In Service of Chaos. (SW\B5)

[Crown]

Would it help if I mentioned that Tarkin is well endowed?

Not for me, I've known for a while that his nickname was 'tripod'.

[NecronLord]

Chapter Twelve

Kaan’s ship banked toward the other, crippled TIE, and he once more tried to connect to it with a grappling line. The magnetic clamp took the other vessel by the radiator, and Kaan’s ship spun on the spot, tugging it back towards the distant mother-ship.


Aboard the Silent Hunter Mara Jade looked at the implacable figure of the Vorlon, Ulkesh. The purple clad figure shifted its position almost imperceptibly, looking out of the window of the Silent Hunter's observation deck.

“You seem pensive,” she said, hesitantly.

The First One did not answer, merely nodding its head and making a soft, affirmative noise.

“W- May I ask why?” she said.

The Vorlon turned away from the Venator’s window to face her, and nodded.

“Err, why?”

“They are coming,” it replied.

“Oh,” Mara said, considering, “Are we safe here?” she asked, unusual urgency in her voice.

Another positive noise, another slight inclination of the head, red eye unblinking as ever, answered her.

“I, err, I have the data you requested. It’s all there. Activation codes. Locations. Encryption systems.” She extended a hand containing a thin data slate toward the alien.

Ulkesh looked down at her hand, shivering slightly, and the aperture on the lens of its encounter suit narrowed. It reached out to brush her mind, and was somewhat surprised to feel fear.

“You are afraid,” it said.

She stuttered, “Y- yes.”

“Of whom?”

She seemed unable to answer, and put the data slate down. The Vorlon stared for a moment, and she stammered, “I had a premonition.”

It continued to stare, and she realised it wanted more.

“Of one of the Emperor’s Inquisitors. I think he is coming for me.”

“I see,” the Vorlon replied, “go and calm yourself.”

She bowed, and, stepping back, left the ship’s observation deck.


Kaan stared in shock at the space in front of him, stars seemed to ripple and contort, then disappear. In a split second he recalled the last time he had seen that, the last time he had seen one of the unidentified vessels. Cutting the tow-cable loose, he fired the engines of his vessel, pirouetting in place and shooting off to one side. He could see the spider-shape of the alien ship clearly now.

It puzzled him, why would such a vessel be there. Then he decided. It was probably there to investigate. Everything fell into place, the destroyed star destroyer had been somehow operating under alien influence. It was an unpleasant revelation, but he did not have long to contemplate its significance.

The scream of the alien ship rang through his mind as clearly as if it had been a gong rung inside his skull. It turned, a beam of violet energy, somehow seeming to be dark, slashed through where he had been.

The Shadow ship was surprised to find enemies so close to it, and spun. Its weapon quickly eliminated the first of the fighters, which had been coasting inert. The TIE and its screaming pilot was reduced to glowing embers in a single moment.


Kaan couldn’t really hold his calm in the haze of adrenaline that came with the appearance of the spider-ship. But he could fly very, very well. He spun and rolled, engines burning at full. Toggling his communications system, he snarled, “I need some support out here!”

The beam slashed through the trail from the ion engines, and proximity alarms screamed inside Kaan’s helmet. He rolled the fighter, pushing the firing studs of the laser cannons as he did.

Twin lines of green fire shot across the vacuum splashing on the black carapace of the alien ship, causing it to glow brightly in places as it radiated energy back into space.

Kaan grinned, and switched weapons mode.


Magnified thousands of times, the view of the battle that Ulkesh saw was astonishing. Not for its scale, but for the sheer luck of the fighter confronting the Shadow vessel. The Shadow vessel was now wounded, bleeding heavily. It tumbled end over end and thrashed about. It was wounded, but not dead. The Vorlon could see that the vessel would escape and report.

It - he reached out, touched it, seized the mind of the vessel, its enslaved pilot, and squeezed.


Kaan paused as the weapon of the enemy vessel flickered out. One proton torpedo remained, and he seemed to have the advantage now. He pressed the firing stud again, and the missile slammed into the great black shape. It broke apart in a blinding – though not to Kaan, shielded behind auto-polarising helmet-optics – flash.


