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Rise And Conquer

"We're going where?!?" Mitchell couldn't believe what he was hearing.

"You heard me," Jagged Fel replied.

"Bad enough we took Muunilinst out from the hands of the Pirates, we're now signing up for a suicide mission."

"Don't think of it like that."

"You saw the holovid of what happened to the Chimaera. Why shouldn't I?"

Jagged was getting frustrated. "Because we're not going to have that happen. We have a much better plan."

Mitchell was still skeptical. "La Forge had a good plan. Execution of the plan counts too."

"Well, let me put it to you this way - we aren't going to try to do it all at once."

"It's going to be a little hard to land on Geonosis without all of them showing up at once!"

"I never said it would be easy. Only that we'd do it."

"Won't we need a foothold first?"

"Well yes," Jagged said pensively, "we do. That's what we're up to now."

"What if we can't establish the foothold we need?"

"I think we can do it, even if it will be tough."

Mitchell pressed on: "But what if we don't?"

"The whole operation will have to be called off, at huge cost to lives."

Mitchell looked grim. "It's risky, sir."

Jagged smiled weakly. "But think of the reward!"

Mitchell thought of the surrender of pirate forces, or their withdrawal from the sector. "Maybe."

"We're going to try, Mitchell."

"How does the saying go? There is no try...?"

La Forge still couldn't get used to the idea of serving on the Warhammer. It seemed so different, for the life-time Chimaera officer. The Warhammer was smaller, but his quarters were comparable, and so he didn't feel too badly constrained. But the thrum of the engines was somehow different, a strange sound.

"La Forge?" Vortagh checked if his temporary first officer was still with it or staring out the window into deep space.

"Sorry, captain, I didn't sleep well last night. First night in a new place always does it to me."

"Not a problem." Vortagh crossed to the other side of the bridge, and La Forge followed. "So here is what Admiral Fel gave me. I think I might forgive him for assigning you to me," joked Vortagh.

La Forge made a face momentarily and replied, "Go ahead."

"Apparently the Rebels are going to make an offering to the pirates. Some Gunboats they stole."

"Wow, even we don't have those," La Forge commented.

"Not yet, we don't." Vortagh said. He held up a black datapad. "Imperial Intelligence gave me the override codes for them. We can redirect them to fly home to our hangar."

"I didn't even know that was possible," La Forge said.

"Ah, La Forge, you really have no idea about II, do you?"

"Seems I don't."

"Anyway, we're going to make this one good. We'll get out there, turn them around, blow up the pirate vessel, and drive off the Rebels. Then we make it look like the pirates were attacked by the Rebels, and we're done."

"How devilish," La Forge grinned.

"Glad you like it," Vortagh said, as he turned back to the tunnel of hyperspace. "Get Steel and Muscat ready. It's almost showtime."

Lieutenant Branet strapped into his fighter carefully, making sure he had everything. The hum of the loaned hyperdrive behind him was strange, but somehow comforting. He and three other Epsilon pilots were headed out to do a convoy inspection.

Wedge spoke over the comm: "Good luck out there, Lieutenant. We'll let you know if anything exciting happens here."

Branet chuckled a little. The Nemesis was remaining behind to guard the shipyard, at least until things were in better shape there. But they were headed out now, to try to get a convoy, and maybe get some supplies.

Branet threw all the extraneous bits in his cabin into storage. The easy missions always have a catch.

Calder threw a piece of bulkhead off of his desk into the corner, angrily. His ship was in ruins. Worse than he'd ever thought. He'd returned, torn a strip off of La Forge, and promptly retreated to his quarters.

Calder tilted the desk and the chaos on it slid off and joined the mess on the floor. The surface had been dented by whatever piece of bulkhead had fallen onto it. He started to move the desk onto the portable anti-gravity unit he had brought back with him.

Admiral Fel had only made the situation worse. La Forge and Iota squadron were now outbound with the VSD Warhammer, leaving Calder behind at the shipyard. Calder was infuriated to no end. This was the flagship of the fleet he was captaining. Now he was the captain of an empty, broken shell of a starship.

Calder got the desk up onto the antigrav unit without too much trouble. He was headed for the shipyard, to set up there for a while. This area of the Chimaera was going to be powered down. The main reactor was ailing, and the repair team had decided to only hold life support in certain areas at a time, generated portably, to conserve the power in the core.

There had been talk of scrapping the ship. Calder's heart nearly stopped when it was mentioned to him. But the more he saw of his ship, the easier it was for him to see why they said it.

Calder pushed the antigrav into the turbolift shaft. The turbolifts were out, so they had disabled artifical gravity in them, allowing access between floors by swimming. Calder followed the desk, pushing it down slowly, to the hangar deck, then pushing it out slowly, Calder landed on his feet, a little harder than he had intended, but still without tipping over.

He pushed his desk over to the shuttle, where his other personal belongings were already waiting. He swore under his breath and boarded. The shuttle departed, and all systems on the Chimaera were switched off, plunging the ship into blackness.

Calder looked out the viewport to see the darkened silhouette of the ISD against the backdrop of Yaga Minor, and he wept.

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