“We need to hold out just a little longer.”
The ship was a scout ship, one of the best that the government of Antooine could get. One of the last that the government of Antooine had. Small and conical, the ship was festooned with transmitters and very little in the way of guns, the ship was speeding with its engines bright as it shot away from the planet. Flashes of light lit the space around it as fighters soared after it, aggressive angular TIE pursuit fighters that flashed green fire at the ship.
The scout-ship buzzed through an asteroid, the ring-shaped mountain of rock hiding it from the larger ships in pursuit while the attack fighter followed it like a flock of aggressive birds. The pursuit fighter was more massive than the standard TIE fighter, and boosted by advances in radiator design, it was able to carry stronger and more capable engines, giving it the speed and manoeuvrability to keep pace with even the fastest enemies, while mounting weapons that could engage the light freighters and gunships that were often the bane of its cousins.
“They’re still on our tail,” the same speaker snapped, desperate in the cockpit. There were three seats, the first was occupied by Vel Elanna, the best pilot that could be found in the taproot cantinas of Antooine’s only spaceport, Mos Vayya. The morpheme ‘tooine’ in ancient Rakatan was popularly thought to translate to ‘receptacle for bodily wastes’ and it implied something about the planets that bore that suffix. Antooine was something of an exception, it was at least fertile enough for farming, and pleasant enough on large parts of its surface to actually boast both rain and dry periods.
Left bereft of planetary government like so many other worlds, by the collapse of the Galactic Concord, and the wider effects of military campaigns, the planet was one of a million that were vulnerable to raiders. Pirates had come, the fireknives and others, but this was something different.
The fighters that surged after them were quite identical, a uniformity that spoke of the military ability of those who sent them. Vel would never forget when they and their masters had arrived.
__ __ __
The Lazy Bantha was a pleasant enough cantina, and its upper levels provided decent quarters at a good price for a trader or pilot passing through. By the standards of the Outer Rim, it was good, the ale and spirits were decent, too. Vel had been woken in the night by the sound of a photon bomb ripping up the landscape somewhere far too close. Darting from the bed she’d run to the window. For a moment, she thought it must have been a crash, it was a spaceport, after all, it happened, albeit rarely.
The sight from the window dispelled any illusion, though, a blue fireball loomed over the city, and she panicked, backing away from the window to her bed, trying to get away from the line of sight and the glass of the window. Her fears weren’t justified, it was far away, but she knew what it meant, and that meant that she had no desire to be there any-more.
Being in a warzone was very bad when you owned your own ship, she knew, and she grabbed her gunbelt, pelting through the door and corridor beyond, disgarding the lock card and running, clawing a jacket on as she hauled ass past other pilots and crew, smacking hard enough to feel jarring pain from the heel of her hand hitting the door on her co-pilot’s room. “Ichix, get up! Get out here!”
The gand’s response was burbled from beyond the door, and she knew enough to know what he was saying; he was denying the nickname. His species considered individual monikers and identifiers as awards, and he had not earned one; she was quite determined to win him over in the end. Right now, though, she didn’t care.
“There’s an attack, we have to get out of here.”
The cylinder door of the alternate atmosphere room rotated, and a cloying scent filled the corridor as the burly insect-hominid stepped out, his glittering eyes shining in the light.
They ran together from the cantina, into the streets. If they got to the spaceport before it fell, perhaps they would be able to get out, and to somewhere better. There were people in the streets, milling aimlessly and spilling out from the pillared and colonnaded buildings, and the smaller ones that spilled off the main streets in all directions. Other houses had pulled blast shutters into place, while some people were apparently already looting, out for supplies.
Worse still, far too many were heading for the spaceport. She could see crowds, and she didn’t want them latching onto her as a pilot, she turned her coat’s collar down, trying to hide the old TradeFed pilot patch, and looked to Ichix.
“Let’s get through quietly,” she said, and he nodded. The motion never looked right on him.
She tucked her collar up and walked toward the spacers’ entrance, only to watch the blast doors begin to close. She broke into a run, “Hey!” she cried, pelting across the crunchy plasphalt, “My ship’s in there!”
The crowd heard her, “Hey, spacer, spacer take us with you!”
“Let us on her ship!”
The situation’s absurdity struck Vel, she was fleeing from a fight she didn’t understand, though a crowd that had no more information than she. She looked upward, and regretted it instantly.
The ominous wedge of a warship was emerging from the clouds, and from it, bulky troopships were falling like leaves across the city, their pale white hulls smeared with the barely-visible shimmer of active shields.
The crowd began to scatter as landing craft came down, some were landing directly in the spaceport, others outside but it was clear that no one wanted to try their luck, and rightfully so, the moment the landers hit the ferrocrete and plasphalt, their boarding ramps slammed down with the force of explosive bolts, disgorging dozens of hardshell armoured troopers, firing wild bolts of crimson fire into the crowds.
“Run!” Vel shouted, her voice drowned out.
They fled, the crowd scatted with them like a flock of startled gulls, running for doorways, and the sides of buildings, as the blaster bolts rippled through the crowd like fire. Vel sprinted around a corner, watching as blaster bolts smacked pits into the ground and the walls, punching holes through walls and people alike.
