The Battle of the Masserix Belt: Absolution
Posted on Sun Apr 9th, 2023 @ 6:36pm by Bomoor Thort & Thane & Amare & Valavai Tarses
5,172 words; about a 26 minute read
Chapter:
Chapter VI: The Last Bastion
Location: The Masserix Belt, Bastion Space
Timeline: Night (Day Three, Week Four) - The Battle of the Masserix Belt
OLD
"The Absolution's position against the Servator has obstructed our firing arc, ma'am," the officer said, only the slightest hint of nervousness tainting his deep voice. "We risk contact with Moff Anthark's ship if we continue firing all batteries at this range and position."
"Our reinforcements?" She then growled across to the Zeltron communications officer, whose hand was clasped firmly against an oversized earpiece crushed against his crimson face, he looked back to her, his angular features set in concern. He shook his head in reply, and Morthart growled again. "Keep firing!" She ordered. "If we cripple his ship, we will just scoop up Anthark from whatever escape pod he hides in." The Zygerrian raised her hand once more and pointed at the Grand Moff's Star Destroyer. "A six-figure bonus to whoever blasts that ship out of the cosmos!"
NEW
Moments earlier, Tarses had ordered speed to one-half to position Absolution between both opposing starships and focus a heavier broadside assault, but when it became clear Enterprise had a fool of a commander willing to strike friend and foe alike, plans changed yet again.
"Flanking speed, helm," he barked at the young officer. "Full burn! Prepare to come abou--"
He was stopped as he nearly lost his footing when something slipped past the shields from the direction of the Servator.
"Where's the damage?" Tarses demanded.
"Small asteroid impact," called out one of the one of the deck officers with a comm to his ear receiving reports from the damage control teams. "Compromised lateral defenses! They--" Another few hard shakes, this time from Anthark's turbolasers striking vulnerable hull plating. "Servator is focusing fire on the opening."
More hits, this time to starboard from the Enterprise. The shots were erratic, and multiple batteries from Morthart's vessel struck both her enemy and ally.
"They're betraying their friends just to rip at us!" Amare noted angrily with a scowl looking through the forward wide viewport as she turned her head right and left seeing where the GW star destroyer's shots were going. She turned back to look at Tarses, and saw for the first time a look in Tarses' eyes that bordered on madness. There was a cold edge in his gaze, a look of rage straining the worn down features of his weathered old face.
"Helm, course one-five-two!" Tarses said calmly as his and Anthark's ships were bombarding each other heavily, the vibrations of each direct hit surging through the floor.
"Sir, that'll put us on a--" cried the helm.
"Do it!" Tarses snapped through grinding teeth.
As both the Absolution and Servator lit each other up with heavy laser fire, both ships passing each other in opposite directions, the former made a critical shift hard to port directly towards the latter. Anthark panicked and attempted to steer his ship clear; precisely what Tarses counted on.
Servator's port thrusters were engaged at full burn to avoid a direct impact. Both ships came to within a handful of meters apart as they passed, fires from the lower decks of Absolution blazing in clear view. The next several seconds became exactly what Tarses had previously described: a "knife fight". The point-blank broadside bombardments were brutal and highly explosive. Men and women on both ships were either rattled, battered, incinerated, or simply ejected out into space from being too close to exposed hull.
At the conclusion of ten destructive seconds, one final impact was violently kinetic. The farthest edges of the sides of both ships tore into the other, a fiery bloom of metal blasting out in all directions. The collision knocked Absolution away in the opposite direction it had been traversing, causing the massive ship to start spinning out of control. The sudden shift in g-forces from the impact threw almost everyone on board to the floor.
"Starboard thrusters!" Tarses shouted as he felt his artificial heart skip a few beats whilst trying to get back to his feet. The helm officer was out cold from his fall, and a junior tech stepped in to carry out the order which gradually slowed Absolution's dizzying spinout.
As the ship was stabilizing to a stop, the Servator and Enterprise came into view dead ahead, the former appearing to have taken considerable damage along its port axis while the latter of which was largely untouched and preparing to come about to finish off Absolution.