Inquisitor Rasavan, oblivious to the drama nearby banked his craft toward the aged Venator class destroyer. A hatch on the ventral side yawned open, and he threw a lever on the custom made shuttle’s control panel, tucking six curved and slanted wings in against the body of the craft. Trusting in the automatic landing system, he stood, the mechanical augmentations of his left arm whirring dangerously as he did.

Unlike most prosthetics, this was not a simple replaced limb, but a gap between organic hand and organic arm. His hand was natural, but the droid part of his arm, extending from an inch above his wrist to just above his mechanical elbow joint, was most certainly not. Indeed, it looked like an antique prosthesis from around the same time as the Silent Hunter had been created. An interested viewer could see tissue fluid, blood, and other liquids in transparent artificial veins and arteries, flowing between the hand and the arm.

Jerec had called it ‘an obscene contraption’ when he had first met the Inqusitor. Rasavan considered that a point of pride. Anything that irritated the now deceased Dark Jedi Master was, in Rasavan’s book, praiseworthy.

Striding down the ramp, Rasavan looked around the Venator’s huge landing bay. A squad of stormtroopers stood rigidly at attention, and a junior officer greeted him. Rasavan was not impressed, “Where is the Captain?” he demanded.

The young officer gulped and stammered, “Sir, the ship is at General Quarters sir…”

The Inquisitor closed his eyes, sucking in a deep breath, “Never mind. Where is the Emperor’s Hand, Mara Jade?”

“I’ll check sir…”


In the depths of the Maw Cluster, a freakish cluster of black holes, a young admiral called Daala started. The blackness of the inside of the maw was oppressive, but she could clearly see one of the few visible features, kept illuminated to provide a reference point and a psychological boost, a massive prototype Death Star. Or at least, normally she was able to see it. Darkness was creeping across the spindly, skeletal surface of the Death Star.

“Sensor officer!” she snapped, irate and tense, “What is that?”

The shadow crept across the device at a growing pace.

He stammered, uncertain, “I don’t know Ma’am. There were some odd neutrino emissions, but nothing above the local norm.”

Daala’s next order was pointless. The shadow had what it wanted, and in a moment, its prize was gone.

[Chris OFarrell]

Yey! Updates!

ROFL, I think Dalla is going to be in biiiggg dodo from Tarkin

[Crown]

You brought the Janeway of the SWverse into your story ...

[NecronLord]

You brought the Janeway of the SWverse into your story ...

Don't worry! It's just a cameo.

[Imajor]

You brought the Janeway of the SWverse into your story ...

Hmm, not sure if that is an insult to Janeway or to Daala. Could easily be both

[Crazedwraith]

Damn you NL! Disatracting me from AS Geography revision! And doing a very good job of it in the process...

[Crown]

Sorry for bumbing, but I realised that I forgot to mention how much I liked this line;

Anakin smiled knowingly, “I have become Grey. I stand between the darkness and the light.” He advanced on Jerec, and the laughter stopped.

I like its implication.

[NecronLord]

Warning: Heavier spoilers in this chapter.

Chapter Twelve

“Returned, I have,” Yoda said, smiling at Obi-Wan. Both looked older to one another, though of course, as a proportion, Yoda had aged little. The small Jedi Master was leaning heavily on his stick and smiling. The Alderannian breeze played through what little hair he had remaining and the thin strands waved like tendrils.

“And we’re glad to have you here,” said Bail Organa, standing beside General Kenobi, “but may I ask to what we owe the honour?”

Yoda tottered along the smooth flagstones, “No longer a Sith Lord, Vader is.”

“I have felt it? Is he dead?”

Yoda’s ears pricked up playfully, “From your point of view, dead he is.”

Obi-Wan shook his head, somewhat alarmed by the possible interpretations of his former master’s words. Bail Organa merely raised a single plucked eyebrow, sometimes Jedi could be infuriatingly secretive in these matters.


Anakin Skywalker watched the Emperor’s shuttle land on Naboo. He could feel his former Master, his former owner, aboard, and he knew that the Emperor could feel him too. “He will be coming,” Anakin said, sweeping a hand over his grey, white even, hair.

