to the sky. The plants scattered around the hydroponics room were all relatively standard food-producing plants, and he didn't notice anything really abnormal about them... "The beetles, can you tell me anything about them?"

Yomin Carr shook his head. "Not much. It's possible that they mutated on this planet and then spread, doing enough damage to the environment to produce the storm that damaged this facility."

"Do you have any genetic testing equipment here?"

"No." Carr frowned. "This is an astronomical station, remember? All the scientific equipment we had was for charting extragalactic objects."

Kyp laughed. "Don't worry about Jacen too much. He's our biologist, and isn't very much into technology."

"I see," Carr replied as he noticed that Jaina was entering some information into her datapad. "As soon as you've finished the damage assessment for this room, shall we move on?"

"Sure," Jaina said, flipping the datapad shut and sliding it back into a pocket on her flight suit. "What's the next damaged room?"

"The observation lounge," Carr replied as he stepped back into the hallway and continued walking.

Meanwhile, in the Rock Dragon, Lowbacca paced back and forth in the cargo bay. He stopped to pick up the scratched piece of durasteel, and looked over it thoughtfully before setting it back down. It had already been fifteen minutes since the rest had left...

Lowie finally made up his mind. Attaching a comlink extender to the Rock Dragon's comm panel, so he'd know if Miko tried to contact him, he stuck a comlink on his belt, gestured to Kyp's R6 to follow him, and headed down the ramp.

"Are you sure this is a wise decision?" Em Tedee warbled from his belt. Lowbacca ignored the miniature translator for the time being, going so far as to slap his paw over its grille as he approached the door. He then tried the door panel, but to no avail, and growled something.

"Lowbacca requests that you override the door's security code," Em Tedee told the R6 in a muted tone. The barrel-headed astromech trundled up, extended its data port, and plugged into the control panel. A tense moment later the door slid open.

The Wookiee grunted an inquiry under its breath, which Em Tedee then translated. A quiet reply promptly came from the R6.

"R6 says that the computer center is approximately thirty meters into the base. The other group is about fifty meters away from the computer center."

Lowie bared his fangs slightly in a feral smile and quickly strode into ExGal 4, R6 in close pursuit.

"What can you tell us about the storm?" Tenel Ka asked Yomin Carr as they left the wrecked observation lounge.

Carr shook his head. "As much as I told... ah... Jacen about the beetles. The storm started a little over a month ago on the far side of the planet. It spread rapidly, and several days after it started, several of the other scientists left in the base's airspeeder to check on its progress. When they returned, we hastily began preparing the base for the storm, but we were not fast enough. As the rest of the team took our shuttle into orbit to map out the global damage from the storm, the main comm tower was damaged. Bensin Tomri, who stayed behind with me, decided to climb up and fix it. I warned him against it, but he ignored me. The tower collapsed and I was unable to free him."

"And the shuttle?" Jaina interjected.

The scientist glared at her. "I was getting to that. I think the shuttle was damaged by the storm when it took off, because when they came back down it went out of control and burned up in the atmosphere. None of them made it as far as I could tell."

"So you basically holed up and waited for help to arrive."

"Yes," Carr replied, stopping in front of another door and unlocking it. "Now this was the communications room," he stated as they stepped inside. "All the equipment has serious acid damage, and will need to be replaced."

"Acid damage?" Jacen frowned, then sighed in realization. "Sulfur mixed with the water in the atmosphere. Of course."

"Correct," Carr replied. "But the equipment was rather old. I hope that the Extragalactic Society can bring some newer equipment."

"We'll mention it when we return," Kyp replied. "But they are on a short budget."

As Carr closed up the comm room, he continued talking. "The astronomical facilities were damaged the worst of all. The main optical telescope was completely ruined, along with the hyperspacial sensor array..."



Lowbacca warily scanned the room as R6 whirred away at the computer terminal, downloading as many of the base's records as possible. The droid paused momentarily, and an audio recording began to play.

"It's the fourth day of the storm," a woman's voice began, "and there's no sign of letting up. When we checked on the storm's progress earlier today, we got caught in it and Tee-Ubo was wounded. She sacrificed herself by giving us her oxygen pack so that we could get back to base." The woman on the recording took a breath, and Lowbacca could tell that she was in pain. "However, the sensor contact has already entered the Helska system and is approaching the fourth planet, decelerating all the time. Despite the storm, in a few minutes we're going to leave in the old shuttle and investigate. Bensin and Yomin are staying behind to watch the base, and I hope they survive the storm. Danni Quee out."

The Wookiee pondered the message as R6 continued downloading. By the time the droid finished, he had made up his mind, and left in the direction that R6 told him the rest of the Jedi were.



Yomin Carr stopped in his tracks as he saw Lowbacca and R6 approaching. "I was not informed that you had androids with you," he calmly stated.

The Jedi turned to see Lowie, who bellowed something.

"Wait a second. Why are droids a problem?" Kyp looked back at Yomin Carr.

"It was an agreement with the Extragalactic Society that this base would not have any droids, as they are an offense to my religion. So I would recommend that you immediately remove your droid from the premises."

Kyp rolled his eyes, but decided that a confrontation was not worth it. "Lowie, take R6 back to the ship, will you?"

The Wookiee barked an objection, but Kyp put up his hand. "You can tell us later. Just go."

"Thank you," Carr curtly stated as soon as Lowbacca and the droids had left.

"You're welcome," Kyp replied, not meaning it at all. "Is there any other damage that we need to know about?"

Yomin Carr shook his head. "There's minor damage all through the base, of course, but that's to be expected."

"Well, then, I guess we're done here." Kyp looked straight at Carr. "Should we take you back to ExGal headquarters or do you want to take your chances and stay here until aid arrives?"

"I will stay here. There is still some data that can be gathered, despite most of the main instruments being down. Thank you for the offer, but it is unnecessary."

"In that case, we'll be on our way."



Yomin Carr allowed himself a slight smile as he watched the group return to their ships and leave. He wasn't entirely happy about the fact that they brought a droid into the station-he hadn't made up the part about droids being against his religion, but that was not what worried him. He thought he had disconnected the station's main computer, but astromechs were repair droids and known to be good at slicing.

Carr sealed the door again and walked back to his quarters, lost deep in thought. These people seemed to accept everything that he had fed them, but he still found something a little unsettling about them. Perhaps they were the Jedi that Nom Anor had warned him about?

With that thought, he reached his quarters and slid the metal door open. As soon as he'd shut the door again, he began to undress, pulling off the suffocating artificial fabric uniform that had been issued to all the ExGal scientists. He balled the uniform up and, sneering, roughly tossed it into the room's closet. Then he reached up and pressed an area to the side of his nose. For a moment, nothing happened; then there was a slight, moist, ripping sound, and his "skin" began to peel along his spine. It continued to peel off, tiny hooks unbinding themselves from his pores in a wave of excruciating pain that ran from head to toe.

He savored the pain, drank it in as if it were alchohol. Now the creature-it couldn't have been anything else-was halfway off. It continued to peel off him, now revealing his true face. Finally finished, the ooglith masquer undulated along the floor until it found its typical resting place.

Yomin Carr straightened and looked at himself in the room's mirror. Scars ran along his body, long since healed, evidence of the tortures that he had put himself through while on the Praetorite Vong worldship.

He tore his mind off his appearance, and put on a utilitarian loincloth before reaching into the closet and withdrawing a roughly head-sized pulsating creature, a villip. Setting it on his bed, Carr stroked the ridge on the front of the villip. A seam appeared in the center of the villip, which continued to invert itself until it was almost a perfect ball again. The oblong ball of the villip then took on the shape of a well-scarred face.

"Executor," Carr addressed the person who possessed the villip's twin.

"What do you have to report, Attendant?"

"A small group of humans, as well as a large alien-I believe it's called a Wookiee-visited the station today. They said they were an inspection team from the Extragalactic Society."

Nom Anor's eyes, or more correctly, the villip's rendition of his eyes, narrowed. "How many people?"

"I counted five, Executor."

Anor drew in a sharp breath. "Four humans and a Wookiee? What were the appearances of the humans? Was one a red-haired woman with only one arm?"

"Yes," Carr replied, unsure of what the Executor was thinking.

"Then we must speed up our plans dramatically. Those were Jedi, attendant."

"Jeedai?" the Praetorite Vong infiltrator inquired, slightly slurring the word. "They did not seem suspicious..."

"Jedi can mask their feelings quite well; I have dealt with them before. Are they still on the planet?"

"No, Executor. They left the landing pad several minutes ago."

"Be watchful, attendant. They may return at any time. I will contact Prefect Da'Gara and inform him of this news. He may send a coralskipper to retrieve you, or he may not."

"Understood," Carr replied before closing the villip.



"Did anyone else find anything strange about that guy?" Jacen asked as he took a seat at the rear of the cockpit. "It was... I don't know how to put it... like trying to probe a Hutt but worse."

Tenel Ka nodded. "Almost like he didn't exist as far as the Force was concerned."

"Almost," Jacen agreed. "But that gets me wondering, if the Force is in everything as Uncle Luke has said, then how can a person not exist in the Force?"

Jaina rolled her eyes. "We've discussed that before, well, sort of. How can a ysalamir live if it pushes the Force back?"

He shrugged. "Got me there."

A Wookiee roar from the rear of the ship broke through any semblance of discussion. Sighing, Jacen came to his feet and walked into the hold. "What's the matter?" he asked.

Lowbacca arfed softly, gesturing at the screen of the ship's computer, which was displaying some techincal data.

"Kriff," Jacen muttered to himself as he broke out in a run back to the cockpit. "Turn around," he insisted to the surprise of his sister and Tenel Ka. "We need to go back. Now."

"Why?" the two pilots asked almost in unison.

"Because Yomin Carr lied to us."

"What?"

