Several Months ago, a man by the name of Maxor Krath was once a proud Member of the Crimson Empire, a glorius order at a time, and could have been if it weren't for the attitudes of a certain few. Thier selfish actions brought about a change which spread like wildefire through the Empire's forces . . .leading most to defect into the new and more peace seeking Crimson Rebellion. Throughout his early career in the Imperial Armed forces, he found himself promoted to duty aboard one of the Crimson Empire's star ships, serving in the stormtrooper legions for several years. It was at a small incident in the outer rim, while defending a fallen supply tanker from pirate forces, Maxor showed extreme courage and ingenuity by piloting a lone TIE interceptor into an asteroid field, drawing the pirate's vessel into the path of an oncoming asteroid, destroying it. He was commended for such a sterling act of bravery and piloting skills, and was immediately posted on a starfighter tour of Duty to the 'ghost' TIE Phantom squadron aboard the Crimson Flagship of the Dark Lord himself.


While still at the tender age of 27, Maxor quickly rose to the rank of squadron commander. However, his duration at the top was quickly smashed after he was demoted for fraternising with an officer. Hanna Silvador was a fellor pilot in Ghost squadron, and the two immediately fell in love, however, thier relationship was discovered after Hanna fell pregnant and was subsiquently discharged.

On the rare occasion he recieved shore leave, he would travel to Hanna's homeworld of Corellia and visit thier son, Ceasar. Fifteen years later, Hanna was killed when her transport, travelling to see Maxor when he was stationed on Ansion, was attacked by a pack of raiders, and destroyed. Maxor was devastated on hearing the news but was never able to get in contact with his son, who'd fled Corellia and joined the Empire, to become a fighter pilot himself.


Now 42, Maxor resembles a shadow of the once proud, almost fanatical imperialist whom galantly strode aboard the starships of the Crimson fleet. Consumed by bitterness and hate, betrayed by his passions, the once heavily decorated officer sits, and broods, taken over by the darkside, alone in his malevolance.

Alone, until recently. His dreams feature more and more a mysterious sith lord, seemingly calling him to a new call, a new duty, and telling him of a new order that is to be born.

Maxor's dreams as of late heralded the coming of a new dawn, they were, vague, to say the least. However, the one defining feature in those dreams was a figure, was a man encased in the shining chrome of sith armour . . .the bearer of the message who beckoned Maxor like a siren, always remained vivid and clear. The compulsion to find the man had grown stronger with each dream, almost verging on the obsessional now.

The death of his wife and subsequent departure from the Crimson Empire had been a crippling blow to the life of Maxor Krath. He was mentally degrading as the days moved on, without the purpose of work or family, he was lost, not to mention being financially crippled. After giving up his only job, his fiscal oppertunities had become greatly reduced. Once a leading fighter pilot at the forefront of the Galactic armed forces, he was now reduced to serving drinks in the seediest of locations or working dock loaders in order to simply scrape the barrel for credits at the end of the day. To say this was a comedown for Maxor would be an understatement. He fallen from grace and lost everything of value, material or otherwise.

With these new visions he was recieving, they offered him something, a hand out of the gutter perhaps. A lifeline that could drag him to anywhere. However he was willing to go anywhere, anywhere but where he was . . .after all, he had nothing more left to lose.

Another figment of the dreams was a pair of men . . .twins to be more precise, who rode upon flaming swoops, and seemed intent on bringing him to this Chromed Lord. They were angels, but not any kind of good angel he'd ever heard laid down in any fork lore.


...........



Deep within the recesses of the Rishi Maze, lay the planet Skeenar. The planet itself sat on the outer reaches of its system . . .its atmosphere was a habitable one, however little light shone there, if none at all. The native people, the Skeen, evolved to work in pitch black conditions, developing perfect nocturnal vision. Thier skin resembles a minty off-white colour, due to the low levels of pigment in thier skin. Twenty four years ago, an group of pirates discovered the world of Skeenar. At the time, the sub-light tech level of the species had no means of fighting against the harsh onslaught of the raiding pirates who overcame the primitive beings, and made off with two of thier young. Little did the pirates know that the twin children they had captured, harboured great mental and telepathic powers of the force. Even at the tender age of two, the young Skeen were able to kill the pirates using thier unnurtered talents.