Ichix rounded the corner, and she grinned, “The underpass, we should be able to,” she stopped in her tracks, and turned. Ichix was wounded, acrid black fumes rose from him, and he moved, twisting in pain where he had fallen.
She turned, and reached down, clasping his hand in hers, searching.
His other hand was on his chest, the wound almost hidden, and she tried to lift him, failing.
“Do not imperil,” he said, his vocoder speaking for him.
She ignored him, and lifted him, hauling on his free arm, she could hear the sounds of distress but hauled him along. She didn’t speak, she couldn’t speak. It couldn’t be so… random.
The off-world soldiers in their white armoured suits turned the corner. They were not tall, but stocky, built powerfully and with wide, squared off helmets that could hold any number of species, narrow gunslit visors made them look almost like small walking pillboxes than men. They raised their weapons in unison, standard drilled motions.
The ground exploded beneath them, tearing the street with fire, as an air-speeder went overhead. Vel didn’t look twice, she was shaken from her complacency, “Come on,” she said, hauling Ichix with her as she fled.
__ __ __
The ship juddered as they circled through the belt, searing light from the Antooine sun stabbing through the windows, spiralling as they moved. The attack pods were a little further, and Vel looked back at the communications expert sat uncomfortably next to her. She’d never been in a fight like this before, but she was somehow more composed than the man at the communications station, whose palms gleamed with the same sweat as his brow. A small screen set into the station in front of him showed the sine-wave of the hypernet carrier signal, staggered and juddering from the interference generated by the warships they were fleeing.
“It’s clearing,” he said, nervously, watching carefully for the moment when it would be worth trying to maximise transmitter power output and gain, they had no fancy way to punch through the jamming, just hope for distance and time. Once they got to six planetary diameters, it would be possible to calculate a jump to lightspeed, but if they got a clear signal beforehand, that would do almost as well.
__ __ __
“I think we’re safe here,” Vel said, slamming against the wall and breathing heavily. They weren’t the only ones seeking safety in the tunnel, and some had recovered from panic enough to draw blasters, consider their options. Vel did likewise, they had guns, but the attacking soldiers were fully armoured and trained warriors.
Vel held her blaster, taking the safety off and wincing as she looked at Ichix, the Gand was breathing, just, but he had slumped down the moment they’d stopped, she could rarely tell when he was sleeping. “Are you awake? How... do you feel?”
“I’m… hurt,” the words were simple and slow, the work of a translator framing complex words into simplicities, “I’m dying.”
She would not believe it, and she reached to his chest, looking for some way to help, “No, no,” she said, she said it again, and again, until there was no further point.
__ __ __
An icy boulder the size of her ship flashed into pieces amidst a burst of blaster fire, and Vel breathed a spiteful breath as she span the ship around again, they were fast running out of belt, pieces of space debris the size of houses flashing past as grit ground from their shields and hull as they soared through the belt. The TIE fighter’s narrow frame came into view and she squeezed the trigger on her controls, watching as it burst into pieces under the fusillade from the tiny nose-mounted cannon.
“How’s that signal going?” she shouted.
“Nearly! We can nearly send it.”
“Hurry,” she said.
The sun glimmered off the gunmetal shapes of other fighters weaving through the belt, and she punched the engine once more, careening on another vector.
A dazzling flash flared ahead, darkening the cockpit windows as they polarized to protect the eyes of the crew, and a tsunami raced through the icy asteroids, rippling through them and tearing them apart. As the wave passed it rang the hull like a great bell, and Vel covered her ears in instinctive pain.
“What was that?” one of the technicians cried.
“Siesmic charge,” she said. “They must have worked out what we’re trying to do. It’s now or never,” she said, glancing at the depleted shields, “we won’t take another hit like that.”
“Almost, almost, got it,” the technician cried, his hands adjusting the controls, “Got it, sending now!” he snapped. “It’s gone!”
“Right, let’s make a break for it,” Vel said, hauling the stick around, as the ship surged out of the rubble cast by the seismic charges.
The TIE fighters surged after them, and one of them fired a missile that streaked toward the scout ship. Vel had never even asked this ship’s name, it was a way to hit back, and that was what she wanted and needed right now.
It hit, but there was no damage. “A tracker then,” she said, “well follow us to Dornalian Space,” she said, “see where that gets you,” she added, and input the coordinates for that destination, punching in the numbers, and watching the navi-computer begin working, a set of lights blinking its status.
She wove an evasive course as the fighters tailing her began to fire, switching to ion cannons to finalize their capture, tracing every movement, almost. Daring them to hit her, she pirouetted into the last vector, giving everything the little scout ship had to make it to the hyper-limit. The TIE pursuers were a little slower, and she watched the seconds tick down, hands on the levers to jump the ship to hyperspace.
A heartbeat to go, and she saw the last computation light blink as it neared completion. A warning sounded, and she searched the panels. Tractor beam lock.
