Kiana's eyes slowly opened as she started to come to terms with how the world was again. She looked around and saw everyone either laying on the floor, or slumped across their desks, with the only exception being Pellaeon, who was slowly getting to his feet. She looked down to see Canderous with his arms around her in the bodyguard position, she quickly shoved him off of her and staggered to her feet. "Any blind jump you can walk away from..." Pellaeon grumbled.
"Indeed Captain." She replied as Canderous started to arouse by her feet. She extended a hand to pull him up. "Thank you, Commander, but I doubt you protected me much." she mumbled to him.
"Status Report!" Pellaeon called.
"Ships systems are fully functional. Minor damage to all decks due to that last barrage of cannonfire. Ordering Damage Control teams to those sections."
"Excellent. Can we get a fix on our position?" he asked. There was a long silence. "Position? Report now!" He ordered.
"Stellar Cartography is trying to get a fix, but they are unable to locate our position."
"What do you mean?" Pellaeon asked.
"Stellar Cartography can't make heads, nor tails, of any of these stars. We must be far beyond the outer rim."
"Best guess, how far?" he asked. There was another long silence. "Report?" Pellaeon broke the silence as everyone held their breath, waiting for the news.
"They can't even guess..." came the report finally. Pellaeon looked at Kiana, as though to ask for her advice, but he simply saw a face just as in need of comfort as his own. He straightened his uniform and looked out of the front viewport at stars no-one, that he knew, had ever seen before. "Begin a scan of the area. Send out a Distress call, ask for any ship in the area that might have information on our whereabouts." he said. The scanner officer almost immediately piped up.
"Sir, we are receiving a faint distress call of our own." he said.
"Where?" Pellaeon turned. Kiana approached the scanner station and looked at it.
"A few hundred thousand miles." he said. "Main engines could have us there in the hour."
"Good, using the hyperdrive without Navicomputer computations got us into this in the first place." Canderous chimed in.
"Indeed, commander. Set a course. In the meantime, all stations report in." Pellaeon nodded, before returning to his position at the front of the bridge. Kiana looked at him.
"I will check on the others." she ordered. She thought of Tuk-Tuk, knowing she would have to explain that his master was left behind... It would destroy him.
****
Canderous and Kiana passed a Damage control team as they headed into one of the crew quarters, they saw Tuk-Tuk sat in the corner, his Lightsaber on the floor by his side. "I... I am sorry." Kiana put her head down.
"Master said she wouldn't let the Lurmen die if she could help it." Tuk-Tuk said. "I knew she would go... But I didn't expect for us to leave her."
"She may still be alright. The force was strong in her." Kiana said.
"I am not upset." Tuk-Tuk lied. "She taught me to not allow feeling to cloud my judgement or my mind. That I was to let go of everything I feared to lose." She could feel it in his voice that he was coming apart at the seams. "Fear leads to anger, leads to hate, leads to suffering, leads to the dark side." Kiana approached him.
"No... This isn't fear. This is mourning... We all mourn the loss of someone close. I have lost a former Padawan myself to this war. Master Yoda himself mourned Count Dooku falling to the Dark Side." she said. "Feel these emotions by all means, you aren't a Knight yet, you are still young and we do not demand perfection from you." she sat down with him. "As she said, train yourself to let go of fear, sadness, hatred and all other emotion... But, that does not help how you feel right now." She cradled the young Gungun's head in her arms.
"I..." He started. "I... I don't know what to do."
"It's entirely possible that she was captured. Remember that the Separatists see Jedi more valuable as Hostages to be bartered with than corpses." Canderous gave her a look to indicate that that remark probably wouldn't comfort him. "Look, we are answering a distress call. If you feel up to it, we might need your help. If they are under attack from Separatists, we may need your help." Tuk-Tuk got to his feet.
"Alright. We do not know she is dead yet... I will save my mourning for later." he said.
"Good. Come up to the bridge with us, Knight Jiktu is already on his way there." she said.
****
"Sir, we are within visual range." the Scanner officer called. A blue hologram appeared on the tactical desk of
A strange looking ship The Jedi, Canderous, Kusp and Chernan and the captain studied it.
"Like nothing i've ever seen..." Pellaeon mumbled.
"Indeed. Little in the way of obvious gunports, nothing in the way of a propulsion system-" Vuka started.
"What about those 2 things at the back?" Canderous butted in.
"Entirely the wrong design, they could never move a ship that size with such little engines. Do we have a fix on its dimensions?" Vuka called. The numbers came up on the hologram
Length: 289 meters
Mass: 1,000,000 gross tons
Decks: 21
"Must be a cargo-transport... Maybe a cruise-liner. Too big to be a smuggler, not enough guns to be a mercenary ship" Vuka said.
"We won't be able to get much more until we board her. They are not answering hails and life-signs aboard are... Non-existant."
"Damn, too late to save the crew." Canderous grunted.
"Indeed, but she will probably have maps we can use." Pellaeon said. "Master Jiktu-"
"Knight Jiktu, i'm not a Master yet." he corrected Pellaeon.