Somehow the two infants survived in the wreckage of the pirate vessel, on the remains of the criminals themselves. Yet another unknown fact about the Skeenar is that they are vicious carnivours, with a blood thirsty drive to feed . . .almost a vampiric trait.

After two weeks of drifting, the children were picked up by a lowly travelling magician named Hadrak Phee, who was renound up and down a stretch of the Hydian trade way for his dazzling magic shows, which were a result of his vast force talents. He was amazed to find two young children, the likes of which he'd never set eyes on before, and took them as his own, naming the twins, Kaine and Cole.

As the years went on, and the children entered thier teenage years, Phee began to introduce thier minds to the force . . .something which he felt the twins had a natural talent for. However, this step up the learning tree turned out to be the last mistake Hadrak Phee would take. As the Twins entered thier twenty third year, thier force talents had risen to levels, Phee had never seen before. The twins seemed at times to function as one being, often finishing each other's sentances without hesitation.They were highly intelligent, but garnered a quality of almost child-like innocence. Although, thier force training coupled with thier inbuilt nature for destruction, quickly brought them into contact with the temptation of the dark side, and soon after, the Twins killed Phee, and took off.

Travelling along the Hydian way, the twins left behind them a string of brutal murders, each one more horrific than the last, until they reached the world of Commenor,which at the time was in the process of being enveloped by the Holy Demosthesian Empire.

Thier handywork on the Hydian way caught the eye of the Mysterious, Darth Xion, former follower of the Dark Lord, and newly crowned Grand Inquisitor of Seti Ashar's Holy Empire. In Xion, the twins found a man whom they could look up to, not only as a teacher, but as a father figure. Xion posted Kaine and Cole as his personal Inquisitorial Guards, each with the full power of an Inquisitor, but far more respected, and began to teach them the ways of the darkside.



.............



"He's"


"Dreaming again."


"It is"


"Almost time to"


"Bring him to father"


"Yes. He needs"


"To meet father"


"Soon"


"Soon, everything"


"Will fall into place."


"Everything"

Rancor Military Research Facility,
Folor Moon, Commenor

"The subject is just this way, sir." The Doctor said, hurrying along the sterile white cooridors of the research centre. Yuri dipped his head in a slight nod and followed the smaller man, eyes taking in the bleak whiteness of the station's medical wing.

Years ago the Rebels had used this moon as a starfighter training base, somehow managing to keep it a secret from the unalligned world of Commenor below them. That, the man thought to himself, was truly an achievment. Of course, that didn't help them when the base was eventually discovered and Admiral Triggit brought his Star Destroyer Implacable down on top of the base.

Still... Many years later LFX Industrial had converted the moon, digging out the old base and installing modernized systems, setting up a combiniation hospital/military base/observation post that was to aide the Home Defence Corps. in the defence of the capital. The Holy Demosthesian Empire, upon taking power over the base, had turned it into a top secret weapons research facility.

Thus far, the presence of the researchers had gone unnoticed among the denziens of the planet below, and with the other governments of their galaxy. Only the highest members of the High Command, the Emperor, the Polemarch, and the Grand Inquisitor, knew of the research lab labelled Rancor, set deep within the bedrock of the moon.

It was there that the Empire's most potent weapons would come to fruitation.
"The subject was submitted to radiation poisoning, correct?" Yuri said, glancing at his datapad. The other doctor nodded.
"Yes, sir. But the reactions we got were rather strange. Certainly not within the normal characteristics of his species."
"As I understand it, something in his DNA set it off. You administrated a Bacta treatment program?"
"We did. The subject seemed to be cured, but his disease returned within days, worse than ever. Since then we've kept him under constant observation. As he becomes sicker, he seems to grow stronger. He will eventually die, but he will become stronger each day until he does."

It was, Yuri reflected, truly puzzling. Before him the last quarantine doorway opened, revealing the subject on the other side of one-way glass.

A towering, full grown male Wookie.

"Where did he come from?" He asked mildly, glancing down at the Wookie strapped to the bed before him. The thing's eyes were open, alert, but its responses to the scientists thus had been slow, almost as if he did not understand.