The damage reports Tarses was receiving were not good. The ship could maneuver, but not particularly well as power to one of the main engines on the port side was lost. The hyperdrive was offline, all shields except for the secondaries protecting the command tower were gone along with nearly half of the main weapon batteries. Worse, nearly all their strike wings had been eliminated with only one successful bombing run on Enterprise, but not enough to inflict major damage.
With everyone back on their feet, and officers seeking new orders, the Grand Moff said nothing as he knew he had greatly underestimated his foes and had no further military options other than the suicidal kind. His hard glare leveled on Thane, then to Bomoor, and finally Amare. He had no more words for them. They were at the end of the line by conventional means. The ship could indeed fight on, but with enemy bombers on the way and two capable star destroyers coming about, Absolution had no chance on its own.
He then looked past them and saw Enterprise recklessly turning itself absurdly close to Servator's position, as if making a sloppy attempt to get into their previous side-by-side formation.
Across the void, the Servator's sirens were blaring as the crew picked themselves up after their sudden sharp manoeuvre away from Tarses' ship and then the proceeding pelting of laser fire from the Enterprise. Those stationed at monitors were starting to receive damage reports from across the massive vessel from the onslaught. Anthark wiped a hand across his mouth and inspected it to see blood from the corner of his lip where his face had been thrust against the rim of the tactical display.
He scowled and drew himself upright, gazing out of the transparisteel viewport, not at the Absolution, but instead at the Enterprise, which was already rounding into position to finish off Anthark alongside them.
"That brazen woman!" he cursed, "She knew full well we would be caught in her crossfire, but was so eager to fire at Tarses' exposed belly that she played into his hands!"
He stepped forwards, flinching slightly as he realised his ankle had also been twisted in the fall. Pushing through, he took a better look at the Absolution, which was gently drifting down on its port side. It seemed, fortunately for him, that the old man's gambit had not paid off, with him still taking the brunt of the weapon's damage, leaving him entirely at their mercy.
He shot around, "Someone get Morthart on the comms again so we can make sure there are no further blunders from her or her so-called tactical droid. I want to enjoy this moment."
His scowl turned and became a slanted grin as he added internally: The old dog has had his day. Time to be put down.
The Servator and Enterprise were sliding across one another, as the latter hastily shifted itself to regain a combat footing against Grand Moff Tarses' flagship. With the light cast by the nearest solar object, a dark triangular shadow was cast over Anthark's vessel by Executive Morthart's, with a number of starfighters that had remained within range sharply altering their trajectories to avoid being caught between the two hulking capital ships.
Craters in the hulls of both vessels, smoke dragging out into the vacuum of space, showed that they had received damage in the fracas, with bulkheads missing and pronounce scarring across the side of Servator where the Absolution had been brought in close by Tarses' gambit - but there was no denying they were faring far better than Absolution.
Klaxons continued to blare throughout the Grand Moff's ship; emergency lighting flashed across the command centre of the vessel, and a number of injured or dead officers littered the walkway, pits and nearby controls consoles. But, standing at the fore of the bridge still, seemingly unmarked or unharmed by the recent devastation, were Thane, Bomoor Thort and Lady Amare, their disparately-developed alien eyes peering with interest, perhaps menace, at the impending onslaught gathering momentum ahead of them.
Thane, the would-be Dark Lord Serus, opened himself up to the Force fully, stripping away any of his barriers and once again embracing that desperate fear of the infinite unknown to catalyse his presence within the cosmic primal energy. For several seconds, which stretched beyond his standard perception of time into grim, pregnant minutes, he felt the waves of energy that pulsated between every life-form on the Absolution. He felt their fear, their panic, their mistrust, and their determined resolve. He felt several towers of extant life force blinking away as their mortal forms crumbled from their injuries, and he soon extended this to the two Star Destroyers rounding on them beyond.
Whilst it was not the deafening cacophony of Coruscant, Thane could feel each of the individuals on those ships. Humans, Near-Humans, other sentients, and even species that were unknown to him, their minds alien and peculiar to his trained senses, shifted around a central force - Executive Morthart herself. He could even feel the synthetics that were dotted about her vessel, their small parts, even from this great distance, like great turning cogs, simple in the face of the absolute majesty of the living beings that had born it, that were all around it.
