Primal Karking Chaos

[Ashin Varanin]

The planet Val'hala was, to put it mildly, anomalous. Some ancient collector of sentient species had, perhaps, used it as a nature preserve. Apart from ever-present humans, Val'hala boasted twenty billion Energy Vampires, Anzati, Shistavanen, Shi'ido, Miraluka, Diathim, Gurlanin, H'Drachi, Maelibus, and Ysanna.

Most of whom, for some unexplained reason, were male. And three-quarters of whom were serving in the massive and unsustainable military.

Also the planet had demigods and phrik.

But none of this was really the point of Balke's expedition to the Val'hala system. In fact, it was all pretty much incidental. See, Val'hala was the midpoint of the Sanctuary Pipeline, over twenty thousand light-years of straight-shot hyperlane held open by hundreds of S-thread boosters. The insanely expensive method of lane creation had been first employed for the creation of the second Death Star over Endor. The ancient booster stations had been repaired and fortified by the Lords of the Fringe.

But the Lords of the Fringe were no longer extant. Certainly not around here.

A flotilla of small freighters descended on the Val'hala S-thread booster station like flies to a carcass. Other people could pick Val'hala's bones for its leftover phrik (the Fringe leaders having recently stripped the mines as best they could). Balke and his people had something much bigger in mind.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

"We're trailing the tertiary crew by five parsecs. Tighten it up, Steng."

The Barabel at the Privateer-class frigate's side console gave a sharp nod and began snarling into the subspace comm. The spinward side of the operation was just as crucial, and coordination could not be jeopardized by hyperspace distortions, so subspace was the comms medium of choice. It was valid, too, over distances like the interstellar space separating Balke's flotilla from the spinward crew.

Outside the viewscreen, the freighters and the frigate began to deluge this S-thread booster station with weapons fire. Whittling down its shields would take a while, and they had to contend with counterfire from an undermanned little Bobison-class defense platform. The nimble frigate danced around the platform and the booster, doing its level best to win the tracking speed contest. Ten astronomical units away, Val'hala was waking up.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

"Shields down on the booster, sir."

"Get the booster between us and the Bobison, then drop the embers."

The embers were prototypical, a reverse-engineering of a story. They said that Ember Rekali and his men had once stolen an artificial moonlet, much the same way Jorus Merrill was reputed to have stolen the Saelari Medical Centre from the occupied Coruscant system. Balke and his associates didn't have Merrill's expertise or Rekali's assets, but one of Balke's men had been in on the Rekali raid and earned a few million for a single hypertug run.

And these ones didn't even have to work to work.

Eight fast transports weathered defensive fire and nestled up against the circumference of the S-thread booster station. Three were in the Bobison's line of fire; heavier transports moved to protect them. Balke kept his eye on the long-range sensors.

"Spinward crew?" he said over his shoulder.

The Barabel held up one taloned thumb. "On schedule, sir."

 

[Ashin Varanin]

"Sir, comms chatter rising. We're being hailed."

"By whom?"

Steng cupped his hand to his earpiece. "The Val'hala planetary government, sir."

"Not interested. We're ten AU away, the spinward crew's five parsecs away -- there's nothing a planetary defense flotilla can do to stop us."

"It's not a threat, sir," the Barabel said. "They're...begging."

Balke sighed, and found himself smiling. "The most alpha-male, pointlessly militaristic society in galactic history, begging. I think I have to hear this. Patch me in." Besides, the rest of his ships would be hearing it too, and he couldn't have the crews slackening in their resolve.

Steng nodded. The transmission filled the bridge. "-and the Sanctuary Pipeline will-"

"Let me stop you right there," he said, and there was silence. "My name is Physeter Balke. I know what I'm doing, and I'm pleased and a little impressed to see that you've figured it out. What's your official rank? God, demigod?"

"...this is Demigod Kayden Ba'tnam, speaking for-"

"Demigod, then. I'd like you to take a serious look at the last ten years of your planet's history. All the times you've been raided and bombarded and manipulated and exploited by governments and organizations who wanted your sons and your resources but gave...very little in return. You'd know your history better than I, Demigod Ba'tnam. Do yourself a favour and examine it, and ask yourself one thing.

"Ask yourself whether being connected to the galaxy was worth it."

The Dark Jedi examined himself for vainglorious purpose or dishonesty and noticed nothing. "I'm not here to hurt your planet, Demigod Ba'tnam. I'm here to do my level best to save it."

 

[Ashin Varanin]

The comm clicked off, leaving Balke and Steng alone on the Privateer's bridge.