His body becomes stronger, yet his mind deteorates. Yuri thought to himself. Odd.

"He was on the ground at Tholatin when the Fleet went in," One of the other scientists responded. "Got his house levelled by one of their mines when they started falling."

Yuri nodded. Like most of the others, he had heard the story of the short and relitively bloodless liberation of Tholatin. The forces of the Unholy Alliance pushing the Tholatin Empire back until they fled, their tails between their legs.

As far as battles in war go, that one had been fairily bloodless. Aside from the thousands of mines that smashed into the surface, a product no doubt of the Tholatin manufactur's incompitence, neither forces had recieved any terrible beatings.

"The Tholatins were using nuclear materials in their mines?" Yuri asked, surprised that such a potentially dangerous product would be used in space over a civilized planet. The radiation could damage starships, not to mention the effects of one falling...

"It doesn't seem so, sir. Rather, one of them hit a power plant and some of their waste removal facilities blew. He probably got a whiff of it from the facility."

That made sense. Nuclear power was not the leading producer of energy in the galaxy, but it was still common on some of the planets further from the core, particularly those in the same quadrant of the galaxy as Tholatin.

Yuri backed away from the table, eyes still on the Wookie. What was it that caused this reaction with the creature? Such a thing had never been seen before. At least, he considered carefully, not since the days of Emperor Palpatine and his mutations.

He stopped, still staring at the Wookie, a terrible idea flashing through his head. It was almost to evil, yet there was something about this Wookie, something vaugly familiar...

Yuri turned away and walked from the room, footfalls echoing strangely from the the dull metal walls. There was a question that needed answering, immediatly.

What did Emperor Palpatine have to do with Tholatin?

The man of chrome came to him again last night. This dream however was clearer than ever, and far more direct. The man instructed Maxor to leave for the planet Olabria immediately. . .there the man would be, ready, with all the answers.

<hr />

Under cloak, the Krath, Maxor's personal TIE Phantom soared through the galaxy at lightspeed. The fighter was one of the few things he wrestled from the Empire before the Crimson rebels overturned his command and he was "force" from the position.

So many of his trusted friends and officers had betrayed him on the day of the insurgency . . .so many he was, forced to kill because of thier mutiny. Yet another dark period in his life which was already pebbledashed with cancerous patches.

Olabria . . . a world devoid of any sentient life, riddled with foul creatures of every kind however. The Krath sailed down through the storm clouds as thunder and lightening clapped and cracked around them. The closer to the planet Maxor became, the stronger the vision of the Chome man in his mind was.

He was here, there could be little doubt of that.

"Can I help you find something, sir?" The monotone voice of the TKL Records Droid asked, its photoceptors running across Yuri's drawn features. Undoubtably scanning the Imperial Records for a match, the scientist thought.

"Yes, thank you." He said, his voice silky smooth and carrying a faint auroa of the evil he had spent nearly all his adult life researching. A cold, calculating man, Yuri Katarn was frowned upon by much of the Imperial High Command. A brilliant tactician by studying numbers, and a former student (it was said) of Grand Admiral Sekran, Yuri had abandoned the Empire after the disaster at Yavin IV, when Admiral Daala had single handidly allowed the Rebels to destroy a Super Star Destroyer and cripple the Empire further.

Leaving the Empire had been among the hardest things he had done; the New Order had proven to be a rallying point, a beacon to all of the indominatable might of true power. But that rallying point had been lost, the beacon conquered. Daala had proven that much.

Not that that was entirely accurate anymore. The New Order had been on the rise, and the Rebellion in decline, since before the outbreak of Wrath. And now, with that debacle behind them, the Empire was the rising star in the galaxy once more.

The assault against Mon Calamari had proven the Empire's might of recent. Even the embarassing loss of General Chau Ming's command vessel, a Reign Star Destroyer, could be forgiven. Accepting one's losses, Grand Admiral Serkan had driven that point into him early on, is the key to war. You cannot be afraid to give way or sacrafice yourself for the greater good of the Empire.

