บท 4: First Contact
I could still feel my jaw hurting where the blaster had been bashed over my face. I could smell blood, and feel its taste in my mouth. I had no recollection of what had happened after we were boarded. I opened my eyes, and it hurt as they adjusted to the light. I had no idea of how long I had been unconscious or if Dari, Rale, and the other crew members were still alive.
I was back bound to a chair in an empty storage room. There were storage units with metal boxes stacked along the sides of the room, and the lamps were gently swinging as they spread their dim light across the floor and walls. Suddenly the door was flung open with a loud clang, and a Humanoid Twi'lek came through. His face was rough and he had his appendages knit tightly behind his head. His skin was light orange and he wore standard Rebel Alliance fatigues.
He took a chair from the corner of the room, making a loud screech as he dragged it over the metal floor. He sat down and watched me closely for a while. "How could you do this to innocent people?" He asked me, calm although I could feel him suppressing his rage. "You truly are the scum of this galaxy" He continued, still keeping close eye contact with me. "We did not do this, you have to let me go, or more people will be hurt". I tried to answer him, but I could barely get the words of my dried and bloody lips, and all my throat could muster was a faint wheezing whisper. The Twi'lek moved his chair closer to me. "Two worlds have you devastated, one of them your own. Reports are surfacing of the genocide of non-humans and mass kidnappings. For what purpose would the Empire do this?"
"I am telling you…" I coughed violently. "This is not an Imperial attack, there is something else. You must let me go, this threatens us all". I answered him, my voice growing slightly stronger. "Why do you lie officer? What is this weapon you are testing?" he continued, ignoring my words. "It's… it's interdimensional. It's not from here". I tried to tell him, but his face didn't change. "The woman you had in your cargo, was she to be experimented on? She speaks of strange droids. What have you created?" He asked, speaking louder and more aggressively. "You must understand, we were hunting whatever did this". His expression changed. "You were hunting it?". "Yes, yes, I have been hunting it for days," I said, my words more like a wheeze.
The room flared red as the alarms blared. The bastards had forgotten to destroy the shuttle tracker, and now Imperial support had arrived. "All men to battle stations, all men to battle stations" A voice sounded on the cruiser intercom speakers. The Twi'lek lost concentration and rose from his chair. He unholstered his blaster and pointed it towards my face. "The only good Imperial is a dea-". The ship violently shook and just when the humanoid was about to pull the trigger, he was slung into one of the storage shelves, and I watched as a heavy metal crate slid over the edge of the shelf, hitting the twi'lek in the head, and in turn knocking him unconscious. As he collapsed violently and fell to the floor, his blaster came loose and slid over the floor settling just beneath my feet. Now, realizing that this was my time to escape,. I started to try to break free from the rope and felt that it was loose and had been poorly tied, and that it wouldn't take me long to get free.
After a few minutes, I was free and picked up the blaster from the floor. I tried to open the door but figured out that the door was locked. I yanked repeatedly on the handle with no results. "All pilots to Interceptors and bombers, mobilize the X-Wings". The voice said as the sirens sounded simultaneous. I had an idea. I aimed the blaster on the locking mechanism and pulled the trigger as I kicked the door opened. The corridor in front of me stretched for what looked like the entire side of the cruiser. It was slightly curved and had windows on the left side all the way to the end. Through the transparisteel viewing pains, I could see the battle outside. Ships of all sizes flew back and forth spewing volleys of fire, lighting up the void in green and red dots. Fighters, bombers and designated interceptors engaged everywhere in dogfights, squadrons of X-Wings were flying to objectives, delivering payloads on Imperial targets. But in the distance I could see the immense triangular shapes of two Imperial Star-Destroyers, bombarding the Rebel fleet in explosively charged plasma.
I walked back into the storage room, exchanging my Imperial officer's cape for the Rebel Fatigues the twi'lek had been wearing. They were a bit tight, but I had to make due. I holstered the blaster and walked out into the corridor.
The deck shook and cranged as I navigated through the Rebel cruiser. The ship was orbiting a Moon, seemingly covered in large deserts and drylands. I was trying to find a comlink terminal, and hopefully, contact the destroyers. I stumbled as the ship was struck once again by Imperial bombardment. I looked around me and saw through one of the large transparisteel windows how a TIE fighter, smoking and wreathed in fire, spun violently towards the hull of the cruiser as the pilot had lost control. It crashed into the side of the cruiser, activating a fire safety system, spewing foam all over the deck. As I slowly made my way through the corridors onboard I could finally see a comlink system, but it was already operated by another officer. I unholstered my blaster, ready to take him out. Just as I had snuck up behind him, the man turned around, and I could instantly recognise his clone facial features. "Rale? How did you get out?" "I untied myself, and killed the guard, same as you I assume". Rale answered "Yes, killed him. Have you established coms with the-" I froze. It felt like everything fell silent. And then, I felt incredibly uneasy. I was rushed by unexplainable fear, just as I saw the hallway and comms room bathed in unnatural light shining through the windows. I had to close my eyes not to be blinded by the intenseness of the changing colours that covered the walls, ceiling and deck.
