Public The Sands and Stars of Er'Kit

[Castam Felian]

ER'KIT DETACHMENT | BRAXTON RUN PATROL TASK FORCE
ANTI-PIRACY OPERATIONS | NEAR CELESTIAL OBJECT TS-259-A
QUELLI SECTOR | NEW IMPERIAL SPACE

Aboard NIV Pers Pradeux

The sanguine surface of Er'Kit, punctuated here and there by swirling maelstroms of gray, white, and black cloud systems that indicated the presence of the planets' rare but vital rainstorms, filled the bridge of the Pers Pradeux with its reflected hues. Even at this great distance, the red world dominated the emptiness of the vast abyss, its curvature a seeming impossibility of color against the black. Castam Felian still marveled at the prospect of gazing downward upon the home of millions, all captured in his view, tethered to a planet most would never leave, their worlds of concerns and anxieties, generations worth of everythings compacted into a rusty patina cast upon the chromatic blacks and whites of the bridge of his ship.​

​

A twinge of pain, so normal and yet so impossible to ignore, even now, after months of treatment in bacta tanks, flashed upward through tortuously scarred synapses from his leg into the base of the commander's brain, electrical signals broadcast by his body screaming in competition for his attention with those broadcast by his ship. A flash of white at the helm. Felian chose to attend the ship.​

​

Steel blue eyes turned to face the communications officer, and the commander's greel wood cane clicked sharply against the polished sheen of the Plasteel bridge floor, so loud as if to compensate in frustration for the hardly audible scuffling of his laggard right foot. "Lieutenant Commander Tammu, Commander."​

​

Venac Tammu's lisping Basic chirped through the audio channels from his position several hundred thousand kilometers to the Pers Pradeux's starboard aboard the Malady's End. His Imperial officer's hat sat awkwardly atop his green ridged skull, as the commanding officer of the Vandal-class corvette attached to Felian's patrol sparked into life on the hologram projector, and Felian found himself, as usual, unable to help but smell the Rodian's thick musk even across the vastness of space. Castam chewed nauseously, the memory of his last in-person encounter with his junior officer akin to scraping dung off his shoe.​

​

<"Commandaw,"> Tammu began, wide black eyes made somehow more insect-like by the hologram's jittering blue tint. <"Awtemith indicateth the thip we awe twacking ith inbound, Thir.">​

​

Felian's head twinged as it labored, protesting against last night's pulkay, to comprehend the Rodian's pitchy message. The Malady's End, alongside its sister ship the Old Bear to Felian's port, had been tasked with listening for the telltale signs of Felian's patrol's quarry. Now, it seemed, pirates proved yet again to be unable to leave well enough alone. Or, perhaps, the Rodian's musk was as impossible to resist for pirates as it was for the females of Tammu's species. Don't forget, he found himself quipping inwardly, they could be Rodian female pirates.​

​

For days, Felian and his detachment had patrolled in the vicinity of the devastated Er'Kit, on the edges of every dominion in this sector of the galaxy, interdicting small time smugglers and maintaining the Imperator's law. The deployment had gone fairly successfully, with the fleet's tender ships kept busy returning impounded goods and prisoners to the Armada outpost on Er'Kit. A particular pirate, however, had evaded capture twice, now. Felian would not tolerate a third.​

​

"Very well, Lieutenant Commander," he straightened himself, signalling to his crew to alert the other ships of the detachment and sound battle stations aboard Pers Pradeux. "If you see the opportunity, engage your interdictor fields and prevent her escape. Transmit projected hyperlane exit coordinates to the fleet and move to engagement positions. Felian out." The blue light of the holoprojector winked out of existence, and the red hues of the reflective sand dunes of Er'Kit again washed the bridge with rust. The familiar gentle push of Felian's organs into their cradling tissues at the back of his body told Felian's orders had been heeded. The Pers Pradeux turned toward and accelerated to sublight interdiction speeds, flanked by her fleet.​

​

This time, the pirate would not escape.​

\​

Spoiler: Fleet composition

Frigates
1 EF96-Nebulon A Escort-class - NIV Pers Pradeux (Flagship) [x]
Corvettes
2 TXS Vandal-class [x]

NIV Malady's End - Lt. Commander Venac Tammu [NPC]​

NIV Old Bear ​

2 Caçadores-class [x]

NIV Black Banner​

NIV Written in Stone​

 

[Kyra Findlay]

The Sith Imperial Civil War or the war, the War of Souther Sith Aggression, the Braxant Run campaign, the Second Sith Imperial Civil War....There were a thousand different names for the conflict that brewed between the Sith Empire and the nascent New Imperial Order. Either way, the war was providing ample salvage and even better smuggling and so many a pirate crew pillaged and raided the small, temporary naval bases and supply depots along the Braxant run, or at least they HAD been until the New Imperial Order pushed the Sith completely from the hyperlane. Now with so many New Imperial patrols looking for Sith stragglers and even the occasional Galactic Alliance clean up detail most pirates and salvagers had vanished from the hyperlane.

Except for Kyra Quez.

She had enjoyed this little game of cat and mouse with the NIO Captain in this sector, but time was wearing thin now. There were new places to salvage. Dantooine, Korriban, and Felucia were all sites of recent battles between the NIO, Sith Empire, and Galactic Alliance. She'd have to move on soon. Unfortunately for her and her crews a particular piece of salvage from one of the recent skirmishes just outside the Braxant run had caught her eye; a Sith Hyperwave Inertial Momentum Sustainer, a useful piece of tech that allowed for vessels to keep their momentum and plow right through interediction. It was a little large, Star Destroyer grade, and it was common in many military vessels nowadays but military vessels had a tendency to stay within defense fleets. Military-grade tech like this would fetch a high price on the market.

An old Privateer-class frigate and a handful of other relics dropped out of hyperspace on the edge of Er'Kit's egress point. Captain Kyra Quez sat in her command chair, her hand running back and forth through the short, pitch-black fur of her Mandalorian Vornskr.

"Launch those Corellian wasps Basout cooked up for us. Looks like Captain Imperial was waiting for us this time so we won't have much time to get what we came for."

In the hangar bay of the Privateer-class frigate, 24 modified Corellian Wasp fighters, cockpit removed and hotwired to old droid brains, swarmed out towards the Imperial flotilla.

Castam Felian