IN THE SHADOW OF THE MANDALORE

Chapter 2 A sci-Fi Friday piece

A quick word if I might

I’m putting too much out, I know. But there is a small group of readers who are asking for “Warrior Wednesdays” high fantasy/barbarian stuff. I wrote “Brillig” for that. There’s another group calling for “throwback Thursday”, where they suggest putting up something old, from when you had a handful of readers. So today I put up the first chapter of A BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO TIME TRAVEL. I had 55 readers when that came out. I now have ten times that amount. I thought maybe they might want to see it, maybe read it. I’m trying to get my BOOK TOOB Channel synced with my Substack page, so I put a link up to my reading today, but also put the chapter up because some people are hearing impaired. Now we have Sci-Fi Friday. I put up a STAR WARS story I wrote some years ago (4 or 5?), and thought, meh, (shrug) maybe someone will want to read it? Guess what? They do. So now I have to put that up for people to look at.

And the good news? All of this is going to come to a halt in a while.

I’m going on vacation!

When I go on vacation, no posts. I’m not even going to think of this page. When I get back, it will be me READING every Sunday night, and posting my Paid Serial novels on Wednesday. You have to step back and take a break once in a while. My problem is that I want to do too much. I did that when I wrote the Time Travel book for NaNoWriMo. I was putting stories out on Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. And writing. Well, I have to catch up with my Locksley tale. I’ve started, but it’s slow going, because it has to be well written, and you can’t just push this stuff out. It looks like I am, but these stories were all written a long time ago. JACK OF DIAMONDS has 75 or so chapters. It’s not finished either. And then I have my novellas on Sundays. I’m working on revising one right now, and hopefully can work on it while on vacation.

In the meantime, my STAR WARS story is only 8 chapters, and THAT will have to be finished as well.

I’m gonna be fuckin’ busy!

TARIS at twilight

  ii

TarCon was the hub of the Taris NavCom system and part of the Jedi complex. A towering structure of five hundred stories, it employed twenty-thousand workers tracking all of the incoming and outgoing vessel using the planet’s more than three hundred spaceports. It picked up a single unidentified craft leaving the planet’s surface from an unknown location that somehow jammed incoming signals from the surface computers, before switching to a manual override.

Theres Shan, Logistics and Analytics Officer for Beta District, looked at the computer screen in front of him and shook his head slowly. It was an anomaly. It didn’t matter how big, or how small a craft was, anything leaving the planet’s surface had to have permission from TarCon’s NavCom before departing.

“What’s happening here? Do you see that?” he asked T’sal, the Sullustan seated beside him. “What is that?” he asked again, and T’sal shook his head.

“I don’t have a call sign for it,” he said in response.

“That’s what I mean. Neither do I. TC? He shouldn’t be able to get off the ground without proper clearance. People?” he called out desperately, trying to understand what exactly he was seeing. “Where’d this thing come from? Anyone else see it? Where’s the tracking number?”

“The vehicle tracking number is obsolete,” Traffic Control’s automated voice said.

“I don’t know. It looks to be an unregistered vessel,” T’sal called out in frustration.

“Unregistered? Obsolete? Can someone tell me how that’s even possible?” he asked out loud. “What about the NavCom code? Have you tried checking that?” Shan asked T’sal, leaving his desk and approaching the bank of computer screens on the floor.

“It’s flying with an out-dated NavCom code,” T’sal said, beetling his brow. “It makes no sense.”

“What does that mean? Out-dated?”

“It means that the computer doesn’t recognize it, but released it anyway. He’s over-ridden it somehow.”

“Call that pilot,” Shan said to T’sal. “Tell him to identify himself, or we’ll blow him out of the sky. Someone get me a visual of that craft.”

“The vehicle is not responding,” Traffic Control replied in a melodic voice.

“The Moons, does she have to sound so calm?” Shan said, more to himself. “This is a major breach. We have to assume that it’s a smuggler trying to leave the planet. Obviously, he’s spliced into the system somehow. How else could he bypass the system? I mean, this isn’t standard protocol, is it? Call SecuroCom,” Shan said.

“The code it’s using is obsolete,” Traffic Control’s computer voice said calmly.

“What? How’s that possible?”

“The code the vehicle is using is eight hundred years old. It’s an old Mandalorian code from the days of the Jedi Civil War.”

“What? That’s impossible!”

“The pilot refuses to answer any hails coming from the surface,” T’sal said.

“Blow it out of the sky. Now!” Shan said, looking at the banked screens and all the traffic waiting in orbit. He was thinking he had to avert a catastrophe in the making. He started scrolling through names of the incoming ships, thinking the worst.

What if it’s that man I met? He said he expected me to help him, or he’d expose me. Help him do what, though?

