The Martyrdom of Blobby the Blobular (Flight 391)

[Andreus Makaryk]

Today was a big day for Andreus Makaryk.

Only the crew of the latest, sleekest Corellian Engineering Corporation spacecraft--his spacecraft--knew that. He had enough flying hours for promotion to captain, thus fulfilling his dream ever since his life had taken any sense of direction whatsoever about sixteen years ago. Today was the last day of proficiency check-rides to evaluate his candidacy for the promotion. Soon, he would have the fourth bar on his epaulets. As he walked around the mammoth seven-hundred-ton spacecraft, inspecting it for any sign of damage that would have to be repaired before, departure, he silently smiled to himself. Within the hour, Flight 391 to Coruscant, his last flight of the day, looked ready to depart.

His external pre-flight inspection complete, Andreus wandered to Coronet Spaceport's crew lounge to meet up with the other two pilots. Normally, only two pilots flew the spacecraft, not three, but a check-ride meant a third person on the flight deck to observe. Today's first officer, Kai Karch, had twenty-four thousand flight-hours of experience, twelve and a half thousand more than Andreus. Normally, Kai would have been the captain, but today he would occupy the right seat to give Andreus a chance to prove his proficiency. Dex Ixiris, with twenty-eight thousand hours, rounded out the flight deck crew. Not only was Dex a pilot, he was also Corellian Space Lines' head training pilot. He would do most of the evaluation. This particular crew was among the most experienced to be found.

Dex handed Andreus the weather briefing for the flight. Andreus flipped through it and smiled; the weather would not cause any delays today. "Looks clear all the way to Coruscant," he remarked, as he carefully flipped through it, taking in every detail. "Looks like you cooked up some good weather for us."

That last remark elicited a healthy laugh. "I wish."

The threesome made their way back to the boarding gate, where some five hundred ninety-eight passengers milled about, eager to either conduct their business or return home, as the case may be. Flight 391 was booked nearly to capacity, and with twenty-four crew, there would be six hundred twenty-two sentients flying to Coruscant tonight. At least, that was the number that for which Andreus bore responsibility.

That was all he cared about, getting his passengers safely to their destinations. He had little interest in the political intrigue and periodic corruption scandals of the Galactic Alliance, nor did he much care about the other political factions taking root throughout the galaxy. Commercial transport was the lifeblood of galactic commerce, regardless of the political situation. Destinations might change, but Andreus' job wasn't going anywhere. So long as he contributed to society and so long as he got paid, politics seemed irrelevant to him.

As he entered the flight deck to begin the numerous slate of pre-flight checklists with his crew, he had no idea that someone else had other plans for his routine, five-and-a-half hour flight from Coronet to Coruscant. There was no way for him to know that, by the end of this night, the politics would find him. Little did he know that he, a civilian space line pilot, would fight one of the first battles in an emergent war this night.

 

[D.C.]

Tarn of Clan Lok was one of the passengers of the Corellian ship. He was a Jedi who worked for the New Jedi Order, and he’d visited Coronet to carry out a small, simple task. He had to deliver a datapad to a colleague of his, who trained his own padawan in Coronet. Tarn Lok didn’t really mind, it was good to see his old friend. But now it was time to return to Coruscant, to the Jedi Temple.

Tarn was a proud Kiffar Jedi. He wore a blue shirt and grey, baggy trousers. A sheath was clipped to his belt containing his double bladed lightsaber. That’s correct; this Kiffar didn’t hide the fact that he was a Jedi. He was proud of being a Jedi and he felt that one had to be able to show it. This wasn’t boasting, he just didn’t want to hide who he truly was.

With his hands tucked in the pockets of his trousers, the towering, muscular warrior walked towards the ship. His brown eyes shimmered in the sunlight and it was as if his body was glowing. It was the Light Side of the Force. Tarn didn’t know, however, that things wouldn’t go as planned. Not tonight. He didn’t realize what danger lied ahead of him. Granted, he was a Jedi, but frankly Jedi—especially Jedi—often find themselves in dire situations.

He looked up to the late-afternoon sky and smiled to the thought that it’d been a good day. If only he knew that the evening would ruin everything…

Tarn walked up the boarding ramp of the shuttle. He walked down the pathway to find his seat. He found it rather quickly and easily and so he sat down. He gazed out the window and waited for the pilot to address the passengers through the intercom. Soon they would be flying back to Coruscant. Soon he could resume the training of Padawans, or maybe even accept a new mission.

* * *

Coronet. Such a lovely little kriffing town. So beautiful. So cute. Oseth wondered what it would look like—what it would feel like—when this whole place was burning to the ground until there was nothing left but ashes. The dark man could've brought a torch to light this place up, but he didn't do this. Not this time. Maybe later. This time, he had other plans. Coronet would burn sooner than later, but not now. No, now was the time to burn something else. To burn something smaller. He'd only hurt a few people in this brutal act of evil, but a few was enough.

He didn't stand in the darkness of the space port. He didn't hide away in the shadows like so many of his brethen would do. No, he stood out in the open, under the burning afternoon sun. Its light beat down on his skin and a grin played on his lips. He looked just like any traveler (dark jacket; blue pants; black boots; white shirt) and his saber was hidden in one of his pockets. Hell, even his alignment in the Force was concealed. His long, blonde hair danced in the wind and his grey eyes twinkled. He looked like a regular spacer who had a good day.

He was talking to a blob-like species. The green thing's language was a little hard to understand, but Oseth was a man unlike any other. He had the gift of the Force and with the Force he was able to understand many languages. Including the blob's—whatever this one's language might have been. It sounded a bit like Huttese, but then again it sounded like Rodese. It also sounded a bit like Chinese, but of course Oseth—or anyone else in the galaxy for that matter—had never heard of 'Chinese'. Oseth didn't know what language the blob spoke exactly, and honestly, he didn't care. Thanks to the Force he understood the stupid creature's words, but even if he couldn't understand that kriffing ugly piece of shit, it didn't matter. All the blob had to do was die, after all.

'You,' Oseth spoke in a mysterious way while he waved his hand in front of what he assumed was the blob's 'face', 'will take this package onboard that vessel. Hide it away in your own disgusting body so that those officials won't find it. Take a seat onboard the vessel and await my orders.'

The blob confirmed it and then began to make his way to the boarding ramp of the vessel. Many people, including a young Kiffar (with a lightsaber!) were walking up the boarding ramp right now and entering into the ship. Oseth frowned when he saw the Kiffar with the lightsaber. He just hoped that this one wouldn't cause any trouble, but it should be fine. The blob was just going to blow itself up when the vessel was at Coruscant and everyone on that kriffing spacecraft would die. Everyone.

Oseth had his reasons for that.

He crossed his arms and watched the travelers board the ship. He saw his own minion—the blob—disappear into the ship as well. Then he turned around and exited the docking bay. He headed for the docking bay where his own ship was docked. He'd follow the shuttle with his own ship. Of course he wanted to watch the fireworks, and besides, he had to be as close to the blob as possible to be able to contact the thing through telepathy. He smirked as he went to board his own ship. Big bada kriffing boom!

 

[Brand]

The sun shone bright as Galak strode quickly through the crowded streets of Coronet, the capitol city of Coruscant.

Galak threw the cowl over his head, the brown Jedi robe light for the warm day yet still official looking. The Jedi Councilor strode quickly towards the hangar bay where the shuttlecraft bound for Coruscant was readying for departure. His flowing brown tunic rolled in the light breeze.

