Any broadcast was cut off by a fuzzy noise, then a monotone and faded voice on all frequencies said

"All is not well. Send more support and rescue vessels to aid the... things."

Inside, the Comm officer stood, and was forced to relay the message around the galaxy, to attract more ships to their doom. If the message stopped, everyone on board would be killed.

Yu looked at the Mon Calamari, and it dawned on him that others were coming, because of the distress beacon. He had to cut that beacon before more vessels were brought to their deaths.

Janson nodded.

"Send in General Skai and his troops. Tell them to take heavy artillery and explosives. Keep the ship on full alert status. Shields up, and weapons armed. Have the fighters takeup defensive positions."

The orders were carried out.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Four Lambda class shuttles left the Vondiranach and headed for the derelict ship. They entered the docking bay and set down. General Skai and his troopswalked into the ship.

"Keep the shields up Gentlemen. We'll call you when we need you."

General Skai and his troops walked into the ship. Skai was a headman in the Royal Phalanx Guard Corp, TDY's elite units. They would do their job well.

They began to walk through the ship looking for the Mon Cals and the grey skinned aliens. They kept a sharp eye out for badguys.

The Vinda Corp Nighthawk-class Corsair Vestron reverted to real space fifty kilometers to the aft of the dead Viscount hulk. The Vestron slowly began to rotate, to bringing all weapons systems to bear on the Viscount. No chances would be taken, the Vestron had standing orders to act in a thoughtful and deliberate way.


“……TDY Vessel ………. This is Captain Hatchet of the Vinda Corporation Corsair Vestron ……………… we received a com message from a Vinda Corp freighter …………….. Are you the one broadcasting the distress signal? ………………..Please reply……… over……”


While a response was waited on, the crew of the Corsair began to prepare for anything. The com copy they had received had told them that someone had been ambushed, and casualties could be expected.
Strike crews suited up in their body armor, checked breathing units, and selected their preferred weapons. The shuttle crews warmed the shuttles, checked shields and weapons systems while they waited. In the med bay extra stretchers were set up, spreading into the hallways immediately around the medical section. Two hundred different kinds of sedatives and painkillers were prepared, and plasmatic shift blood was taken out of cryogenic freezing. The ship was prepared for fighting, and if needed, medical relief.


On the bridge

“What life signs do you get from the Viscount?”

“Very strange readings sir. We have for sure, four living beings on board. There might be six. Then there’s these phasing readings, they go from non-life form to life form, then back again. I’ve averaged it out, and it appears like we have about three hundred beings using some sort of scanner cloak…”

“Hmmm…. good work; keep at it. I want total readings of every damaged part of the vessel, as well as information on where it could have come from. You,” The captain gestured to an idle bridge member “Give him a hand researching missing Viscount class ships.”



{If you want me to edit anything, just say so}

(Naw, thats' great :D )

Inside the vessel, the dark shapes sized up the new arrivals. Meaty. Not as big or as strong as the others, but still will provide good entertainment.

The rusted guns turned quickly, for their state of degredation, and fired fresh red lances at the Lamba classes, who would either have to leave and abandone their men or die.

Those already inside were suddenly struck fast with the grey beings. They closed fast, and opened their cloaks to reveal dark, shadow, insubstantial shapes within. Several men were immersed screaming. Lound explosions resonated inside as the trapped men set off explosives in vain. The grey shapes grabbed several men and retreated deep into their shadows again.
_____________________________________________________________________

Outside the ship, the seemingly dead guns heated. Suddenly the vessel was alive with guns, firing terribly inaccurate shots in all directions, causing chaos in space and playing havoc with any attempts to pper inside its' depths.

Janson screamed.

"Ion cannons, fire! I want that ship disabled!"

The ion cannons on the TDY Star Destroyer oepned up. With in seconds, the ship's weapons around the docking bay were disabled. No more sporadic fire from there.
-----------------------------------------------------

General Skai saw the things attack. The four squads opened up. The TDY forces numbered a hundred men strong but were reduced quickly to about ninety. Their fire seemed to do nothing.

Skai ordered them into a run. The pored through the corridors towards the cabin and the people in it. That was their first priority.

As they ran they suddenly encountered a pair of grey, rubbery creatures like the one they saw on the distress call. One levlled a HUGE gun, but a taller-still one in a red coat pushed it down.

It rised to its' full height, head brushing against the ceiling, and said "You are here to help, yes?" he then thumped over to them.

He was easily two feet taller then the tallest man, and seemed to tower above them. "My commanding officer is lost, he sent up a short range distress call. The things, that I see you have met, are trying to close up corridors to trap us. We myst keep moving"

And with that the two aliens ran towards the bridge.
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Out in space, the Vinda Cor vessel got another transmission on a secure line.

"We are the ones who are calling for aid. The other vessel has opend fire on us. we fired solely to illuminate our dead hulk. They attack our derelict ship, they burn it! Help usssss..."

The last part had degenerated into a hiss. It sounded nothing like the creature who had sent the original distress call.

_______________________________________________________________________

The crewman searching for files on missing viscounts finds what at first appears to match. A list of casualties from the TNO campaign shows a time when MCR lost several viscounts in battle. One of the files has been partially erased, but it was clear this was the ship.

What information remained says it was destroyed in battle, but when clean up crews came back, it was gone.

Also, this vessel had degraded far too much, more then any vessel should have considering the amount of time its' been out there.

__________________________________________________________________

And out in space, bothering noone, is a little Azguard transport ship, that starts to come around very slowly.....

