By: Anthony Hummerston.

STARRING

Rojic,   Jimmi,   Karnov,   Niall,   Kory,  
And special guest star:
Joe-90
as the droid.

Note: Excepting Roake Khan, the names of the enemy were never actually known, but they have been named for clarity.

There is hardly time to draw breath, as the gallant attackers take on the not-so gallant defenders. The Magna Guards are pressing their attack. The one on the left-hand side of the bridge trots to the lift platform and presses the button. On the right-hand side, another uses a pile of crates to climb and draw level with Karnov. Karnov is expecting this, however and presses home with his lightsabre. The Magna Guard is somewhat unbalanced by Karnov, but defends with its electro-staff, catching Karnov a glancing blow for a minor flesh wound and a jolt of electricity. Green lightsabre versus purple electrical discharge! Karnov beats the droid back a little, but it is undeterred.

One of the dark-side agents, Danfiné shoots Jimmi, who is concentrating on the Magna Guard that isascending on the lift platform. Meanwhile, Niall gets a bead on Y’lanfi -the woman on the bridge.

A carefully-aimed shot sees her topple from the bridge into the battle droids below! The Bothan was crouching next to Y’lanfi and tries to slot a sly shot between the Magna Guard and Karnov. The melee is too frantic though, and his shot goes wide. It impacts on the ducting where Rojic is carrying out delicate wrecking operations while defending himself from the ASN-121 droid.

The shot also zips over the head of Kory, who has finally caught up with the others. She casually tosses a smoke grenade into the pit to her left, while drawing and shooting Danfiné, who slumps down over a console, unconscious.

The third dark-side agent, named Sc’dall, is preparing for a devastating attack. He raises his arm, and lowers his head. Calling on the force, he sets a whirlwind in motion. This picks up debris and whirls around the area that our heroes are defending, dissipating Kory’s smoke. As it picks up speed, they are all battling the debris, which is cutting, lacerating and bruising their flesh. Karnov and Niall are caught in the full force of the storm, and take a battering. The others manage to keep out of the worst effects….For now! Luckily, for our heroes, the storm is rather indiscriminate and several battle droids are also damaged. Two look at one another. “What’s going on here?” They manage to ask before being dashed against the walls of the room.

Joe-90 is sizing up the battle. He sees a Neimoidian with a glaive approaching over the bridge from the forward command post. He calmly raises Sarah-Jane and lets the guard have it. This makes the guard stagger and take stock, though there is nowhere to go other than to drop into the pit in front of him. Battle droids fire wildly, but they are still being buffeted by the whirlwind, their shots go wide. The ASN-121 droid has a perfect shot at Rojic in the duct. There is nothing else to shoot in here. It aims carefully. It misses!

Karnov trades blows with the Magna Guard. For every two strikes with the lightsabre, he fails to make a telling hit with one. The other strains the droid’s servos as it desperately parries. Soon the Magna Guard is drawing on its power reserves just to remain in the fight.

Sc’dall abandons controlling the whirlwind. Instead, he reaches out for Jimmi. Jimmi’s mind is filled with a scenario based on our heroes failing in their mission. It shows what Sc’dall and the others will do to the Rose Wanderer crew. Suffice to say that it isn’t pleasant at all. A chill makes Jimmi shudder involuntarily. There is a chance to embrace the dark side and turn on Karnov’s gang. Jimmi puts a brave face on the experience, but in the next few moments, it can be seen that the visions are playing on the Miralukan’s mind. The fear also tempts Jimmi. “Turn, damn you!” Sc’dall whispers, “Your fear can make you stronger!”

Sc’dall.

Rojic gets a bead on the ASN-121 droid. He can’t possibly miss. The droid is head-on and makes a perfect roundel for him to aim at. He’s had time to prepare and calm his nerves. He raises the blaster and…..Misses! A stream of expletives finishes the attack. Karnov pulls his slice at Sc’dall, but the intensity of the fight, and the violent whirlwind going on around him are both taking their toll, the attack goes wide. This effect is repeated with Niall’s two blaster bolts. Sc’dall dodges left and then right to avoid both. Joe-90 is taking no prisoners, Sarah-Jane coughs once again, and the Neimoidian guard clasps his chest before collapsing. The glaive is released from his hand, and a second later it joins the maelstrom. This will have grave repercussions later! The glaive does a quick spin around the storm, gathering speed all the time. A second revolution and it is at terminal velocity! It slams into Joe-90, and scrapes across his chest, sending large sparks flying. Jimmi can feel it coming dangerously close, and so concentrates upon the weapon. Jimmi uses the whirlwind to slingshot the glaive toward Sc’dall, where it slices deep into the enemy’s arm. Sc’dall screams in pain.