The encounter-suited Vorlon next to him nodded, “Yes,” Kosh said.

“What do you suggest I should do?”

Kosh shook his head, “It is your time now,” it said, turning and leaving.


Aboard the Silent Hunter, Kaan found himself once more jumping down from the bottom step of a boarding ladder, an irritating necessity aboard pre-TIE ships such as the Venator class. He’d spent his entire life aboard ships like the Hunter, and he knew how to tell the feelings of a crew simply by breathing the air, electric as it was with a certain trepidation and confusion, he made a point of immediately asking what had happened.

The trooper replied in the hushed tones that were the universal accompaniment of gossip…


Anakin could see the flash of crimson robe that heralded the Emperor’s Red Guard, and slowly rose from the seat he had been meditating in, overlooking Theed Falls. He reached out with his mind and felt the familiar crystal of hate that was Lord Sidious. He was, in a way pleased. For the Emperor to have sent only his guards to capture him would have been rather an insult. The two guards snapped to attention at the ends of the street, under orders not to interfere.

At last the cloaked figure of Darth Sidious appeared, and Anakin smiled. “Lord” he said, using a youthful and confident tone that was perhaps the most surprising part of the encounter, to the Sith Lord’s mind, “Sidious.”

“Lord Vader,” Palpatine replied, leaning on a gnarled wooden cane that seemed to convey so much of Palpatine’s character, the wickedness and loathing that had been his lifelong companions.

Anakin gave a thin, aged smile, “Vader?” he asked, glancing over his shoulders, one at a time, “I see no Vader here.”

“Then who do I address if not a fellow Sith Lord?”

Anakin’s smiled broadened, continuing the little game “Why that is simple. You address the Chosen One of the Force. The man who will kill you.”

“Then die,” Palpatine said, “Chosen One.” The Sith Lord raised his gnarled hands, his cane held in place by casual almost instinctive use of the force, in a gesture which had been the last sight of many of his enemies. Anakin raised his own hand, palm flat as he countered.

The Emperor unleashed a barrage of lightning tendrils, they raced through the air, a horrible manifestation of rage and hatred, the force lightning flashed out from the depths of his soul and reached forward to savage the wayward apprentice.

Except they did not perform as planned, they washed across a sphere of shimmering energy. Grappling for purchase, the tendrils of hate found nothing but a barrier of iron resolve. They continued the struggle for many minutes until Sidious’ concentration ebbed, spent. “Is it my turn now?” Anakin crowed, seeming as if he had perhaps, if one stretched one’s imagination, been somewhat irritated by the raw power of Palpatine made manifest.

A Jedi would have said that Anakin seemed to enjoy the look of horror on Palpatine’s face too much, but Anakin Skywalker was no Jedi.

The two guards reeled as their ceremonial force pikes shot from their hands towards Palpatine. He spun, cane falling, and raised his hands. The pikes slowed, and landed in the aged Sith Lord’s palms.

The gnarled cane, grown in a single piece, from a rare force sensitive wood, flew into Anakin’s hand. Palpatine turned once more to face his ex-apprentice, dropping the weapons. Anakin smiled yet again, and threw their former bearers at the Sith Lord too as he let the walking stick clatter to the floor.

Palpatine was surprisingly sprightly in dodging the projectiles. Lashing out in anger, the lightning found its mark on one of them, whose screams were cut silent after only a few moments of the dark lightning.

“You know, of course, My Lord,” the ironic tone of Anakin’s voice reminded Palpatine of something in his past, “that this will only end one way.”

A bar of blue light flared from the lightsaber, made from the remains of the one crafted by Sariss – Anakin had eventually let her go free, perhaps a mistake that only time would tell after having her surrender the weapon to him - suddenly in Anakin’s hand.

“So be it,” Palpatine said, his own weapon emerging from his sleeve.

Anakin’s blade clashed off the single red blade of Darth Sidious in a whirling array of blue and crimson. Flash after flash of bright light sparked in the air between the two as the blades of light clashed. Anakin seemed vital and alive, young again, free of mistakes and regrets, “You never where much of a lightsaber combatant, ‘Master.’”