"We're coming in hard and fast, stay sharp people. Ion fire is everywhere. Target the Viscount's cannons and take them out...that Destroyer's got a few but let's not let the others do any damage," Sahrah Grummet instructed her squadron.

The small group of obsidian black fighters maneuvered towards the reckless ship. Ion bolts sizzled past every which way. It was like celebratory confetti from hell. "Missiles first - let's take out what we can before we get too close."

She flicked a switch and her computer targeted one of the cannons. Sahrah nosed her A-wing until the gun was in her reticle. Targeting boxes spun and dipped around it, finally meeting together on the crosshair. The tone of a solid lock sang into her ears and she squeezed the trigger. Her comm unit crackled with multiple confirmations of missile releases from other fighters. A small screen on her control panel showed the view from the missile and tracked its progress. The gun was 10 meters...5...1...sizzle. The screen winked out and showed her ship's loadout once again. The ship's hull bubbled with multiple explosions from other successful hits.

One line gone... Sahrah switched over to lasers and aimed at a cannon as she hugged the form of the Viscount. A few blasts and the cannon overheated, melting in on itself. It blew up inside as the next ion blast had nowhere to go. Score!

"Grummet to Vestron...there's a lot of fire coming in here from those two ships. We've disabled a side of it, it'll take a bit to finish off the other guns since this mother is rollin'...but I'm pretty sure we'll pull this off. Tell that other ship to watch it's fire bette-" a nearby A-wing pulsed with electricity crawling over its circuits - the work of an ion cannon, "better...and one to pick up...Grummet out."

She brought her A-wing about for another run, popping up targets and firing missiles as fast as locks were confirmed...

“Vestron to Grummet, message acknowledged.”

“Vestron to TDY ship. Please watch your fire, we have A-Wing fighters disabling the erratic Viscount.”

“Sir, could you take a look at these readings?” Captain Hatchet nodded, and moved over to the communications consol. After a few minutes of muttering back and forth with the communications officer, Hatchet straightened, and announced to the bridge crew “People, someone is attempting to pull the wool over our eyes. The transmission we just received does not, in any way, maintain any similarity to the original distress call. In fact, it is not even the same race. The tonal qualities are very basic – very primal – very different.”

After giving the bridge crew a look over, Captain Hatchet pulled out his com and messaged the hanger bay.

“Hanger bay one, prepare to transport two strike teams over to the Viscount.”

That order give, the Captain moved over to the science station, intent on inquiring how the research on this derelict ship was going. Two screens were filled with information readouts of the current status of the ship, and a high definition holomap was being generated of the ship’s corridors, and levels. At least the strike teams would have accurate data about where they were in the ship.

“Any information about where this Viscount came from?” Hatchet asked. A few flimsies were handed back to him, as the two men continued to work. Hatchet skimmed the two pages, and then started at the top of the first. It had been deduced that this was the Mon Cal “ghost ship” from the TNO/MCR war. A ship that simply disappeared after the battle, and before salvage crews could come to claim it.


“Ward, would you say this ship has taken an enormous amount of damage, even more so than estimated after the battle it was in with the New Order?”

“I would at that sir. The degradation rate is high, very high. Look, here.” Science officer Ward pointed to the aft part of the ships hull. “This section appears to have been manually disassembled. Almost like a few salvage crews got at it… but it was reported that none did get to it. And, here. This section has been entirely eaten away. I would guess the artificial gravity is still running, but some reactor has sprung a leak, which resulted in a large amount of acid burning through the hull to the outside.”

Captain Hatchet nodded, and returned the summary to the science desk.

It was obvious that some ruse was being pulled.

"Roger that VC. TJE fighters inbound."

The TJE defenders headed in to assist the VC fighters. The continually pounded the weapons emplacements.

---------------------------------------------------
Skai gave the order.

"Move! Follow them. If what they are saying is true, we don't want to get trapped. Move, double time!"

The TDY RPGC ran after the grey skinned aliens. They made their way to the bridge and stopped.

The bridge doors opend wide, like a mouth. Inside was the twisted corpses of two of the tall beings. A live one was working furiously at the consol, sweat dripping from his face to the surface of his suit. He looked up, and paled.

The grey creatures materialized out of the darkness, at least forty of them. They closed ranks into four horizontal lines of ten each, and moved forwards. The grey cloaks fell, and finally they got their first good look at the creatures.

They were and oddball mix of races, from humans, to bothans, to Mon Cals, to Wookies, to anything. But each was horribly machetied and chunks replaced with robotic parts. It was obvious they had been killed and refitted. Their arms were and assortment of rending slashing weapons.

They closed to the lines of men and slashed brutally. Any who attempted to pass them died. Any who attacked died.

Another twenty came up from behind, still in their shadowy, glistening cloaks.

The Red coat took out a pair of Class-A thermal detonators. In a situation like this he would have just blown up everyone, but there were humans, and he did not wish to get None Azguards killed who had come only to save them.

"Keep going" he said, and primed the grenades.
___________________________________________________________________

Outside the vessel, the Viscount stopped firing. But from behind, the Azguard shuttle started to come about. It sent out a distress call, and asked to dock a ship, any ship, for it was damaged and needed to be repaired soon.

_______________________________________________________________

New data was suddenly found on the Viscount. The crewmans' eyes opend wide as he cracked the final encryption code. The Viscounts' computer system opend up to him and-

-The computer short circuted. His terminals' screen blew up in his face, as the overload of information fried the circuts. Inside the whole mess was fused by the intense heat.

_______________________________________________________________________