“SecuroCom forces are on their way to investigate,” the Sullustan replied.

“We can’t wait for them! That thing’ll be gone before they even get close. Blow it out of the sky! Get the guns out!”

“He’s opened fire,” T’sal said. He looked at Shan.

“The unidentified?”

“According to SecuroCom tracking, the vessel has opened fire,” Traffic Control offered.

“I hope they’ve fired back.”

“The suspect vehicle has left atmosphere,” Traffic Control responded. “It has disabled three of the surface guns and crippled a fourth.”

“Where is he? I need to know where he is!”

“He's gone into the gas clouds. He’s jamming our systems,” T’sal called out.

“How can he do that!”

iii

Almost as soon as TarCon lost track of the ship, the NavCom system went blank. The pilot inserted a flashdrive into one of several ports on his left arm, punching a code into a handheld device he had.

Three thousand drones circling the other side of the planet came on-line.

iv

NavCom was slow coming back on line—it was less than a minute—but when it did, it detected the satellites. SecuroCom, issuing a planet-wide alert, scrambled into action. A squadron of three dozen fighters on standby screamed into orbit. The ship-to-shore staccato sound of communications dominated the airwaves as SecuroCom forces prepared to engage the drones.

One minute later, SecuroCom scrambled a second squadron of three dozen ships to help intercept the drones.

All air traffic was sent into a holding pattern above the planet. There was only one ship in the entry lane that was past the point of no return.

 

v

“There’s a situation,” a voice crackled out of Alyssa’s ComLink.

“What exactly do you mean by ‘a situation’?” she asked, smiling.

“Up here in orbit.”

“Is it incoming?” she asked. “Are we under attack?”

“It’s the drones.”

“The drones? What do you mean it’s the drones? Do you mean the drones in orbit?” she said, sitting up and dropping her voice.
“Affirmative.”

“What about the drones in orbit?” Dax asked, leaning forward.

“They’ve been activated.”

“Talk to me Voss,” she responded. “I need more than just that.”

Keegan Voss, a Trianii—a feline species with a thick prehensile tail, narrow yellow eyes, and long canine incisors in a tapering snout—arrived on Taris two days earlier, hoping to find an apprentice in the upcoming padawan Ceremonies. Their friendship went back more years than she cared to remember. They’d started in the Journeyer program together.

“I don’t understand. What do you mean they’ve been activated?” she asked.

They were sitting in one of three lounges in the Gorman Spaceport in Hilao district—a complex boasting more than forty landing pads and overlooking the city a kilometre below. She looked up at the sky, mentally chastising herself as she did.

There’s nothing to see out there.

She was looking at the dead yellow sky and thickening plumes of gas that would have been mistaken for clouds on any other planet. On Taris, they would eventually be mined for minerals.

If there’s a disturbance, why haven’t I detected a shift in the Force?

And then she felt it.

It began with an unease in the pit of her stomach, followed by a familiar tremor in her left hand; the hairs on her arm were standing on end. It was subtle—it was always subtle—and she knew Dax would never notice. No one ever noticed. She put down the cup of d’Alaquan tea she was drinking.

She looked at Dax who appeared eager to rush out to the planet’s defence.

He’ll have to learn patience. It won’t do him any good rushing into something without knowing the details.

That’ll only get you killed.

“Someone’s activated the drones,” Voss said, levelling his voice. “You and your padawan need to get up there before they start taking down transport ships.”

“The drones?” Dax asked, and Alyssa silenced him with a look. The civilians walking by looked at them curiously, and Dax lowered his voice.

“Does he mean the old Sith drones in orbit?”

“They’re supposed to be inactive,” Alyssa said into her ComLink with a hiss.

“They were inactive. Now they’re not,” Voss said. “No one here can explain it.”

“Are you at the Temple?”

“Affirmative. We’re scrambling for Jedi here, but most of them seem to have scattered. Sightseeing I imagine—not that there’s anything worth seeing on this squalid rock. I was hoping you were near your ships.”

“We are. Have they started attacking transport ships yet?”

“NavCom’s rerouting as many ships as it can to the Salish Spaceport. They’ve told the pilots to go to manual override if they have to. It seems someone left the planet using an old security code and scrambled things up good. They’re sending some of the other transports to Sector forty-three.”

“Have you tried reaching anyone else on their ComLinks?” she asked as she stood up, throwing her cloak over her shoulders. She checked her weapons out of habit.

“They can’t possibly make it in time; not if they’re not here already, or at least close to their ships. The last message you left said you were at Gorman Spaceport.”

“Affirmative. We’re here to meet my padawan’s family. We’ll meet in three,” Alyssa said, running to the turbolifts leading down to the hangar bays.

Dax was close behind.

“I have a bad feeling about this,” she said with a sigh.