Sidious snarled in rage and lashed out with a flurry of slashes, ten, then twenty per second. The Sith Lord darted this way and that, dodging one way and then another from the blue blade that stabbed out and unerringly blocked every blow.

“You know what I learnt in your service? My Lord?”

Palpatine gave a feral snarl that defied translation and attacked once more.

“I learnt,” Anakin parried, pushing his opponent, a being that now seemed to ooze the darkness of its heart into the bright Naboo day, “that my true strength is fear,” the Shadow tried for a low cut, but was blocked again, Anakin’s saber was only held in one hand now, and the other shot from his colourless robes into his left hand, firing in a blaze of heatless green.

He sank the lightsaber into Palpatine’s leg, punching a neat hole in his robes and the limb beneath before withdrawing the blade as the shocked Sith Master staggered back. A tremor crept down to Palpatine’s hands, and the blue blade bisected his weapon. “So now,” Anakin said, “I will culture your fear. Nurture it. Make you feel the dread you have inflicted on others. You are after all, undeserving of a swift death.”

Palpatine staggered back, and Anakin reached into the force, using it to deftly push his enemy back, “Then I will kill you as you had me kill your last apprentice. And with you, the ‘Noble and Ancient’ Sith Order will die.”

The twin blades were poised on either side of Palpatine’s neck, and Anakin exhaled as he extinguished them, and turned, “Enjoy,” he said, walking away.

[Crazedwraith]

Sweet. I like the concept of pulling a second sabre, I was thinking of using a simlar move in Vertex.

[Chris OFarrell]

Oh that is mean

[Murazor]

Damnit! I was planning to write something so similar that I am now pissed. Did the Vorlons make you a telepath or what?

In the other hand, good quality and all that. Anakin the Grey is a mean bastard.

[Crown]

Damnit! I was planning to write something so similar that I am now pissed. Did the Vorlons make you a telepath or what?

Ditto, especially in regards to what makes Sith Lightning so potent ... you touched on it, but there is still enough 'wriggle' room for me to expand upon it without looking like a copy - cat.

Nice chapter, short as always though.

[NecronLord]

Chapter Thirteen

Mara Jade stared blankly at Rasavan. The cybernetic Inquisitor faced her across a short corridor deep within the Silent Hunter. “Mara Jade,” he said.

He’s here!. It was a strong thought, sent deep within her, and sent on to the Vorlon, many floors above.

You can defeat him, was the almost contemptuous answer that flowed from the back of her mind, unbidden, in a voice that didn’t quite seem to be her own.

“And you are?” she asked, knowing full well who he was, but desiring his belittlement.

“You will come with me,” he said, “to see your Master.”

She smiled, confidence shining in her green eyes, “I don’t think so,” she replied.

“I didn’t give you a choice,” the Dark Jedi demanded. His prosthetic arm emerged from under the black cloak he wore, and a cylindrical section that would be taken at first glance for a structural support detached and dropped, spinning, into the palm of his cybernetic hand. Mara could see three more such weapons concealed in the rugged and blatant augmentation.

That explains a lot, she thought.

The hand spun on a motorised disk, twirling about its axis, and he rolled his neck a little and stretched his other arm, something clicked in his other arm, but it sounded quite natural.

Raising the lightsaber into a classic guard, the inquisitor pressed the activation button, and a bar of yellow light shot out of the emitter. He spun his wrist around again, the blade blurring into a wide almost disk.

“I make my own choices,” Mara said, smiling, and glared at him. Rasavan recoiled as if struck. He had never quite felt anything like what she was doing. It was as though she had poured insects inside his skull, and they were poisoning his mind with stingers and mandibles.

He staggered to one side and dropped his weapon, instead trying frantically to put out flames on his clothes, screaming as he did so.

Mara watched with satisfaction as her assailant collapsed, smiling grimly at a trickle of blood running from his nose.


Emperor Palpatine hissed through his gnarled and yellowed teeth with every step up the endless flight of marble stairs that lead to his ‘retreat.’ Elite stormtroopers rushed down the stairs to aid him, clones from the finest lines offered to help him up the stairs, and he hissed, shoving one away.