Avara was thrown to the side as a morbidly obese Twi'lek male shouldered him aside. Galak pushed forward, moving and blending with the crowd. It was a slow way to travel, Galak had to concede, but a necessary one.

Galak was pleased to finally have finished business negotiating a deal with one of the Congressional Representatives of Corellia. As Prime Envoy of the Order Galak himself took a fancy to politics, something that had come to benefit in the tumultuous times that battered the Jedi Order and Galactic Alliance alike.

In the distance Galak would make out the hangar. He checked his wrist chrono and accelerated his pace, aiding the Force in clearing a beeline path through the civilian masses. Once inside the bay he scanned the rows of vessels for his designated shuttle craft and was pleasantly surprised to find it was a sleek new CEC model, appearing to be fresh out of the factory. Galak showed the attendant his boarding pass and stepped on board, surprised to find himself greeted by another strong, light side presence of the Force.

Galak made his way down the aisle before seeing the dark face of a Kiffar Jedi. "Hello, my friend; mind if I take a seat next to you?" he asked politely, his eyes gleaming with merriment. The muscular humanoid was intent on staring out the window, and it didn't appear as yet that he'd noticed a powerful presence entering the room. Avara hoped he wouldn't be too surprised to find the Grand Master's lieutenant standing at his row on the shuttle.

 

[Andreus Makaryk]

The blobular creature, under the thrall of the Sith, immediately shoved the mysterious package into one of his many squishy skin folds. His skin swallowed the device, practically absorbing it, and that was the end of that. As he had already made it past the metal detectors, the chances of the device being found was very slim now. It looked as though the Sith would have his way, even with the two Jedi present. The Jedi seemed too busy chatting with each other to notice. The blob, meanwhile, didn't even realize he had been mindtricked, the better for the explosive device to go undetected by the Force.

He printed out his three boarding passes--seats 22H, 22J, and 22K--and oozed his way through the aisles of the massive spacecraft to get to his assigned seats. One seat wasn't enough for the blobular creature, and two would severely impose upon whomever got stuck in the third. Even with three seats, a fraction of his blobbiness managed to ooze out into the aisle...but the blob adamantly REFUSED to book the middle section of seats. That would merely make his stench even more centralized.

Meanwhile, on the flight deck, the crew of three continued to make their own preparations for departure, completely ignorant of the presents awaiting them in aisle 22. Sure, they knew about the odor, but not what was buried within.

"All cabin doors closed, check."

"Reactor one start switch, engaged."

"Air conditioning packs and filters, you BETTER BELIEVE that's a check."

"Flaps, fifteen, check."

"Trim, set to auto-climb, check."

As the captain and co-pilot began running down the power-up checklist in earnest, the last of the checked luggage was loaded onto the spacecraft, and another warning light in the cockpit deactivated. "Captain" Makaryk caught it immediately. "Cargo doors closed, check."

Meanwhile, as the first of the ship's two reactors began to online itself, and as captain and first officer continued down their checklists, the flight attendants began their safety briefing. Corellia Space Lines took its reputation for safety very seriously, and while regulations only called for reading from a script, this carrier imposed an additional duty upon its crew to ensure that passengers actually paid attention to it.

"Corellia Space Lines welcomes all passengers on board this brand new Corellian Engineering Corporation 700 flight to Coruscant. Please listen carefully to these safety instructions – even if you are a frequent flyer – as they are specifically for this spacecraft. Emergencies are extremely rare, but should an emergency occur, passengers who paid attention to the safety briefings are far better prepared than those who did not."

The flight attendants quickly and efficiently fanned throughout the cabin, searching for passengers who were not paying attention. The briefing seemed to stop for a few seconds while the cabin crew hunted down stragglers. Generally, the dirty looks from other passengers annoyed by the delay, however fleeting, was sufficient to shame those who would normally ignore a safety briefing into paying at least nominal attention. In reality, Corellia Space Lines had built such a "delay" into its normal scheduling.

"All carry-on luggage should be safely stowed in the overhead lockers or under the seat in front of you. For the first-class cabin, carry-on items may also be stored in the mini-closet next to your seat. Please ensure that the closet door is fully closed and in the latched position. Unsecured objects may not remain where you left them, and may cause injury in the event of emergency. In preparing for takeoff, please make sure your seat back is straight up and your tray table locked away."

"Click your seat belt closed and fit it snugly around your hips. Seatbelts must be worn at all times when seated. When the seatbelt sign is turned off, you may move freely around the cabin. Return to your seat immediately if the seat belt sign is switched on and fasten your seat belt."

As the flight attendants walked throughout the cabin demonstrating operation of seatbelts, they further checked that all tray tables were in the locked position and that passengers had stowed their luggage.

"No smoking is allowed on this flight in any part of the cabin, including the lavatories. Tampering with any smoke detector on the spacecraft is against regulations and subject to heavy criminal penalties, so please don't do it."

"All electronic equipment including commlinks, portable holoprojectors, electronic games and datapads must be turned off now as they may interfere with the spacecraft’s navigation system. When we reach hyperspace, datapads may again be used. Commlinks must remain turned off until we are on the ground at our destination."

The flight crew subtly positioned themselves for the next part of the safety briefing, moving towards the emergency exits. Doing so made it easier to point out the location--and a bit more likely passengers could find them with a quick glance.

"This spacecraft is equipped with sixteen emergency exits: two in the front of the spacecraft, two in the rear of the spacecraft, two approximately halfway through the first-class cabin, two in the business-class cabin, and eight underwing exits distributed throughout the economy-class cabin. Please take the time to count the rows from your seat to the two nearest exits. In the event of an emergency, floor level lighting will illuminate, showing the routes to these exits. However, in low-visibility conditions, you may need to feel your way to your nearest exit by counting rows. Please note that your nearest exits may be behind you."

"If oxygen is needed in an emergency, an oxygen mask will be released from above you. Place the mask over your mouth and nose and tighten the strap. Pull down on the hose to start the oxygen flowing. Make sure you put on your mask first before assisting others such as children." The flight attendants wasted no time in pulling out demonstration oxygen masks, placing them over their mouths, and adjusting the strap to fit snugly around their heads. Nor did they waste any time in pulling out demonstration life jackets for the next part of the briefing.

"Life jackets are found under your seat or under your arm rest. In the unlikely event of a water landing, put your head through the hole in the life jacket and pull the jacket over your head. Click the waist band clip and tighten your belt. To inflate your jacket, pull the tabs at the end of the chords. If more inflation is needed, blow through the tube on the jacket. Do not fully inflate your jacket until you are clear of the spacecraft."

"Please look in the seat pocket in front of you for the safety instruction card. Please make yourself familiar with it as it explains the safety features of this spacecraft. In addition, the safety instruction card contains important information about brace positions." The flight attendants, ever resourceful, pulled out safety cards and demonstrated where on those cards to find the pretty pictures illustrating proper bracing procedure, then demonstrated the proper way of placing hands over the head. " To brace for impact, ensure your feet are placed back on the floor underneath your seat. Place your hands on your head and push your head down firmly against the seat or bulkhead in front of you."

At long last, the safety briefing was nearly complete.

"As we are about to take off, make sure your seat is fully upright and your seat back tray is stowed. Sit back and enjoy your flight. The flight time for today is approximately five and a half hours."