The Bothan is firing again, seeking out Karnov. This appears to be personal! Kory blasts Sc’dall and makes a neat blast-mark on his chest. Inspired by Kory’s marksmanship, Niall rolls from behind the crate and snaps off two more blasts. They are right on target, but fade left at the last moment! Sc’dall grins at Niall’s poor shooting, only to receive a blast from Jimmi! The dark-side agent staggers back a step. The barrage is starting to make a difference at last. It also fires his anger, and he holds out a hand to Jimmi. Jimmi is not going to be influenced so easily. Then Sc’dall clenches his fist, and Jimmi starts to feel pressure on his neck. Sc’dall is using the force to do the neck-choke manoeuvre!

Rojic is still struggling to hit the droid in the confined space of the ducting. There being nothing to impede his shots, he keeps missing. Finally, he uses his cowardice to good effect, and turns a corner. He reaches back to send a warning that he is not to be followed. Shooting blind, the shot hits home! The droid sparks a bit and shudders. Rojic looks back around the corner to admire his handiwork! The droid, in its efforts to avoid the shot has managed to get itself tangled in some of the loosened wiring. Its motors go into overdrive trying to free itself. A horrible whirring grinding noise echoes chillingly along the ductwork.

The Magna Guard is trying to pull Karnov off the ledge and into the pit. It signals a low strike but instead strikes high. A purple-coloured electrical bolt shimmers over Karnov, but he’s made of stronger stuff than that, although had he hair, it would have stood on end from the electrical discharge! Karnov is starting to tire of the cut and thrust of the fight. He mimics the droid’s low blow. The droid follows the lightsabre in the precise arc that Karnov has very obviously signalled. At the end of the sweep, Karnov reverses the cut, and etches a neat ‘Krill’ sign into the droid.

This proves instantly disabling to the droid, who teeters on the crate for a second before a gentle shove from Karnov sends it crashing to the floor below in three equal pieces!

From behind a console, an injured Roake Khan barks an order. “Enact protocol five!” Battle droids stop shooting our heroes and get to work. Khan is slowly regaining his strength, and he stands up. He draws a small blaster and starts sending red bolts of hot plasma in the direction of our heroes in particular and Niall specifically. Either way, the shots go wide! Joe-90 has the processing power to run through a number of options, speculating on what ‘protocol five’ might be. Here are some of the more ridiculous ones.

“Free school milk for school children?”

“Pink jumpsuits to be worn by all funeral director staff?”

“Conference attendees are allocated one parking space only, regardless of the number of delegates?” Joe-90 rejects all of these. On Khan’s order, the battle droids are sabotaging the controls. The ship stops slewing gently left and lines up like an arrow pointing at the planet below. The engines pulse briefly, and the planet starts looming larger in the view screens in front of the bridge! Knight’s Move is not bound for the sun, but for the densely populated surface of Coruscant itself!

Niall is a little put out at being shot at by Roake Khan. “You can’t shoot me, I’m ….” He flips his lapel to show his Jedi Service Corps badge, and puts a thumb over the ‘service corps’ part, “A Jedi!”

“Great, Niall! -That should do it!” Kory gasps. Khan merely sneers at him.

Karnov is too busy watching the battle droids in the pit below to comment. They have risen from their seats, and drawn blasters. They are filling the consoles in front of them with everything a blaster can chuck out. Bolt after plasma bolt fry the controls. The guns glow cherry-red with the energy expended. Above, the whirlwind is abating somewhat, but our heroes are still buffeted with the intensity of the miniature tornado. Sc’dall is trying something else. He crouches down, and then rises up, drawing on some inner strength. In an instant, he runs, straight to Niall, covering the distance in an instant.

“I didn’t even see him coming.” Niall would report later. “Me either!” Jimmi concurs. In the forward section of the bridge, Sc’dall draws a lightsabre in super-quick time, and brandishes it at Niall, who hastily defends with his own. The sixty-foot distance was traversed in less than a second!

“That’s nearly the distance between the pitcher’s mound and the home plate!” Joe-90 observes dryly.