Jacen paused to brace himself against the doorway. "The base's shuttle didn't burn up in Belkadan's atmosphere," he explained. "Logs showed a signal from sector L-30, about eighteen parsecs Rimward. Most of the personnel left in a shuttle to investigate that, not the storm. So as far as we know they're still alive."

Tenel Ka reached for the comm, leaving Jaina to do the flying. "Avenger Leader, this is Tenel Ka on the Rock Dragon. We just receieved some new data from Lowbacca concerning ExGal 4."

"-copy," Kyp acknowledged, partially cut off by a burst of static. "R6 already told me. We'll discuss it with the rest of the squadron."



Predictably, the Avengers couldn't form a solid conclusion. Miko and about half of the squadron wanted to investigate. The rest, excluding Kyp (who had decided to wait before he took a side) were in favor of staying.

"Jacen," his sister began, "if you think they might still be alive, we should go to Helska immediately. Not back down there."

"But it could also be a front. We know he's alive, and we can still get information from him."

Tenel Ka nodded her approval. "And what does Lowbacca have to say?"

An excited Wookiee bellow answered the question; there was no mistaking whose side Lowbacca was on. Jacen merely smiled, to his sister's discomfort.

"Squadron's split fifty-fifty," Kyp reported over the comm. "How about you guys?"

They told him.

"Then it's settled," he remarked. "Good point, Jacen; we don't need to waste time chasing wild Gundarks."

With that conclusion the two ships, transport and starfighter, plowed back through the atmosphere at a much faster rate. This time the Jedi wasted no time on pleasantries, leaving Tenel Ka to watch the ships as they charged for the front door.

"Fused shut this time," Jacen remarked as he drew his lightsaber. He quickly sliced through the sealed door, only to find the corridor beyond crushed in rubble. "Kriff."

"Master Lowbacca suggests that we find a back door," Em Tedee translated from his position on the Wookiee's utility belt.

"What a novel idea," Jacen dryly remarked as he shut down his lightsaber and clipped it back on his belt, running to catch up with the rest of the group. They were almost halfway around the station by the time he did.

The sight that greeted the group as they neared the back door was, to put it mildly, gruesome. An astromech droid leaned against the back wall, its dome crudely removed and a human skull-Jacen recognized it fleetingly as Tomri's, whose body they hadn't bothered to check-in the dome's place.

"My goodness," a tinny voice erupted after it could see the destroyed astromech.

"What kind of maniac does that?" Jaina inquired, thoroughly revolted.

"Same kind of maniac that I suspect we'll find inside," Kyp answered. "So much for his claims of the ExGal society agreeing to not have droids in the station."

This time Jaina stepped up to the door and tried the controls. "Locked as well."

Lowbacca arfed something, which Em Tedee reluctantly translated. "Master Lowbacca suggests interfacing me to the door controls."

"Alright, then, get up here."

Em Tedee floated off Lowbacca's belt on his repulsorlift cushion. "I must protest being used in this manner," the small droid complained despite knowing the uselessness of the complaint as Jaina hooked him up. Moments later the door slid open.

"Sithspit!" Jaina exclaimed as she involuntarily took a step away from the door. In her startled state, she forgot about the stairs leading to the door and lost her balance, landing in Kyp's arms.

Standing just beyond the door frame was a roughly humanoid creature, almost exactly two meters tall-'the same height as Yomin Carr', Jacen thought. In the alien's hand was a snakelike staff, and tatoos covered its body from head to toe. Upon seeing Jaina's discomfiture, it gave what might have been the equivalent of a snort, alhtough Jacen wondered how that was possible given the lack of a normal nose on the alien.

"I did not know that you jeedai were so characteristically clumsy," the alien remarked in Yomin Carr's voice. Then it leapt into action, snakelike staff stiffening and swinging as if it were a lightsaber.

Four humming lightsabers, each a different color, greeted the hissing staff. Jacen, now the nearest to Yomin Carr, swung his saber into the path of the hissing serpent-and was surprised when the living creature deflected his saber as if it were another lightsaber.

"What the..." was all he had time to say before he ducked into a roll, and the creature's staff bit into the wall behind where he had been standing. Now he was inside ExGal 4, but so was Carr. There was an electronic screech, and the wires that connected Em Tedee were broken by the staff while Jacen was distracted; the droid went flying back into the clearing before it could regain control with its repulsors.

The door slammed shut, leaving Jacen standing opposite Yomin Carr. As the tip of a lightsaber poked through one corner of the blast door, Carr sprung into action again, hammering at Jacen with a flurry of blows that put the Jedi firmly on the defensive. The Jedi found himself hard pressed to keep up, feeling rather disoriented around the alien, and after perhaps two minutes had passed his guard faltered; he felt something strike his left heel, and he fell backwards.

Before he could react, Carr was standing over him, armored foot standing on his lightsaber arm, strange staff pointing at his throat. "Too easy," the alien gloated, and drew his staff back for a killing blow--

Which was stopped by a glowing bronze blade. Lowbacca bared his fangs at the alien warrior before applying more force to his blade, driving Carra back. Jaina ran over to help her brother while Kyp joined in the attack with Lowie.

"Are you all right?" she asked, helping Jacen to his feet.

He winced as a starburst of pain seemed to spread from his heel. Whatever the staff was had torn through his thick boot as if it didn't exist. "I think it might have been poisoned."

"Then get back to the ship," she warned him.

"I'll try." He leaned back against a wall, trying to recover enough strength in that leg to limp back to the ship while Jaina charged into battle. As the battle raged on, Jacen focused on halting the flow of the poison before it did any more damage. He already couldn't feel anything below his knee, and as he shifted weight in preparation to walk out the door, his ankle folded and he collapsed with a groan. So much for that idea, he thought as he started crawling.

Now outnumbered, it was only a matter of minutes before the three Jedi brought Yomin Carr down. Bring him down they did; he croaked and fell as a lightsaber punched through his shoulder armor.

"Who are you really?" Kyp demanded, his lightsaber pointed at the alien's face.

Yomin Carr managed to contort his broken and bleeding face into something that resembled a grin. "The beginning of your end," he managed as his hand twitched imperceptibly toward the staff, which was lying only a few centimeters away. The staff instantly responded, softening and becoming more snake-like. Its head coiled upward, and before Jaina or any of the other Jedi could react, it spat a blob of venom toward her face. She started to dodge to the side, but with no warning from the Force her reaction time wasn't fast enough.

The venom splashed across her right eye and cheek, burning like acid. She instantly recoiled, using a gloved hand to wipe most of the venom off her face.

Before it could cause any more damage, Lowbacca rapidly stepped over and in one smooth swing beheaded the now soft staff. At the same time, Kyp moved his lightsaber closer to Carr's exposed face.

"You will tell us who you employed you," he said in a very serious tone, "now."

Yomin Carr managed to choke out a laugh. "I know enough to tell you that your vaunted Jeedai powers are useless against me."

Kyp didn't flinch. "Tell us."

The alien said no more. Sighing, Kyp turned to Lowbacca. "Lowie, bind him while I make sure he doesn't try anything. We'll have to bring him with us."

As the Wookiee reached for the binders that hung on his belt, Kyp spotted Carr's other arm moving toward a bandolier on his chest. He swung the lightsaber to intercept it, cutting off the hand. The arm thumped down on top of the bandolier weakly as dark blood spurted out.

Kyp's eyes widened. "Stand back!" he warned as he took a leap backwards. Moments later, the bandolier exploded like a weak thermal detonator, scattering Yomin Carr's remains all over the room. Kyp wiped some dark blood off his face. "So much for interrogation," he sighed.

"Was that the same person who gave us the tour?" Jaina asked in a tone that suggested she'd seen better days. Already she had torn off part of her jumpsuit and used it to wipe the venom off her face.

"Apparently so," Kyp replied as he turned toward her. He noticed that her right eye was tearing; a stream of clear fluid escaped and trickled down Jaina's cheek. "How badly did it hurt you?"

She shrugged. "It burned pretty bad, and I'm having some trouble seeing out of one eye."

Kyp nodded. "All right, let's get back to our ships and patch you guys up. Then we can tear this station apart to see what really happened."

And without further ado, here's...

CHAPTER THIRTEEN


"THAT WAS Coruscant space control," Cathi explained as she pulled off her headset and turned to Dellen. "We can land, but nowhere near Republic Center, and they're going to send out a team of customs inspectors because of this ship's profile."

Master Dellen sighed. He'd accidentally discovered the small amount of ryll spice that had been left aboard the freighter by the Imperials; it was enough for Cathi to survive for a time and maybe upgrade her ship, but it could also just as easily land her in a prison. "I'll see what I can do about them," he explained. Normally Jedi would not help smugglers, but in this case he was indebted to her for rescuing him; besides, she didn't even have enough money otherwise to pay the berthing fees on Coruscant.

"Thanks," Cathi said with a hint of uncertainty. Dellen sighed again. From what she had told him, the Jedi were now perceived as a mere vigilante group by most smugglers, with reports of a Jedi-led squadron running rampant throughout the Outer Rim... How the mighty have fallen, he reflected. The Jedi Council would never have tolerated such an insult.

The comm chose that moment to squawk, making the pilot involuntarily jump a little. "Freighter Headwind, you have deviated from the appointed flight path. Return to it at once."

"Understood, Control," Cathi replied as she nudged the control yoke in the correct direction.

The landing, several minutes later, was as unremarkable as any landing Dellen had seen. After making sure his lightsaber was still attached to his belt, he walked with the smuggler down the landing ramp and saw Coruscant from the ground, or as close as you could get to ground, for the first time in fifty years.

"Some things just never change," he said, more to himself than to Cathi as he eyed the docking pit that the Headwind was berthed in. The well-scored walls, blackened from many years' worth of takeoffs and landings, could have easily predated the Outbound Flight. The Jedi took a deep breath of the air, smelling it carefully. "Just as polluted as ever."

Cathi nudged him with her elbow. "Here comes the circus."