"You've got doubts," said Balke.

The Barabel shrugged. "Don't you?"

"Of course. Then we all talked it through, picked the right pressure point, and figured out where we could make the most long-term impact. I wasn't convinced myself -- but this is far from an irrevocable step."

"It's just that we'll be accountable for an awful lot."

"A lot of good, too. All we can do is look at the net. Same as carrying a gun, Steng. Gun or a blade or, feth, a hammer."

The Barabel's tongue flicked, tasting the air, and Balke felt his first officer's doubt fade away. "Spinward team's confirming they've attached and linked the embers, and deployed the boarding torps. We'll be the same in...one minute."

 

[Ashin Varanin]

Balke squinted through the viewport at the looming mass of the station. S-thread boosters had a minimal but generally capable crew, and a crew like that couldn't be allowed to interfere. Even if coma gas boarding torpedos were expensive. The torps crashed into the unshielded station, maybe deploying their payload, maybe not -- no way to know. It would do for now.

"This is Balke to embers. You ready?" A chorus of staggered Ayes percolated through the comms. "Then synch and break. Karlo, Venn, get that cover mobile."

The transports swarmed away from the booster station, the weaker ones physically covered by tank ships. The Bobison kept firing...but it was using its maneuvering thrusters as well. Ostensibly to get a better firing angle, but more likely to get some distance from a potential explosion.

"Steng, how's the tertiary group?"

"Sspinward reportss ready." The Barabel's voice generally got sibilant under stress, a reliable indicator. Moment of truth.

"Engage."

 

[Ashin Varanin]

The flotilla jumped en masse, bound for what had recently been Fringe territory. Somewhere far away, he knew, this exact same thing was happening, just in the opposite direction. Somewhere else, five parsecs spinward by the next S-thread booster, the other team was jumping for the Corellian Trade Spine.

"Hypercomm?"

"Booted up, sir."

"Punch it."

Nothing happened; nothing he could detect. But back at the edge of the Val'hala system, and also five parsecs away from there down the Sanctuary Pipeline, two S-thread booster stations had just jumped to hyperspace. His Privateer, his flotilla, and the other team were racing two hyperspace distortions as the innate characteristics of that dimension reasserted themselves. S-thread boosters held turbulent routes open, forcefully. Without the boosters, the Sanctuary Pipeline's center point, and all hyperspace travel around Val'hala, descended into the kind of turbulence that would shake vessels out to realspace. A ridiculously quick and straightforward route was now washed out like a mountain road in a landslide, navigable only with extreme care and a great deal of both time and risk.

Replacing two S-thread boosters in turbulent space likewise required time and risk. Weeks or months, certainly. And S-thread boosters were horrifically expensive.

"Hyperradio is full static, sir. Switching back to subspace."

The natural jamming was the sign: the jumps had gone as planned. Elsewhere, those booster stations were being led into trackless space for salvage and sale -- and their removal had wiped out the only possible pursuit routes.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

SIX DAYS LATER​

​

The Sanctuary Pipeline, the spinward side, connected to super-hyperroutes. It had also, a week ago, connected to what had been the Fringe heartland: the markets of Wild Space and the Unknown Regions. Like a major blood vessel cut in two, the Sanctuary Pipeline hemorrhaged into unregulated space, ungovernable space: ten parsecs of hyperspace turbulence surrounding the planet Val'hala. Hyperspace comms were down, hyperjumps ended in tragedy as often as not, and a handful of brave souls were marking out temporary routes to get to stranded ships. One such brave soul was Wennis, the pilot of a Koensayr search and rescue cutter, upon which Shule had hitched a ride. His ability to find the minds of the stranded shaved hours or days off Wennis' searches, so he was allowed to remain even when the vessel was full to capacity. A few days of that had put him, Wennis, and the cutter in the Val'hala system.

The system had twenty billion people, and no traffic whatsoever.

Anyone trapped in the system had landed to conserve fuel and air. Anyone trapped outside the system wasn't getting through unless immensely motivated, like this search and rescue ship. The cutter arced down through the atmosphere. Aboard, Shule did his level best to filter out the planet's fury and fear. He'd listened to the audio records on approach. Something felt off.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

Half-way down the ramp, Shule stopped and inhaled. "The air smells like frustrated testosterone."

"Too fresh for me," said Wennis behind him. The SAR captain gave him a shove. "Don't dawdle, Windspeaker. I've got a lotta people that need to use this ramp."