“That speed’ll cover a hundred meters twice as fast as Usain Bolt!” Jimmi chips in.

In the din, Joe-90 thinks he hears the word ‘restraining bolt!’ This combined with the baseball reference spurs him on to extra-extra violence!

With the lightsabre, Sc’dall beats Niall back a yard or two, back into the abating storm.

Karnov and the Bothan exchange shots. Only Karnov manages to make a mark on his opponent. He grins. The Bothan snarls back, full of hatred, but is actually seriously wounded. He drops to his knees behind a console and makes for the corner of the bridge, where a panelled door is located. Meanwhile, Jimmi has had enough of the Magna Guard going up and down on the platform. With a gentle pushing motion, Jimmi waits for the platform to reach the top, before using a pushing motion to topple the droid over the non-existent railings. In the real world, it is slightly comical. In Jimmi’s mind, the fight with the droid is like a rather deadly game of snakes-and-ladders. Kory sees the droid toppled. “I’ll set ‘em up, you knock ‘em down!” She offers, shooting the droid while it picks itself up. It spits and sparks, and little blue flashes of electrical discharge play over its body. It reaches for the controls to raise the lift again only to be blasted in the hand for its trouble. Jimmi asks for an update from Kory, who replies that the coffee spigot has been blown off.

“Thanks. That’s all I need to know….Except what’s a coffee spigot?” A final volley of shots nearly finish it off.

Roake Khan turns his attention to Jimmi, though cannot make a single shot find its target. Joe-90 turns Sarah-Jane toward Sc’dall, who is trading blow for blow with Niall. A shot later, and the dark side agent is rocking from the force of the blast! Sc’dall manages to use Niall as a ‘human shield’ and protect himself from Joe-90 and Sarah-Jane, though Niall presses another attack with the lightsabre. The two of them fighting on the bridge between the sub-commander’s post and the main command area makes a dramatic scene. The red- and teal-coloured lightsabres wildly flashing across the dimly-lit bridge. Sc’dall counter-attacks, and is wearing down Niall’s stamina with the ferocity of the blows. Niall is beginning to think that he’s met more than his match.

Unhelpfully, Joe-90 says, “This is something that Niall needs to do for himself!”

Niall is being savagely beaten back. -Any stray blow will remove 2d6 of his limbs! “No it’s not!” He snarls at the droid. Joe-90 responds simply. “Oh!”

In the ducting, the AS-121 droid has found Rojic’s weak spot. It homes in and blasts a stinging shot at Rojic’s most sensitive part! “Nooooo!” Rojic screams over the din going on outside. “Not my wallet!” His yell comes echoing over the din of the bridge. Rojic decides that this is fighting talk, and launches a counter-attack. He is starting to think that he’d do more damage to the droid if he tried to repair it. However, the precarious nature of life-force, and Rojic’s lack of it, spurs him on to make some distance between him and his antagonist. He flaps and crawls around another bend in the ducting and into relative safety. Jimmi and the Magna Guard trade shots, Jimmi doing considerably better than his opponent, but only managing to knock a few greebles off the droid. Below the main command deck, on the sub-level, the remaining intact battle droids are attaching devices to various consoles. Outside through the forward observation windows, the planet fills the view. It is rushing to meet them alarmingly. Apart from a few minor course corrections, it looks as though Knight’s Move is pointed straight at the heart of the planet’s government sector. Had they a map, and a breathing space, Karnov and his team could see the biggest government buildings including the senate and the Jedi temple directly below them.

Karnov joins Niall in his battle. The enemy agent is a tough character, and easily defends against the padawan and the service corps Jedi. They trade blows. Now three lightsabres are swooping and swishing in the half-light. Sc’dall beats back the attackers, putting both Karnov and Niall onto the back foot. As they retreat under the flurry of blows, Kory suppresses her fear and feels the calm at the eye of the storm. She lets herself be overwhelmed by the force, which flows through her. She coolly snaps off a shot, which catches Sc’dall square in the chest, making him stagger back. Niall and Karnov drive the defender back in a rush of blows. Sc’dall is beaten back, but not beaten yet. He gathers himself for an onslaught. Niall is starting to fear for his life. Will his enemy ever be vanquished?