Pain is a teacher of all Sith, and Lord Sidious embraced its teachings.
“Do something useful instead!” he snapped, and pointed to the locals gawping at him from the bottom of the stairs, “Kill them! Keep this quiet!”

“Yes Sir!” one snapped, nodding, “Right away.”

He limped his way between the fine wooden doors, and up another set of stairs while Imperial Guards and stormtroopers bustled out towards the front steps. Stuttering automatic blaster fire and screaming echoed from outside. The high notes of panicking gungans – how he despised them – were mixed with the screams of humans.

Pulling his hood down, the ruler of the galaxy punched buttons on his desk, an the great windows of his study turned slowly opaque, plunging the room into darkness.

“Executor Sedriss!” he commanded, and the droid brain that ran his communications filtered through the holonet

A short time later the young Dark Sider’s visage appeared on Palpatine’s desk, in miniature, flickering hologram form. The Emperor’s face was lit in a pale blue light from the desk’s holocamera as he spoke.

“Excecutor Sedriss. I command you to take control of the Death Star and bring it to the planet Naboo. There I shall initiate you into the Order of Sith Lords.”

The surprise on the future apprentice’s face was plain, “It shall be done my Lord,” he said.

“Good. Go forth and do my will.”

He touched a button and the image flickered out.

“Sector fleet command,” he said to the droid brain. Vader, or Skywalker, or whatever he called himself would never escape this world alive.


Rasavan rolled about in immense pain, even experiencing phantom pain from his missing flesh, feeling the searing heat of a raging inferno consume his body, seeing his tormentor through the flames that clouded his vision. A solution presented itself, and he reached out through the force and pushed her backwards into the bulkhead she stood next to. Her red hair obscured her face as she hit the wall head on, at great speed, and abruptly, the telepathic pain ceased.

She lay still, and he gasped for the air that no longer burnt his lungs.


Ulkesh span, turning towards the nearest turbolift. Such insolence towards his servants could not be tolerated. Clearly instruction was needed below.


Gathering his strength, but moving shakily, Rasavan rose and approached his quarry. Leaning forward, he took her pulse. She was alive, but unconscious, which was for him, ideal. Picking up the Emperor’s hand, the Inquisitor headed back to the landing bay.

His ship awaited, refuelled, and wiping the blood from his nose, he crossed the open hangar deck, “Clear my ship for launch!” he demanded, striding up its ramp.


Above the serene sphere of the water planet Naboo, a scene from decades ago was repeated. Warships slid into orbit around the little but-influential planet, forming a blockade, they were the Chomell sector fleet, consisting of well over two-dozen star destroyers and their support vessels.

Aboard Kosh’s ship, Anakin watched the vessels arrive, “I shouldn’t have made him scared,” he said, “He’ll probably destroy this world to try and get me.”

“His hand is never yours,” Kosh said.

“Yes, perhaps,” the ex-Sith Lord said, “but I have an idea…”

[Crazedwraith]

Curse you for posting this when i was about to go out. I'm only now reading it...

EDIT: I came, I read, I liked as ever. Poor Mara.

[Crown]

EDIT: I came, I read, I liked as ever. Poor Mara.

Idiot Mara you mean. She was taught by the Emperor himself how to do away with traitors, and she gets sucker punched. Sheesh.

Nice chapter.

[NecronLord]

Idiot Mara you mean. She was taught by the Emperor himself how to do away with traitors, and she gets sucker punched. Sheesh.

Well. Aside from not being able to do much with the force now, as when she was a Hand she drew on the Emperor's power somehow, it happened to the Emperor himself once, remember.

Not that she's not an idiot.

[Chris OFarrell]

I'm impressed so far. Its interesting where your going with this. For a split second I have to admit I thought the guy comming for Mara was Grevious...he is the first character in your fic I don't recognise.

Can you PLEASE have Dalla come to Tarkin and admit she lost a f*#(ing DEATH STAR and get shot?

[NecronLord]

I'm impressed so far. Its interesting where your going with this. For a split second I have to admit I thought the guy comming for Mara was Grevious...he is the first character in your fic I don't recognise.

Kaan is also new, though he fits a rather obvious EU archetype. And yeah, the spinning wrist was a nod to Grievous.