Hastily, Shule hopped down to the tarmac. "Sorry. Inconsiderate of me."

A stream of refugees and medical gurneys flowed out of the Koensayr SAR cutter and into the waiting hospital facilities. He focused on alleviating the worst of their nervousness and pain. Not much, though. Those things were useful for diagnostics, and he'd long ago learned not to interfere with professionals. Nurses and trauma doctors converged on the rescued crewers. Shule traded notes on the refugees' mental condition with the requisite person, then adjourned. There was a Jedi signal that needed answering -- a meeting, he hoped, of whatever Knights had been on or near Val'halla when the Sanctuary Pipeline was cut.

 

[Arage Bao]

[member="Shule Windspeaker"]

[SIZE=10.6666666666667px]Val’halla held a few operations for him, [/SIZE][SIZE=10.6666666666667px]important[/SIZE][SIZE=10.6666666666667px] operations that weren’t easily replaced, except if ya wanted to travel about six months into one direction to Demonsgate every once in a while. Khal had been spending some more time in Protectorate Space these days, running back and forth the Rimma Route to strengthen the ties that had been created during the Netherworld, but every time there was one thing that kept coming back to him.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6666666666667px]No matter where they were from Fondor to Thyffera, and from Yag'Dhul to Sullust, there was a single story that kept coming back.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6666666666667px]Someone had stolen the Sanctuary Pipeline.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6666666666667px]Khal doubted he woulda been able to actually repair the pipeline, he might have had the funds for it, but that wasn’t the issue. The issue was getting competent individuals to do it. It’s one thing to refit a huge station and another to get a whole fething hyperspace lane back in order.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6666666666667px]But he could help out in another way.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6666666666667px]Little unmanned probes had been sent along the way, mapping out a less dangerous route towards the system Val’Halla was in, it would precede a small relief flotilla. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6666666666667px]Most of it was just the things that Khal could gather up on short notice, but there were good people involved. Underground, some Exchange here and there, some other folks he had befriended along the way and most of all.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6666666666667px]All funded by Salvatrucha.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6666666666667px]Guy’s gotta do what a guy’s gotta do.[/SIZE]

 

[Not Ordo]

His great and mighty lord Darth Ka Helmetus, Sovereign of the stars, prince of the 4th wall and beacon of hope for the galaxy dropped out of hyperspace in the illustrious, and rebuilt (thanks Varanin), empire one.

Lights danced across the bow of the mighty vessel like the lights of fireflies in the eyes of an awestruck child as it made it's way toward the strange world that he could have sworn he had blown up however that could possibly have been a less than dry dream he had after too much bantha steak.

"Sandurz?" he said forcing his voice to a lower octave, "Is this Helmetus 76526?"

"No, Lord Helmetus." Col. Sandurz replied, "This is 76562."

"Damn, well scan the system for my arch nemesis then we can go."

"Arch nemesis, sir?" Sandurz asked his face awash with confusion, "Do you mean the guy who called you short yesterday?"

"NO YOU FOOL!" Helmetus bellowed-ish, "The waver! The waver you dolt!"

Sandurz had not a clue who this person was but a full scan would keep him quiet and so the crew and their Colonel saluted and gave a hearty "Hail Helmetus!"

"Fething right hail me." Helmetus said taking his seat.

 

[Arage Bao]

[member="Darthka Helmetus"]

[SIZE=10.6666666666667px]“A ship has dropped out of hyperspace, Khal.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6666666666667px]“Hail it.” [/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6666666666667px]When it was mentioned that it was a [/SIZE][SIZE=10.6666666666667px]small[/SIZE][SIZE=10.6666666666667px] flotilla it hadn’t been in jest, maybe two dozen freighters with a few dedicated cargo ships. All of ‘em were currently packing with a few things, supplies, engineers and resources that could be used to repair things.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6666666666667px]No armies or storage boxes filled with explosives or anything.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6666666666667px]Khaleel hadn’t been expecting to come into a fight, which might have been a fault of his, but that’s life for ya. Sometimes it gives ya, sometimes it takes it away again from you, he would have to talk to whoever was in charge and figure out what was happening there.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6666666666667px]“Unidentified ship, this is the Salvatrucha One.” [/SIZE][SIZE=10.6666666666667px]had come with the paintjob. [/SIZE][SIZE=10.6666666666667px]“We have come here to aid the citizens of Valhalla after the Sanctuary Pipeline incident, any help is sorely needed and would be greatly appreciated, over.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6666666666667px]And then he waited.[/SIZE]