He was already looking in the direction that she had pointed, so it came as no great surprise when the inspection team arrived.

"If you two would be so kind as to wait for us here," the lead inspector, a somewhat overweight human in an expensive-looking uniform, began, "we'll begin our inspections. Are there any hazards we should know about first?"

The smuggler shook her head. She'd secured the small package of ryll inside a scanner-shielded compartment, but authorities were always expecting such tricks so she was slightly nervous about it.

The inspectors disappeared inside the freighter, and came out several minutes later. Needless to say, both Jedi and smuggler were relieved to see them empty-handed.

"Your ship is clean, Miss Riclin," the lead inspector began, motioning to one of the other inspectors, "except for this."

She took in a sharp breath and frowned as the inspector produced a small vial from an accompanying droid.

"You recognize it?" the inspector remarked, smirking. "We will be taking both of you into custody until the judge determines your sentence." He leaned closer to Cathi, who wrinkled her nose in disgust at his breath. "I hear he isn't usually very friendly toward smugglers."

"I'll bet," Cathi sardonically remarked as several other inspectors began to approach, carrying binders. Then, oddly enough, they found better things to do and scattered. Startled, she looked over at Dellen, who was staring at the inspector with a piercing gaze.

"You will not take us into custody," Dellen said in a calm, controlled voice.

"I... will not take you into custody," he hesitatingly repeated.

"You will turn yourself in to port authorities for fraudulently arresting innocent people and possession of illicit substances," Dellen continued.

"Yes," the man mumbled. "I will turn myself in for fraudulently arresting innocent people and possession of illicit substances."

"But before you do," the Jedi added quietly, "you will sign the papers saying that this ship is clean."

"Right." The inspector, still looking slightly confused, did as he was told before leaving and taking the rest of his team with him.

Dellen shook his head as he watched the group leave. "Haven't done that in a while. Always some corruption somewhere in a bureaucracy."

"You know," Cathi said in amazement, "you'd make a great smuggler."
"Which is precisely why the Jedi Code forbids us from using our abilities for profit," Dellen replied, looking back at the ship. "In the meantime, I think we should get out of here before he gets suspicious and decides not to go to the port authorities."

As they walked toward the pad's exit, Cathi looked up at the serene Jedi. "I thought it was impossible to go against something like that?"

"Not impossible," he corrected. "Just very difficult, and it requires a strong mind. He wasn't the strongest person I've met, but he could have been weaker."

Cathi had to admit, there was something about the tall Jedi Master that she found somewhat attractive. But as she opened her mouth to speak, he stopped her.

"I know what you're thinking," he remarked. "I suppose I should have also mentioned that the Jedi Code forbids attachment."

"But how is that possible if Luke Skywalker is married?"

Dellen stopped in shock, more at the name than the idea that a Jedi was married. "Skywalker?" he asked.

"Luke Skywalker. He's the leader of the Jedi. I thought everyone's heard of him?"

Dellen shook his head. "I've been out of galactic matters for the past seventy or so years." So a Skywalker leads the Jedi now? he wondered. "Whose son is he?"

It was Cathi's turn to shrug. "I could be wrong, but I've heard that he was Darth Vader's son."

The Jedi Master abruptly turned to face her. "The son of a Sith?"

"What's a Sith?"

Dellen ignored the question. If this Luke Skywalker was the son of a Darth Vader, that meant that Vader was also a Skywalker... and the only Skywalker he knew of who would have been old enough to be a father was Anakin Skywalker. He shuddered. The Chosen One... or at least the person that Master Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan Kenobi had insisted was the Chosen One.

Which led to an interesting revelation: a Sith had brought balance to the Force?

He left the question hanging in the back of his mind as they stepped into a hovercar rental shop. They quickly selected a model and paid the deposit to use the car; Cathi would have to pay the full fee when they returned it, but that wasn't a problem since he would pay her for her inconveniences as soon as they reached the Jedi Temple.

They shot out into the crowded Coruscant skylanes, Cathi doing the steering as Dellen attempted to locate the Temple.

"No mention of Jedi Temple found in city maps," the hovercar's navigational computer reported. The Jedi Master scratched his head and tried a different tactic. "Locate Jedi."

"One entry found for Jedi Praxeum," the computer reported after a moment.

"Location?"

Dellen nodded when the map appeared and had the computer calculate a flight path to this Praxeum. Maybe they'd be able to tell him a little more about what had happened.




Unlike the imposing Jedi Temple, Dellen noted, this Praxeum was anything but imposing. Nestled in between several skyscrapers, it occupied part of a rooftop and was a modest four stories in all, not even a fraction of the size of the Jedi Temple. It had no hangars as far as Dellen could tell, and the architectural style was radically different from that of the Temple.

Master Dellen took a breath and stepped out of the hovercar onto the duracrete pad, Cathi following him at a few paces' distance. He stepped into the main entrance of the Praxeum, looking around at the few Jedi scattered around the room. "I'm looking for Master Skywalker," he announced.

Eight pairs of eyes turned to meet him, all with inquiring gazes. "He's not here at the moment," one vaguely green-skinned Jedi said as he walked over. "I'm Dorsk 82. How can I help you?"

"I'm Master Dellen," he replied. "Can you tell me where Skywalker is?"

"He's in the middle of a Senate hearing at the moment." Dorsk 82 frowned slightly. "And you said you were... Master Dellen?"

"Yes."

Dorsk looked down. "Pardon my suspicions, but Master Skywalker is the only Jedi Master that I know of at the moment."

Dellen laughed. "That's actually what I wanted to talk to him about, but I suppose I'll have to wait." He looked around the room. "Would you mind showing me around here while we're waiting?"

"Ah... I suppose," Dorsk replied, stepping forward. "You see, the last person who simply announced himself as a Jedi Master was Joruus C'baoth."

"Joruus?" Dellen inquired, noting the mispronounciation of the name.

"An insane clone of the Jedi Master who died on the Outbound Flight," the other Jedi replied.

Dellen screwed his face up in incredulity. Talk about being a stranger in a strange land!

"What's so funny?"

"Well..." The Jedi Master took the time to choose his words carefully. "That's the other reason why I'm here."

"C'baoth?"

"Sort of."

Dorsk 82 shook his head in amazement, or perhaps confusion. "All right, I'll let you wait for Skywalker," he said as he started leading the Jedi Master through the Praxeum.

The first room they stopped at was apparently a sparring room of some sort, the otherwise flawless walls marked with the occasional lightsaber burn. "The Praxeum," Dorsk 82 explained, "isn't supposed to be the main training center for the Jedi, but we do have limited facilities."

Dellen nodded. "So is the Order smaller than it was under the Republic?"

"We are under the Republic," Dorsk 82 replied with a little confusion evident on his face.

"Ah, pardon my choice of words. I was referring to the Jedi Order as it was sixty to seventy years ago."

"Under the Old Republic, you mean?" Dorsk shook his head. "We don't have enough records to compare the old Jedi Order with the current one."

"Another thing I'll have to remedy," Dellen muttered, more to himself than to Dorsk.

"Pardon?"

Dellen ignored the question. "Where is the main training facility located? Here on Coruscant?"

A light laugh excaped Dorsk 82's lips. "Hardly, with land prices so high. The Academy is located on Yavin Four."

"Surprising," Dellen murmured. "Once the headquarters of a great Sith Lord, and now a training academy for Jedi." He looked directly at Dorsk. "Were there problems with the Academy in its early days?"

Dorsk 82 paused as he opened the door to what appeared to be a meditation chamber. "You know of Exar Kun?"

Dellen lifted his hands. "How could I not? I'm a historian, after all. I am surprised that Exar Kun himself created trouble, since the Jedi order had destroyed him. I was thinking more along the lines of devices he may have left."

As they left the meditation chamber, Dorsk 82 licked his lips nervously. "Exar Kun found a way to trap his spirit within the Massassi temples," he finally said. "He destroyed several promising trainees, and nearly destroyed Luke Skywalker before he was vanquished."

Dellen shook his head in a mix of disbelief and amazement. "Even dangerous after death."

The next part of the Praxeum that the two Jedi entered was the residential area, where any Jedi who happened to be at the Praxeum stayed. Dellen glanced inside the open door of an unoccupied room. The small room, more like a closet in fact, was sparsely furnished with only the minimum necessities. The bed didn't look terribly comfortable, but it was probably better than a freighter's berth.

"That's about all there is here," Dorsk explained, motioning for the Jedi Master to return downstairs. Dellen followed without any further questions. By the time they had reached the entry of the Praxeum, Dellen noticed a sandy-haired man, dressed in black, standing and talking to one of the other Jedi.

"Oh, there's Master Skywalker," Dorsk exclaimed before hurrying over. In the meantime, Dellen took a hard look at the sandy-haired man, noticing a distinct resemblance to Anakin Skywalker.

By now Dorsk 82 had gained the Jedi Master's attention and brought him over to Dellen. "Master Skywalker?" he began. "This is Master Dellen."

Luke gave Dellen a puzzled glance after they had exchanged polite bows.

"A pleasure to meet you. I understand that you're the last Jedi Master remaining," Dellen said after the formalities had been exchanged.

"We've been trying to change that," Skywalker said with a slight laugh, "but if you are what you claim to be then I am no longer the only Jedi Master." A more serious look came into his face. "What brings you to the Praxeum?"

Dellen extracted a datachip from a pocket in his robe and handed it to Skywalker. "The message on that should explain the situation better than I could. Do you have a conference room we can use?"

Luke eyed the old datachip somewhat suspiciously. "I suppose, but we need to keep it brief since I need to return to Yavin Four soon. Follow me."

As they walked toward the meeting room, Luke turned to the other Jedi. "You aren't the same Master Dellen who was assigned to the Outbound Flight, were you?"

"Actually, I am," Dellen replied as they rounded a corner and entered the conference room. Seeing Luke's inquisitive stare, he continued. "I'm not a clone, though."