He could also feel Amare, his apprentice, her own presence in the pool of power chaotic, lacking in nuance but flaring sublimely with the Dark Side. And, more overwhelmingly, Thane detected Bomoor, as though he were closer than the mere metre that separated them on the bridge of the Absolution. In these rare, dangerous and intoxicating moments that he sunk into the Force, where he felt himself, like he was looking down separately from his-self, at the nexus of the whirling energy of existence, he struggled to determine where Thane ended and where Bomoor began - or if such terms were even truly appropriate.
Memories, flecks of their lived reality, passed between them. Flashes of golden plasma and glinting steel slipped before them, soft words from moments past were muttered absently as their collective power pooled and their intentions aligned and focused on their present.
He loves you, you know, said one woman's voice. I will never let it end, a young man replied. A new path... free from the Jedi... rumbled a final baritone, before Thane opened his warped, molten eyes and glared at the world anew through the oculi of the Sith.
The Caanan prince outstretched his gloved hands towards the forward viewport of the Absolution, the digits spreading out to seemingly grasp the amber-stained behemoth of GalactaWerks across the vast, insurmountable distance in space, as it continued its advance towards the Absolution, poised precariously above the Servator, whose own engines had been engaged to close the distance with Moff Anthark's nemesis.
As though part of Thane's own, the leathery brown arm of Bomoor also grasped out, tugging at the ethereal ties that bound their own bodies to the atoms that weaved into the hull of the Servator. Their once differing opinions on the will of the Force were melted away by their unified and almost primal command to submit to them.
For every day Amare had believed she was beginning to truly understand the ebb and flow of the Force, her two masters always found a way to reveal a whole new dimension of power when she least expected it. She had felt and interacted with the Force in ways that were terrible and marvelous, subtle and destructive, painful and delightful. Yet never before had it felt so akin to a surging tidal wave...no, worse...a tsunami.
She was observing Thane and Bomoor as they were reaching out casting invisible hands across the cosmos taking hold with that which would not be possible with flesh and bones. Then she felt a strong tingling race up along her spine causing her to shiver with uncertain wonder. The feeling persisted through her shoulders, down her arms and to her hands. She raised them close to her face and gazed upon her palms seeing no glow or other strange visible effect, but there was indeed the warm tingling of power beneath her blue skin.
She closed her eyes, focused her mind as Thane and the Sith Lords of the holocrons had instructed, and let herself go to wherever this wave of power was going to take her. The Force, in its most raw unseen form, guided up her hands in the same manner as the two ex-Jedi next to her. She eagerly wanted to join the brothers, to help them do the impossible. She saw within her mind's eye a silhouette of Thane in the form of pure distorted red and black energy like the lava flows of Mustafar, and his eyes were solid golden ovals of fire that like twin stars. She saw him out there in space, beyond the safety of the Absolution and he turned to her and extended his hand as if welcoming her to fly into the cosmos with him. She gladly accepted and wondered if the vision was just her imagination, or if Thane could see her the same as she did him.
However, just as the essence of Bomoor holding Thane's other hand came into view, her strange yet wonderful vision turned to black as reality struck hard and instantly veered towards pain and extreme burden. She found herself releasing a brief cry of pain as she unexpectedly encountered the resistance of millions of metric tons of mass.
Thane grunted suddenly at the exertion as his companions joined their own furious might to his own, and his right leg slipped, causing him to shift his weight downwards, as if he was holding up some overwhelming weight. The Human Sith Lord hissed, which soon turned into a low growl as he thrust his body up to its full height again, forcing his hands further forward, fingers and hand trembling as great tremours began to rippled through his body.
His mind flashed to the boulders on Irrikut, of Bomoor's success with three over his own feeble two. He pictured the sneering and dismissive faces of Quellus, Dero and the other conniving creatures of the High Council. He remembered his hand being crushed between the weight of Bomoor on Jericho, the Force and his dignity torn from him, and he remembered the childhood slaughter at his home by Axion. And he saw Sotah, broken and defeated, crippled in his arms.