As, Yuri understood, Ming had done. The Empire had lost a Star Destroyer - the Mon Calamari Republic had lost far more in that battle. It was a debacle from which they would surely recover, but they could never again be more than a gnat beneath the iron fist of the Galactic Empire.

"Sir?" The droid asked, clearly noting the lack of attention he was paying. The scientest shook his head, an irritated thought forming in his keen mind.

"Yes?" He snapped. The droid was taken aback by the tone his voice carried across, but he was programmed to be of assistance and not to make note of these disturbances.

"What can the Imperial InfoMatrix do for you, Sir?" It asked, voice the same irritating, emotionless one of a droid. Yuri Katarn understood the role droids played in the galaxy and in the Empire, and their neccessity, but that was not to say he cared for them. Not at all.

"I am looking for information." He said, his voice returning to the silky smooth tone of before, calm as ever. "On an Imperial project known as Arc Hammer."



The records search had yielded little result, as was expected. Yuri had not known what the library would contain of the old Imperial Dark Trooper project, but it was always worth a shot.

The second rule to war, as Admiral Sakren had taught him, is knowledge. Learn about your enemy, how he fights, how he treats his inferiors and superiors, how he reacts. And use it against him. Destroy him with himself, with your knowledge of him.

The Dark Trooper project was shrouded in mystery, as one would expect of the Empire. Only the highest ranking officers of the New Order would have known of the project, and it was doubtful that even they would have known very much.

No... the Dark Troopers were still a mystery. And much to the dismay of Yuri Katan, the research that had been put into their development had vanished along with the Super Star Destroyer Arc Hammer when it was destroyed by Rebel commandoes.

Yet another reason to detest the Rebels. He thought grimly. It was largely uknown among the forces of the Holy Demosthesian Empire that the scientest had been assigned, albiet briefly, to the manufacturing facility during the development of the Phase I Dark Troopers. The first of the Dark Troopers, little more than a skeletal frame armed with a cutting blade, had been a project of Yuri's. Following the successful deployment of the first units to the Rebel Base on Tak, he had been yanked from the project, sent to work on the superlaser components for the second Death Star.

The Death Star, that had caused the Empire to go to hell in a hand basket. Pushing such thoughts from his mind for the second time in as many days, he turned back to the duties on hand.

It stood to reason that something from the Dark Trooper project must have been left on the worlds where the droids originated from. The Gromas System, home of the infamous Gromas Moons, had provided the Empire with the rare alloy they required to construct their machines; Phrik. Yuri had known of the metal's use, but it took more than a little digging through Imperial records to discover where it came from. The science division already had a ship prepared for their use in this project; one of the new Star Avenger sphere ships. Yuri would have preferred a Star Destroyer, if only for the harkening back to the days of his role as scientist within the New Order. But the Admiralty had decided on the Avenger, and it would have to do.

Ignoring what he did not need, most of the clothing and samples from his previous research, Yuri made sure to pack the laptop computer terminal and a dozen extra data bricks before leaving his apartment. He would have to inform the Vigil that they were leaving orbit, and the vessel was prepared to go at a moment's notice (as were most of the warships of the Empire). But it would take several hours yet to clear things up here before they could leave.

With a smirk, he picked the comlink off his belt and thumbed it on.
"Ethol, have the Vigil prepare for hyperspace. Make for the Obroa-Skai system, I'll meet you there." There was an acknowledgement from the other end of the unit, and Yuri returned the device to his belt. Even with the lead the warship would have, his ship would make it to Obroa-skai in plenty of time to meet them there on schedule. And it gave him the neccessary time to finish his affairs on the surface, too.



"Captain Logan, I presume?" He asked, casting an eye around the command core of the Star Avenger Vigil. Unlike most modern combat ships, where the bridge was placed in a position sure to take enemy fire, the command core of these attack craft was located in the very heart of the ship, a ball-shaped room with a command walkway leading into its centre. One could stand from here and see the entire battle taking place around him, the tactical screens showing the entirty of space outside.

In the centre of the command platform was a raised dias, and set upon it a complete command chair. Not a simple Admiral's seat with a retrctable TAC display, but a seat complete with full-scale controls to manipulate the massive vessel as well as half a dozen of the command stations put together. Those stations were set around the room in an circle, the most important of them on the same level as the command plaform, less important ones below on the floor.