"In that case," Luke paused but momentarily, "how did you survive Thrawn's ambush? And why do you look to be only my age?"

Dellen sighed as Luke inserted the datachip into a tabletop reader. "I was sleeping when the ambush happened, so the message on the datachip can probably tell you more than I could."

Both Jedi remained silent as the hologram of a middle-aged captain appeared.

"I am Captain Avin of the Bulk Cruiser Ny'lith Boro, attached to the Outbound Flight. This message was intended to be delivered by Master Dellen, one of the six Jedi Masters assigned to the Project.

"I have recorded this message because, sixty years ago, our ship was attacked and nearly destroyed by unknown marauders. We survived the ambush because our navigator, Master Fernas, executed a hyperspace jump through a nearby black hole. However, that jump catapulted us eighty-five million years into the future, into a galaxy that I have learned is called the Milky Way.

"Our hyperdrive was rendered inoperable by the jump, and we entered hibernation for the next sixty years as we cruised toward a nearby starsystem at sublight. Our arrival in that system caught the attention of a passing ship, whose human crew awakened us and helped us to repair our hyperdrive. In return for their assistance, we have arranged to tow their ship back to their home planet, which is on the other side of this galaxy.

"We have included on this datachip the necessary information to execute a hyperspace jump through the black hole, as well as the coordinates of the human government we will be traveling to. As we will be attempting to bring this government into the Republic, I request that the Republic Senate consider sending a resupply mission, with additional diplomats, to the provided coordinates."

Finally, the recording ended, and Luke spoke cautiously. "So Master Fernas blew the hyperdrive, yet you managed to escape, through a black hole nonetheless. No wonder everyone thought you were dead."

Dellen shrugged. There wasn't much more he could say.

Luke took a deep breath. "Well, that explains the vision I had several weeks ago," he said. "A brief battle between two fleets, centered around a comet, then a ship that got pulled out of hyperspace..." He shook his head. "Now it makes sense. I wish I had realized earlier."

"It should," Dellen replied amiably. "Fifty years after we entered hibernation, in reality only a few weeks ago, a passing ship noticed us and accidentally awakened the crew. With their help we were able to jury-rig the hyperdrive using parts from one of the shuttles. I went back to the wormhole using the other shuttle, while everyone else headed across the galaxy to meet with the home government of the other ship."

"So you duplicated Master Fernas's trick and wound up back here," Luke finished for him, "except that your hyperdrive was also blown?"

Dellen nodded, leaning back in his chair. "That's where Cathi, that person you saw sitting by the door, came in. She stumbled across my ship and brought me back here." He sighed. "More had changed here than I had expected."

"The rise of the Empire, its fall, and then the New Republic?"

"More than that," Dellen said. "What happened to the Jedi Order? It used to number in the tens of thousands, and now it seems there's only about a couple hundred Jedi?"

Luke bowed his head. "The Clone Wars took its toll on the Jedi, and then the Emperor and his minions wiped the survivors out. Only a handful survived the purges."

"I see. The Clone Wars?"

"A series of wars that broke out between the Republic and several groups that were pushing for secession," Luke answered. "Led by the Trade Federation and several other corporations if I recall. Unfortunately for us, the Clone Wars also resulted in the destruction of many libraries, so we only have sketchy records of what happened. Almost all records related to the Jedi were destroyed, purposefully or by accident, and we've been working from scratch since."

"So that explains why so many of the traditions of the Jedi have been lost," Dellen replied. "Although I'm not terribly surprised that the Trade Federation was behind it. They were a pain the Republic's side for years, and it seemed that we could never get rid of them."

"We've been attempting to recover as many traditions as we can," Luke said. "About four years after the death of the Emperor, we discovered the remains of the Chu'unthor, which helped immensely."

Dellen nodded. "On Dathomir. Master Yoda used to tell us about the natives of that planet, back when I was a mere padawan." The two shared some laughter.

"We defeated the Nightsisters as well," Luke said after they'd finished. "Dathomir is now a part of the Hapes Cluster and is by extension a part of the New Republic." He looked up at the chronometer. "Well, I need to leave for the Academy now. Would you like to join Mara and myself?"

Dellen shrugged. "I'd actually be interested to see this Jedi Academy," he said as he came to his feet. "But first I need to pay Cathi for bringing me here."

"We'll pay for you," Luke replied, and making sure to retrieve the unused chip, exited the room. "What was your position with the Outbound Flight?"

"Historian," Dellen replied. "I was Master Jocasta Nu's assistant in the Jedi Archives for several years."

"Oh?" Luke seemed surprised. "In that case, I'm sure that Tionne will be very eager to meet you. She's been studying everything we could find on the Old Republic Jedi."




Several minutes later, Dellen collected his crate of belongings from the Headwind and went to the docking bay where the Skywalkers' ship was berthed.

"So that's your ship?" Dellen asked Luke, who nodded.

"The Jade Sabre," Luke answered. "Mara and I designed her, and I did a lot of the work on her."

"Impressive ship." The transport's lines were smooth and vaguely organic, with sweeping vertical tailfins running along both sides. The large cockpit was at the front and in the center, a bubble on the nose of the sleek ship. All in all, it was a rather large craft, perhaps sixty meters in length...

"She's like a cross between a shuttle and a light freighter," Luke continued, pointing at a seam in the aft part of the ship, below and just forward of the twin ion drives. "One thing that we built into it was a docking port for either my X-wing or Mara's Headhunter." He smiled knowingly. "I took a hint from my brother-in-law, a smuggler, and included a milspec shield generator as well."

A prudent measure; the Jedi were never short of enemies, Dellen reflected. "What about weapons?"

"Besides the X-wing?" Both shared a laugh as they boarded the transport. "It has a couple of quad turrets and a concussion missile launcher."

"Sounds like it would be useful in a fight," Dellen remarked.

Luke agreed. "It's seen it's share of fights since we finished it three years ago." The two entered the expansive, almost bridge-like cockpit, where a red-headed woman was checking instruments. "Mara, this is Master Dellen." He then turned to the other Jedi Master. "Master Dellen, this is Mara, my wife."

Dellen wanted to ask Luke about his having a wife, but he was interrupted as Mara tried to grasp the notion that he was indeed a survivor of the Outbound Flight. He rolled his eyes and went through the expected battery of questions until Mara was satisfied.

Finally, she looked down at her wrist chrono. "Well, our launch window will be closing, so can we stop talking and finish prepping the ship for takeoff?"

The Jedi Master took a seat in the cockpit, somewhat ill at ease, while Luke and Mara made their way around the ship to check things. After a few minutes, they returned to the cockpit and sat down, bringing all the systems online and contacting Coruscant traffic control. After another minute, the Jade Sabre had left Coruscant orbit and jumped into hyperspace; the two Jedi piloting the ship finally relaxed in their seats.

"I'm rather curious," Dellen began, leaning forward toward Luke. "How much do you know of the Jedi Code?"

Luke mulled the question over for several moments. "We've recovered bits and pieces of the Code," he replied. "Why do you ask?"

"I had meant to bring this up when you introduced me to Mara," Dellen replied. "You see, the Jedi Code forbids marriage or emotional attachment of any sort."

Luke and Mara exchanged puzzled glances. "That wasn't in any of the fragments we recovered, and Yoda never mentioned that." Luke finally said. "Why would the Jedi Order forbid such attachments?"

"I'm not sure of the precise reasons why, but from what I've studied, the reasoning behind this rule was because emotional attachment creates a certain fear for that other person's safety. That fear can interfere with a Jedi's judgment."

Luke nodded. "That makes sense, unfortunately." Sighing, he looked straight at the other Jedi Master. "The Jedi have existed without that rule for over twenty years now, and I feel that may be hard to change at this point."

"How many other Jedi are married?" Dellen inquired.

"Out of about two hundred Jedi, perhaps a dozen are married," Luke answered.

"I see," Dellen observed with a sigh. "It seems that much work will be required to bring the Jedi Order back to its former standing."

"What do you mean by that?" Mara asked as a puzzled look crossed her face.

"Before the fall of the Republic," Dellen replied, hoping he got the newer information correct, "the Jedi Order numbered in the tens of thousands. We operated under the official sanction of the Republic Senate, which funded us. The Jedi Council, which led the Order, answered directly to the Supreme Chancellor."

"So there was a Council," Luke mused. "Who comprised the Council?"

"It varied," Dellen replied, "although Master Yoda and Master Windu were almost permanent fixtures on it. The criteria for choosing new Council members was very complicated."

Luke nodded. "How were new Jedi trained?"

Dellen sighed, almost imperceptibly. "It was a lifelong process. The Jedi Knights would find Force-sensitive beings as soon as was possible, and with the permission of the parents these children would be taken to Coruscant. They would train as groups up until about the age of 12, when a Jedi Knight or Jedi Master would take a trainee as his or her apprentice. After that, it would be up to the master to determine when a padawan was ready to become a Jedi Knight."

"So that's why Master Yoda said I was too old to train," Luke murmured, looking out the wide cockpit window at the infinite swirls of hyperspace.

Dellen inclined his head. "You trained under Master Yoda?"

He nodded. "Before that, old Ben Kenobi trained me."

"How old were you?"

"About sixteen when I found Ben. I started training under Yoda after Ben's death... I was around nineteen then."

The older Jedi Master leaned back in his chair and stretched his somewhat stiff shoulder muscles. There was much that had happened in the galaxy during his absence that he needed to catch up on, and he suspected that he still wouldn't have much of it down by the time the Jade Sabre arrived at Yavin IV.



* * *



The Rock Dragon had much better medical facilities than the Millennium Falcon, one being a smuggler's freighter and the other a modified Hapan transport, Jacen reflected, but they were both equally cramped.