 

[D.C.]

The Kiffar just gazed out the window. He sensed a strong Light Side presence in the ship and he instantly realized that another Jedi—probably a Council Member—was nearby. He could hear this one's footsteps as he strode down the walkway, between the rows of seats. He felt how this one's Light Side aura became stronger and stronger the closer he got. Yes, this had to be a Jedi Master. Tarn didn't doubt that.

'Hello my friend,' the Lightsider asked suddenly, 'mind if I take a seat next to you?'

Tarn tore his gaze from the window and looked up to the familiar face. He smiled and answered: 'Why, of course master Kalar. I didn't know you were in Coronet as well.'

The personel began to ramble on about the safety instructions and the Kiffar listened. When they were finally done he turned back to his fellow Jedi. 'In case you haven't heard of me, since I'm usually on the road to carry out missions for the Order, I'm Tarn of Clan Lok.' He offered Kalar a hand and he smiled. 'What brought you to Coronet, master?'

 

[Andreus Makaryk]

As the cabin crew completed its safety briefing,, the chief purser flipped a switch hidden in the front galley. The switch flipped a light green in the cockpit, informing the captain and first officer that the safety briefing had been completed. Andreus, relaxed once again, looked up. "Safety briefing completed, check."

"All reactors online, check."

"Power to repulsorlift standby, check."

"Takeoff configuration checklist complete." Andreus's voice seemed relaxed.

Andreus tapped his comm to ground control. "Casino three-nine-one heavy, requesting takeoff clearance."

"Casino three-nine-one heavy, takeoff clearance to heading two-one-zero on station plane granted; maintain heading."

"Affirmative, takeoff to heading two-one-zero on station plane, Casino three-nine-one heavy."

Both Captain Makaryk and First Officer Karch reached for the throttle that would send the reactor's throughput to the spacecraft's two massive repulsorlift engines. Such was standard procedure; in the event of some fault, neither pilot would be solely responsible for the failure. The six hundred eighty-five-ton spacecraft powered off the ground. Kai Karch and Andreus Makaryk pushed the throttles further forward. The brand-new spacecraft responded perfectly. The passengers, meanwhile, would scarcely hear any sound or feel any acceleration at all, thanks to the state-of-the art repulsorlift buffering system installed.

"Eighty knots." Kai's voice filled the flight deck with a standard call-out, intended to verify that there was no discrepancy in the spacecraft's multiple velocity-measuring instruments.

"Eighty knots," the captain confirmed. The captain watched the instruments as the spacecraft ascended above the orbital platform. When the spacecraft was high enough, "Captain" Makaryk banked the massive spacecraft into its assigned heading, which would send the spacecraft away from the planet and out of what remained of Corellia's gravity well, after about twenty minutes of ascent. The heading also would provide a good alignment with the hyperspace route to Coruscant. Andreus busily entered the flightplan into the navicomputer, so the computer would calculate the best hyperspace route to Coruscant. Andreus could do it by hand, if he had to, but this spacecraft, with its sophisticated flight management computer, gave him no reason to do it by hand. Even as he input the necessary data into the spacecraft's flight management computer, he kept an eye on its instruments.

"Three hundred thousand kilometers." Another standard callout from Kai, this one indicating the spacecraft had reached the altitude above planetary surface necessary to cut in the sublight engines. Captain Makaryk responded by cutting power to the repulsorlifts. Again, the transition from repulsorlift to sublight engines was seamless.

"Navicomputer ETA to hyperroute, forty-five seconds. Standby."

"Forty-five seconds to hyperroute, confirmed. Initiate hyperspace checklist."

Andreus wasted no time in producing the required checklist. It contained only a few items, and even for this new spacecraft type, he already knew them by memory. However, regulations forced him to go through the checklist anyway, so that nothing was missed. Andreus did not mind; he rather liked having the checklists to fall back on as an additional safety measure. Neither captain nor first officer liked to cut corners.

After ensuring that all extensible control surfaces were retracted into the required hyperspace configuration, and that the navicomputer had finished calculating its route, Andreus announced the hyperspace checklist was completed. Much like lifting the massive spacecraft off the ground, both pilot and first officer engaged the throttle into hyperspace simultaneously. The cutting out of the sublight engines as the hyperspace engines engaged would scarcely be noticeable to the passengers, other than the blue swirling maelstrom of hyperspace visible outside the windows.

"Captain" Makaryk thumbed the commlink to the spacecraft's public address system. "Ladies and gentlemen, this is Captain Andreus Makaryk along with First Officer Kai Karch on the flight deck. We have just entered hyperspace, and cabin crew will be along shortly with meals and refreshments. We expect an on-time arrival in Coruscant approximately five hours from now. Current weather at Coruscant is twenty-seven degrees Celsius and partly cloudy. We will keep you updated on the flight's progress; as we have entered hyperspace, it is now safe to get up and move about the cabin. We hope you enjoy the flight."

The cruise stage of the flight reached, Captain Makaryk was more than happy to engage the craft's autopilot. There wasn't much for the captain nor first officer to do in hyperspace, other than relax and enjoy the view, for the autopilot would fly the massive spacecraft through hyperspace along its pre-determined course with practically no intervention from the crew required. Soon, after the meal service for the passengers was completed, the cabin crew would serve meals in the cockpit, too. For now, while the cabin crew distributed gourmet restaurant-style menus throughout the cabin, with first-class having quite the exquisite wine collection, the captain and co-pilot engaged in a rather relaxed discussion of what they intended to do with their forthcoming week off.

They had no idea what dangers lurked in Row 22.

 

[Andreus Makaryk]

The cruise through hyperspace stayed uneventful, as it always did. In hyperspace, nearly all of the flying was automated--the only real responsibility left for the pilot and first officer consisted of navigation and fuel checks every fifteen minutes. Beyond this, conversation on the flight deck degenerated into mostly chatter as the cabin crew concluded its meal service.

Everything was going as planned, perfectly normal. For the next five hours, nothing interesting would ever happen.

Eventually, the flight reached the point where it would have to come out of hyperspace. Much like the takeoff procedure, both pilots pulled the hyperspace lever simultaneously for safety reasons. As the spacecraft dropped back into realspace, the twinkling lights of Coruscant's night side filled the cockpit windows. Captain Makaryk would land the six-hundred-eighty-five ton craft, while First Officer Karch handled communications with traffic control.

"Casino three-nine-one heavy, good evening. Request clearance for initial descent into Coruscant," Kai began the communication like any other. Nothing new here.

"Casino three-nine-one heavy, clearance to R-two-zero radial granted. Descend and maintain flight level five-seven-zero. Winds are at three-three-zero at four knots. Skies clear. Temperature twenty-one degrees Celsius, dewpoint seventeen. Pressure twenty-nine-point-nine-four-inches."

"Cleared to R-two-zero radial, descend and maintain five-seven-zero, three-nine-one heavy," Kai confirmed back to the controller.

Andreus reduced the throttles in accordance with the space traffic control's instruction, and addressed the cabin so preparations for approach could be made. " "Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We are just now beginning our initial descent into Coronet. Please return to your seats and fasten your seatbelts. We expect to be on the ground in approximately sixty minutes." Traffic into Coruscant was always busy. There were always holds, no matter the time of day, and approach control typically dumped commercial traffic entering atmosphere more than three hundred nautical miles away from the spaceport it intended to dock at, thus requiring slower, atmospheric approach.