"Knight Jiktu, can you take a squad of your men aboard and try to retrieve their starcharts?" Pellaeon ordered.
"I'd like to go too." Kiana said. "We'll take Misfits and do a sweep of that saucer section, whilst you and Cannok Squad do a sweep of her engine room. You'll probably be in heaven there." she smiled at the Jawa.
"Sounds good to me."
****
The LA/AT landed in the
shuttle-bay of the strange ship, the power still on and a force-field coming down to keep the air inside.
The pilot punched a few things into the console. "Air is breathable." he said, Marbacca grunted happily. This meant he could leave the transport. He was too big for a space-suit. The teams jumped out and the Clones quickly swept the area. Detpack and Hightower carried a large box out of the transport.
"We'll get this scanner set up in the saucer section." Canderous ordered. "Come on, Misfits. On the double!" he ordered. Blaze stepped down from the transport and looked around, there wasn't anybody in sight. But there was a
shuttle"Fancy!" Vuka said. "Although, it's design is just as alien as this ships. He approached it. "Curiouser and curiouser..." He mumbled. Marbacca approached.
"Master, let's get going, this place is... Unsettling... I get the feeling Wookies were never meant to walk these halls." He grumbled in his language.
"Indeed. Come along, Cannok-Squad." He said. They headed through one exit, along with their scanner and a pair of Astromech droids they had brought, whilst the Misfits headed through another, making their way along the empty corridors. Kiana and Tuk-Tuk walked cautiously along.
"Misfit Squad, come in" The voice of Vuka came through the comm-link.
"Come in." Canderous replied.
"We've found some of the crew. There are many humans here. They seem to be colour coded. All of the ones we are passing in the corridors seem to be wearing either red, yellow or blue. Wait a minute, we have non-humans... This ones humanoid, but his skin is Blue.""Chiss?" Kiana asked.
"Negative, his sclera are white, as is his hair... And he has antennae.""Strange..." Kiana replied. "Never met anything like that before." At that point, they opened a door, to find a small, circular room, with a dead body in it. This body was wearing a
Red shirt had strange patterns across the skin and
strange cranial ridges"We've just found another alien." Kiana said. Doc rushed over to it and started to check his vitals. "Dead... Rigor is only just setting in, he can't have been dead more than 12 hours... But no signs of a struggle... His eyes have blood gathered behind. I'd need to open him up to get a look at his insides... But it almost looks like he... Drowned... several blood vessels in his head popped, He looks like he suffered from The Benz." Doc sighed.
"We're getting the same." said Vuka.
"I concur, Best suggestion is that the ships air-pressure was quickly, and without warning, increased to several hundred atmospheres. Death would have occurred instantly." Canderous picked up a
Strange device near his body.
"What the hell?" he asked. "Looks like a weapon." He began to look it over.
"WHATEVER YOU DO, DO NOT USE THEIR WEAPONS!!!" Vuka yelled over the comm-link as the sound of burning and orders being shouted. could be heard.
"Very powerful, just blew out a wall with a single shot. It's like a blaster cannon in pistol form." Canderous kept hold of the weapon.
"Very well." Kiana replied. She looked at Canderous with a "This is why he isn't a Master" look. She then walked into the round room. "Looks like a lift... But there are no controls." She looked around, seeing only a handle on the wall. She walked over to investigate and grabbed the handle, looking it over. "No indications on the floor... Maybe there is a way to reach the bridge."
"BRIDGE!" A robotic voice replied. The doors closed and only Kiana and Doc were inside as they rocketted upwards.
"What the-?" she asked. "No, stop!" The lift ignored her as she had taken her hand off of the handle.
"General." Doc said, getting up and readying his blaster. He then grabbed the handle. "Stop!" The lift stopped. "Alright... I think we have it... Whilst we hold this and say a place, it takes us there. Must have a hell of a good AI onboard.
General, are you alright?" Canderous asked over the comm-link.
"Yeah, me and Doc are fine, just getting the hang of the controls. You're on Deck 19, correct?" she asked.
"I think so..." She nodded to Doc.
"Deck 19." he ordered.
"DECK 19" The lift descended again. Soon, the doors opened again and Canderous nodded to them. Doc carried the corpse outside, before the Clones piled in. Kiana grabbed the handle.
"Bridge."
"BRIDGE" The lift started to raise. Kiana got out her Comm-Link. "We have found an automatic lift that is taking us to the bridge."
"Confirmed, we have made it to what we believe to be the engineering section. The technology here is incredible. The computers here are telling us that this thing can cruise at 6 times lightspeed. The fastest ship in the galaxy barely makes it past 1.4x Lightspeed.""By the force... Do we have an estimation on it's top speed?" She asked.
"Well, according to the computer, fastest recorded speed of a ship of this class is 14x lightspeed, but it can only maintain that for a few minutes before... Exploding... Fun to know.""See what else you can get from it."