He sighed and turned his head to the side, noticing Tenel Ka and Lowbacca attending to his sister's eye. His own wound didn't need much, as some bacta and a simple synthflesh patch worked, but the poison had been a little more difficult. Even so, after running through some Jedi purification techniques he'd been taught, the numbness was finally leaving his leg.

It was still going to take a while to heal, he realized as he rolled over. The leg still hung limply, and it was painfully obvious that he'd be of no use in a melee. Not in his present condition, at least.

Across the room, Jaina finally sat up on another fold-out medical bed. For the time being, she wore a crude patch over her right eye. Then she came to her feet and strode over to her brother, sitting down next to him. "How's the leg feel?"

"Not like much at all," Jacen admitted. He didn't have to answer, given that as twins the two Jedi shared a sort of bond, but it was better than listening to the computers hum while the other three Jedi were off searching for anything at all in ExGal 4. "How about your eye?"

"I think I pushed out most of the venom, but there was so much of it..."

He nodded. There wasn't much that they could do for her eye with the limited facilities aboard the Hapan transport, and it would be a while before they got back to anything that remotely resembled civilization. With no person among them really trained in Jedi healing techniques, and no field medics handy, nobody was even really sure how badly Jaina's eye had been damaged by the staff's venom. "Think you'll still be able to fly?" he asked.

She snorted. "Doesn't look like I have much choice, for now at least. I'm hoping that I won't have to get a bionic eye, but..." Jaina shrugged, then stood up. Moments later she returned with a dejarik board. "I'll play you."

The other three Jedi returned around a half-hour later. Each carried a crate of material except for Tenel Ka, who couldn't carry a crate and hold a lightsaber at the same time; as a result, she was bringing up the rear.

"Here," Kyp said as he tossed a couple of medpacks at the twins. "I think these ought to be useful."

Jaina frowned. "You looted the base?"

"Just putting some abandoned supplies to better use," Kyp said with a laugh. "It's not like Yomin Carr could find any use for those in his current state."

Shaking her head at Kyp, Jaina tore open one medpack and pulled a bacta patch out of it. After making sure that it was still fresh, she flipped up her eyepatch and took off the old bacta patch, then applied the fresh one.

In the meantime, the others were busy unpacking the crates. Tenel Ka handed Jacen a simple glass jar containing one of the brown beetles. "We found this in the station commander's room," she explained.

"Looks like they did know about the beetles after all," Jacen remarked, giving the jar back.

"Yeah," Kyp agreed. "Then we found these."

Jacen craned his neck to get a better view of the stuff that had just been put on the dejarik table. In the middle were two roughly ovoid, purplish blob creatures. "What the kriff are those?"

"Communications devices, or rather creatures, of some sort. They were in Yomin Carr's room. One was already dead when we found them."

"And the other?"

Kyp frowned. "It came alive when we touched its front ridge. That's how we found out it was for communication. Some other alien of the same species as Yomin Carr answered, and laughed when he saw me. He warned me that I'm going to be, ah, dead if I keep sticking my nose in where it doesn't belong." The Jedi chuckled at that. "Then he broke the link or whatever. We haven't managed to get this thing to respond since then."

Jacen grabbed a makeshift crutch and hopped off the medical bed, making sure not to put weight on his left leg. Then he ambled over to where the strange, blob-shaped creatures were and put a hand on the one Kyp had indicated was alive.

He normally had a talent with any kind of alien life, in that he could easily communicate with it, but in this case his talent didn't help him; the creature was obviously dead. He shrugged. "I guess we could stick them in a stasis chamber to keep them from decomposing... further." He wrinkled his nose slightly. They were already beginning to smell bad, or maybe that was how they normally smelled. He decided not to push the thought further.

"Yeah," Kyp agreed as Lowbacca took both dead creatures into the cargo hold. "Well, there's nothing more to find down here. How about we head off for Helska now?"

Jacen looked down at his leg. Injuries or no injuries, they couldn't forget about the scientists who had gone to Helska. "Maybe we should have gone there first."

"I think Lowbacca and Jaina can pilot this ship," Tenel Ka finally said. "Jacen and I should be able to handle the turrets."

"Then that's settled," Kyp said, turning and heading for the ramp. "Meet you guys in orbit."

A few minutes later the Rock Dragon broke orbit and vanished into hyperspace.




So this is Helska, Jacen reflected from his upside-down position in the ventral gun turret as the Rock Dragon dropped out of hyperspace along with the Avengers. It had seven planets in all, including a couple of gas giants in the outer system. Looks like any other system.

He found himself somewhat dizzied by all the movement; so as to hopefully avoid detection, all of Kyp's squadron was looping and rolling as they moved, seemingly on the edge of disaster but in reality highly coordinated. He whistled softly. They were good pilots.

"We've got a lot of activity around the fourth planet," Jaina called from the cockpit.

Tenel Ka broke into the comm. "I thought it was supposed to be uninhabited?"

"It's not now."

"Any hostiles yet?" Kyp asked when there was a lull in chatter. Jacen had almost forgotten that the Rock Dragon had the best sensor kit of any of the ships flying with Kyp...

"I'm reading what looks like an asteroid field in orbit around the fourth planet," Jaina replied, "along with a large moon. All have lifesigns."

"Don't tell me we came all the way out here to find a mining operation," Miko said, his voice dripping with so much sarcasm that Jacen imagined he could catch the excess in a bucket.

"Cut the chatter," Kyp called. "We've got incomings. Rock Dragon, do you have readings on them? Identification?"

"Negative," Jaina replied. "Bunch of asteroids, came from the fifth planet."

"Let me get this straight, a bunch of asteroids just broke orbit and decided to come over here?"

"I said cut the chatter, Miko."

There was an audible sigh. "Roger that."

"Rock Dragon," Kyp continued, "do you have any sign of the scientists yet?"

"Negative." There was a pause. "Those asteroids are accelerating."

"Then they aren't asteroids," Kyp replied. "Shields up, weapons ready. Mark them as potentially hostile and scan all frequencies for comm traffic."

Suddenly, Jacen's targeting screen was awash with yellow dots. "Blaster bolts," he muttered to himself. There must be around a hundred of them.

"No comm traffic," Jaina reported. "They seem to be well-coordinated."

"Strange," Kyp remarked. "Hang on, we've got something inbound."

"Rocks."

"What?"

They're firing rocks at us? Jacen wondered.

"Slight correction," Jaina dryly said, "they're molten rocks. Re-designating incoming group as hostile."

There was a snort. "Rocks? What are they going to do next, start throwing sticks at us?"

"Miko," Kyp warned, obviously getting annoyed at his wingmate. "Avengers, break formation on my mark." He waited until the two sides had almost closed to visual range. "Mark."

Shortly after the squadron split into pairs, they found themselves in the middle of what would best be described as a swarm. Jacen opened fire along with everyone else, and space was suddenly awash with the streaks of tracers and the strange molten missiles of the enemy.

He paused for a moment, in between bursts, to take a look at one of the enemy ships that was flying low below him, and noticed its roughly aerodynamic shape, transparent canopy, and even stranger-looking pilot. So they're starfighters, he thought before nailing the fighter with a burst from his twin laser cannons.

The first shot... vanished? he wondered, but the second powerful shot caught the fighter squarely in the center and blew it into a cloud of molten debris. As he looked around, he noticed that the rest of the Avengers were faring just as well against these crazy fighters.

"Jacen, stay sharp," Tenel Ka pointed out from the other turret. Jolted, he noticed a few of the fighters had strayed close to his position, so he resumed firing. The first blew up immediately, but he found that he had to put several bursts into the second before it was also destroyed.

"They seem to be diverting our fire," he finally remarked. "And they're getting better at it."

"Won't help them," Miko replied. "We've already killed over half of them."

"I'm picking up a lot of small gravity cones," Jaina reported from the cockpit. "They're driving the navicomp nuts, just like an Interdictor would."

Jacen stole another glance at one of the alien fighters. No engines...

"They must be using that for propulsion," Kyp remarked for him. "I'm not reading any conventional shields, either."

The Hapan transport abruptly changed course, throwing Jacen's aim off. Then he noticed a heavy barrage of molten rock sail below him. The numbers were finally getting balanced, with roughly two alien fighters for every member of the Dozen-and-Two Avengers. To be fair, however, the Avengers hadn't suffered a single loss yet.

"Shields down!" someone shouted.

Of course, there is such a thing as speaking too soon, Jacen reflected as all hell broke loose.

Dare I say that this is actually better than Vector Prime??

If you say so

By the way, Chapter 14 is on its way, I'm just giving it time to sit before I give it the final proofreading. Won't have time for a while to finish Chapter 15, although it is about halfway done.

My gosh. I'm sorry for the long delay--I was so busy that I forgot to post Chapter 14. Anyway, here it is, and I hope everybody enjoys it.


CHAPTER FOURTEEN



"Computer, seal the doors to this room. No entry without my authorization."

Ph'ngu Reco sighed as he compared the two voice graphs, one from the actual recording he'd found in an obscure log in Voyager's computer and the other one produced by a partially disassembled 3PO protocol droid that was sitting beside him. The voice graphs still differed too much for him to risk testing the authorization codes live.

Frustrated, he kicked a loose bundle of wires, sending them halfway across the computer room. It certainly didn't help that he didn't have the handy Universal Translators that the Voyager crew posessed. What was worse was that the Federation kept several obscure languages in use, rather than standardizing on one language like the Republic had done in time immemorial. No wonder the protocol droids were going nuts trying to tell the different variants apart.

He waited for the 3PO unit's vocal processor to make the changes before he tried comparing them again. This time, the graphs were almost identical, but still...

"Kriff it," he muttered as he pulled some wires out of the 3PO's interface box and plugged them directly into a terminal. He then switched to another terminal and tapped in some commands before going back to the first terminal.

