IN THE SHADOW OF THE MANDALORE

CHAPTER 3 ARCHANGEL DOWN

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CHAPTER THREE

ARCHANGEL DOWN

    i

“Bravo Leader, respond!” Alyssa said into her ComLink. “Dax? Voss? Respond!”

She was met with a purposeful hiss of static on the line. They’d had communications shortly before engaging the drones, but as soon as they had visual contact everything went quiet. Something was jamming the airwaves.

“K-9, see if you can find what’s jamming us.”

The droid chirped out a response.

“I don’t care about ship to shore right now. We need ship to ship.”

The astro-mech responded with another series of beeps and whistles, and she read his response on the computer screen. She understood Binary as well as she did Basic and a dozen other languages, but sometimes she liked to read his responses because it helped to keep things sorted out.

“I don’t care about that, I need to get Bravo Leader on line.”

She tried her ComLink again.

“Bravo leader, respond!”

She watched three SecuroCom ships implode, the muffled flare of flame nothing more than a brilliant flash in the vacuum of space. Voss swept past, firing a full array of lasers. He did a quick roll, weaving in between three SecuroCom fighters and narrowly missing a fourth before coming out of his roll. Two drones imploded to her left, a third one farther away on her right. He was already stalking another three drones before he cleared the flashpoint.

The man’s too reckless, she swore under her breath. He’s going to get someone killed.

“Something’s wrong. This is too easy,” she said into her ComLink, hoping for any response.

“I didn’t get that Kashiefi, did you say it was ‘too easy’?” Dax asked, looping past her with three drones coming online and giving him chase. She watched as he reversed, banked around, and came in behind the drones, his lasers giving short, staccato bursts.

Finally! Back on-line. I’m going to have to remember to give K-9 a good acid bath after this.

“Yes! Too easy. Something’s wrong.”

A SecuroCom TX-37 fighter imploded to her left, and she cursed the Squadron Leader for the fool he was. He was leading the squadron right into a trap, and there was nothing she could do to prevent it. There was debris from SecuroCom fighters floating in the close confines of the battle area. The drones, one moment dormant and the next moment opening fire with lightning precision, destroyed three ships before the squadron had even moved into position. But they hadn’t moved, not until they engaged with SecuroCom, and that was something she couldn’t understand. It was a tactic she hadn’t expected the drones to utilize.

With communications jammed, she never knew if Bravo Leader had called for full shields before, or after the fact—but it was already too late—and she screamed in frustration at the man’s folly. If she’d have been able to contact him sooner, she might’ve been able to remind him about coming in with shields on.

He should’ve known that. It was the first order he should’ve given. Never go into a situation without your shields activated, she’d told Dax a hundred times—no, a thousand times, she reminded herself—and hoped it was a habit he’d been quick to pick up on. She searched him out during the opening salvos and had her answer a moment later when his ship took a direct hit from a drone. She saw the telltale green flash of his shields before Dax opened fire himself, taking out three drones.

She could see that with the initial deployment of the squadron, Bravo Leader had his fighters stretched out too thin. He should’ve had them coming in as a flying wedge, breaking off and circling the drones. The idea was to contain them—not scatter them.

The man has no grasp for tactics. Another rich fool’s son who’s bought his way into the Corps because he thinks he knows how to lead men. Well, this isn’t a game simulator.

Four drones opened up another SecuroCom fighter and quickly set off in pursuit. And now they move? She set off to help—strafed the horizon as she did a twisting roll—letting the Force guide her hand and smiling to herself as the four drones imploded.

It’s too easy, she told herself again.

The drones should be using the planet’s gravitational pull for speed, but they’re not. They’re inert. They should have rudimentary shields at the very least, considering how close they are to Rogue’s Halo, but they’re sitting still, not fighting. It makes no sense. They’re purposely leaving themselves exposed.

It’s not a tactic a drone should use.

“K-9?” she called to her Astro-mech. She heard a swirl of beeps and whistles in her headset.

“Of course you did, and thank you. I would’ve accepted nothing less from you. Now, can you bring up NavCom files and show me the drone tactics from sixteen hundred years ago. I want to know what it was like when these things first showed up. I want to know why they aren’t fighting back.”

“What’s the matter, Kashiefi? It’s the easiest target practice you’ll ever have,” Dax laughed. She was glad to see he’d found his stride—or was that over-confidence?

“And you don’t find that strange?” she asked. She powered her shields up and dropped out of orbit as she reviewed the files K-9 brought up on the ship’s computer. She searched out the rest of the drones with her sensors. They were still inert, which made even less sense.

“Why aren’t they fighting?”

Nothing about what was happening around her made any sense. Scientists on Taris had deprogrammed the drone systems after twelve years of constant failure. Whoever brought them back on line, did it for a reason. There was purpose, and motive; but what was the purpose, and where was the motive?

“They are fighting,” Dax insisted.

“She’s right,” Voss said, as if he suddenly understood. “No matter what you might be thinking, drones are programmed to defend themselves, and defending yourself doesn’t mean standing in one spot and blasting at anything that moves.”

“Exactly! They should be circling us and trying to take us out one at a time,” she said, powering her ship back up. “At least, that’s what the old files say. They’d surround the incoming ships, find a weakness, and then overwhelm them with their numbers. They aren’t doing that. They should be using the larger asteroids to slingshot themselves at us—using the asteroids’ gravity for speed. They’re not.”

“Then what are they up to?” Dax asked.

