A Dark Empire Story. By: Kopaka_Metru Empire of Darkness, Episode VII, "Taking Back Decimator" Brenden's Y-wing came out of hyperspace. Followed by the rest of the rogues. They had chosen y-wing's so they could pound the 'Nerevar' with ion torpedo's. Thus, they had fitted all 8 torpedo slots with ion torpedos...and a Vengence class cruiser was waiting on the outskrits of the area, just incase the rogues bit off more than they could chew. "Okay Form up, get into firing groups." Brenden said, he flicked a switch and relayed targeting data to the other rogues. He looked at the Y-wing, it was the one he had flown before the squadron was replaced by arwings...Brenden seldom gave up a fighter... but this was one case where it was best, the y-wings were the only available fighter at the time, and they were more slower and firepower oriented than the arwings, so naturaly, the arwings would be better equiped to rogue squadron. The Y-wings they had used were given to 'Gold' Squadron, the primary bomber squadron in the fleet. They had taken on personal affections with the fighters, the bomber 'crews', as the bomber pilots refered to squadrons, were sent on very dangerous dangerous missions, and their average lifespan during heavy war was about 1.7 weeks. Brenden's old y-wing was battered with laser blasts and recovered panels that obviously weren't matching to the paint style of the ship, although, with all the carbon scoring the ship had taken from laser fire, you really couldn't see the old white blue colouration of the ship. He looked back to the large battleship infront of him. This war had claimed too many victims already, and Brenden wanted to make sure that no more suffered. Turbolasers raced towards the y-wings. The 'Nerevar' had been taken over by covert droids, and all at once they sprung an attack, it seems that only Rogue Squadron made it out alive. Although the Droids were always strategicaly correct, they always lacked the randomness a live pilot had, live pilots could combine manuvers to make new ones, do things that required a creative mind, this is what droids lacked. Besides that, The rogues had been on the 'Nerevar' for close to 6 months, they knew it like the backs of their hands. The Idea of the raid was to netruelize the ship with the ion torpedos and then a few republic and victory class ships would ship in a new crew. As the Droids, were, well.. droids, they would also be affected by the ion torpedos, so with any luck, the 'Nerevar' would sleep with the fish soon. Brenden glanced back at the 3 pilots in his firing group, he couldn't see their faces, but he didn't need to. This was a personal mission. After being on the 'Nerevar' for 6 months, the crew had become a family so to speak, you knew and trusted your fellow crew members, you had to. This attack just reminded everybody that the galaxy was a dangerous place. Brenden hit a swith on his control stick and switched weapons over to the ion missiles. "Confirm firing sequences." Brenden asked. R5 replied with all fighters with correct data. "Thanks old buddy." The R5 unit beeped and whistled a 'may the force be with us'. As Brenden's Y-wing reached the droid ship, turbo lasers lashed up. "Steady, get in attack line" Brenden pointed his fighter's nose to a small trench along the ships bow, and putting all sheilds forward, sat back and waited. Brenden's fighter dove for the trench and he leveled out. "Group 1, report." "2 here" "4 here" "3 here" "Good, start targeting sequence." A little monitor on Brenden's control console showed the distance left till they reached their target[think 1st death star run, x-wing targeting comp]. Their target was a main generator access hatch, even if the missiles didn't make it to the generator, the explosion would send EMP pusles through the superstructure and would disrupt the generator to a lesser extent. "Even out your sheilds, we could have fire from every direction." Brenden moved a 3 way switch to the middle function, evening out his sheilds, fore and aft. As he neared the target, and mind twisting turn layed right before the target hatch. Brenden rolled onto his port stabalizer, and pulled slightly up as he turned hard to port. As he neared the end of the turn, he rolled so that the top of his ship faced the cruiser and fired his missiles. 