And above them, simply an uninteruped view of space that gave the illusion of a transparisteel series of viewports, looking out into space. Watching, Yuri pitied anyone who looked up were a Star Destroyer to engage the top half of the craft.

"Yes." The man replied, looking the scientist over once. He spoke with a dignified air, obviously he was of a wealthy family and a generous upbringing, probably Imperial, perhaps on one of the outlying planets of the New Order. Perhaps...

"Bakura?" Yuri said, hazarding a guess. Logan blinked, eyes wide with surprise.
"Yes. How did you know?" Yuri only gave an almost inperceptable shrug.
"Set course for Olabria, Captain. We should see what the Empire has left for us."

The other saluted, his confidence in the scientist risen by the man's obvious intelect, and turned to reissue the order to his inferiors.

How funny it is, Yuri mused, that we employ men like this Captain Logan, to carry orders from the highest levels to the lowest. Get rid of the Captains, and I wonder if everything would fall apart?

He was still considering the strangeness of that when the ship made the jump to hyperspace.

The Vigil's return to realspace was made with the efficiency only months of training under the finest military officers the galaxy had to offer could produce. Immediatly upon entering the Olabria system, the vessel had begun launching probe ships - flights of its Starfighters to search out the locations of their quarry. The planet was immediatly apparent below them, an unihabited, relitively unknown spec of rock hanging in space. Three moons orbitted this particular world, and each one, Yuri knew, contained a Phrik mine. And the planet below, should (by all reasoning) likewise contain an Imperial base. It was that he expected to find any records of the Imperial efforts here, assuming any did indeed exist.

Captain Logan was in his element, issuing orders to the various starfighter pilots (safely encased some levesl below in their simulator-like units, another marvel of Imperial engineering). Six Sqaudrons, he had decided, a quarter of the vessel's deployment capabilities, should be sufficient to screen the vessel. There no were no threats to be seen, at the moment, but there was no harm in being prepared.

"Have another wing stand by in the ready room, just in case." He ordered. Yuri stood by, watching as the vessel's commander handled the task of setting his ship up for a stay in this dead system. After several moments, in which the activity seemed to die down to a light hubub, he stepped forward.

"If I may, Captain? I would like a flight of fighters, and a shuttle if you can spare one, with a contigent of soldiers, to head towards the planet proper."

Logan nodded, turning to issue the orders, but stopped.

"Can I tell them what we are searhing for, Doctor?" Yuri offered him a thin smile.
"Tell them that they are looking," he said, "for an Imperial base. There's bound to be one down there somewhere.



"What do you think, Lieutenant?" Yuri asked, gazing out from the rather luxerious (overly so, in his opinion) officer's quarters assigned to him into the computer-generated image of the planet Olabira below.

"I'd say it's a longshot, Doctor." The other replied, sipping idely at a tall glass in one of the room's conforming chairs, positioned in one corner so the occupant could observe both the holographic view (which could be changed to show the view from any tactical display or holocam on the ship) and the doorway. Lieutenant Ethol was officially assigned to the Vigil, under Captain Logan, but the scientist had taken a special liking to the young man who served as one of the ship's doctors, and had declared him his aide as far as his current project went.

Ethol, as far as Yuri understood him, was a very keen individual with an eye to pleasing his superiors, and he had proven most adept at that in the past. And, Yuri had come to realize, had a holographic memory. Every scrap of information he had on the Dark Trooper project, or anything that could at all relate to it, had already been spilled from his mind, to little end.

But he was there, anyway, and that was what mattered. His research skills were unfathomable, and he was said to be very adept as a slicer, as well. Truly a man of many gifts... Yuri would enjoy molding him in his own image.

"You doubt we will find anything on Olabria?" He asked, turning from the hologram and settling into the twin of Ethol's chair. "Or is there something more?"

Ethol had proven to have a remarkable sense of things since Yuri had met him. An... ability to sense when they were close to a discovery, or nearing their target. It was something that the scientist did not fully understand, but he had long suspected it had something to do with the Force. He had spent the last month prodding Ethol slightly, trying to get the Lieutenant to divulge something, anything, of the abilities he might have had.