“Considering they’ve been off line for centuries and suddenly today—not yesterday, or the day before—but today, they come online and attack, I’m thinking they’re being used as some sort of diversion.”

“A diversion? You mean like before an attack?” She could hear the excitement in Dax’s voice, as if the prospect of taking part in a war was something every generation should have.

“Do you sense an impending attack?” Voss asked.

“No, it’s something else,” Alyssa replied. She was looking at the telltale tremble in her hand. “It can only mean one thing,” she said softly.

“Sith,” Voss said.

Alyssa nodded to herself before replying. “Yes.”

“Why would the Sith want to attack the Republic now?” Dax asked. “There’s more Jedi on the planet now than there will be next week, or next month.”

“Not the Sith,” Voss corrected him. “A Sith. A single Sith has a better chance of infiltrating and blending in with the population. He could use the Force to hide himself in a council of Jedis if he wanted, and no one would know any different. You think this is a diversion meant to keep us out of the way of whatever he needs, don’t you?” he asked Alyssa.

“Then why today?” Dax asked.

Yes, why today?

ii

Archangel burrowed itself nose first into an opening three hundred meters above a Second Level mezzanine. Smoke and fire billowed up from underneath, and the ship groaned as it lurched and finally settled, hissing with the sound of escaping vapours. The navigation lights on the port side flickered feebly, finally dying as Ver’dika drove his lightsaber into the port side hull as though he was an ancient hero slaying a beast. The transparisteel hull melted under the heat of his lightsaber as he carved a hole large enough for him to step through. Holding onto a bent piece of metal on the side of the hull, he tossed the carved metal to the side with a wave of his hand and Force-jumped his way into the opening.

He found himself looking at a small reactor near the rear engine room. The ship’s hyperdrive was shut down—emergency protocol in the event of any ship crashing—and he breathed a sigh of relief. He quickly scaled a ladder leading to the walkway above. The emergency lighting was dim, nothing more than a hint of light he thought, as a large, flashing blue light cast long shadows against the curved hull of the ship’s interior.

Four security droids approached. Ver’dika knew Fitt used security droids and that the Y4DK models were an offshoot of the Warden 10-24 series created during the Old Sith Wars. They were antiquated relics that had no business even being on-line. Their fingers were gun barrels and their chest plates opened up to reveal powerful laser cannons. Heavily armoured, the “Red Terror” was supposedly capable of independent thought, although Ver’dika had yet to come across any security droid that could think for itself; that was a dream still far off in the future, he told himself. He knew that once a machine learned independent thought, there was no controlling it. No one in their right mind would want to have a machine beside them trying to determine, or perhaps judge, a moral issue.

“Halt, by order of the Grand Facilitator,” the first droid intoned, raising its blaster barrelled arm chest high. A moment later the chest plates opened and two laser blasters slid out along the plates, powering up and taking aim.

“The Grand who?”

“The Administrator,” a second droid insisted.

“Identify yourself or...”

A quick push of Dark Energy sent all four droids crashing against the inside of the hull with enough force to break metal. It wasn’t enough to destroy them, but it gave him the time he needed. One of the droids tried firing, but the multiple shots went out of control and blasted a hole in the ceiling, bursting a pipe that screamed out a whistle of steam as if in pain. The droid aimed and fired a second shot, but Ver’dika caught that with his blade and sent it back, shattering the droid’s gun barrelled arm. He watched as the droid’s laser cannons tried to aim. A second droid fired at almost the same time, but the droid’s arm had somehow become entangled with the other droid, and they both exploded. Ver’dika fell on his back with the concussive blast of the droids, the flash of light blinding him for a moment. The last thing he remembered seeing were the two remaining droids trying to free themselves from the tangled mess of twisted metal. He rushed forward, trusting in the Force, and with a hurried slash disabled the two remaining droids.

Stepping into the hallway, he began searching out his target’s essence with all the powers of his Dark energy.

I know you’re here, Fitt. I can smell the fear on you.

There were moaning crew members in the narrow hallways where the air lay thick with smoke. He knew it was only a matter of time before the choking atmosphere of the planet came seeping in through the cracks and fissures of the hull. He commended himself for having had the foresight to wear the Mandalorian armour. Not only had it saved him from the blast of the droids, it sealed him off from the noxious fumes around him. Whatever crew members he might come across would be more concerned with finding survival suits. If the Centurion armour gave him a sense of invincibility, he knew the sight of it would send survivors running for safety.

Everything was going according to plan. He’d managed to force the ship down in almost the exact spot he needed; the fact it was two blocks over wasn’t that much of an inconvenience. But all his memories as a son of Mandalore told him the most important thing about any mission was getting out. He knew to expect the unexpected, and to trust in the Force, but his first reaction would always be his Mandolorian nature.

A flashing light in his helmet warned him of an incoming message. He tried reading it as he explored the ship with the Force. He pushed a button in a series of four on the left side of his helmet, and the message scrolled up to the left of his vision. With the crash reported, SecuroCom was on its way.

Time’s running short.

He didn’t want to have a running battle with SecuroCom. He had to get in, and get out. He brought up the infrared as he followed his instincts through the dark halls, searching for any life forces. He sensed Fitt trying to escape the observation lounge with someone else—his daughter he hoped—and a slow smile played across his lips. Locating a terminal jack for the cleaning droids, he plugged into it, slicing into the ship’s schematics, looking for the shortest route.

And now to get out.

He punched a code into the data pad on his sleeve as he made his way to the observation lounge.