At two hundred thousand feet, Andreus engaged the spacecraft's two massive repulsorlift engines, and after they had started, he carried out the checklist to shut off its three sublight ion engines. This was standard procedure. Regulations forbade the operation of sublight engines at low altitudes, especially on densely populated worlds such as Coruscant, due to the pollution and ionizing radiation that such powerful engines tended to generate. Though the sublight engine shutdown was routine procedure, Andreus had no way of knowing that it would have dire consequences only moments in the future.

The spacecraft continued a rather uninteresting and uneventful descent to fifty-seven thousand feet, its assigned altitude. The bright lights and towering skyscrapers of Coruscant were visible for hundreds of miles; so good was visibility that Andreus could identify a couple of towering skyscrapers near his destination spaceport from three hundred eighty-seven nautical miles away. So clear were the skies, and so tall were the landmarks, that they could be seen even over the curvature of the planet. As the spacecraft approached and held for further descent clearances, it overflew a large industrial area, occupying a few thousand square miles. Controllers often routed space traffic over it, because doing so reduced noise in wealthier, more important areas.

However, as the craft leveled out to hold, Andreus suddenly began to feel uneasy. He had no idea why. The weather presented no concerns whatsoever, and a cursory check of his instruments revealed that everything on the spacecraft functioned normally. There was literally nothing for the captain to worry about. In less than an hour, he would be on the ground, off for a week, and almost certainly promoted to boot.

But he couldn't dismiss the bad feeling. It quickly became worse.

How to deal with it? He had to think fast. Quickly, he ad-libbed, activating the public address system to communicate with the cabin. "Ladies and gentlemen, we are expecting some air turbulence ahead. Please return to your seats and fasten your seatbelts. Flight attendants, be seated."

Both Kai and Dex looked at the prospective captain like he had seventeen heads. More likely, he was hallucinating. Kai and Dex both wondered what kind of hallucinogenic drugs the prospective captain might be taking. Aside from the fact that the nearest air turbulence was more than a thousand nautical miles away, the instruction for flight attendants to be seated as well as passengers was very rare indeed. It indicated that Andreus actually expected something far worse than mere turbulence--the command was seldom used unless conditions became so bad as to bounce people off the cabin's overhead bins and the like. So what was the problem? Not even Andreus knew why he had just issued such a drastic order to his crew.

"Hey, Andreus, can I have some of the shrooms you're smoking?"

 

[D.C.]

Another ship dropped out of hyperspace, a short distance behind the shuttle. This ship was a small craft, a simple Z-95 headhunter. It wasn't as big as a freighter, but it was a fast ship and capable of hyperspace travel. At least, this particular Z-95 was, since it was upgraded with lots of neat stuff. The dark figure that piloted this ship was Darth Oseth, a crazy Sith who happened to be a tad sadistic. He gazed through the window of his cockpit, at the shuttle in front of him. The shuttle he was going to blow up. He didn't pay any attention to the beautiful and serene ocean of stars, or the backdrop of the City Planet.

It was time. Time to smile.

* * *

Tarn clutched his head as if he suddenly had a headache. He glanced at his fellow Jedi who sat next to him and wondered if he sensed it too. He didn't ask though, because he didn't get the chance to ask. Just when he opened his mouth to say something, a green blob-thing exploded in his seat.

* * *

Oseth reached out in the Force. He could sense the sentients onboard the shuttle, including the two lightsiders who seemed to be quite powerful. However, they wouldn't be powerful enough to stop the big-bada-kriffing-boom. The Sith made contact with Blobby's mind. It was time to give the slimey thing orders. Oseth had to giggle before he could send any telepathic messages, because the thought of a green blob exploding seemed so kriffing funny to him.

~Blob!~ Oseth's voice echoed throughout the slime's mind. ~It is time. We're above the skies of Coruscant! Blow the shuttle up!!~

The green blob somehow 'grabbed' the package which he'd hidden inside him. He pressed the buttons and activated the explosives. A moment later the thing exploded in a rain of slime and some kind of disgusting blue liquid that might have been blood. The passengers right next to the slime (who'd been feeling uneasy the entire trip, because they were sitting next to a stinking slime creature), were ripped apart. Their limbs flew across the ship and their blood splattered all over the place. That's what happened in that first instant, right after the blomb exploded.

Blobby died. The ship was practically destroyed. Tarn's headache got even worse.

 

[Andreus Makaryk]

The blobular creature, seated across three seats in Row 22, received his marching orders. Under thrall of the Sith, the blob first had to find the bomb, which during the last five hours had sunken far beneath his many mammoth skin folds. By now, the bomb had nestled itself nearly a meter underneath the blob's thick, slimy skin folds, and the blob therefore had to strain its abdominal muscles to even feel the bomb, much less detonate it. The blobular creature expanded his abdominal muscles, crushing the bomb between his abdomen and the three feet of skin folds above it--the skin folds alone weighed more than two typical human adult males.

The bomb detonated when so crushed.

While the blobularity of the Sith's chosen minion had contributed greatly to keeping the bomb hidden, it also meant the bomb had to blast through three metric tons of mass before its effects upon the spacecraft were felt. The blob therefore unwittingly martyred himself as a giant shock absorber. The bomb blew apart the blob's three metric tons of mass, but those same three tons of mass muffled the shockwave effects of typical bomb detonations in pressurized environments. Instead of simply blowing the spacecraft apart, the explosion sent several chunks of blob, ranging in mass from being comparable to a heavily-laden backpack to a full-sized human, flying outward in all directions.

Some such pieces of blob struck nearby passengers in the head, instantly killing them with blunt-force trauma to the head equivalent to a bowling ball striking the skull at a hundred twenty knots.

One large piece of the blob was blown almost straight down, severing power cables to both the repulsorlift engines, and the number-two sublight engine as well. Worse, the half-ton piece of blob was big enough, massive enough, to tear apart all four of the spacecraft's hydraulic lines. Within seconds, the spacecraft would drain all its hydraulic fluid--a vital fluid that controlled all of its control surfaces for atmospheric flight, as well as the directional thrusters that maneuvered it in tight turns and in space. Without hydraulic systems, the control yokes in the cockpit would prove completely useless.

Another half-ton of blob blasted outside the spacecraft, damaging its right wing and striking the Number Three sublight engine as well. The pieces of blob blown out of the spacecraft tore holes in the spacecraft's skin on the way out, exposing everything inside to explosive decompression. So-called "tear strips" engineered into the spacecraft's skin contained such failures to two to three square meters apiece, enough to very quickly depressurize the spacecraft; however, the containment also prevented an immediate, mid-air breakup.

The oxygen masks dropped as air blew out of the spacecraft, forced out by a pressure difference of thousands of pounds per square foot. At fifty-seven thousand feet, most species had useful consciousness of well under a minute. The air was very thin up here, thin enough to be sucked out of lungs, leaving those inside with a few desperate gasps before passing out if they didn't get an alternative source of oxygen very quickly. Within a couple of seconds, cabin crew had reacted by donning the oxygen masks that had dropped above their seats.

The PA still worked. "Place the mask over your mouth and nose! Tighten the strap! Pull down the hose! Put your own mask on before helping others!" The crew very obviously grasped the gravity of the situation, conveying properly how to use the spacecraft's oxygen masks in only eight seconds.