Can you PLEASE have Dalla come to Tarkin and admit she lost a f*#(ing DEATH STAR and get shot?

But... but...

I'll have him mention it in passing. I don't want to actually have her 'appear' again.

[Setesh]

*evil chuckle* Good, Good.

But you have to wonder, just how long will Ani put up with the vorlons before he pulls a sherriden. The one with him seems a great deal like the original Kosh. More helpful and generally regretful ofthe mistakes their pride causes. I don't think Ani will put up with trading one Master for anouther now that he's 'seen the light'. So the way the other Vorlons regard others will piss him off faster than a tusken doing the two step on his mother's grave.

[NecronLord]

The one with him seems a great deal like the original Kosh.

...

It is. The one with Mara, Ulkesh, is Kosh2, but is being rather nicer than he was canonically. For now.

As for the rest. You'll just have to wait and see.

[NecronLord]

Chapter Fourteen.

Governor Tarkin glared across the table at a spike-haired… youth! He found it difficult to believe that the Emperor had sent this Sedriss here as his representative. Rumours had begun cropping up about why this man had arrived at Despyre instead of Darth Vader. Tarkin wasn’t entirely fond of those kind of rumours, he’d known Vader for a long time, and unlike this Sedriss, he was a known quantity.

Sedriss had the stare of a genuine madman, something Tarkin noted with satisfaction that even the strident Admiral Motti found unsettling. The panoramic observation window before them showed only the swirling brightness of hyperspace, whipping past the Death Star as it raced across the galaxy.

“Tell me, Admiral,” Sedriss said, staring through the window, “Have you been looking forward to testing this weapon?”

Motti smiled from his chair at the pacing youth, “Of course!” he said, “this station is now the ultimate power in the universe. I have been anxiously awaiting its application.”

“Don’t be too proud of your little toy Motti. It is merely,” he disdainfully glanced back at Motti, “a tool for the Enlightened.”

“The Enlightened?” Motti asked, “Let me guess, you’re another ‘Dark Side devotee like Vader?”

“That is correct.”

“Well, this mystical force of you hasn’t helped you locate him now has it? Nor for that matter, given you clairvoyance enough to find our stolen data tapes, or the hidden rebel fortress -” Motti gasped as cold tendrils of pressure wrapped around his neck.

“I will teach you the power of the Dark Side, little man,” he snapped.

Motti gasped again, his eyes bulging as he reached up to his neck, trying to preserve an illusion of calm that he didn’t feel a shred of.


Rasavan’s ship was also travelling through hyperspace to Naboo, though it was faster and its journey was shorter. Inside a dark cell, more of a cubby-hole with a lock, in the ship, Mara finally awoke. It was unfortunately too cramped to rub her head, which felt almost like someone had squeezed a hutt into it. As she realised where she was she began to panic. That shouldn’t have happened, she should have anticipated and pushed harder.

But something inside said that such impractical self-recrimination was useless, and her thoughts soon returned to the present. The cell was a masterwork of discomfort, it was just too small for her to stand up straight in, and, shuffling around and craning her neck to observe the typical imperial cell’s ceiling. Camera lenses, three of them, and a thick pane of transparisteel covering a light designed to range from soft illumination to ‘blinding’ at the touch of a button.

“Okay,” Mara murmured to herself, “not much chance of escape there,” she set about a slow and methodical exploration of the tiny cell, and found, without much surprise but still with annoyance, that there was nothing to aid an escape.

‘The Empire sure knows how to make a cell’ she thought, and stopped, wondering when the Empire had become ‘them.’ Mara leaned back, and tried to stave off tears of despair. She’d impressed on others many times that ‘Imperial Triumph is a Historical Inevitability’ now it came home to roost for her.


The Rebel Alliance Dreadnought New Hope cruised through the depths of interstellar space. This ship was essentially the flagship of the alliance, a mobile, hidden base from which Senator Mon Mothma managed and co-ordinated many of the galaxy spanning cells of the Rebel Alliance. Master Yoda found it oddly reassuring to be back aboard one of the venerable ships of the Republic he had visited and used so many times in his long career as a Jedi.