It had done no good thus far, and Yuri had wondered briefly if the man was rejecting him purposely, or if he himself had no idea of the power he might hold. Surely he suspected something... but then, perhaps not. At any rate, Yuri had made it one of his personal missions to discover if the man did have any Jedi abilities, and make use of them if he did.

"I don't know that we'll find anything, sir. The Empire made use of the ores there, certainly. But it is doubtful they had anything but mines there, and even then the mines were destroyed by that Jedi Knight of the Rebellion when he showed up."

Yuri nodded slowly. That was, perhaps, the only piece of 'common' knowledge they had about the Dark Trooper project (common meaning they only had to slice through low-level security systems to get to it). That the project had been halted, sabotaged, by a Rebel agent who was said to be a Jedi Knight. His name was still unknown, but there was some reference to a Katarn. A katarn, Yuri had found out, was an alien being that inhabited the lower levels of the Wookie homeworld, Kashyyk. And, of course, a name he himself shared. Curious, indeed...

"It is possible, of course." He conceeded. "But we do not hope to simply recover data. We wish also," he offered the Lieutenant a tight smile, "to secure these stockpiles of Phrik for ourselves."

Lieutenant Ethol was saved from any response by the blaring of an alarm in the room, and the Alderaani landing scape was instantly replaced by the figure of Captain Logan, standing in the middle of the vessel's command core.

"Doctor," he said hsatily, clearly irritated at having to take the time to contact this civilian, as high and mighty as he may have been. "We have confirmed an Imperial Star Destroyer in the system. Would you like to-"

"I'll be right there, Captain." Yuri said, already slapping the door command and jogging from the room, Lieutenant Ethol following.

"-come to the command centre." Logan finished, speaking to an empty room.



By the time Yuri and Ethol entered the command core of the Vigil, the enemy ship had already closed to visual range. Flanking her, barely visible to the naked eye but standing out as tiny blips on the sensor displays, were starfighters. Not TIEs, but a larger design, with sweeping wings, almost as if they were some kind of birds of prey...

"SoroSub Preybirds." Logan said, glancing over Yuri's shoulder at the screen. "They were the Empire's line fighter for a while, back during the whole Caamas Crisis."

Yur nodded, taking his eyes from the screen and glancing up at the holographic 'viewports' above. Doing so, he realized for the first time how successful the Empire had been in designing the ship they way they had.

The angling dagger that was pointed at the Vigil now was a blood-chilling sight, even to Doctor Yuri Katarn, who had seen many blood chilling things in his time.

"Have you identified it?" He asked, not blinking as he watched the vessel draw nearer. Logan offered a brief nod.
"She's the Tyrannic, sir. Old Imperial ship, reported destroyed by the New Republic. Evidently, she's not running with the New Order these days."

Yuri finally tore his eyes from the oncoming vessel, gazing thoughtfully at the Captain now.
"How do you know?"
"She's not broadcasting an ID signature. In fact, we had to slice through her overlays just to find out who she really was."

Yuri blinked. He had not been aware that the Imperial slicers were quite that fast.
"That," Logan was going on, "and her general lack of upkeep. I'd say she's running the lone path of a warlord, probably surviving off whatever scraps the Empire has left out here."
"I wonder what she wants with us, though?" Yuri mused, speaking more to himself than anyone else.

Logan only shrugged and turned away, issuing orders again to launch the ship's remaining fighters and prepare for combat. Yuri turned, frowning.

"Wait, Captain. Belay those fighter launches. If the enemy thinks we are not in for a fight, we stand a better chance of victory here."

Logan stopped, considering the implications of that. He could launch his fighters later, of course, but trusting a civilian, even a Doctor, was risky. Then again, if the rumours were true... if Yuri had been a student of Grand Admiral Sekrat...

"Belay that," he ordered. "The ship will obey the orders of Doctor Katarn."
Yuri smiled.
"You won't be disapointed, Captain. Right. Load all missile tubes and prepare to fire on my mark, vector six-six. Launch sqaudrons seven and eight along the same Vector."

The orders were obeyed, with some hesitation, and Yuri smiled thinly. The two groups of fighters were aimed directly at the ridgeline of the enemy craft, now, diving in hard.