Meanwhile, as the spacecraft's massive repulsorlift engines flamed out, cut off from power, the deep sound of engines winding down filled the cockpit. Within about fifteen seconds, the sound of engine power faded out entirely. The only audible noise in the passenger cabin was that of wind. Terrifying, brutal, three-hundred-knot wind as the atmosphere fled the cabin. There was nothing else to be heard. Nothing could be heard over the howling wind.

Only Andreus' warning to fasten seat belts a moment before had kept sentients from being sucked out of the cabin along with everything else that wasn't bolted down.

*********************

The first indication the flight deck received that something was wrong was the sound of an explosion.

Then no fewer than five master alarm warnings went off.

About a tenth of a second later, the cockpit door blew out into the passenger cabin, forced off its hinges by the pressure differential between the flight deck and newly-depressurized cabin. It flew out of one of the holes in the cabin a second later, adding about another two square meters to said hole in the process.

Immediately, all three pilots donned THEIR oxygen masks. They wouldn't have much time to do anything but at this altitude before they succumbed to hypoxia.

"WHAT THE KRIFF WAS THAT!?" Andreus asked, though no one could hear him over the shrieking of the wind. At any rate, the other two pilots were quickly disabused of the notion that their prospective captain had overdosed on shrooms. The spacecraft shuddered, and began to slowly list to the right. The loss of engines had resulted in it becoming an almost-seven-hundred-ton glider, and the damage to the right wing meant it couldn't provide as much lift as it should, thus dragging it down.

NO 1 REPULSORLIFT FAIL
NO 2 REPULSORLIFT FAIL
AUTOPILOT DISCONNECT
AUTOTHROTTLE DISCONNECT
OXYGEN MASKS DEPLOYED

Those five warnings immediately lit up the flight deck. First Officer Karch, more than twice as experienced as his captain, immediately acted to correct the spacecraft's list. But the controls felt heavy, and were only getting heavier as precious hydraulic fluid leaked from the spacecraft. "Help me!" But Karch's effort was futile. Only seconds later, more ominous warnings appeared.

NO 1 HYDRAU EMPTY
NO 2 HYDRAU EMPTY
NO 3 HYDRAU EMPTY
NO 4 HYDRAU EMPTY

This was the end of all training, all emergency procedures. A spacecraft could recover from having no repulsorlifts, using a combination of sublight engines and steering that, on this spacecraft, was provided by a quadruple-redundant hydraulics system. A hydraulics failure could be recovered by creative utilization of the repulsorlift engines. But there was no training on what to do when both systems--a total redundancy of six times over--went out entirely. The odds were three hundred seventy-trillion to one.

By now, the rushing winds were drowned out by wailing warning alarms in the flight deck. Andreus, in desperation, turned to the one control system that might still be good--his sublight engines. He immediately began the procedure to restart them, but it would take ninety seconds, time he did not have when his spacecraft was slowly listing at the rate of about a degree a second.

The captain desperately raced through the procedure, attempting to relight the Number Three engine first, the engine on the damaged wing. He desperately needed to start it, to provide power to force the wing back up relative to the rest of the craft. By now, the spacecraft banked forty degrees to the right, and the nose was beginning to drop. The BANK ANGLE warning added itself to the numerous warnings and alarms already flooding the flight deck.

He dared not look at Kai, or Dex. He knew Kai's knuckles would be white by now, from trying to pull the spacecraft out of its bank using controls that were no longer functional. Both his more experienced counterparts seemed paralyzed by denial that such an impossibility could ever happen, though Andreus dared not spend the second to verify this. He was too busy trying to save the spacecraft, using the only thing he recognized as being left to him.

He didn't have enough time.

 

[Brand]

Galak heeded the warning from the cockpit, sitting himself down and fastening his seatbelt in the nick of time as the vacuum opened up. He pushed his oxygen mask aside and focused for only but a moment, projecting as large a bubble of breathable air around him as possible. After he had initallty set up the bubble it would not be hard to maintain, and useful to have active in lieu of an oxygen mask.

Avara searched out with the Force, projecting his sizable senses out as far as they would go. He could sense a malicious presence in the vicinity, but it was far enough away that he could not place the exact disturbance. "There's some kind of a dark sider just in the outer reaches of my senses." Galak could see that Tarn still clutched his head. "Hang in there, Knight!"

 

[Andreus Makaryk]

The wind continued to howl throughout the passenger cabin, the only noise that could be heard. Though the cabin was now fully depressurized, frigid, high-altitude atmosphere still blew into the cabin at a relative speed of around two hundred fifty knots. No engines, no sign in the cabin that the craft was under control at all. Out of control, the spacecraft continued to bank steeply.

On the flight deck, the noise from the wind had subsided just enough for the pilots to communicate for the first time. Barely. First Officer Karch sent the spacecraft's first transmission since being stricken.

"Casino three-niner-one, declaring emergency! No repulsorlift, no hydraulics! She doesn't respond to controls!"

At least Andreus knew the rest of the crew had recognized the situation. However, that recognition still did not give them a clue as to what to do. No one knew what to do; even Andreus couldn't be sure, and he was moved more by a desperate "What CAN I get to function?" attitude at this point than any knowledge he might have gleaned from training.

He continued his frantic procedure to restart the sublight engines, undeterred by the series of wailing alarms. He was almost done.

But he ran out of time. The spacecraft reached ninety degrees of bank, and flipped over, dragged down by its damaged wing. The nose immediately pitched down sixty degrees. Bereft of power, or any control input whatsoever, the spacecraft entered a spiral dive. Andreus struggled against sudden and rapidly changing g-forces to reach the remaining controls. His eyes focused on the artificial horizon, and the altimeter and airspeed indicator on either side of it.

The dive increased the spacecraft's airspeed immensely. Already, it redlined, generating the OVERSPEED warning, and yet another alarm. At this rate, the spacecraft would reach its maximum atmospheric operating speed in mere seconds. If there was one thing even more worrying, it was the altimeter, which unwound with a speed no one on the flight deck had ever seen in atmosphere before, not even in a simulator. In less than ten seconds, the spacecraft had lost more than four thousand feet.

"Approaching VMO!" Kai's voice indicated panic. A mid-air breakup certainly seemed a reasonable fear at this point.

The spacecraft continued to flip and spin, in silence, on its way down.

"Fifty thousand feet!" By the time Kai finished his sentence, the spacecraft had lost another 1500.

Andreus finally managed to reach the last switch he needed give power to the sublight engines. Number One and Number Three rumbled back to life. Number Two remained silent, generating a barely-noticed NO. 2 SEL PWR OUT warning that meant power from the reactors could not reach the engine. Whatever had happened, it had severed the wiring to the center ion engine.

"Forty-three thousand!"

Andreus immediately gave the Number Three engine full power, while leaving One on idle. He needed full power on the right side to try to countervail the spin, before he could try to recover the dive. But as the power on the right side increased, the engine suddenly throttled back before racing up to full thrust again, a classic sign of engine surge. If allowed to operate in this condition, the engine would tear itself apart after only moments. The pilot was left with no choice but to throttle back at the precise moment he needed the power most. Otherwise, the engine would not run long enough to get the spacecraft down to a runway; it would last a minute or two at best. The right engine had been damaged.

"Thirty-six thousand!" Kai's panicked call-outs continued. At least they meant Andreus could focus that much more attention on throttle settings and the artificial horizon. The spacecraft would plunge into the ground in less than 90 seconds at its current rate of descent, an eye-popping 27,000 feet per minute.

