Freespace V.S. Star Wars Part Six
(Clone Wars War Drums Play)
The Galactic Terran Vasudan Alliance is confident that the massive fleet of Shivan vessels shall bring about the apocalypse, unless they can put their newest plan in motion, but there is more to the Shivan invasion than meets the eye!
Deep within a nebula on the outskirts of the Milky Way, a Rebel freighter carrying the notorious Admiral Aken Bosch tries desperately to elude the Imperial fighters!
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“We’re hit!” said the pilot of the Rebel transport.
“What’s going on???” asked Bosch, still utterly puzzled by even the clothes these people were wearing.
“We’ve got fighters on our tail!” replied the pilot angrily.
“Who are you people? Are you with the GTVA?”
“Never heard of them.” said the pilot, ignoring Bosch.
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“Center the tractor beams field of view on the Rebel ship. Do not let them escape!” said Thrawn, sitting contently on his seat inside his Star Destroyer as it begin to swerve around to Rebel transport.
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“Their tractor beam is almost on us!” said the Rebel pilot.
“Tractor beam? Wha-” said Bosch running to the back of the transport.
Seconds later the transport came to a grinding halt. Thrawn’s ship had locked on using the tractor beam.
“Well… so much for the rescue mission!” said the pilot.
“Your not kidnapping me then???” asked Bosch.
“No, but rescuing people captured by the Empire is what we do.” replied the pilot.
Suddenly a feeling of shame came over Bosch. Months of attacking GTVA targets, demanding the independence of his systems and all along there was a much bigger picture to what the universe was all about. He knew that nothing would be the same again.
All his thoughts over the months were flashing through his mind, the sins he himself believed he committed filled him with guilt and sadness.
As he watched as the Rebel gunman on the upper turret was shooting at the surrounding fighters, and as he saw the pilot struggling with the controls, he came to wonder what it was like from the point of all his followers who died in his false name.
He decided to act… now…
“Pilot, does that ship have shields?” he asked.
The Rebel pilot said “Yes, but only objects can pass through them. Any of our laser turrets are useless against it.”
“Alright then…” said Bosch walking off to the rear turret.
Getting in the turret, he cleared his eyes, took a firm hold of the controls, and fired upon one of the fighters. The laser bolt hit the fighters left side plate, causing it to swing out of control. It bumped into another fighter and they both spun toward the tip of the Star Destroyer, crashing into the tractor beam projectors.
“We’re free!” said the Rebel pilot.
The transport engaged it’s Hyperdrive and sped through the nebula toward the Gamma Draconis jump node.
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“Blast!” said Thrawn.
“Well… we don’t need him anyway. Set a course for the outskirts of the nebula!” he shouted.
The Destroyer made a quick jump towards the edge of the nebula. Arriving, Thrawn’s ship came to an excellent view. The Milky Way, right for the taking, with the nebula right behind. The nebula was the past now. Fighting in the fog was no longer needed. The Empire would send swarms of ships into the Milky Way and will in no way be limited by the primitive workings of Terran Subspace.
“Take us to the Byss node. Send a signal through, asking for reinforcements.” he said with a grin.
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The Rebel transport quickly arrived at the Gamma Draconis node and went through. The Node seemed to be unguarded at the time.
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Thousands of light-years away, The Shivan Juggernauts converged on the Capella Sun.
GTVA forces fought valiantly as they tried to help all manner of transport reach the Epsilon Pegasai Node. Thousands died as transports began to be destroyed by the overwhelming power of the Shivan forces.
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Deep within the nebula, as Thrawn begins sending transmissions for more ships through the node to Byss until all of a sudden… Sathanas Juggernauts came out of Subspace. A second after arriving, they opened fire on Thrawn’s ship.
The Star Destroyer lost it’s shields in the huge barrage of beams from the massive ships four front beam cannons.
Sparks flew off control panels, pipes exploded all around the bridge.
“Admiral, we have lost shields! The other Destroyers have opened fire! Our weapons are down! We are getting damage reports from all decks. Orders, sir?”
Thrawn just stood there looking out the front view screen, emotionless, wondering…
The second in command of the ship stated to Thrawn that another hit will destroy them, still Thrawn thought and pondered his mysterious thoughts.
Suddenly he spoke… “Get us back to Byss. We need to regroup.”
“Yes, sir!” replied Thrawn’s Lieutenant.
Thrawn and his fleet jumped through the node to Byss.
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Light-years away, the Shivan super-warships began to build up a huge EMP pulse along with a disruptive radioactive field. These fields all began to grow in size immensely and soon consumed the Capella star.
Command noticed the build up of energy around the star and warned all the fighters protecting the convoy to speed up the evacuation of the system.