She cursed with every bone in her body and hit the panel, the hyperdrive wouldn’t engage when the ship was in a tractor beam powerful enough to arrest their motion; stress would tear the ship to atoms.
The Star Destroyer loomed large behind them, as the scout-ship was reeled in like a fish on a line. Vel Elanna drew her pistol and vowed to sell her life dearly. She had already got the message out. She’d won already.
__ __ __
Atha Prime watched from the bridge of the Annihilator as the ship was reeled in. A Star Destroyer by any standard, the Annihilator was built from information and knowledge stolen from shipyards across the galaxy at the highest of prices; knowledge brought to him from across the galaxy, carefully pieced together and assembled painstakingly. It had been tested and tested again.
“Bring the pilot to me,” he said, turning from the windows of his cockpit module.
His crew did not speak an acknowledgement, there was no need, his word had been given and would be done, and the Clone Master rose, towering over his personal control platforms and the pits of crewmen around him, walking through the doorway.
The Councilmen of Antooine waited in the chambers outside the bridge, each of them secured by binders and a guard behind them. He looked down at them, humans, aliens, a mixture and a rabble, nervousness on every face. “One of you, or more, sent a scout ship to beg for aid,” he said, “which of you did so?”
He searched them, their features were weak, and he wondered at the duros who stepped forward, “I did,” the grey-skinned being did.
Atha bent forward, his hand holding his staff of office, and he went down to one knee to bring his eyes, the only visible part of his features, closer to in-line with the humans, even so the man shrank back against the warrior who held him. “Cunning, to use only a single ship, one that could pass as an escape attempt if it was intercepted. You did not fail, though,” he said, “your message was sent, and not jammed. Do you rejoice?”
“I think it is time to renegotiate,” the councilman said, “there is little doubt that help will be on the way.”
“So be it,” Atha Prime said, “take the rest to the surface, let them go,” he said, “secure what supplies we already have, and prepare to depart. You will remain for a time,” he said, “what is your name?”
“Dor Bin,” the councilman said, watching as his fellows were taken, “you are leaving?”
“Yes,” Atha said, “we’re yet ready to confront a rescue fleet. Soon we will be, but not for long.”
“Then, I think we’re all glad that you’ve seen reason, your eminence?”
Atha Prime rose up to his full height once more, and turned his head with the ponderousness of a tank turret to regard the doorway as it opened once more and a squad of clone warriors entered, carrying the stunned and restrained form of Vel Elanna through the doors.
One of them looked upward, removing his helmet to reveal handsome features beneath. “This is the pilot, Father. We lost seven as we boarded.”
“Good,” Atha said. “You are intelligent, for a politician,” he said to Dor Bin. “And this was an excellent pilot. Better than our current pilots perhaps. Take them to craino-scan,” he said.
“Wait,” Dor Bin paused, attempting to step backward as the guards seized his arms.
“Your talents will be of use,” Atha Prime said. “We will not speak again. The process is fatal. Fear not, you will fare no worse than your fellows; they will carry my plague down to the surface. Any planet that resists is punished.”
“What, wait, hang on a moment, let’s be reason,” Atha prime nodded to one of the guards, and Dor slumped down in his restraints as one of the guards stunned him at short range.
“Intelligent, but far too talkative,” the Clone Master said. “we will correct that.”
__ __ __
Bombers swept from the ships that orbited Antooine, twin-hulled things with biogenic payloads. The Clone Master had ordered the infection of Antooine, and they would obey. The shuttle that had carried the councillors back to the planet had landed in Mos Vayya, one of hundreds taking food-stocks, vaporator equipment, drillheads, industrial droids and anything else that sensor probes could find on the surface. It was a raid a plague of locusts had descended from the ships in orbit, but their feast had been interrupted. IT would have taken weeks to strip the planet of everything that they had wanted, but the locals had sent a message and a relief fleet could already be racing through hyperspace to the planet.
The bombers streaked over oases and cities, and their glide-pods scattered aerosolized plagues across the planet. Atha Prime had given his command and within half an hour, hundreds of drop sites had scattered every mesa and sand-sea with infection elements; every city and larger town had been afflicted.
The punishment was not yet just delivered from the air, however. Clones obeyed any order without question, and not one flinched from the tasks given to them before they withdrew. Burning hospitals and pharmacies, hunting down medi-flyers and shattering the medical infrastructure of the planet.
Massacre was a currency, and fear a tool.
The clone troopers burnt out every spaceport and orbital strikes were used to destroy anywhere an interplanetary ship could be found. The plague would remain on Antooine unless someone ignored the beacons and landed on the planet to bring aid to its people.
Orbital mines and medical warning beacons were scattered in orbit and at the planet’s lagrange points respectively.
When all this was done, the Clone Master’s ships prepared for hyperspace…
This thread is for the Star Wars RP Group. Head on over or visit our Discord and say hi if you're interested! Anyone wanting to join in feel free to hop in, first reply gets to decide if you intercept the Clone Fleet if it's leaving or if you miss it. The message would outline in brief terms that the planet has been attacked by a force of destroyer-class starships and identify them as pirates.