Other air traffic that had received Karch's declaration of emergency now reported to the traffic controllers.

"He just entered a huge spiral dive..."

"Uhh, yeah, sir, he's inverted..."

"Definitely out of control..."

The spacecraft was well out of its aerodynamic limits. The stress placed on the already-damaged airframe was immense. The airframe began to make ominous creaking noises. Then, a sound like a slugthrower going off filled the cabin, the sound of a rivet popping out. It was followed by another.

"Twenty-eight thousand!"

The landing gear doors separated from the airframe and flew off, torn from the spacecraft by the massive aerodynamic loads of the dive.

The spin began to slow, but Andreus desperately needed to wring more power out of his damaged engine to stop it in time to recover. He ran the engine back up to full power, but only for a couple seconds before it could begin to surge again. Then he reduced the throttle back to seventy percent to relieve stress on the engine and allow it to clear any surge that might threaten it, before cycling the power up again. It was a risky maneuver, but there was no other way that Andreus could readily contemplate that would increase the power available to him without permanently burning out the engine and thus dooming the spacecraft.

The airframe was still under great stress. The wings' ailerons followed the landing gear doors in separating from the airframe, not that they would have done much good without a hydraulic system to operate them, anyway.

"Twenty-two thousand!"

At last, Andreus began to get the spin under control. The artificial horizon, not to mention the Coruscant night lights, showed him at sixty degrees of bank and slowly decreasing. Now, he might finally be able to do something about the fifty degree, nose-down position. Gradually, he began bringing power up on the Number One engine to force the nose up, the overspeed be damned. The dive was what threatened to immediately kill him.

"Seventeen thousand!" And forty degrees of bank angle.

Everyone on board found themselves pressed into their seats as the nose finally began to lift out of the dive. The g-forces from coming out of a dive this steep would be immense. The remnants of the blob pressed down on the row of seats where the blob had been seated with four times their normal weight--enough to crush the seats.

"Thirteen thousand!" By now, Andreus had slowed the dive to "only" sixteen thousand feet a minute and the bank angle had corrected to twenty degrees. The gravitational forces acting upon him were so great that he could no longer move the throttles any more than a bare nudge. He could only hope he had the right engine configuration to recover at this point, because he couldn't change it.

"Ten thousand." Kai finally calmed down a bit, as he realized the rate of descent was slowing.

Eight thousand.

The nose finally rose above the (nearly level) horizon at only 6400 feet. The vertical airspeed passed through zero shortly after that, and the spacecraft began climbing again. The terrifying, two-and-a-half-minute, fifty-thousand foot dive finally seemed to be over. Now the pilots had to figure out how to fly their spacecraft and land it on a runway with forward engine thrust alone. None of them had ever heard of anyone doing that successfully.

 

[D.C.]

It was quite the show. The Sith Lord loved to watch the shuttle in front of him. The pilot seemed to be struggling to save the ship and it seemed like he was actually being succesful. The blonde-haired darksider chortled and looked at the vessel with twinkling grey eyes. It was just so great! And the thought of a blob-thing exploding in bits of disguting green substance was over the top comical. Oseth could imagine what the passengers looked like by now.

He looked up to the sky. They'd entered Coruscant's atmosphere. There was a clear sky and everything seemed to be just fine. The Sith Lord inside his Z-96 Headhunter tipped with his fingers on the dashboard in front of him. An evil thought entered his mind. He really couldn't allow the pilot--even though this dude was an exceptional pilot--to save his vessel. Oseth absolutely couldn't allow that! So he would summon the power of the Dark Side and he'd create a...

... thunderstorm.

* * *​

Tarn bit his lip. Sweat fell from his forehead. He tried to stay calm and draw upon the Force to actually remain calm, but it was hard. There was this... disturbance. Tarn of Clan Lok didn't feel good. He didn't feel comfortable at all. He looked to the master who sat beside him, and who'd told him to 'hang on'.

'I'm trying,' Tarn said. 'But... Master I... I'm afraid we--'

BOOOOOOOM!

* * *​

Oseth had drawn the Dark Side of the Force to himself. It surrounded him and his vessel like an invisible hurricane of dark power. He reached out and slowly but steadily, grey clouds appeared in the bright sky above Coruscant. Grey clouds, out of nowhere.

Oseth guided the power of the Force and let it flow. He added more and more power and here and there a tiny flash of light cracked in the clouds. The Sith had almost reached the point where he'd unleash a storm upon the shuttle, piloted by Andreus Makaryk, a person who just had to die. Oseth built up the power of the Force and then...

BOOM!

Lightning roared in the dark sky and lightning struck the vessel. The entire ship began to shake and if that wasn't enough, another flash of lightning struck the ship of Captain Makaryk. Oseth unleashed the wrath of the Dark Side upon the shuttle and he intended to wreck it to a point where it'd just crash down into the city below. The lightning wouldn't destroy the shuttle, but the crash into the big skyscrapers would.

Oseth smiled. It was almost done. Makaryk was almost dead.

Almost.

* * *​

'Gah!' Tarn shouted. If he had not buckled up, he'd fallen face down to the shuttle's floor. He sat up again and drew upon the Force again. He let it flow through himself and he calmed down. The fear was gone and replaced by serenity. He sighed and looked back to Galak.

'Master,' Tarn said. 'I don't know what it is, or who it is, but something--or someone--is trying to kill us all. What if this... assassin... is a Sith and sent to kill us both? Because we're Jedi? Or maybe he's just targeted you, master, because you're the Prime Envoy.' The Kiffar spoke calmly, as if nothing happened. 'Whatever's going on,' he went on, 'I feel that this opponent is too strong for me. And the lightning's already stricken the vessel... we might be able to help the pilots make a ... somewhat good landing by aiding them through the Force, but I fear that's all we can do...'

Tarn looked away from Galak and into the cabin. He could see the terrified people. Men, women, children. They didn't understand what was going on and that was just the scary thing. Even Jedi Knight Tarn didn't understand what was happening. Of course, he sensed the Dark Side. But... who or what was the source of that Darkness... he didn't know. He just didn't know.

'If we get out of this alive,' Tarn said, 'I'll buy you a beer.'

 

[Andreus Makaryk]

Ironically, it was probably fortunate for the pilots, and (unknown to said pilots) unfortunate for one Lord Oseth, that they still did not have the spacecraft under complete control.

Why? The spacecraft had increased airspeed in the dive. By a lot. So when Andreus pulled out of the dive, said spacecraft had a lot of excess airspeed to dispose of. In fact, it would do this whether Andreus liked it or not. Ironically, the 400-knot airspeed meant the spacecraft's wings now generated too much lift for level flight at this altitude. Without such fancy things as elevators to control pitch, the spacecraft had entered a classic phugoid cycle. Too much airspeed, and the nose would pitch up, inducing the spacecraft to climb. The spacecraft would then lose airspeed, pitch down, dive, and gain airspeed, at which point the cycle would repeat.

The nose pitched up again, forty-five degrees, and the spacecraft climbed rapidly even as a major thunderstorm blew up out of nowhere.