Awash with the Dark Side, his growl grew louder, more guttural and less Human. Ethereal tones interlaced with his cracking voice. All colour slipped from his already-pale facade, and dark, unnatural crevices and lines appeared to carve their way from his sunken eyes.
"No...!" Thane seethed, willing himself and his companions forward, as he struggled to not seek consumption of their own power and rage, his arms shaking almost uncontrollably under the immense pressure and pain his physical form was being subjected to.
"Sir!" A voice called from the pit, practically inaudible to Thane, Bomoor and the others. "The Enterprise - she's slowing..."
Tarses was now seeing with his naked eyes just what his son, Symon, had envisioned through the Force years ago. He felt his old joints tremble as he recalled his son's entranced subconscious words:
"The Order of Two shall unite as a triad...
...Through pain they forge an awakening...
...Two hulks shall be lain to waste by powers unseen...
...The traitors will scream in the void..."
In the distance, the Enterprise, which had crept marginally ahead of its Imperial ally, seemed to be faltering in its advance, its trajectory minorly slanted. If they were visible to the crew of the Absolution, they would have seen the bright-white of the Star Destroyer's engines blazing, as more and more energy was funnelled into them, fighting against the invisible power that had them in its vice-like grip.
"All stop," Tarses quietly ordered as all eyes on the bridge had no doubt that the three dark ones were doing something that science or logic could never adequately explain.
"S-sir?" the helmsman asked, partly bewildered by what was going on and not fully understanding what was said.
"You heard me," Tarses snapped at him. "Cut the engines. Focus all reserves to forward defence screens."
Morthart was flung forward from her command chair as the lights on the Enterprise's bridge cut out. The entire superstructure shuddered all around, as terrible creaking and the sounds of metal straining filled their ears, a deathly and harrowing scream of competing forces tearing at the entire ship around them.
With her claws outstretched and ears ringing, overwhelmed by both the groaning of the ship and the klaxons, the executive scraped her way up to her full height once more, only stopping to thrust away the tactical droid as it attempted to assist her. All around her, the command crew were either nursing their own wounds or attempting to gain control of their consoles, which were all flickering and displaying various warnings. As she turned her slitted eyes towards the broad viewport, she was horrified to see their trajectory was shifting across, moving away from the battle formation against the Absolution, and edging ever closer to the Servator.
"What are you doing?!" She hissed at the helmsman. Morthart began to launch herself at him when the ship jolted once again. Sparks erupted from ceiling panels and rained down over them. Tiny bits of slag and white-hot filament littered over Morthart's fur, singing it and causing her to screech as it burned the skin beneath. "Correct course!" She screamed, rubbing her hands over her injuries, spit erupting from her crazed, fanged mouth. "Destroy Tarses!"
"Si-- Ma'am... I can't! The controls, they-"
"Full power has been diverted to the engines, Executive," the droid stood to her side interrupted, having recovered from Morthart's shove. "An unknown force is affecting the Enterprise. I have had manoeuvring thrusters activated across the starboard hull to full power, but it has not, ultimately, slowed our descent. Momentum is increasing, and the pressures are now causing the superstr-"
"What?" Morthart wheeled around to the droid. She clasped its head between her hands, her sharpened nails digging into the brushed metalwork that gave its cranial unit such an elegant appearance. "How? The asteroids? A weapon!?"
The droid showed no concern at the executive's assault, its unblinking visual receptors boring into its master, as if delivering any other manner of report. "The energy exerted does not appear to be gravitational, but sensor results are inconclusive." Another sharp groan echoed around them, and yet another shipquake rumbled beneath their feet. "There are stories, conflicting quasi-historical accounts, Executive, of Force-wielders-"
Before the droid could complete the computational thought, a priority communication was auto-accepted by the Enterprise's comm system and Anthark's voice reigned down upon them from all speakers.
"Mort...rt! Your ship... impact trajectory with mine!" Heavy static clouded the words but the alarm in the voice was clear, "Reverse... thrusters at once!"
“We are!” Morthart seethed, thrusting the droid aside with as much force as she could muster, although the artificial being barely staggered before righting itself, standing at its full height and regarding its mistress coolly. It seemed to hold an infuriating degree of detachment from the impending doom looming over them all. “It’s those Jedi!” She spat, a low feline growl accompanying her strained words. “They are doing this. We have lost control! You must do something, Anthark!”
