All hands braced for impact. When it came, the mighty warship rocked back and forth like a sloop upon the waves. The intertial dampeners had been thrown out of synch and before they could be recalibrated by a droid-brain, many casualties were registering from across the ship due to collisions with bulkheads and instruments. No man was safe, even the mighty Captain who once stood proudly on the catwalk nursed a headwound as he lay on cold decking, light fading to dark with the coming of Death's Embrace.


A salvo from the port sponson of the Carpathia left the slowest of the attacking ships a drifting wreck while those that could gain the neccessary speed ahd already made the jump point and abandoned the scene with all due haste. The firing ceased leaving those behind to lick their wounds and scratch their heads.


" Report," demanded a man standing in the starboard crewpit. His forage cap was somewhere on the floor and as an answer rang out from the aft control corridor, he began a search for it.


" No more ships remain on our scopes sir. Seven freightors are not accounted for."


" Commence TIE patrols. Senior officers to convene in the wardroom at thirty minutes. Medics to the bridge, see to the Captain..."


Thirty minutes passed in a span of time that far exceeded their chronological value. Alone in the wardroom, he felt as if seconds lasted hours and minutes lasted days. The burden of command had been placed firmly onto his shoulders when it was not asked or, he admitted to himself, wanted. Soon the ship's senior officers began filing in, one after another. Most had datapads in their hands or a few discs for the consoles on the the table. The were to a man considerably fatigued and look it.


" Let us begin. Worst things first. Jash?"


The ship's chief engineer still wore that which he was almost always was found in: the standard sky-blue jumpsuit of his department. While entitled to wear standard walking-out dress, he was a more hands-on type than his peers on ships of the line. " Reactor is operating at eighty percent right now: that is with engines powered down and all guns operating off of their generators. Those generators will have to be replenished soon. If you want to raise the shields and start up the engines, I can give you fifty-percent on shields and one-quarter sublight. You want more one than the other and it's a trade off from there."


" Hull?" asked Commander Pfaltz.

" That's the best part. We have a major breach in the aft-ventral quarter of the port sponson. I've ordered the area sealed off and am readying for repairs. But I cannot get started until we get out of hyperspace...from wherever it is we're going."


" Going?" Captain Montill looked puzzled, his brow wrinkled as he arched an eyebrow. Having landed for the meeting he was still clad in the vacuum-sealed flightsuit all Defender pilots wore, though he had deigned to remove his helmet. It sat rather unceremoniously on the table next to him.


" Well, our hull is made of a kurranium-bonded alloy that I cannot synthesize. I can however take the sections we've retrieved and mould them with another metal. I simply need a deposit with which to work. It has to be a pure source, and we don't have any to spare on the ship."


The room grew quiet. Commander Pfaltz looked down at the mirrored surface of the table and viewed his own visage. He turned to the built-in console and accessed a map of the area. Reviewing it in silence, he deactivated the screen and viewed his crew. " This was supposed to be a routine missions - escort a convoy bound for Gyndine, then put in for repairs. We have nine freightors left out of twenty - seven destroyed, four towed away. We have suffered heavy damage and are in a contested region of space. The last thing I want to do is stay here since we have obvious Meridian activity in the area - let us all thank Admiral Kaken on our return. However now, we need a world to call on until we finish repairs. We are a good bit away from any Imperial system and we can not make it all the way to Gyndine or back to Ylesia. So we find something close."


" Where?" asked the ship's gunnery commander.


" We set course for Lannik."

[font=Times New Roman]The Carpathia was making good time. [/font]


[font=Times New Roman]Commander Pfaltz snorted to himself as he glanced at a porthole and allowed himself that thought. The Broadsword-class Siege Monitors were slow, ponderous vessels that were never designed as ships of the line. For one of them to go slow was a sad state of affairs indeed. Inwardly he wondered if any of the TIE Defenders remaining could manage a greater hyper-space speed than its carrier. [/font]
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[font=Times New Roman]Strolling through the bowels of the ship he saw the extent of the damage. Despite the rather terse manner in which Lieutenant-Commander Jash Ressin had dealt with the now-Acting Captain, Pfaltz excused the smaller man and viewed the scene for himself. It was quite a view at that, unlike any other. A massive section of the port-sponson’s hull had been chewed away by repeated missile salvoes and there, standing on of six decks affected, he could look out into a panorama of hyperspace protected only by a deflector shield. [/font]
[font=Times New Roman][/font]
[font=Times New Roman][/font]
[font=Times New Roman]Finally leaving the area as some large repair-droids came bustling in, Pfaltz could overhear the diminutive engineer swearing up a storm. His rather brusque manner was tolerated since he had a natural talent with anything mechanical and this was a ship of the Imperial Navy where, without exception, the engineering sections were the most relaxed in the arena of discipline. No doubt why engineers never make Captain.[/font]


[font=Times New Roman]A jounrye that would have taken a fully operational Broadsword six hours was estimated to take a full day. All that the middle-aged man could do as he pondered his predicament was feel sorry for himself. Commander Pfaltz was one of the oldest executive officers in the Fleet, every one of his peers from the Academy having advanced to command their own ship. He was a man who had always felt more secure in the shadow of someone else and now, deprived of that shadow he feeling distcintly…naked. [/font]