Lightning struck the craft, repeatedly. Unfortunately for the Dark Lord, the flashiest move wasn't always the best one. Spacecraft were designed for a wide variety of conditions, including flying to stormy worlds. Thus, they were designed to be struck by lightning. Repeatedly. Many, many static discharge wicks had been engineered into this Corellian Engineering Corporation ship. Their job was to make sure that the lightning passed harmlessly through the spacecraft, to the ground. Which it did. However, there were other options available to the Dark Lord to throw into the storm that would pose a far greater threat to the crippled spacecraft...

Andreus didn't like the very high nose-up attitude, not at all. He didn't know that it had just saved him from crashing into a solitary skyscraper, the headquarters of an industrial corporation in the heart of its factory complex, two miles away. The spacecraft gained thousands of feet in altitude, even as turbulence from the storm began to cause it to bounce around a bit, as the airspeed dropped. Worryingly.

The pilot recognized the phugoid cycle from his training. At last, his training became of some use for controlling this unheard-of situation--if he could actually figure out how to make use of it. His training told him what was happening, but because his control yoke wouldn't respond to anything at this point, it didn't tell him how to correct it. He would have to figure that out on his own.

By now, airspeed had reached dangerously low levels. The nose was still way too high. Unable to think of anything else, Andreus pulled back on the throttles to drop the nose, the opposite of what a pilot would normally do to gain airspeed. It worked, and the spacecraft picked up a few knots here and there. When Andreus was satisfied, and when the spacecraft had descended back down to ten thousand feet (so passengers could breathe without the oxygen masks on), he brought the throttles back up a little to bring the nose up level. Finally, he had some degree of control over his spacecraft, though the throttles would require constant juggling, especially because he had to try to keep more power on the right side just to keep level, even though the right engine was damaged by the blob explosion.

Now, it was time to figure out where to divert. The destination spaceport was nearly four hundred nautical miles, nearly two hours, away. The right engine, or the spacecraft structure, might not hold together that long. "Kai, get us the nearest runway, please.

The first officer nodded, and opened communications with traffic control. "Casino three-niner-one heavy, declaring emergency, we need the nearest runway."

"Nearest runway is at Hutt Blobular Trinkets Industrial Field, seventy-two nautical miles from your position. Eighteen thousand feet." Coruscant was densely populated; there wasn't enough room for runways, so the crew would have to make a decent-sized trip to get to one. "Shall I vector you?"

The idea of a runway landing didn't really appeal to any of the pilots. Most pilots would only ever see one in a simulator. They were incredibly rare in the real world, because total repulsorlift failures were themselves rare. Dex, the training instructor-cum-second-officer, and Andreus' evaluator, was the only person on the flight deck who had ever performed one. And he had had the benefit of the control yoke actually working, too.

Nevertheless, given the situation, Kai was bound to accept. "Yes. Full emergency services, please. Souls on board, six hundred twenty-two." He didn't know the explosion had already killed seven people.

"Turn right, heading seven-zero. Intercept the localizer. Descend at pilot's discretion. Runway eleven, cleared to land."

With the spacecraft finally under some measure of control (even if it required constant adjustment of the throttles just to keep in level flight), and with a landing clearance in hand, it was now time to address the passengers for the first time since the explosion. Andreus picked up the commlink that would address the PA with his left hand, even as he continued to juggle throttle settings with the right. "Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We have had a small control problem. We will be making an emergency landing on the runway at Hutt Blobular Trinkets Industrial Field, and expect to be on the ground in twenty to thirty minutes. I trust you are not in too much distress. Flight attendants, prepare for emergency landing."

Andreus cut back power to the right engine, to cause the spacecraft to begin a wide swing to the right. As he began his turn, he had no way of knowing the true origins of the lightning that suddenly flashed all around him. He had no idea of his Force sensitivity--nor did he have any idea he was now locked in a life-or-death duel with a Sith Lord. If the Sith was at all paying attention to traffic control transmissions, he would now know where to direct his energies.

He only knew he had to make the most difficult landing of his career, under conditions no one had faced before. The lives of more than six hundred sentients depended on him getting it right.

Meanwhile, flight attendants began to reiterate those parts of the safety briefing pertaining to proper brace positions and evacuation procedures...

 

[D.C.]

So the lightning didn't have much effect at all, but that was quite alright. Oseth loved to play games after all. He would have to come up with a new move, though. He watched the spacecraft in front of him flying over Coruscant. His target... this Andreus Makaryk... he was good. This guy truly was able to fly a spacecraft. Oseth admired the pilot's skills, even though he was going to kill the pilot.

The Sith Lord looked up to the dark sky. He reached out in the Force once again and this time he summoned the power of the wind. He directed it to the vessel and the wind (invisible but effective) began to slam the spacecraft from different directions. From the left, from the right, from the top, the bottom, the front, the back. And not in this particular order, but at random. It was like: bam, boom, bang! Like a street fighter, punching from different angles at unexpected moments.

Oseth continued to hit the ship with the wind, knowing it was getting harder and harder for Andreus to keep up. Soon, young Makaryk would be bathing in a pool of his own thick, stinking blood, and Oseth would be standing over his corpse.

It was nothing personal, it was just business.

 

[Andreus Makaryk]

As Andreus completed his turn to intercept the runway's instrument landing system, things started to get a lot worse.

The thunderstorm's winds picked up. Violently. Windshear constituted just about the worst weather that this spacecraft could possibly encounter at this moment, and it made its presence known. The spacecraft had instruments to measure it, but with a Dark Lord manipulating the winds, such instruments could not be predictive. They could only measure changes in the wind that had already occurred.

Like the sixty-knot breeze on the nose that suddenly dropped to twenty, and then became a seventy-knot crosswind from his left. A fifty-knot change, and ninety degrees of directional change, in only two hundred feet of altitude...that was a lot. Not to mention fairly representative of the conditions the pilots faced.

All three of them had experience flying in bad windshear like this. Not with no flight controls, however.

The workload on Andreus rose dramatically. However, the other two pilots could tell that if they tried to help with the throttles, they would only get out of step, causing the engines to go out of sync, and thus causing a crash. Instead, they could feed him information, thus allowing him to focus more of his attention on the very important act of actually flying the spacecraft.

The storm hadn't reached Hutt Blobular Trinkets Industrial Field yet. It was still sixty-five nautical miles away, and the Sith Lord stirring up the storm seemed too impatient to simply cause it to lie in wait there. So the crew received a patronizingly rosy weather report from the field. "Winds from three-three-zero at six."

If only.

The spacecraft bounced about. Andreus' attention fixated on such useful instruments as the artificial horizon, his lifeline for keeping the spacecraft at least reasonably level in this kriffing shitstorm. He had no idea why the weather had suddenly gone south. "Where the kriff are these clear skies the forecast called for?" Just as another huge gust of wind threatened to send him wildly to the left, he cut power to that engine to counteract it.

"Niner thousand feet, intercept localizer in thirty-six nautical miles," Kai helpfully informed the pilot.

Andreus didn't like this storm. Not at all. Just when he thought he had almost flown out of it, he looked at his weather radar. It was following him. Now, he had to start thinking about even more contingencies. Something was seriously the kriff wrong here--but without knowledge of, much less training in, his Force sensitivity, Andreus couldn't tell it was a Sith Lord stirring this bantha dung up.

He had a bad feeling about this.

Fifty-six nautical miles from field.

"Kai, get me next nearest airfield. I don't like this. Dex, we have enough engine power to TOGA?"

TOGA stood for take-off-go-around. Andreus was concerned he might have to execute a missed approach in this weather. Dex quickly began the calculations as to whether or not one ion engine, plus another damaged engine only able to deliver seventy percent thrust, was sufficient for the maneuver.