"Mark. Torpedoes away." The proton torpedoes shot away on their jets of blue flame, screaming away in the wake of the fighters. It was all about the numbers.

"Starfighters to break on my mark. Star petal formation." He said calmly.

The range meter counted down quickly, less than a hundred meters between the warheads and the fighters, now... ninety meters... eighty... seventy-five...

"Mark!" Yuri shouted. "Sqaudrons, break!" They did, breaking away from their dive. The enemy guns traversed to follow, their barrels out of line of the torpedoes following in the wake of the fighters...

An hour later, it was all over. The last of the Star Destroyer wreckage was being hauled aboard the Vigil a half an hour after that, techs already going over it, searching for anything that would help them learn more about the ill-fated Star Destroyer.

"Sir?" Yuri hadn't even noticed during the chorus of the battle that Lieutenant Ethol had disappeared. Now, he was standing white-faced at the end of the command walkway, datapad gripped firmly in one hand. "Report from the ground team. Urgent."

Nodding, Yuri stepped away from the command consoles and half-ran down the walkway. Something must have spooked Ethol bad to get that kind of reaction...

[center]END PART I

"Shit. What in God's name happened here?" They were standing under the overhang - what was left of the overhang - that had once protected sentry officers from the rain just outside the old Imperial base.

"Apparently, they ran into some trouble." Lieutenant Ethol said dryly, surveying the damage. The bodies had been removed already, hauled back aboard the shuttles an towards the Star Avenger waiting in orbit. But the shattered hulks of machiney were still scattered on the ground, in pieces.

A lot of pieces.

"No shit, Lieutenant." Yuri said, his booted foot making contact with the broken head -at least is looked like the head - of one of the droids. "Did they get a report off?"

The other man nodded, his face still ashen. They had arrived at Olabria only hours earlier, and had almost immediatly fallen under attack by a Star Destroyer - running under the command of some rogue Imperial warlord, evidently. And now their ground team was dead, and a shuttle destroyed.

"Barely, sir. From what we make of it, they entered the base here to secure it, as you ordered. They were met by a force of battle droids weilding large swords... most of them died within minutes. Those that didn't made their way back to the shuttle, which managed to destroy the remaining droids before one of them managed to self destruct and destory the ship."

The scientist inhaled, the sound echoing through the dark interior of the base. Olabria, a system in the Yminis Sector, was one of three planets whose moons contained an ore known as Phrik, used extensively by the Galactic Empire in their Dark Trooper project. The Holy Demosthesian Empire, in a long effort to resurect the data concerned with Dark Troopers, had undertaken a mission to the planet in order to try and discover more about them. Ever since the destruction of the Arc Hammer, the Imperial research and manufacturing facility dedicated to the construction of the behemoth battle droids, had been destroyed by Rebel agents, the project had been lost.

"Sir?" Ethol said quietly, unsure of whether or not it was safe at this point to question his leader. Yuri did not respond for a minute, but bent down and gingerly lifted one of the massive cutting blades from the floor. It was heavy, far heavier even that its size would indicate.

"Have them take it back to the Vigil, Liuetenant. And confirm that it is made of Phrik." He frowned, eyes glittering dangerously in the dim light. "We may have just realized the capabilities of Dark Troopers. And this isn't the best they were capable of."

"Sir?" He asked again, inquisitively. Yuri's frown deepended. "These were Phase one troopers, Lieutenant. Phases two and three didn't use swords."



"The results have just come back from the research team, Doctor." Lieutenant Ethol said, entering the quarters aboard the Vigil with his customary quietness. "They've confirmed that the weapon was Phrik."

"No surprise there. There are only so many things that can do that sort of damage to an Imperial landing party."

"Yes, sir. But here's the interesting thing. According to the researchers, the Phrik they found in the weapon didn't come from any of Olabria's moons."

"What are you talking about, Lieutenant? Where else would it have come from?"

"They said that it came from Omman, sir. It's a planet in the same sector-"

"I am aware of Omman system, Lieutenant. Why would the Empire excavate Phrik from Omman and haul it all the way to Olabria when the planet's own moons are practically swimming in the stuff?"