"You don't understand, this thing is quite happy to answer every question I have. The strange thing is that I think I know that it's speaking Jawa-Trade, but the clones are saying it's speaking Standard and Marbacca says it can't be speaking anything other than Shirri-Wook.""Maybe it has some mind-probing ability... Whatever the case, this thing seems to be more than happy to have us. It's the exact opposite of what all of those space-port stories say about derelict ships."
"Oh yes, I'm going to be honest, I was expecting most of Cannok Squad to be dead by now, as well as you. Left alone to face something that sucks your face clean off.""Comforting." Kiana laughed. The doors opened and they walked out onto
the bridge in a standard 3x2 cover formation. Hightower put his hand up to indicate the all-clear. They then each grabbed a corpse that was sat in one of the chairs and pulled them gently down to the ground, before sitting in their seat, looking through the databanks.
"Seems very much in working order." Detpack said. Canderous had grabbed the front seat and was looking at the data.
"This must be one of the gunners seats... Weird..." he said. "Wait... No... This is the only gunners seat, I have access to the entire ships weapons compliment from just this console."
"No gunnery crew?" Detpack asked. He pressed a button on his console and what looked like a
Pair of binoculars appeared out of the console. He looked into it. "I can see Defiance... She's out there and she's looking beautiful." He leaned on the console, not realizing that he had pushed a button. At that moment, the main screen turned on and the picture that he could see was punched up. Doc, who was seeing to the dead man in what was obviously the captains chair (Making him the captain) looked up.
"Look at it. It's a perfect picture, clear as day... It's not like ours at all..." At that point, a button started beeping on the console in the captains arm-rest. Doc pressed it.
"Can anyone hear me? Kiana?" Kiana looked across the room.
"Vuka, is that you?" she asked. Doc pulled the captain out of the chair and laid him on the ground.
"Yeah, this ship is so helpful, it's giving me and my clones a course in how to operate it. And what's even better is that I don't sense ANY HINT of the dark-side here. I'm sorry that all of these people died, but... Well, this thing is going to be very useful in the war effort. I'd be sorely tempted to make it the Jedi's flagship. With this, we could-""Remember, Knight Jiktu, we are peace-keepers."
"I know, but bringing the war to a quick end is one of the best ways to maintain peace.""Enough. Look, right now, we need to get back to Republic Space, we can study this ship more once we arrive... What have you found out so far."
"Alright, according to the computer, this is the U.S.S. Shran, apparently named after a hero of our dead blue friend back their, who are called Andorians. This ship is part of an orginization called "Starfleet" Which seems to be the naval arm of an immense immense galactic Federation called "The United Federation of Planets." She's a Constitution-class, launched about 6 years ago from their homeworld "Earth", sometimes called "Terra" or "Sol" Dammit, these people have a lot of names for their planet." He hummed a little as he skipped through some uninteresting tidbits. "Alright, here we go. We have coordinates for this Earth and according to the computer, it'd take us about 3 weeks from our current location to travel to Earth Engines are apparently online and ready to go."
"Well, this "Earth" place seems like a good place to start." Canderous said. "Wooooooooow, I think I just hit the jackpot. Weapons manifest. Listen to this-" He pulled the weapon he found earlier. "This is called a "Phaser" and this ship is armed with immense versions of it. a pair on the dorsal and ventral center of the Saucer, a pair aft, just above that hangar we arrived in and another pair on the bottom of that core section. And we have what are called "Photon torpedoes" with what it calls a Variable Yield with a minimum of 1 Isoton and a maximum of 25 Isotons per warhead... How much is that..." He pressed a few buttons.
"Like Proton Torpedoes?"
"..." Canderous couldn't believe what he was reading. "Sir, 25 Isotons is the equivalent of about 50 of our standard Proton Torpedoes. Each one could level a city. We are sitting on 100 of them... We have enough firepower to level Coruscant."
"Alright... We have obviously stumbled across a warship..." Kiana said quietly, completely blown away by the killing power of this ship.
"Actually, Master, although you are half-way there, not quite. This ship was built to serve a dual-function. Apparently, this Federation has made enemies of a "Klingon Empire" who are a warrior-race, not unlike the Mandolorians of old. This ship was designed not only to fend them off, but also to serve as an exploration vessel. Her mission is as such "To explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations. To boldly go where no-man has gone before."""Quite the tag-line." Kiana said.
"Indeed, but in her current state, she is merely an exploration vessel on a mission of purely peaceful intent." Vuka said.
"Call me Sentimental... and i'd never thought i'd say this... But, I think we need to return it to this Federation.""I do as well... But first, we will need to use it to get home. Continue to study the weapons and see if we can duplicate them somehow." She then grabbed her comm-link. "Captain Pellaeon, this is Kiana, I need a medical team immediately, the entire crew is dead. We are going to be commandeering this ship for the moment, under Intergalactic Salvage rights. Mark her in the ships logs as a friendly. We will also need an engineering team and a few crewmen. Although, from what I have seen, I doubt we will need more than 100 people to fly her.
"Understood, General. And are you sure less than 100 men? Seems hardly worth taking it.""Captain, when you see her tactical data, you will understand exactly why we are taking her."