They all exchange attacks, all three trying desperately to find a chink in the enemy’s defence. Their weapons crackle and hiss in the rapid feints, parries and ripostes. Karnov finds an opening eventually. He takes a cue from a half-feint and fade-right from Niall. Karnov sees Sc’dall over-extend his reach. Smoothly Karnov whips his weapon around, and neatly slices off Sc’dall’s left hand at the wrist! The instant that the dark Jedi looks at the remains of his arm, Niall whips his own lightsabre around, and slices Sc’dall in two! The two halves topple of the bridge and down into the sub-level. Before the enemy’s lightsabre has hit the ground, Jimmi tries to use the force to pull it up and into safety. The force is weak in this one, and the weapon -still ignited- falls to the floor.

As the duellists were fighting for supremacy, the battle droids have activated their devices, and small explosions have blown open control panels and consoles. It’s a lot of smoke and noise all of a sudden. Kory takes exception to being left with ruined technology and her next shot reduces one battle droid to component limbs. Meanwhile, Rojic is looking for the sublight drive circuitry. He searches his conduit, but is distracted by what he thinks is the object of his desire. The assassin droid re-routes its own circuitry, and follows. It finds a great target on Rojic’s rear, and a critical hit later blasts the unfortunate Toydarian in the posterior. Rojic howls in pain. Kory finishes off the Magna Guard that has been playing hide-and-seek with Jimmi, and Rojic manages to find the droid's weak spot and finally disables it.

The lull in the fighting has a motivating effect on Roake Khan. He stumbles to the corner of the bridge, where an iris-valve opens suddenly to reveal the entrance to an escape pod. Khan dodges another flurry of shots and presses the button to open the pod bay doors. He doesn’t account for the Bothan though, who has decided to use the last of his strength to shoot Khan himself! Out of earshot from our heroes, the Bothan coughs. “I’m sorry, Khan. I cannot let you do that!” He wheezes. Khan is surrounded in a halo of shots, which impedes his progress, but doesn’t actually injure him. Joe-90 homes in on the centre of the ring of missed shots and places one right in the back of the fleeing Neimoidian. Khan finds himself propelled forward rapidly. Khan takes cover behind a protocol droid, hampering any further clear shots from the attackers.

The scales of fear are dropping from Jimmi’s ‘eyes’ as Sc’dall gets promoted from dark Jedi to dark force-ghost. Niall has taken Jimmi’s lead, and pulls Sc’dall’s lightsabre from the floor and flings it toward the escape pod with the force. The weapon skitters across the entry hatch, knocking a control panel half-off, and piercing the seal between the pod and the hull of Knight’s Move. An ominous hissing starts as the atmosphere in the ship decides to make a bid for freedom in the wide uncharted vista of space. The crew are not unduly worried however, since their adventure on board ‘Enisada One’ They know that a ten-kilometre ship has an awful lot of breathable atmosphere in it which will have to leak out before they start having problems. – Besides, their rapid descent through the atmosphere is going to be a much, much bigger problem!

Knight’s Move has homed in on the planet below. The first tendrils of the upper mesosphere are interacting with the prow of the ship, and greebles are starting to warm rapidly with the friction. There are scant minutes left. The crew leave the downed Roake Khan for a while and desperately try to wrestle with the controls. Kory scoots around the control panels. Wherever she looks, she sees carbon scoring and a mass of destroyed wires, fibre-optics and fluid links spilling out of panels. The battle droids might have been next to useless in a fight, but they could do a good sabotage job! Jimmi finds a place of calm among the wreckage of the bridge. Stretching out with feelings, it’s time to communicate with the surface quicker than any conventional means. Jimmi searches for someone, -or indeed- anyone in the Jedi temple that they know. Finally settling on Master Junn, Jimmi telegraphs a brief message to the Jedi master. “Knight’s Move Trojan horse, dark-side crystal, about to crash on you!”

On the planet’s surface, Master Junn is in the library of the Jedi temple. As coincidence would have it, he is viewing Karnov’s training records. The message from Jimmi, high above on Knight’s Move flashes in his mind. Calmly he stops the holographic display, and nods toward Jocasta Nu the librarian. Taking his leave, he crosses the floor of the library at an elevated pace, his footsteps drawing glances from the other Jedi working in there. Jocasta exchanges glances with some of the others. Master Junn obviously has something on his mind….

The calm of the library contrasts starkly with the turmoil on the bridge of Knight’s Move. Niall calls into the distance hoping to attract Rojic’s attention. “We need reverse thrust, Rojic. Now!”