PERMISSION GRANTED

The slicer breathed a sigh of relief. He found the Federation's insistence on relying on such keyphrase/voiceprint combinations to be almost comical, given the ease with which such combinations could usually be cracked. Then again, this Federation's technology was rather lacking in certain areas, so maybe that was to be expected.

He paused as his display gave him a list of choices, roughly translated into Basic. None of the choices presented were exactly what he wanted...

The slicer stood up and walked across the room to a cabinet that was full of datachips. He sifted through the datachips until he found one he wanted, then walked back and plugged it into his terminal. It was a rather simplistic system worm that he'd designed when he was on Coruscant for the purpose of compromising a transit system database.

He smiled at the memory. Those were the days when he was still a street urchin on Coruscant, before he'd managed to give himself a nicely paid position in the Jedi Temple. While he'd found it to be an exciting challenge to defeat the security systems of the Temple, getting past the Jedi had been impossible... and that had been how he'd wound up on this ship.

Blinking, he looked at the chrono mounted haphazardly on one of the equipment racks, and decided to hold off on rewriting the worm for the alien system until he had some food in his stomach.

Roughly three days later, Reco idly scrolled through the results that the worm had sent back across the flimsy ship-to-ship data couplings. For one ship, it had quite a treasure trove of information on this entire Federation...

He was interrupted by a knock at the door, and quickly looked over at the holocam monitor. He quickly exhaled a sigh of relief and stood up. "Come in, Captain."

Captain Avin carefully stepped over the bundles of wires as he entered. "Do you have the data I requested?"

"Most of it, Sir," Reco replied nonchalantly. "I'm about ninety percent done with their database."

Avin frowned. "What took so long? We're pulling out of hyperspace today and this needs to be finished."

Ph'ngu sighed and sat back down. "Whatever this Federation might have in the way of sophisticated electronics, they certainly don't know how to use them."

"What makes you say that?" the Captain asked, his curiousity piqued.

"Permission to speak freely?"

"Go ahead."

Reco glanced at a terminal before leaning back and looking directly at the Captain. "Well, let me just put it this way: Whatever the people who designed the LCARS system were smoking, I want some of it. They have some of the worst algorithms I've ever seen. Their built-in search routines are sequential, so it takes practically forever to search for anything, and on top of that the search routines display all the data being searched through on the console. The closest thing to that I've ever seen was in a civilization that was barely entering the spacefaring stage."

"You're a slicer. You know how to get around that sort of thing," Avin replied, obviously not understanding.

"It's not that simple," Reco replied with a look of annoyance. "I coded a worm to insert into their system to get around the inefficiencies, but it took a full day to get it working properly. They have a massive, rather redundant database as well, and the worm has been sifting through it for the past couple days." He pulled a datachip off a nearby stack and inserted it into his console. After a few moments, he extracted the chip and handed it to the Captain. "Here's a copy of the results so far."

Avin nodded as he took the chip. "I expect you to be finished in two hours exactly, because that's when we drop out of hyperspace."

"I will, Sir." Reco blinked as the Captain left the room. Two hours? He knew it was close, but not that close...

He turned back to the terminal and quickly sent some commands to the worm, which promptly dumped the data it had collected so far. 91%. Not enough. Reco switched to a command list and looked for any other programs on Voyager that he could kill without arousing too much attention...



"Acting Captain Chakotay to the Bridge," a voice buzzed over the comm. Still in a groggy state, Chakotay slipped out of his bed and hurried over to the sonic shower, managing to stub his toes on a piece of furniture that he didn't recall putting there. What a way to start the day, he mused.

"Shower on," he commanded. Nothing happened.

"Computer, shower on," he commanded, more forcefully this time. After several more unsuccessful tries, he gave up and went back into his quarters and grabbed a comb. He ran it through his hair several times in front of a mirror until he was mostly satisfied with it, then half walked, half stumbled to a dresser and grabbed a clean uniform from it. Chakotay quickly put it on, cursing in an ancient American language as he realized that he'd put his shirt on backwards. After correcting his mistake, he rapidly clipped his rank pips to the collar and left for the nearest turbolift. On the way out, he managed to bash his head on the door, which elicited a few more choice responses.

When he finally reached the Bridge, still rubbing his head, he was immediately informed that they were about to drop out of hyperspace in several minutes. Wearily, he took his seat in the captain's chair, and then activated the comm. "Bridge to Engineering. B'Elanna, do you know of any problems with the sonic showers?"

"No. Why do you ask?"

"The sonic shower in my quarters wasn't responding to voice commands," he replied.

"We'll look into it," B'Elanna replied.

Chakotay forced a bemused smile. Here they were, only a minute away from a home that none of the crew had seen for several years, and he was worried about the sonic showers.


Deep in the data center, Ph'ngu anxiously glanced at the timer that he'd set up to tell him when they were coming out of hyperspace. The worm was telling him that it had processed about 99% of the records, but there were only 30 seconds left, and he needed to disconnect and clean up before they separated the ships...

Come on, he silently urged the program as the seconds counted down.

The progress indicator finally changed to 100%, and Reco let out a sigh before switching to another terminal and starting to clean his tracks.



"We have reverted from hyperspace," Seven observed from behind Chakotay as Voyager's inertial compensators struggled with a sharp change in velocity. For a moment he wondered if he'd get thrown from his seat, but it stabilized after a moment.

"Main viewer on," he instructed. The viewscreen snapped on, showing a breathtaking view of Earth. Moments later, Chakotay drew in a sharp breath. "We're inside the Mars Defense Perimeter," he muttered. "Lieutenant Kim, contact Starfleet Command and tell them that we are not hostile."

Just as the lieutenant reached for the comm controls, the bridge lights suddenly dimmed and then went out altogether, along with every other system on the bridge. Chakotay found that he had problems seeing anything at all, considering that the emergency lights had refused to come on as they were supposed to.

"What the hell just happened?"

"Unknown," Tuvok replied from his position at the security station. There was some tapping sounds as if he was ineffectually trying to access an LCARS terminal. "It appears to be a complete power failure."

Chakotay hit his commbadge. "Bridge to Engineering. We've suffered a power failure, can you give us any information?"

There was a long pause before the reply came. "Torres here. I'm not sure what happened, we had just brought the warp core back online and everything failed. As far as we know, it's ship-wide."

Chakotay came to his feet, wishing that the emergency lights were working, and tried to make his way to the bridge ready room without tripping on anyone or anything. "Fuck it, does anyone have a light?" he finally asked after ramming his foot into the steps. After several tries, he found the ready room door and felt around the wall for the emergency release. Once he'd tripped the release, he then went back to the doors and pried them apart, letting some reflected sunlight onto the Bridge.

His commbadge chirped again. "Chakotay here."

"Commander, we think we've found the problem. The main computer and the backup both went down, and they somehow brought all the other systems with them. We're restarting the main computer right now, but it will take about five minutes."



"Why do we always get general alerts in Spacedock?" Captain Gail Hancock of the Excelsior-class starship USS Hercules complained, throwing an angry glare at the bridge dome. Naturally, she reflected, whenever some potentially hostile alien vessel showed up by Earth there were almost no Starfleet vessels around to investigate. She sometimes wondered if the universe was out to get the Federation.

Still, a general alert meant that any nearby starship had to respond immediately. This meant that she had no choice—even if her aging Excelsior was only halfway through its long-overdue refitting process.

She turned to the helm officer. "Get us out of here, maximum thrusters."

"Aye, Captain," the officer replied.

Gail glanced up at the viewscreen, noticing one other starship, a four-nacelled Cheyenne, begin to slide out of its berth as well. As if two ships would make much difference if the Borg had returned.

Soon they had passed Spacedock's doors, and both ships were approaching the intruder at full impulse.

"Lieutenant Gordon, can you get me a better view of the intruder?" Gail asked after a moment. The comm officer did as requested, and soon the viewscreen displayed what could possibly have been the bastard child of an Intrepid and a Borg Cube.

Several people on the bridge swore under their breaths, while Captain Hancock merely frowned. "Lieutenant, see if you can read the markings on that Intrepid primary hull."

Again, Lieutenant Gordon manipulated the viewscreen, and after a moment the badly-scorched primary hull came into view. Despite all the burn marks in the hull, the numbers remained clearly visible: NCC 74656.

Gail's jaw dropped slightly. "My God," she muttered. "It's Voyager."

"Should I power down the phasers?" came the inquiry from Tactical.

"No!" Gail half-snapped, causing the officer at Tactical to recoil slightly. "Keep them up. We still don't know if they're hostile or not."

"Yes, ma'am."

Gail turned toward Lieutenant Gordon. "Comm, open hailing frequencies to Voyager."

"Hailing frequencies open, no response yet."

The captain frowned. Surely Voyager's captain knew Starfleet protocols? "Scan all frequencies, they might be transmitting on a non-standard one."

After several seconds had passed, Lieutenant Gordon looked up. "I have a signal from the ship, audio only."

"Put it on."

The voice was garbled slightly, but remained intelligible. "-is Captain Avin of the Republic ship-" The transmission cut off at that point.

Gail looked at Lieutenant Gordon before replying. "This is Captain Gail Hancock of the Federation starship USS Hercules. Be warned that although you are docked with a Federation starship, you are within the Mars defense perimeter and precautions will be taken if you show any signs of hostility."

Lieutenant Gordon mouthed "Video" at the Captain, who nodded as the image of the strange captain appeared on the viewscreen. Her eyes widened slightly as the image stabilized; the captain appeared to be, for all extents and purposes, human.

"I apologize for the transmission problems earlier," he began. "We had arranged with the crew of Voyager to tow their starship here to Earth, but just after we reverted to realspace their ship's systems went dead. I have been informed that they are currently bringing their systems back up."

Gail glanced over at Tactical. "Scans?"

"He seems to be telling the truth, Captain."

She nodded. "We appreciate your hospitality, but Starfleet Command requests that you move your ship away from Earth orbit."

"Captain?" Tactical interrupted.

"What is it?"