In response, Anthark established an equally distorted holographic connection and appeared before the executive, still holding a wounded ribcage and wearing a furious snarl within his dark, finely-trimmed beard.
"What do you mean? Have you been compromised?" he demanded, before adding, "I won't hesitate to fire upon you to defend the Servator if I must."
The slitted pupils of the executive’s eyes broadened further and she launched herself towards the holographic display of Anthark, her fangs bared. To any onlooker, the Zygerrian appeared crazed, her senses abandoning her in her final moments. “How dare you, Human!” She howled, her claws piercing the hologram, causing its display to sputter even more. “You are nothing without GalactaWerks – without me! You will save us! I order you-“
The sound of one of the ship’s large hatches hissing open interrupted her, even as another tremendous groan rippled through the vessel, and she looked back. The tactical droid was also regarding the various surviving crew members that were siphoning into the large lift that would lead out of the rear of the command centre. “Traitors!” Morthart barked at them, panic causing her voice to finally crack. “Return to your stations or I’ll have you all executed! Do you hear me? Executed! Droid!” She looked to her tactical droid. “Execute them all. NOW!”
The droid inclined its cranial unit and produced a small holdout blaster from within its leg, and quickly aimed it at the crewmembers inside the lift, who were mashing the control switches. He fired several bolts in very quick succession and with high precision, but only two appeared to meet their mark before the thick durasteel hatch sealed shut, and Morthart did not get to see which, if any, had been killed.
“Their tactical decision is sound, Executive,” the droid remarked, holstering the weapon. “Furthermore, without a bridge crew to man the stations, the odds of you managing the control array and avoiding some manner of demise are beneath nought-point-nought-nought-one percent. You should aband-“
Even though Morthart had hardly heard the droid against the backdrop of her own panic and mortal fear, whatever it was still saying was drowned out by another deafening screech and she was thrown forwards into her command chair, smashing her furred face into the armrest before she rolled aside. More white-hot sparks showered down from above, singing her fur, burning her flesh and blinding her in one eye. Her screams were drowned out by the sound of the ceiling structure splitting; components and panels collapsed, crushing the droid beside her and causing numerous fires to erupt.
An explosion rocked the ship from somewhere within its depths as she scrambled to rise, and her body was thrown sideways into the wall. A sound akin to wind rushing, or some manner of soaring, filled the command centre, and Morthart, with new pressures now pinning her body largely against the bulkhead, barely managed to turn her face towards the viewport. The image of Anthark was no longer there, but with her remaining eye, she could see the enormous bulk of the Servator filling the screen and growing closer, now no glimpse of space visible. Green turbolasers were stretching out from the Imperial Star Destroyer, zooming towards her own ship, and she could see all of their thrusters firing to move the ship out of the way of their shared certain doom.
She hoped the droid killed at least one of the traitors before they fled.
Back on the Absolution, Darth Sidious' words from the Telos Holocron spoke keenly through the memories of the new Sith Apprentice...
You must channel your hatred, unleash it without hesitation upon your enemies...
Amare's legs began to tremble at the joints and start to give out on her and she lent her share of power to her dark masters. She began to feel like a flag on a ship's mast in the midst of a terrible hurricane on the high seas.
Do not hesitate. Show them no mercy. Do what must be done...but beware...
All of her past doubts, bad memories, and physical pain started to come back to the Nautolan all at once. She yelped aloud in agony, the effort exacting a terrible toll on her.
...The influence of the dark side of the Force can lend unrivaled power to you, but with such power comes...transformation.
The shock whip scars on her back that had been completely healed by the azoth within the chrysalis had returned as fresh wounds, bursting open fresh with excruciating pain under her uniform. Her head was ringing with the memories of her dead ex-life mate's voice -- that of Jett Versetto -- screaming swears and accusations at her with each fall of the whip from her time with him. Even the horizontal scar of the terentetek slash on one her lekku had reappeared, but the reopened wound was only superficial.