“I think someone’s just blasted it!” Rojic responds. His voice sounds hollow from within the ductwork. A second later, the droid comes around the corner, right into the muzzle of Rojic’s blaster. There is a shot, and bits of droid scatter through the ducting and fall with a tinkle out of the open end.

“I hope that wasn’t the reverse thrust, Rojic…..”

“No, but it was a major obstacle to making progress.”

“Obstacle? What obstacle?” Niall asks.

“The one that makes me too scared for my life to think straight!”

“Well if we crash you can kiss goodbye to all that Banking Clan Scrip….”

Banking Clan scrip worth 250 Republic credits.

This spurs Rojic into frantic activity. A second or two later he emerges from the duct. Surveying the wreckage of the bridge, he looks crestfallen. “-And I was hoping there’d be better salvage out here!”

“They’ll be salvaging our Dorn-Nern-Aurek out of the wreckage if this thing crash-lands on the surface….”

“Talking of crashing….” Kory says, wishing she wasn’t, “We’ll be arriving at our destination in a few minutes. So whatever you’re going to do, do it fast!”

She and Rojic move off to find the least-damaged panel on the bridge. A second later, they’ve ripped off the carbon-scored console to reveal the wreckage below. “This’ll take about half an hour….” Rojic starts to say. Kory hisses at him. “Do it in five. After that you can finish the niceties as a force-ghost….Or whatever Toydarians become after death…..” She thinks. “Probably return to the slime of the swamp.”

“No time to get personal, Kory….” Rojic starts to say.

“No time at all. Let’s get to it!”

They realise that most of the ships systems are shot. Indeed have been shot, blasted and exploded. Instead of a few wires to hotwire, they have a few hot wires, that don’t even stretch to the charred remains of the sockets they once plugged into. Kory curses softly. Rojic curses in his most eloquent Huttese.

“Karking poodoo! Wee tee womp rat e’nachu.”

Kory is worried. “Weeko Kreespa!”

“Me k’nodaa!”

Kory snatches a cable. “What’s this part of?” She asks.

“I don’t know. I’d need to figure it out. I didn’t exactly read the manual before trying to fly this ship on manual!”

“We don’t have time to think! Act on instinct!” Kory yells in his ear. The panic is starting to rise in her. There is nothing but planet in the view screen now, and it’s approaching at a frightening rate. Superheated greebles are already hitting the bridge as they melt and separate from the bow of the ship, ten kilometres away. –Actually the distance to the front is starting to diminish rapidly as more of it burns away.

Rojic grabs the cable. “Okay. I think that this might be…..Um….Shield control?”

“Find somewhere that’s not too charred to plug it into, and get me a display!” Rojic jams the cable into a socket, and a crackling, distorted image appears on the half of a display that isn’t too badly blasted. Kory moves some sliders around. She thumps the console with a fist, while Rojic holds two hastily stripped wire-ends together. “Try now….” He tells her. For a few seconds, the shield array control panel comes up. Kory can select a small section of the ship to protect. As the bow is burning away the quickest, she redirects power there.

Niall is working on the helm. He heaves on levers and pushes buttons, but there is no response. “The air’s leaked from the bellows of the Voigt-Kampff machine.” Jimmi says, hoping to lighten the mood. Niall points to the altimeter -one of the few things still working. “There’ll be no air in us in a few moments!” Finally, Niall gives up on the helm. There is no time to start repairs. He turns his attention to the thrusters. “I’ve got some thrust. We might be able to buy time by adjusting the attitude of descent.”

“Do it!” Kory yells from halfway inside a console. Niall shifts the angle slightly. Kory makes a bid to angle the shields once again. Now they are directed to the ventral sections of Knight’s Move. “What about the heat shielding?” Jimmi asks. Rojic gives Jimmi the bad news. “There isn’t any! This ship has never flown in atmosphere. It was never intended for atmospheric flight! Only a madman would even attempt to do so!”

Right on cue, there is a chuckle from Roake Khan, still lying incapacitated behind a burned-out console. The protocol droid is still wittering away about the condition of the ship. Even the normally placid Karnov is getting tired of his predictions of doom.

Rojic has modified an audio output. “Pull up! Pull up!” It intones in a droid’s voice. Rojic swears at it. “Damn heath and safety protocol will end up getting us all killed!”