"I'm picking up a power surge aboard Voyager, indicative of a core breach in progress." The officer frowned. "Their core ejection hatch is pointed at the other ship's midsection."

Gail turned back toward the viewscreen. "My tactical officer informs me that Voyager has a warp core breach in progress, and that your ship is blocking the core ejection hatch."

Captain Avin's face paled noticeably. "Understood." He turned away slightly and began to give orders. Gail watched as the frameworks connecting the two ships together were suddenly jettisoned, and free from its burden, the Republic ship began to pull away from Voyager.

"Voyager's main power seems to be back up," Lieutenant Gordon reported.

"Hail them," Gail said, wasting no time.

Another man appeared on the viewscreen, his face partly covered by a tattoo. Gail vaguely recognized him as a... wanted Maquis leader? She blinked in surprise but spoke anyway. "Captain, I cannot waste time on formalities. You have a warp core breach in progress."



"Lieutenant Torres, what the hell is going on down there?" Chakotay's voice carried over—barely—the din of alarms and general panic in Engineering.

"I'm not sure," B'Elanna temporized as she directed several crewmen around. "All we know is that the computer reboot wreaked havoc with the warp core."

"Yes, I know," Chakotay's irritated reply came back. "Another ship informed me. Can you get it under control?"

"We're trying, but the containment systems are all screwed up." The engineer tried one of the consoles, which promptly displayed some garbage and then died. "I think we'll have to eject it. Are we clear?"

"The Republic ship has already undocked and should be clear now."

"Good," Torres replied, running over to the ladder and climbing up to the second level. She reached another LCARS console and quickly began entering commands.

"Core breach in 50 seconds and counting," the computer announced in the same tone it might use to announce the brewing of a cup of tea. Torres wished she could give the computer a good whack but refrained from doing so, instead continuing to enter commands into the console.

"Ejection sequence started."

"Damnit," the half-Klingon engineer swore as an error message flashed up on the console. The ejection doors would have to jam up!

"Core breach in 40 seconds and counting. Ejection sequence aborted."

B'Elanna gritted her teeth and tried again, closing the ejection hatch.

"Ejection sequence started. Core breach in 30 seconds and counting."

This time the doors opened smoothly, and the long warp core began to slide out. Containment fields appeared around it to prevent the air from being blown out of Engineering, and B'Elanna watched in relief as it disappeared through the floor.

"Core breach in 20 seconds and counting. Warp core ejected."

A ragged cheer went up from the assembled engineers as Voyager surged to full impulse to get clear of the unstable warp core.



"Starfleet Command isn't going to be very happy about having a hot core in Earth orbit," Gail half-muttered as she watched the whole process unfold.

"It's starting to stabilize," Lieutenant Gordon remarked. "Reactants are venting."

Good, she thought. "Open the channel to Voyager again."

"Channel open."

Gail nodded. "Voyager, this is Captain Hancock of the USS Hercules." She paused for a moment. "May I inquire as to what happened to Captain Janeway?"

"I am Commander Chakotay, Voyager's acting captain," the other replied. "Captain Janeway was temporarily removed by the orders of the Chief Medical Officer and is confined to her quarters with an escort."

"Understood," Gail acknowledged, with a slight smile on her face despite herself. "Welcome back, Voyager. I believe you'll find a homecoming party waiting for you at Spacedock."

Chakotay grinned, if briefly. "I wouldn't expect anything else." He grew more serious after a moment, however. "The Republic ship that brought us here is hoping to open diplomatic talks with the Federation. I trust you can relay that message to Starfleet Command?"

Gail nodded.



On Voyager, Chakotay leaned back wearily in the command chair as they continued toward Spacedock at half impulse. Voyager would certainly need an extended refitting; four years' worth of damage couldn't be repaired overnight...

"Earth," he sighed, looking around the bridge. For the first time in as long as he could remember, the entire bridge crew was smiling, and he could just make out tears on many crew members' faces. So they were home—but how much had home changed?


* * *


Ph'ngu swallowed nervously as Captain Avin knocked at the door. "Come in."

"What exactly did you do to Voyager? You nearly killed us all," Avin said in a no-nonsense tone.

"The worm malfunctioned," Reco answered, pulling a datachip off the ever-growing stack. "I did get all of the data you requested, however."

Avin took the chip and pocketed it without looking. "Exactly how did it malfunction, and can it be traced back to us?"

Reco shrugged. "From what I could tell, the worm activated a bug or something like one in their system, causing the whole thing to shut down. I made sure to wipe my tracks before that, so aside from really bad timing, there's no real way they can trace us."

"Good." Avin turned to exit. "Since this never happened, I can't do anything to you, but I'm just going to warn you that if I ever need your services again, I don't want any screw-ups."

"Understood, Captain."

Reco waited for the Captain to exit before he returned to his terminal.

A quick question since I seem to be a little lost is this the newest part of the story or you just reposting it here.

It's the newest part of the story... I had just forgotten to post it

hehe ok at least im no longer confused.

Well, here's the next installment, fresh and hot out of the oven.


CHAPTER FIFTEEN


"You let them escape?"

Commander Skravi Krel considered the question that the Prefect had posed. He was standing in a moderate-sized cavern that had been hollowed out of Helska IV's icy crust by the gigantic boring creatures that the Praetorite Vong employed. Already icy stalagmites had formed on the ceiling, their sharp points aimed downward like a yammosk's teeth. The floor, although ice, was fortunately covered in debris.

"I do not believe they escaped," Skravi eventually replied. "Although two ships managed to flee, several grutchins had attached themselves to those ships."

Prefect Da'Gara narrowed his lidless eyes, his red robes folding about him as he moved closer toward the commander. "But how can you be so sure? The one that we captured at great expense told us that the two metal-craft that escaped were piloted by other jeedai." The Prefect straightened and began to circle about the commander. "While you may be correct, there is no way I can know for sure."

Skravi Krel wanted to say something insulting, but knew that such a move would be pointless and ultimately fatal. In the meantime, the Prefect continued stalking around him in a circle.

"It is becoming apparent to me that you are ill-suited to commanding the defense of this foothold. The Executor has informed me of a region in this galaxy that no scouts or spies have returned from for the past fifty years. I am assigning you a Miid Ro'ik and several escorts. You will go into that region, find out who it is that is hindering our progress, and destroy them. You will only return if you are successful."

Skravi bowed, wincing at the very idea as he did so. Although the Miid Ro'ik was roughly equal in size to the infidels' rather presumptuously-named Star Destroyer, it was horribly outmatched in terms of firepower. Yet Prefect Da'Gara expected him to single-handedly conquer the one region of space that Yuuzhan Vong scouts had encountered the most trouble in? /No,/ his mind answered itself. The Prefect expected to get rid of him.

Commander Krel resolved at that moment to prove Da'Gara wrong. "Belek Tiu," he said, snapping his fists against his shoulders. The phrase loosely translated to "I do as you command" in Basic.



* * *



Luke Skywalker danced back a step to avoid being scored with the azure lightsaber blade that his opponent wielded. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see his wife, Mara Jade, observing the lightsaber duel in the Jade Sabre's sparring room with a bemused expression.

He rapidly blocked a flurry of blows from his opponent before shifting to the offensive again, his strokes seeming like a blur to the naked eye. Yet his opponent countered every stroke and finished with a blow so hard that it knocked the lightsaber free from Luke's hand.

The emerald lightsaber arced through the air for a moment before the automatic cutoff extinguished the emerald blade. Luke's lightsaber clattered to the deck of the Jade Sabre as Master Dellen shut his azure blue lightsaber off.

"Your style is interesting," Dellen remarked as Luke called his lightsaber back and clipped it to his belt. "It appears to be mainly Form Six with a very strong Form Five influence, so it's far more intense than Form Six by itself."

Luke nodded. "Neither Obi-Wan nor Yoda mentioned lightsaber forms to me. They just trained me as quickly as they could."

"Obi-Wan Kenobi was a Form Three user, as I recall," Dellen said after thinking for a moment. "Master Yoda was Form Four. And the sixth form is a combination of many, so you probably developed your own variation of it since you studied under so many Masters."

Across the room, Luke sat down alongside Mara. "What form do you use?"

Dellen shrugged, looking out the large viewports of the sparring room at the mottled tunnel-like sky of hyperspace. "I've studied all the forms," he finally said. "However, as a historian, I came to appreciate Form Two the most."

"What is Form Two?" Mara asked, her curiosity finally getting the better of her.

"It's one of the most ancient forms," Dellen explained as he stepped away from the viewport. "It was rarely used when we left, since it's optimized for saber combat and blasters were, and apparently still are, the most common weapon in use."

"Hokey religions are no match for a blaster at your side," Luke said with a wry grin on his face after a moment, echoing Han's words from so many years before. When Dellen looked at him curiously, he explained. "My brother-in-law told me that well over twenty years ago, when Obi-Wan was just starting to train me."

"An all too common attitude," Dellen agreed.


Several minutes later, the Jade Sabre was gliding through Yavin IV's atmosphere in much the same way that a rock doesn't. Mara expertly brought it to a hover over the time and battle-worn landing pad before slipping it into the expanded hangar bay below the Great Temple.

"Welcome to the Jedi Academy," Luke remarked as the trio walked down the Sabre's landing ramp. "I'm afraid it's not quite up to the standards of the Jedi Temple as you've described it, but it suffices."

Dellen glanced with curiosity at a small and almost oily-skinned ship nearby in the hangar. "That's an interesting-looking ship."

"The Shadow Chaser." Luke nodded as the three Jedi continued toward the hangar turbolift. "We relieved a Dark Jedi training facility of it several years ago. It's rarely used, but it is nice to have for emergencies."

The turbolift doors slid open, and they stepped inside. "What is its hull made of?" Dellen finally asked. "I've never seen any hull material with that particular sheen."