Before the dark times, and the dagger-ships that were now viewed as the mark of the Palpatine Era. “Welcome to the New Hope Master Yoda, General Kenobi” the rebel leader said, eliciting a nod from the latter and a cantankerous tap of the latter’s’ cane upon the floor – clearly his time in exile had dulled his social graces a little, “I am told by Senator Organa that you wished to be appraised of any information we have on the movements of Lord Vader.”

“Yes,” Yoda said quite simply.

“Well, our contacts in the Imperial Garrison of Coruscant report that his shuttle arrived there several hours ago.”

Obi-Wan and Yoda exchanged puzzled glances. “A question. Did your informant see the pilot?”

Mon Mothma nodded, “Yes,” she said, “he didn’t get any pictures, but he reported seeing a middle aged man and some form of robed droid disembark.”

The last two Jedi exchanged puzzled glances.


Ulkesh’s transport ship tore through hyperspace at its maximum safe speed, struggling and failing, to keep up with the imperial inquisitor’s vessel in real-space. The dimension used for travel by the Vorlons and Shadows was far different to that used by the Empire, despite sharing a name. Its non-linear routes meant that the calculations for passage through it were perhaps more complex than those of ‘normal’ hyperspace.

One could make the same journey by a longer route and take less time. Things worked differently there.

The symbiosis between ship and pilot was similar to the union a skilled rider could develop with a loyal horse, but greater simply by virtue of the telepathic links between one and the other. The pilot could see and feel as the ship felt, and the ship could feel the emotions and commands of its pilot.

Aboard the vessel, Ulkesh usually forsook the comfort of an encounter suit, which, ultimately served as a means of interacting with lesser races. In his mind he could ‘see’ the kaleidoscope of hyperspace rush around the ship. But there was something wrong, and he wasn’t entirely sure what.

Then he pinned it down, some form of interference crossing all bands of his mind. Some form of distortion, as if the alternate reality was twisted, as though someone had taken its natural shape and pulled a part from it, stretching its surface and creating a bubble one wouldn’t normally notice.

As far as he knew only his own race had ever attempted that kind of feat.


The being that had once been a Duro could feel, no, sense, something nearby. There should not be anything nearby. Nothing was supposed to be nearby. These thoughts clouded his – or had it been a female? – thoughts for a moment, but then it sensed the interloper revealing itself.

It was one of the Lords of Order. Or at least, one of their ships, it knew of them only as malevolent creatures. Enemies. But its orders were not to harm such beings. It was against the rules. It waited, demanding instructions from its superiors.

The Masters seemed to take a long time to consider before they sent their commands.


The scale of the hidden construction he could observe appalled Ulkesh. A vast metal framework surrounded by thousands upon thousands of spider like shadow vessels, laying down a web of the same sickly black material that they were made from upon the construct’s surface.

His knowledge, or rather, the knowledge of his Carrier, identified it easily. It was a Death Star. To his mind, prophetic visions of the Chaos his enemies could wreak by unleashing such a weapon bolstered by their own technology sprang unbidden. He could visualise the city world of Coruscant bursting apart into a billion fragments in a second. Recriminations. Internecine war.

In the past the scale of such an atrocity, the sheer suffering it would unleash, would have terrified and aggrieved Ulkesh. But millennia of unquestioned power had been detrimental to the Vorlon’s original agenda of protecting their inferiors. But even now, he could feel a part of that horror. He knew that he could not allow such an appalling plan to be implemented. He would not.

The ship screeched into his mind in pain, and he was snapped back to the present by the empathic pain as a beam of energy cut into the side of his transport. He reached out with his mind and jammed the internal links of the assailing ship, the bonds between its hardware and its processing unit, the miserable remnant of some member of the ‘young races.’

The Shadow ship stopped, disoriented but Ulkesh didn’t bother to attack it. More were following it, keen to destroy him before he escaped. At his urging, his vessel turned and fled. As soon as he was outside the distortion he would be able to send signals clearly, at least. Then he would have to find and liberate Mara Jade.

Her importance was suddenly far greater than he had ever imagined.

[Crazedwraith]

Slick.

[NecronLord]

Slick.

I misread that as 'sick' at first.

[Crown]

Nice chapter bud, looking forward to the next.