Kory asks tentatively whether Karnov and Niall have any more thrusters online. Despite their best efforts, they haven’t. Karnov replies, “The ships ten kilometres long….”

“Actually more like seven now!” Kory reminds him. Undeterred, Karnov continues. “Seven kilometres long….It’s not unlike turning an oil rig around…It takes time!”

The protocol droid points out something wrong with this statement. “Actually sir, I think you meant to say oil tanker.”

“I know what I meant! Hasn’t someone plugged his annoyingness into the ship to find out what’s going on?”

Joe-90 obliges. The protocol droid can only repeat the altitude, which is dropping fast, and the odds of surviving a crash.

“Get it to tell use something we don’t know!”

The droid does a quick calculation. “At this trajectory and speed, you’ll kill thirty million and four people.”

“Four?” Karnov asks, Why the extra four?”

“Add in yourselves of course.”

Joe-90 and Rojic simulate a high-five over smouldering consoles. Kory wrestles with another panel. She gives a report. “The astromech droids aren’t responding!”

“What?” The others turn to look at two astromech droids, still plugged in, but unresponsive. Joe-90 offers to show them some sense. “After all if they’re not part of the solution, they’re part of the problem!”

They pull the droids from the interface sockets. This makes little difference, as the power feeds to their stations have been severed a long time ago.

“Damn cheapo droids!” Joe-90 snarls.

Jimmi has got an audio relay working. Reporting back to the others its faint output. “Landing struts are not deploying.”

Rojic retorts. “There aren’t any. This ship wasn’t designed to land in atmo.”

Niall looks at the displays that are still working, and the planet rushing up at an appallingly fast rate. “Actually, I think that itwas designed for landing in atmosphere. -Or rather crash-landing in it. –A one-way journey into hell! Going down!”

Karnov has control of a few energy-collection vanes and the deflector dish. He angles them to act as airbrakes. They last all of a few seconds before joining the other greebles streaming off the unprotected parts of the ship. The whole of Knight’s Move is not much more than a gigantic fiery meteor, streaking through the evening sky alarmingly. A crash and a heavy thud reverberates thorough the bridge.

“What was that?”

“Deflector dish, comms array and most of the remaining monorail station at hangar seven!”

Rojic wails. “The money!”

Karnov is calm. “I am but a leaf on the wind….”

“Don’t start that again!”

Kory looks at the endless cityscape below them. “We need a soft landing!”

“Like where?”

“Like the sea?”

“There are two ‘c’s in ‘Coruscant’” Jimmi reminds them.

“Sometimes, even I tire of your constant quips!” Karnov snaps at him.

Niall is about to say something derogatory too, but he hasn’t the time.

Kory and Rojic are running out of things to investigate. Everything they examine has been destroyed beyond repair. Joe-90 scans the remaining systems for extra power, for solutions and for the slightest glimmer of hope….

Niall and Karnov can’t bring themselves to crash the ship on the Jedi temple, the senate building and the heart of the republic government district. “Anywhere else?” Karnov asks in desperation.

Jimmi calls on a snippet of galactic knowledge. “There are small artificial seas on Coruscant.”

Karnov doesn’t think this is a good crash site. “There’s a good chance we’ll create a tsunami….That could kill just as many civilians as plunging into the crowded city!”

Jimmi thinks again. Niall manages to flatten out the trajectory somewhat and scrub off some speed. “It’s now or never!” He screams above the din on the bridge. The temperature is rising alarmingly, the tops of skyscrapers are clearly visible through wispy clouds.

Jimmi suddenly remembers something. “The mountains! The Manarai mountains. They’re sparsely populated, and only a few hundred miles from the senate building!”

“Got it!” Niall nudges the remains of the ship around. Knight’s Move groans and roars under the strain. Roake Khan is laughing to himself.

“What’s with him?”

Khan comes clean. “This was always a suicide mission! The one attack that has no defence…”

“Someone shut him up!”

There is no time for retribution. The remains of Knight’s Move cross the sky like an intensely fiery comet. Niall and Karnov are hanging on to the controls. The thought of escaping in the escape pod crosses everyone’s mind, but there is room for one or maybe Rojic and one other. Instead, they bravely cling on to their stations. Niall and Karnov execute a series of fast step-turns, scrubbing off speed and rate of descent. Jimmi considers calling on the force to arrest the ship’s descent in the final milliseconds. At a half-a billion tons, it’s impossible even for a Jedi master. “It’s too big!” Jimmi wails.