At once all the Juggernauts jumped out of the system to an unknown location.
Suddenly Terran Command noticed that the stars mass was expanding. A massive shockwave originated from the star, knocking the rings off a nearby ringed planet.
Capella had erupted into a huge supernova!
The blast reached the convoy and the Shivan ships attacking it, annihilating all the ships. Some of the convoy and fighters defending it made it out of the system in time.
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Meanwhile, in the Gamma Draconis system…
The Rebel transport carrying Bosch was heading for the Capella node when Juggernauts began jumping out, allowing a huge explosion to come through, destroying the Juggernauts in the process. As the explosion neared the Rebel transport, the Rebel pilot turned the ship around, heading for the Gamma Draconis Node.
Other Juggernauts began jumping through with no explosion following them. Each one heading for the node to Gamma Draconis.
The Rebel transport jumped through into the nebula then quickly jumped again to the Byss node where they found the Maria fighting Shivan warships as they struggled to enter through the Byss node.
More Juggernauts came through, followed by the explosion once again. As soon as the explosion came through, the unknown particles inside it merged with the nebula, and quickly began transforming the nebula into a massive shockwave.
The Maria jumped through to Byss while all the Shivan’s stayed by the Node.
Before long, the shockwave consumed the Shivan ships and the Rebel transport.
“Ouch!” said Bosch as he was thrown onto a wall.
“The ship is falling apart! Into the escape pods!” shouted the Rebel pilot.
The GTVA probe placed in the nebula was vaporized before it could send out any transmissions.
Never again would the GTVA have any records of what had truly taken place during that time.
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Beyond the node to Byss, Grand Admiral Thrawn began to collect his fleet and move toward the Subspace Portal once again.
“We are ready to enter the portal, sir!”
“Very-well… Proceed…” he replied.
The Destroyers Hyperdrive powered up and began to interface with the Portal. It moved into it until…
All of a sudden, the Hyperdrive powered down.
“Sir, the portal is not opening!”
“Try again.” Thrawn said, emotionlessly.
Once again, the Hyperdrive powered down as the portal did not open and pull in the ships.
“This is… impossible!” said Thrawn with a rare sign of anger.
“Orders, sir!”
Once again, Thrawn stood up, walked to the front view screen and thought… He thought for a while, wondering what had taken place without his knowledge. Wondering what he missed in that unknown galaxy. Suddenly it came to his mind, that perhaps even another galaxy is no place for the Empire. A single journey to any other galaxy could bring back dangers he could not imagine…
It was what he wanted to do which bothered him. What he hoped for so long. The dreams he had for the Empire, and those so many other desires he could not fulfill due to his place in the universe. His single position among so many which made him believe that this senseless war being raged between the Empire and the Rebellion was utterly useless. Because it didn’t give him the opportunity to fulfill his most wanted desires…
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Admiral Petrach was addressing the crew of the Aquitaine on the sad destruction of Capella, and the loss of so many friends, all of whom died to save so many.
After the debriefing, Petrach went to the observation room window. He looked out into the stars and noticed two of them did not like quite as they used to. One with a red field surrounding it, this was Capella, and another, looking very similar, Gamma Draconis.
It came to his mind that there was something in Gamma Draconis that could have changed many things. It occurred to him that even the Shivan’s had enemies stronger than the GTVA. Beings warring on a far more grander basis than for a few small systems in this small corner of the galaxy.
He wondered what Humanity would be doing, thousands of years from now. How much of the galaxy will be open to him if he could live until then, and how many people would call those planets home… The destruction of Capella was one of the homes of so many, but will one day be only one in thousands to have their inhabitants evicted, and how many would die from such an event, and how many battles, bigger than this one, will there be…
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Bosch was terrified. He was not going through subspace, but rather some kind of wormhole, but exactly how fast he was going he could not calculate.
Suddenly, Bosch hit the floor of the escape pod with a thump.
After he got up he noticed that he was back in the nebula again. Everything seemed to be normal again, except for an orange light coming through the mist. Then he noticed, that this was not ionized dust…
A large structure came into view, round in size with what looked like a city at the top. The escape pod came crashing down onto a large platform.
The pod door burst open and Bosch cautiously climbed out. Smoke surrounded him but he was able to make out a sun surrounded by orange clouds in the sky.
The smoke cleared, and Bosch jumped at what he saw. A man cooking what looked like meat of some kind on what also looked like a high-tech grill. More people were there too, all of them seemed to be fairly happy and content.
Finally, the man at the grill spoke…
“Hello, I’m Lando Calrissian, and your just in time for the barbeque!”
The End…
For now…