"Perhaps the Omman moons have a better grade of material, sir? Or it could simply be that they did not assmble the droids on Olabria, but they were sent there from somewhere else."

Yuri nodded, considering that. It was possible, likely even, that the droids had been built at a different location. But why? Certainly, it made sense that the Empire may wish to spread their facilities out, so as to escape a singular attack directed at one target, and it possible that the Arc Hammer had been built to guard the manufacturing planet, perhaps even was the plant.

"If they moved that much Phrik around, Liuetenant," he said carefully, "then there must be records of it somewhere. Cargo manifests, logs of runs from the Omman system, that sort of thing."

"Most likely, sir. Assuming any survived the Vong wars and the Wrath virus. But the only sets of Imperial records left are..."

"Exactly, Lieutenant. Located on Coruscant and Bastion. And neither one is easily accessible to us." He paused, offering a thin smile to the other man. "Fortunately for us, we do not need Imperial records, specifically."

"Sir?" It had become a habit of Ethol's, Yuri noted with a touch of a smirk, to offer up that confused 'Sir?' when there was something he did not understand. The man was smart enough, but it took some explaining at times.

"The Empire always had a habit of hiring out their cargo loads to private contractors. The Emperor preferred to spend his credits on Star Destroyers and Death Stars than on a merchant fleet. Xizor Transport Services were largely responsible for hauling materials out to Endor for the second Death Star."

Ethol gave a short nod, smiling himself now.

"You believe there will be records somewhere of private firms that shipped Phrik for the Empire." He said. It was not a question.

"I do not believe, Lieutenant. I know. And where better to begin looking than the system where they got their resources from?"

He turned to the holographic screen that was showing the bridge, and at a slight movement of his left hand the system activated the communications line.

"Commander Tyl, set your course for the Omman system. Maximum speed."

The executive officer nodded, and at another hand motion, the screen died.

"Omman should yield more information on the Empire's project, Lieutenant. And perhaps even offer some answers."

"I don't know what we can expect to find on Omman." Yuri said, surveying the planet below them. Like Olabria, which they had left behind only hours ago, Omman was desolate, nearly abandoned save for a handful of settlers who had either choosen this as their home, or survivours of the Imperial base that had once been here. "But there must be some reason that the Dark Troopers were encountered on Olabria came from here."

"You mean, aside from your other theory, sir?" Lieutenant Ethol asked. The scientist nodded. There was a chance, a very good chance, even, that the raw materials, Phrik, had been hauled away from Olabria and the other planets and manufactured somewhere else. But that did not make sense. Why build them somewhere else and send them back as defenders?

"It is likely, Lieutenant, very likely, that the Empire had a limited production plant on the three worlds. The Olabria base was so forgone that there was no chance of discovering it. But if the one on Omman is not, if by chance it still manages to produce droids, we could have stumbled upon the greatest secret in the Empire."

He smiled thinly, turning from the viewports.

"Captain Logan, assemble a ground team, if you would. Make sure they have some backup this time... same, a half-sqaudron of Tank Droids?"

The Captain nodded his affirmitive and begun to issue the orders, the Vigil holding her slot in space above the empty world below with cool grace. Ever since that attack by the rogue Star Destroyer Tyrannic Logan, and the crew, had been on edge.

Evidently, Yuri thought silently, watching as a full wing of Starfighters rose out of the hanger bays and took up their own holding positions around the ship. they're taking no chances.

"Has there been any word from Olabria?" He asked, casting an eye to Ethol. Because recieving and transmitting via the holonet was next to impossible while a ship was in hyperspace, the Empire had equipped all of their ships with call ques, devices that stored holonet messages so that a ship, upon reverting to realspace, could instantly be connected and recieve their message. It did little good, in most cases, if it was a live transmission, but often the Empire transmitted its orders directly via the holonet to save time.

The Lieutenant typed a command into his datapad and nodded slowly.
"Just the standard report, sir. They've successfuly excavated the command centre and some of the Barracks in the old Imperial base, and they report that the security system is more or less up to speed."

"Very good. Have them work through the old records, if they can. There should be some details of the project lef there, perhaps even more than we could hope."

He smiled.

[Incomplete]