Outside the ship, the Republic cruisers and capital ships have finally awakened to the danger, but too late! Interceptors scream through the upper atmosphere toward Knight’s Move. There is little or nothing they can do however. None of them has a tractor beam. Even if they did, the forces would tear the stricken ship into even more pieces.

The final moments are all too brief. Knight’s Move streaks across the sky, knocking vanes and aerials from the tops of the biggest skyscrapers. Another tower looms large, but there is little that Karnov and Niall can do to avoid it. Concrete splinters like matchwood, and joins the debris raining down into the streets. With an almighty roar, the ship ploughs on toward the mountain range, now an island of dark shadow in the constant glow of the city surrounding it.

“Shields!” Rojic yells at top volume. “Sacrifice everything, including life-support!”

Joe-90 shuts down. He can help no more.

In the final seconds, the ship crashes. An almighty groan becomes a deafening grinding rumble as the ship touches the ground, and tears across it, ploughing a furrow a half-mile wide. In the glow of the super-heated hull, Karnov lays a protective hand on Niall’s shoulder, and surrenders to the force. Niall holds on, his anger at this final moment etched on his face. Jimmi crouches in the lift shaft, resigned to fate. Rojic cowers in a ball, Roake Khan merely laughs. Kory blows a kiss to Niall. “Nice shipping with you, sweetie….”

Everything fades to grey.

There is a massive crash, Knight’s Move strikes a glancing blow off an outcrop of rock, and breaks in two, slewing sideways. Ironically it fades right a little, and the wreckage starts to disintegrate into hundreds of fiery chunks, still hurtling forward with the momentum. After a moment, the superstructure becomes a million fiery pieces, all bouncing, tumbling and crushing their way along the valley. The conning tower is the last to succumb. This too collapses under the force, and finally comes to rest, glowing a cherry-red that soon cools. Everything fades to black.

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The force-shockwave from the poisoned crystals and ingots has spread across Coruscant, expanding into the solar systems and out into the surrounding systems. The core of the Repubic holds its breath….. In the Jedi temple, there are bodies everywhere. – They line the corridors, fill the offices and some slump down in the streets, or sink to their knees. Even the strongest of knights have fallen victim to the poisonous effects. The dark side claws at their souls, a thousand voices are suddenly silenced. The warm glow of the light side of the force flickers then diminishes and is extinguished. Citizens have witnessed the fireball in the sky and felt the force of the crash landing. The streets are all but silent at the shock of the events unfolding…..

The strongest of Jedi, those on the council have no time to discuss this at committee. They scramble all available crash teams and soon a fleet of LAAT ships are racing at full speed to the crash site.

Several teams fan out and start spraying a fine, silvery stream of particles among the crash site. Master Yoda feels something in the force, and directs his ship to a spot among the wreckage. The bridge of Knight’s Move is on its side, horribly charred, partially crushed and hardly recognisable. White-suited troopers pour from the craft, and fan out, searching, and using sensor arrays. Master Yoda urges them on.

Finally, the troopers find something. One of them indicates a trace on his scanner. More troopers and ships descend to the spot, and in a well-drilled exercise, soon pry away the layers to reach the trapped and partially mangled bodies of our heroes.

Master Yoda sits on a piece of twisted hull. He is calm, at peace, but concentrating intently. Finally, as the bodies of the crew emerge one-by one from the wreckage. Joe-90 is pulled free. His sensor array kicks in, and he observes the solemn procession of bodes being loaded onto the L.A.A.T.s. Over a ridge comes the sound of metallic footsteps. Miraculously two battle droids have also survived the crash! Joe-90 picks up Sarah-Jane with one hand, but can play no part in the action, as the other hand is missing. The troopers crouch as the droids approach. The droids are insulting as usual. “Looky-looky, what have we here? Eat blaster Republic sleemo!” They intone. They start blasting. Six troopers fire back, and their shots reduce the droids to slag in seconds. If Joe-90 had a mouth, he would have grinned. He has no feelings either way about his former companions. “They did a job, they paid the price.” He muses to himself.

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CODA:

A few days later, and five Bacta tanks are arranged in a semi-circle. A green glow fills the room. A Polis Massa medic and several droids are on patrol. Several Jedi council members arrive. There is a solemn serenity. They survey the tanks and the contents before getting an update from another medic.