Luke frowned briefly. "It's an experimental armor that was designed by an Imperial research center in the Maw Cluster," he explained. "Extremely tough, although not invincible."

"I can see why it would be useful," Dellen agreed as the turbolift shot upward to the residential levels of the pyramid. He shifted his crate of belongings and waited for the doors to open.

The doors opened out on yet another stone corridor, its floor polished by either droids or years of use—Dellen couldn't decide which, but figured it was probably the latter. They walked a short distance down the hallway before Luke stopped at a door and punched a code into its control box. The door slid open noiselessly, and Luke looked expectantly at Dellen. "You can use this room as your quarters for now," he explained.

The older Jedi Master stepped inside and looked around the simple room, nodding to himself as he did so. Despite having lost so many of the old traditions, the new Jedi at least realized the virtue of humility. The quarters were rather spartan, with the walls and floor of the same unadorned stone as the rest of the temple. A single transparisteel window let light, and also air into the room; there was an equally spartan bed in one corner as well as a chair and desk at the other end of the room.

Dellen put his crate down on the desk and began to unpack it, shaking his head as he pulled the tricorder out of it. What use is this thing? He set the tricorder down on the desk and hung his spare garments up in an alcove that served as the room's closet.

Luke was still waiting outside by the time Dellen emerged, but Mara was nowhere to be seen. "You mentioned on the way here that you've been having difficulties keeping the Jedi together," Dellen remarked as the two set off through the Great Temple's cool corridors.

Skywalker nodded. "A number of Jedi have taken it upon themselves to be the police of the galaxy, and the Senate isn't very happy about it."

"In other words, vigilantes," Dellen observed. "How are the Jedi governed right now?"

"Right now... badly, I would say." As they walked through a suspended transparisteel walkway over one of the lightsaber training rooms, Luke idly watched a sparring match between a couple of trainees. "It's mostly democratic at this point, and I periodically call all the Jedi together to discuss matters. We learned a little about the Jedi Council from some of the few records that hadn't been destroyed, but unfortunately I'm not sure how we could go about setting it back up."

Dellen raised his eyebrows slightly. "That, at least, should be easy to remedy."


After they had toured most of the Temple, the two Jedi walked to the Academy's cafeteria and ordered some food. As they sat down to eat, Dellen looked up. "This Academy is fairly impressive, I must admit," he said.

Luke smiled wanly. "I'm glad you find it that way. It's been hard getting it to this point, however."

"The attacks you mentioned while we were on the Jade Sabre?"

Skywalker nodded, taking a bite of the bruallki on his plate. He chewed it for a while before speaking again. "At least five times now."

Before Dellen could say anything more, a blue-domed astromech trundled up to the table. It beeped and warbled rapidly before Luke raised a hand. "I get it, Artoo. We'll be down there in a moment."

Dellen inclined his head in mild surprise. "You can understand astromechs?"

Luke shrugged as he quickly cleaned his plate. "Just the gist of what they're beeping about. I was an X-wing pilot for the Rebellion for several years, so I couldn't always rely on translators." His plate now empty, he stood up. "There's apparently a couple of damaged ships coming in for a landing. Feel free to come with me."


"Not a very pretty sight," Dellen remarked as they stepped out of the turbolift and began to stride toward the outside landing pad. A heavily damaged X-wing, its cockpit canopy missing and its landing gear retracted, was sitting alongside a transport that Dellen vaguely recognized as having Hapan styling. The X-wing had some sort of creature trapped between one set of foils, while the transport's hull was covered in carbon scoring.

Luke frowned as they reached the two ships. "Only two... and they left with a dozen." They walked around to the side of the transport where the ramp was located, and waited for it to extend. The first person down the ramp wore an orange flight suit. "Kyp Durron," Luke muttered, although he kept whatever thoughts he had on the matter to himself.

Kyp wore a haggard expression on his face, and it was fairly apparent that he had not slept much in the past several days. "We were attacked by an unknown force over Helska Four," he offered. "Miko went down on the planet, but we weren't able to rescue him."

"What happened to the rest of your squadron?" Skywalker inquired.

Kyp hung his head, looking down at the pavement. "They're dead," he finally replied in a serious tone. "We were outnumbered, but things were going well for us until these aliens found a way to bring down our shields."

Dellen walked over to the X-wing and peered at the strange creature that was trapped between its S-foils. The creature, surprisingly, was still alive and he could hear its teeth grinding. "What is this thing?" he found himself asking.

Kyp turned away from Skywalker for a moment to see what the other Jedi Master was talking about. "That? I have no idea. Some sort of silicon-based lifeform. One of them chewed through my astromech and then started on my cockpit canopy. That one disabled one of my engines and my hyperdrive."

Further conversation stopped as several more people came down the transport's ramp. Dellen blinked in surprise; the only one who didn't seem to be hurt was a Wookiee with mottled golden fur. The first person down the ramp, a red-haired woman in a flightsuit, was missing one arm. The man that followed her didn't seem to be in much better shape, making his way down on makeshift crutches. Alongside him, a woman who bore strong resemblance to him wore a patch over one eye...

Luke shook his head. "I haven't seen you guys in this bad shape for a long time, but at least you're alive."

"Barely," the man with the crutches muttered.

"Cilghal's in the Great Temple, Jacen. I think you and Jaina should see her first, and then we can talk about what happened."

While the two wounded Jedi walked—or rather limped--off to the Temple, the Wookiee and the red-haired woman stayed behind. "Why isn't she going with them?" Dellen asked. "She lost her arm..."

"It was a training accident several years ago," Luke explained as they walked up the boarding ramp with the other three Jedi. He turned to Kyp. "How much do we need to unload?"

Kyp motioned to several crates. "That's evidence from ExGal 4," he explained. "There was some sort of alien warrior in the base, but he blew himself up rather than risk letting us capture him. None of the base personnel seemed to be alive."

"Anything else?" Skywalker asked, looking around the transport's cargo hold.

The redhead spoke up. "We recovered some hull plating from Urias Xhaxin's frigate, and then..." She pointed at a makeshift stasis chamber with two purple blob-like creatures inside. "Then there were those."

"Alright." Luke looked straight at the redhead. "Tenel Ka, see what you can take. Kyp and I will take the crates, and Lowbacca can bring the stasis chambers. We'll store all of this in one of the old control rooms for now."

While they were walking back to the Massassi pyramid, Kyp filled Luke in on what had happened on Belkadan.

"You say that Yomin Carr looked like the attackers Corran described?"

Kyp nodded, setting the crate he carried down in a corner of the former Rebel Alliance control room. "Before we left, I made a brief trip to Obroa-Skai to try and find any information on the aliens Corran ran into. Nothing came up."

"If anything would have that information, it would be Obroa-Skai," Luke agreed. "So we have either a previously unknown race native to this galaxy, or we have an invasion."

"If Helska is any indication," Kyp said as he straightened up, "it's the latter."

Luke raised his eyebrows. "Do you have anything more than coincidence linking Helska to Belkadan and Bimmiel? The Senate does not like working off hunches, and if we expect them to investigate, and perhaps act against Helska, we need to give them a good reason to."

Kyp almost snorted. "Investigate Helska? I would wish them luck. We received no comm traffic from these aliens, so I think diplomacy is out the window here."

"I understand." Luke sighed softly as the group turned and started walking back to the landing pad. "Still, this is the Senate we're dealing with. Was there anything else that might link them?"

Kyp pondered the question as they walked in silence. "I couldn't really sense Yomin Carr with the Force," he finally said. "He was more like a shadow. It was the same way with the fighters that attacked us, and they didn't look like droid fighters to me."

"That won't help," Luke said as he took a closer look at the creature between the X-wing's foils. The creature regarded him with a cluster of beady eyes and struggled to free itself again, jaws clacking wildly. "Many in the Senate think the Force plays to our whims. What are we going to do with this, anyway?"

"I don't know how well restraining it would work." Kyp shrugged. "It can chew through durasteel, so particle shields or forcefields might not help either."

Luke eyed the creature for a while. “Force fields should hold it, but then we have the question of transporting it. A large stasis chamber might work.” He looked up to see if there was anything else on the X-wing, and his gaze caught another creature, this one obviously dead, but still attached to one engine. He walked around the starfighter and carefully lifted the dead insectoid off using the Force. Together, they carried the heavy thing around to the front, where the live one was still eying them hungrily.

After they had carried the heavy creature back to the former control room, on a flash of inspiration Tenel Ka dragged the twisted piece of hull plating from Xhaxin's frigate over to the creature, and inserted it into the dead insect-like creature's mouth. The other four Jedi watched her silently.

"They match." The Dathomirian warrior and sometime Hapan princess stood up, pointing at the plate. "The teeth of this thing match the score marks on the plate. We have the connection right here."

Luke nodded, his face grim. "Then we have it. I'll call a meeting of all the Jedi."

"What about the thing that's still stuck in my S-foils?" Kyp interrupted. "I don't want it getting loose and eating half the Academy while we sit and talk."

All four Jedi exchanged bemused glances. "That could be a problem," Luke agreed.



Some time later, Jacen leaned back in his seat, ignoring the pain that shot through his left heel as he did so. Just three days after they had returned from Helska, Luke had already called every Jedi in the galaxy back to Yavin IV for yet another meeting. He just hoped this one would produce better results than the last one.

He didn't need to use his eyes to tell where Kyp was. The older Jedi Knight seemed more disturbed than Jacen had ever seen him before, but that was probably because he'd lost his entire squadron, as well as the Jedi that he had decided to mentor. Jacen shuddered to think of what might had happened if Tenel Ka had not volunteered to help.

Jacen looked down at his ankle, then sighed and focused on the dais. What was a deep cut in the heel compared to a dozen deaths? From what he'd seen, it seemed pretty obvious that thing weren't going to get any better. He shuddered despite himself as his uncle called the assembled Jedi to order.



NEXT CHAPTERS: Chapter 16 and beyond