<O:p
[font=Times New Roman]I remember what Commodore Arren taught us. “ No matter how much we think ourselves ready to captain a ship, no man is ever ready to bear the burden of command. That burden falls heavy – either shoulder it or be crushed.” [/font]
[font=Times New Roman][/font]

<O:p
[font=Times New Roman]Commander Pfaltz was well feeling the weight when the call came from the bridge, announcing the reversion to realspace. [/font]

Lannik - Royal Palace


Crown Prince Affik was not happy at all. Around and around he paced, wearing down the rough skin on either hand as The Grand Vizier sat without much care, allowing his mind to dissociate itself from the angry ramblings of the worried Royal as he thought long and hard. They had a vested stake in the existing arrangement and as they both knew, the arrival of an Imperial warship could very easily alter their plans and bring months of planning to naught.


" We need to give them what they want or we will never succeed," the Crown Prince said, snarling as he did. Inside he wanted to mash something though he knew it would do no good.


" And what if they want Lannik? Imperial warships are sent bearing letters of annexation. Are you ready to join the Empire?" The Grand Vizier closed his eyes again after sending an admonishing glance in the Prince's direction. For almost two hundred years he had served the King and he was quite frustrated that the barely seventy-year old upstart was interfering with his thought.


Both the advisor to and son of the King knew that the King while amiable and genteel would never freely allow the Empire to take over the small, remote world. Both also knew that the small military in the service to the King would be no match for even a division of Imperial soldiers - regardless such action would leave Lannik in ruins. That was an end neither man wished.


Suddenly an idea struck the Vizier.


" They can have it so long as I get it too. We can bribe them - what do you think?"


Wheels turned and gears ground together between the floopy ears of the diminuitive politician.


" Khalas!" the Prince shouted, snapped the advisor from his thought. He then turned and stood.


" Perhaps they can have it..."

Lannik


The Carpathia had been orbit for thirty hours without sending a single officer to the planet. Repairs were being affected throughout the ship and the eight remaining TIE Defenders maintained a constant vigil through the system. Suprisingly, there was very little traffic in or out. There were no less than twenty defined landing areas on the planet itself and a large space station in low orbit, but still very little came or went. There were ships, to be sure, that had risen through the atmosphere only to be greeted by the ominous form of a Broadsword-class Siege Monitor. But there were no shots fired and no commands to halt - the Imperial vessel did not interfere with traffic and in return everything space-worthy gave the ship a wide berth.


Thirty-one hours and still nothing happened.


On the thirty-second second hour, still nothing.


" All right. jash - get down there. We'll begin scanning. Find what you need, stay clear of the natives, and get back to the ship. At the first sign of trouble get out."


" Wonderful. 'Bout friggin' time." The engineer grumbled before the comlink chirped shut, leaving Captain Pfaltz alone with his thoughts. An hour later, he watched the small Sentinel-class Shuttle leave the port-sponson and descend to the surface. He kept glancing at it as if he thought the longer he could view it the safer it would be. Soon though it disappeared in the mass of clouds and marshy ground and all breath became baited.


Fifty minutes later...


" What the frell..."


"...fire! Fire..."


"..to the shuttle, now, we'll cover you..."


"...ARRGGHH..."


And that was all the Carpathia could hear before static consumed the comm-channel.

Odd enough. Jash Ressin scanned his surroundings as one eye finally became available. He strained to open the other but could not and was unable to recall why. Try as he might he could not separate the lids. The hand he raised to his face drew back with blood coating two fingers. Memory of a rifle-butt abruptly meeting his face returned as a stinging sensation ran along his nervous system.


The room he was in was a shock considering it had a table, some chairs, and even several windows which appeared un-barred. A gust of wind however revealed an armed guard outside each window thus preventing escape better than a shield or bars could have. The guards wore an unfamiliar armor , so it appeared gazing at them with one eye.


The door to the room opened and two men moved inside, their skin a very pale shade of grey with small locks of hair visible under ornate headresses. Their eyes were more bulbous than the standard humanoids' and aside from the aristocratic look to both, he recalled seeing someone of their species in a documentary about Force users and enemies of the Empire. Another man entered in a military uniform and carrying a briefcase. The more important of the two stood silently while the third approached.


The torture commences. Ressin braced himself but was suprised when the pain in his face lessoned instead of grew - the military-looking man was healing him! He managed to speak, but only the trained words of his officer-training came out. " Lieutenant Jash Ressin, Chief Engineer of the Monitor Carpathia. Service Registry AGTT-735-FFD."


" Welcome to Lannik, Lieutenant. I am sorry you had to be brought before us in such a manner but you did fire first. We had hoped to use non-lethal tranquilizer darts."


" Why?" was all he could manage as the medical aide applied a bacta patch that stifled the movement of his lips.


" We wanted to meet you and mainly find out why you are here. My name is Khalas. I am the Grand Vizier to the King."


" And what do you want from us?" Probably going to ransome us back to Pfaltz for money or supplies.


" That," the other figure replied, moving closer," is exactly what we need to talk about."