“Life signs were extremely weak, but there’s a fighting spirit there. –We induced a coma in each of them, but they can be revived soon.

A few hours later and the fade to black becomes a slow fade to a green-tinted white. One by one, our heroes come out of their comas, as they are revived. Their bodies have been through the most extreme of traumas, but have survived more-or-less intact. They are released from the Bacta tanks, and enter rehabilitation. A few days later, they are strong enough to answer a few questions, and be finally reunited.

It’s a strange experience. To them it seems only minutes since the crash of Knight’s Move. They are old comrades, though each of them sees the others in a new light. There is a quiet and almost tense atmosphere. Some might say that there is an aura around all of them. Joe-90 is there. Though he had no feelings toward any of them, he has served them well during their convalescence, and found himself without a master. Though some would call it guarding, as he refused to give up Sarah-Jane for several days. He is sporting some new hardware, a new arm, and revamped software. “I’m a hundred and fifty-percent the droid I used to be!” He quips.

Rojic is the fist to break the silence. In some small way it also breaks the ice between them. “It’s all your fault!” He yells at Niall eventually. Niall raises his eyebrows in surprise. “Yes you!” Rojic continues, pointing a bandaged finger at Niall. “We had a good deal going! Excitement and adventure and all that, and you go and take the whole lot. The ship, the money the equipment the salvage and everything, and you bury it into the side of a mountain!”

Niall is slightly taken aback. Kory and Jimmi suddenly start to giggle. After a moment, Niall and Karnov follow suit. Even Joe-90 manages a strangled chuckle. Rojic starts getting crosser and crosser. “Now’s the time for recriminations.” He says. The recriminations start. “No it’s your fault!” Jimmi accuses him. “Always putting mammon above life itself!”

“Actually I put my life first. –Only just ahead of making a profit.”

Karnov is more compassionate. “I think that Niall did okay, considering the circumstances.”

“Any drop from orbit you can walk away from is a good landing.”

Karnov looks at his legs, still splinted and wrapped in medpacks. “Well, I say ‘walk.’”

Jimmi adds to the argument. “Well, I make a rule that any ship that takes off safely, I intend to land in safely. -That ratio has served me well in the past.”

Jimmi asks about the crystals. “What happened? Did the crash trigger the chain reaction and black out the system?”

A medic replies. “For a time. But the Jedi council scrambled a fleet of ships and managed to damp down the effects with tons of some silvery metallic stuff.”

“Sissorium! The stuff the Bimmisaari were mining on K-59!”

“Blimey, that was a long time ago!”

They go silent for a moment.

Kory says, “At least we got Roake Khan.”

“There’s no way he’d have survived that. -The Bothan too.”

Joe-90 confirms this. “I saw them die. It only lasted a few milliseconds, but they’re certainly dead.”

“You know, he revealed that it was all a suicide mission.”

“Fanatic!”

“-And a dangerous one. There are probably more where he came from.”

“But hopefully without the blind dedication to the cause that he appeared to have.”

Jimmi adds, “You know, thinking back to Khan, I had a bad feeling about him months ago. We followed him that evening after meeting Master Annix, remember?”

They nod. “And another thing,” Niall continues. “That Bothan was outside in the corridor after we revealed the poisoned crystal plot to Master Annix.”

“-And he’s been following us ever since.”

Joe-90 interrupts, “Well not any more, and actually sir, the ‘he’ was actually a ‘she’”

Karnov hesitates, about to make a revelation. “Actually there’s something along those lines I need to tell you.”

Jimmi says. “I’m a Quarren and so’s my wife!”

Karnov glowers at Jimmi, but doesn’t manage to elaborate.

There is a silent moment. As Karnov goes to make his grand revelation, there is a knock on the door. Joe-90 translates from the Polis Massa that comes in. “He indicated that there is someone to see you.”

Our heroes look around. “We’re not expecting anyone, are we? No-one that wouldn’t just walk in.”

“Best check it out.”

Niall is first up. He is a little unsteady on his feet, but he can feel his strength returning.

He opens the door, and turns back to the others.

A gun barrel points to his temple. Niall is still a little light-headed and can’t react before a vaguely familiar voice off says one chilling word…

“Fire!”

NEXT EPISODE: 'Series Two!'

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Footnotes:

   Credits to follow in due course!