"Master, I...I c-can't..." Amare huffed through extreme stress and fatigue and torment as her strength started giving out completely. She began to find it almost impossible to stay upright, adding as she fell to one knee yet still keeping her hands up and directed towards the enemy starships, "...Can't go on...much...longer..."
But Amare's words fell on deaf ears as her fellow Force wielding companions buckled under the weight of their own efforts, with even Bomoor's sturdy legs shaking under the strain. If their eyes were open, they would have seen the officers on the bridge slowly but surely turning from their monitors to gaze aghast as the Enterprise was slowly being torn from its trajectory, its hull cracking and bursting as it resisted like a Vornskr tugging at its master's lead only to be pulled every onwards.
But even with closed eyes, they felt every inch of that ship and its ill-fated crew as they commanded them with their immense combined power to fall downwards and towards Anthark's own capital ship.
The recycled air around Tarses and the other officers was electric. Everyone could feel hairs on the backs of their necks sticking up and a few felt sweat roll off their brows, but all began to feel a very subtle strange nauseating feeling in their heads as they watched the power of the Force at work before their very eyes. Even Tarses put a hand up to his face as it started to feel difficult to even look at the dark trio without the ill feelings worsening.
The Grand Moff winced and rubbed at his eyes for but a moment, and then when he looked up again, he saw Amare starting to slowly rise back up again. Strangely, the Nautolan, while keeping one arm focused towards the ships in space, had her other arm positioned in such a way that Tarses recognized from his past harrowing battlefield experiences. It looked almost as if something invisible was supporting her, lifting her the way a soldier would try to get a wounded person up on their feet.
When the Sith Apprentice was upright again, her hands unnaturally flared scarlet, and the nausea towards everyone standing behind the Order of the Sith began to worsen significantly. With the tremendous power of Thane and Bomoor in play, Amare's draining influence on the ship amplified and people throughout the ship began to suddenly start feeling diminished. This additional essence was channeled between the three Force users, and together, in near-perfect unison, their powers reached even greater heights.
Buoyed remarkably by this sudden upsurge of ethereal energy, Thane felt his being tighten, as though the various threads or power leaks that had been ebbing out of him had been wound back in, contained and bolstered in a fashion quite alien to him. Yet, it as a sensation of strength, of remaining whole and steadfast against the surging currents of the Force pressing against him as he and others continued in their dark endeavour against their foes.
His legs fixed themselves in place and his arms stopped trembling, as he stood at his full height, no longer appearing burdened by the immense weight that looked to crush him just moments before. His outstretched hands held firmly in place for a moment, as his fingers began to close together until they became full fists.
“Now…!” Thane growled in a grizzled voice unlike his own, and his eyes shot wide open, the molten-yellow turned red-hot and glowing, the gold that had engulfed his eyes now streaming out in unnatural rivers into the little white that remained in his eyes. He thrust both his hands downwards to the ground, with both Amare and Bomoor doing so as well in perfect synchronicity. The bridge of the Absolution seemed to shudder suddenly from the gesture; the metal deck beneath the three Force users looked to briefly ripple, and small cracks ran across the transparisteel viewport, and each of the dark warriors seemed to crumple down to their knees, their limbs going loose and each heaving with massive, strained breaths.
Anthark had managed to limp himself over to the bridge viewport and propped himself up against the transparisteel, through which he could feel the tremendous strain of the ship as it fired turbolasers and tractor beams in an attempt to hold back The Enterprise as it fell like a dagger upon them. Mere moments ago, he had issued the order to abandon ship, for the little good it would do most of the crew. All his bridge officers understood the situation they were in and were resolving their fate in their own ways.
For the would-be-usurper of Bastion, he took his final moments to look out at the grand battle that rightfully should have resulted in his certain victory, cementing him as a true Imperial legend. However, like so much of galactic history, it was now to be dictated by a handful of Force mystics who know nothing of the proud struggle of true working sentients who earn their power in life and not through an aberration of birth.
As the shadow of death descended upon them and the thrum of their final desperate assault was replaced with the churning and warping of The Absolution’s hull, Anthark fixed his gaze upon Tarses’ limp, but surviving ship, wondering if the old dog knew he was selling his soul for this victory.
TBC
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