3 hit the hatch, but 5 made it through. He continued to roll and turn, then dove into a small hole in the superstructure from a previous battle. He put all power to engines and surged forward; Spitting out the other end of the ship and turning towards the randevouz[sp] point. "All firing groups report in." because group 1's target required the trench run, it had lasted the longest, the other 3 groups should have finished their runs by the time Brenden emerged. "All groups report 65% percent accuracy, recommend the 'Bester' finish her off." Corran reported through the comm. "Affirmative," Brenden switched over to the channel the vengence class liberator was using. "Bester, begin firing when ready." The 'Bester' was the Vengence class liberator that was lying near the edge of the sector, just incase the missiles weren't quite effective. An electric humming noise filled the comm units as 2 kilometer long blue slashes of ion energy surged at the 'Nerevar'. They struck the ship just infront of the bridge and sent blue electric sparks everywhere. Corran flipped his comm onto the global comm channel, "Bester reports that the 'Nerevar' is sleeping with the fish." Cheers eprupted from all the comm channels. "Does this mean we can enjoy that fine Hydrakian whiskey you promised lead?" "Yes, i did promise you guys fine hydrakian whiskey...so you'll all get the whiskey, although be warned that a hydrakian liver, altough the same in name and shape, is quite more resilient to alcohol than that of a human...or any other species in this squadron." "Ok, first one to get drunk enough to walk through the bridge naked wins a free hydrospanner!" Rogue 3 said, and the whole squadron chatted over bets and dinner. End of Episode VII. ************************************************************************************************ Empire of Darkness, Episode VIII, "Balance Point" The Droids had taken many unfactioned worlds and were posing a major threat to the well being of the Galaxy, but still many politicians refused to admit the imposing danger. When the Federation moved a crew into the 'Nerevar', they found the droids had outfitted the ship with many devices that were thought too complex to construc, the droids had retrofitted the whole ship with nano- technology, A cloaking device had been added, as well as all turbolaser's had been fiddled with, to the point where they fired a 5 times the normal rate, and used half the energy. The engines had been equiped with a booster for sublight speeds, and the hyperdrive went .56 beyond trans-warp speeds(trans-warp is 100x the speed of light). After some of the hulking equipment was removed, so people could fit on the ship, it headed off for corellia. Brenden leaned back in his chair. He picked up his coffee and took a huge gulp. Earlier that morning the doctor had called him, the rest of rogue squadron had left sickbay...it seemed that whiskey was more potent than anyone had imagined; one sip and Gavin passed out. Brenden tried to remember to save some for the other supervisors, he was sure atleast Pete would get a kick out of it. The fleet was headed for Corellia, Brenden only hoped they would get there soon enough. The droids had advanced further into the rim colonies, infact it was reported they had gone as far as the inner core worlds in some sectors. Corellia lay in the New core, a section of the galaxy just outside the inner core worlds, named 'New core' because it was discovered by the Eranian's farely early on, then the terran's founded a few colonies there shortly after. It was a bridging system between the Inner core, and core worlds and the border of Mammoth inc. space that spread through 'Wild Space' named for the fact that it had not been publicaly explored by any governing faction. Mammoth Inc. had not reported any invasion's on any worlds of theirs, so Brenden was hoping they still hadn't reached corellia. The Fleet would pass through the outer Terran Worlds and pass briefly through the 'Outer Colonies' space. Just as Brenden was about to fall asleep, a knock on his door woke him right up. "Enter" A cadet with a clip board under his arm entered. "Sir, we are picking up several anomilies from around this sector, as well as a distress call." He pointed at a mark on the star chart attached to the clip board. "How far is it from our current heading?" Brenden asked, yawning "It's on our current heading, shall i give the order to check it out?" the eager for a promotion cadet responded. "Yes, i'll be there soon." As the cadet left, Brenden cursed, he had not yet a chance to rest since this whole thing started, sure 1-3 hours of sleep every 4 days, but that was rushed and often followed by a very tense moment, he had yet to sit back and just relax. As he walked to the bridge, several officers saluted him, and a few offered him some coffee. He entered the bridge as the ship exited hyper space and the scene outside came into view. An outer colonies space station was defending off a few droid cruisers, a small amount, but big enough to wipe the little station off the maps for good. Several small OC snubfighters zoomed by