In between the Rebel cruiser and the Star-Destroyers, a massive rift had torn itself into space, spewing flickering light over the voidborne battlefield. And through that rift, that gate, something emerged.
It was like nothing I had seen before. First, a triangular ornate form pierced the portal like a gigantic ram, laced in brass clad by an eagle made off massive gold. Behind this ram, the rest of the shape emerged. It looked somewhat like a palace or a cathedral, obviously not built to be efficient or aerodynamic. The hull was covered in statues, arches, pillars, spires and the gaping maws of gargantuan canons, facing both the Rebel and the Imperial fleet. Other weapons were mounted on the ship, ranging from small automatic plasma guns to large turbolaser tier weapons systems.
The interdimensional ship drifted slowly forwards, powered by the enormous engine blocks and just behind it, now when the entire had pierced through the transdimensional rift, the anomaly closed in on itself, imploding and collapsing on itself, and returning the void to darkness. The fighting had stopped, as both Rebel and Imperial forces were contemplating how to best react to this emerging threat. TIE fighters had stopped trailing the Rebel ships, and the X-Wings and Y-Wings had seized bombing the star-destroyers. The silence before the storm.
The first to open fire was the Imperial command cruiser. And soon, all the heavy turbolaser batteries on all Imperial vessels joined in this orchestra of destruction. Hell rained down on the extra-dimensional threat. But all the green bolts of plasma seemed to just dissipate before they could hit the surface of the new enemy. The turbolaser fire acted just like small droplets of water hitting an invisible pane of glass, the energy scattering away, losing its potency to the invisible shield that seemed to surround the giant ship. For a while, it seemed like the behemoth would not fight back, as it drifted deeper in between the fleets. But after some time of increased Imperial bombardment, it retaliated.
I watched as the enormous cannons fired projectiles large as starships, hurling them at incredible speeds towards the Imperial star destroyers. Two of the shots connected, and on the impact, they swiftly overloaded the Imperial shields and decimated the hull. I witnessed as star-destroyers, the benchmark for Imperial strength and power, was shattered like glass by some unknown force.
I snapped away from the spectacle and tried to collect myself, figuring out what my best course of action would be. "We need to get off this ship before it is destroyed like the others," I told Rale. "This way". He answered, pointing further down the corridor.
I ran with Rale down what felt like the entire length of the Rebel cruiser. Rales cardio was superior to mine, and I had difficulty keeping up as he seamlessly and tirelessly rushed forward, with me, lagging just behind. Inconsistently, the starship shook and cranged violently, throwing us to the sides, but we stood back up and continued the run. "Over there, escape pods!" Rale shouted, pointing towards a section of the corridor that seemed to open up into a small room.
The smell of burned plastics and metals filled my nose, as I saw further down the corridor, smoke belching from the hangar area. The cruiser didn't have long, as it had sustained multiple direct hits from both the Imperial star destroyers, but also the alien behemoth. Screeching noises from metal, slowly scraping against metal rang out loud, as the cruiser's hull failed and the bulk was about to collapse.
"Rale" I shouted behind him, struggling to collect my stamina. Rale turned around and faced me as we ran, "Rale, how much further?" I shouted between my heavy breaths and gasps for air. I couldn't go much further now, as the toxic smoke poisoned my lungs more and more for every breath. But Rale just continued to run.
The blaring and screaming of emergency sirens were unbearable, and I couldn���t take much more of it. And my lungs felt as they were on fire, the taste of blood on my tongue. I wasn't going to make it. "Here it is, just here." Rale stopped and frantically meddled with a panel of buttons and switches on the wall. A round hatch opened up, and Rale slid himself through. "Hurry up, come in after me," He told me from the other side of the hatch, and I hurried up to try to get myself in the pod.
The pod was surprisingly comfortable, padded, and with a decent view of what happened outside. But what happened outside was anything but nice. I saw how a beam of seemingly solid light shot out from the ornamented behemoth and cut a Nebulon-B rebel support vessel clean in half. All that was left of the Imperial star destroyers was a cloud of atomized glowing scrap, slowly cooling in the void of space.
The pod wasn't equipped with a hyperdrive, so we were trapped in this system, and the automatic navigation system was guiding us straight down to the planet's surface. Burning through the atmosphere, of this desert world, the battle in the sky grew ever more distant, but however distant it was hard to miss the flair of light that shot out into space, as the massive Rebel command cruiser's core generator finally overloaded, and the ship detonated into a massive explosion, shredding what was left of the hull into a million pieces.
As we were plummeting, dragged by the gravity of the planet, I looked over at Rale, he was sweating heavily, dripping from his forehead down on his Rebel fatigues. "The galaxy will never be the same," I said. "I know"
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