and exploded. "We are being hailed sir!" "patch us through." a voice came over the bridges comm system, "Federation Ships, you are commanded to leave by the Outer Colonies Directive 567446, no unallied ships can enter OC space without previous permission from OC traffic control!." The voice was slightly high pitched and majorly afraid...if they were having trouble taking care of a few droid cruisers...what chance did they have against a whole federation attack fleet?...Brenden pushed the comm switch and replied, "You look in no position to 'make us leave', besides the fact your distress call was put through a global comm channel, and not a stricly OC channel. Although if you think you do not require our assistance, then we will happly sit here, though if you greet us with hostilities, we will be forced to blow you to frell." Brenden smiled at his smart-aleck response. a wimper was heard through the comms and then a small pound. The OC official had aparently took off, as an escape pod jetisoned from the station not long afterwards. "Pencil Pusher....." Brenden uttered, a few 'hear hear!'s were sound out from the bridge crew. 3 proton missiles from the droids finished off the station, then they high-tailed it out of the system before the federation could interfere. Brenden slumped against the wall. "Well that was for nothing." The fleet was about to head off, when the 4 droid cruisers returned. They spread apart and advanced slowly, Brenden thought it was some joke, then relizing the droids couldn't make jokes, he looked back at the viewport. Over a thoudsand droid cruisers jumped into the system. "Not again...." the gunner crew officer said. The droid cruisers formed a arrow-cone shape formation and pointed it at the federation, they started to advance at a rapid rate, and missiles and lasers surged forward from them and pounded the federation Already in his arwing and speeding forward, Brenden Glanced to the side to see a Scimtar cruiser Get pounded with lasers and missiles and watched as the starboard nasel broke off and vented atmosphere and crew. The shear size of it just stunned Brenden to the least. The magentic field disruption the huge amount of laser plasma was causing heavy turbulance for a ship the size of Brenden's arwing, and the HUD was flickering like mad. With Throttle at 2/3, Brenden saw a y-wing coming up his side at full throttle, as it slowly passed him, Brenden could see the face of the pilot, a young man, probably just 3 months out of the academy, but although his features made him look young; his eyes told a different story. Being a Y-wing pilot, he had probably seen some pretty heavy action already, and his eyes had the look of an 80 year old great war veteran. Brenden popped back into reality as the Bomber pilot's face suddenly was struck with fear; A proton missile came streaking in and pounded into the nook between the starboard stabelizer and the cockpit, the spot that caused the most structural damage to a y-wing, and ignited all the bomber's warheads. The resulting explosion shook Brenden's Fighter with the force of the great supernova and incinerated the y-wing the missile hit. For the second time in his life, Brenden felt scared, it had not been since his redemption from the darkside that he had felt this way..sure he had been surprised, or atmost overwhelmed, but the true and un-polluted fear that had struck him, was a human instinct for survival. "No, This fear will not consume me!" He shook his head and looked straight on; he pushed the throttle full and felt himself tugged back into the seat of his fighter. He switched his comm over to the global frequency, which usauly stayed fairly quite in combat, but would transmit to every comm unit when used, hense it not being used in combat. "Like a thousand beings in a thousand galaxies, we march into battle, we raise our arms and pray to the immortal gods that use us like laser bolts in a game of galactic war, for we are not the people of freedom, we are the foundation of the tower that will alow the generations of our children to see over the hill of war, across the oceans of hate, and through the tunnels of darkness; Now ride into the fate that our immortal masters have chosen, fight for the ones who will see over the hill, fight for the ones who were fell from our tower of Diversity, AND FIGHT FOR YOUR FREEDOM!" Battle cries sounded as the SnubFighters and cruisers of the Federation collided with the Drones and Battleships of the Droid armies. Shockwaves brust free from their restraints and fire burned the atmosphere that vented from cruisers and fighters, sparks from ion cannons fried and corroaded the circut boards of Drones and Battleships. End of Episode VIII