Meanwhile, Kai contacted controllers for the requested information. "We're getting a little concerned about the weather here. Next nearest runway?"

"That would be Black Sun Aerodrome, two hundred eight nautical miles, sixteen thousand feet. Do you wish to divert there?"

"Standby."

That was nearly an hour away. Now at forty-three nautical miles, Hutt Blobular was within reach in under fifteen minutes. Not to mention, the runway at Black Sun was shorter, and the spacecraft would have to hold together for longer, and overfly more densely populated areas...

The spacecraft bounced in the wind again. Andreus quickly adjusted the throttles to keep the ship flying. The gust passed, but then the right engine rolled back twenty percent for a second before resuming its normal thrust output. It was a worrying sign that the right engine wouldn't hold out for the hour it would take to fly to the next runway. Black Sun was definitely out of reach.

Andreus shook his head. Kai relayed that. "No."

Meanwhile, Dex had finished his calculations. He had more bad news. "We can't get sufficient power for a missed approach. This is going to be the only approach we're going to get."

At twenty-four nautical miles, Andreus began the rather difficult turn to intercept the localizer for Runway Eleven, reducing power to the right engine to execute the turn even in the face of insufferable windshear. To get away with this, he had to sacrifice some altitude. That trade-off was far preferable to missing the turn.

"Five thousand feet."

Andreus was trapped.

 

[D.C.]

And so the Sith gained the upper hand. With a smile on his face he reached out in the Force again. Even though he'd gained the upper hand, the winds were not enough. Almost enough, but just not it. Oseth needed a bit more. Rain. Water. Just to make it impossible for the 'captain' to fly his ship.

A few moments later rain began to pour from the clouds above the spacecraft. It was heavy rain. A deluge. He also concentrated the power of the Force on the clouds to create a mist around the shuttle. Andreus and his mates wouldn't be able to see much anymore. Lord Oseth couldn't wait to see the crash!

* * *​

Tarn sat in his seat. He was calm for a while, but with all this wind and rain he began to get a little stressed. He clenched his hands to fists and bit his lip. He closed his eyes and tried to focus on the Force again, but all he could sense was that Dark Side presence nearby. He couldn't focus at the moment, there was a lot going on.

Of course the Kiffar was good at meditating, because he did it almost every day, but under these circumstances it was just kriffing hard to center yourself.

He was slowly losing it. He was getting scared.

 

[Andreus Makaryk]

Even with instruments, there was such a thing as "minimums." As in, minimum safe conditions to land a spacecraft on a runway.

For this particular spacecraft, such minimums were 2400 feet of runway visibility (abbreviated RVR), and a maximum crosswind of twenty knots on a wet runway.

The weather hadn't reached the field quite yet, though it was beginning to pick up, because Lord Oseth remained fixated on the ship itself. So the weather reports from the field were still deceptively calm. The controller contacted the distressed spacecraft with the latest weather information. "RVR 6000 feet, winds two-two zero at fourteen, gusts twenty."

In other words, within minimums.

The conditions Andreus had to deal with, however, were far different. His instruments could guide him to the threshold of the runway, but they couldn't automatically adjust the throttles to account for the hundred-ten-knot gusts. The conditions were so bad that even if the autothrottle had been functional (it had disconnected in the explosion), not even it would have been able to compensate. Andreus was on the right heading to land; now he needed to intercept the glideslope, currently about a thousand feet above him. He would intercept it in about three miles.

The spacecraft bounced around even more. Andreus' piloting skills had never before been tested this much. Hoping to put some buffering between himself and these kriffing winds...

"Kai, see if you can relight the repulsorlifts."

Kai attempted to restart the two repulsorlift engines, only to generate more warnings.

NO 1 RPSR SEL PWR OUT
NO 2 RPSR SEL PWR OUT

The repulsorlift engines would not be helping Andreus land today. Like the Number Two ion engine, power from the reactors could not reach them.

The winds jolted the spacecraft again. Andreus thought he heard a creaking noise from somewhere. Eighteen nautical miles to go. He reduced power slightly to descend along the path of the glideslope, but of course he had to constantly juggle to keep a reasonably steady descent.

The Dark Lord had by now literally stretched Andreus to the limits of known human performance. No doubt a gleeful smile would sprout across his face as more winds buffeted the spacecraft. As Andreus threatened to cross his breaking point, that same Force-sensitivity that had led him to issue the fasten-seatbelt warning only a moment before detonation reasserted itself.

"Three thousand, slightly below glideslope..."

Andreus yanked the right throttle back down to idle before giving it more power again, to compensate for yet another gust of wind a second or so before it struck. The spacecraft's flight data recorder would record that gust as being 128 knots.

"Gear down!"

With Andreus having a handful of spacecraft to fly, and Kai busily monitoring instruments, the unusual presence of a second officer on the flightdeck suddenly became critical for the flight's survival. With no hydraulic system to actuate the machinery that lowered the landing gear, Dex would have to do it with an old-fashioned handcrank and gravity. He got up, and removed a panel on the flight deck floor that concealed the handcrank.

At this point, Andreus had to reduce power on the Number Three engine--again--to allow a surge induced by the heavy rain to clear. Only skillful manipulation of the Number One throttle kept the spacecraft from falling to the ground at this point.

Meanwhile, Dex flipped the switch to gravity-drop the gear. The handcrank finished the job, albeit slowly. The gear locked in place..."Gear down, five green!"

But it had an unintended effect--namely, shifting the center of gravity of the spacecraft back. The nose pitched up, and the spacecraft ominously lost airspeed. The few hundred feet of altitude gained were welcome, however, as they gratuitously put the spacecraft back on the glideslope. Andreus reduced the power on the engines accordingly, and was pleased to find that after coming precariously close to stalling, the spacecraft seemed stable (as stable as it would ever hope to get in these winds, anyway) at 240 knots of airspeed instead of 270.

As he didn't really have a way to slow his spacecraft down without kriffing up his altitude, he would take whatever break he could get.

"Two thousand feet, glideslope is good..."

At this point, Andreus was much closer to the runway, only nine nautical miles. A new weather report came in. "2400 RVR, winds two-one-zero at twenty-niner, gusts four-five."

Visibility was now right at the limit. The winds were way above limits. But Andreus had no choice but to land anyway.

The winds shifted to press Andreus down. He increased power.

"One thousand feet, slightly below..."

"Alert the cabin."

Kai thumbed the PA intercom. "One minute to landing. Brace for impact."

The spacecraft's GLIDESLOPE warning activated, generating yet another aural alarm to go off. The winds continued to press Andreus' spacecraft down. Only four nautical miles from the runway, he was faced with a horrifying thought.

He needed more power, when his right engine was at seventy percent--the maximum for the damage it had sustained.

"Five hundred! Winds three-three-zero at eighty..."

He would have to sacrifice his engine to save his spacecraft.

The spacecraft had drifted just slightly too far left. Andreus pushed both of his engines to full power--the sound of which filled the cabin. The spacecraft started correcting back to the right.

The glideslope warning gave way to a TOO LOW--TERRAIN warning. Andreus flipped a circuit breaker to overload his right engine with power--he had no choice. The sound of "PULL UP PULL UP PULL UP" filled the flight deck.

Andreus desperately searched for the runway. With 2400 RVR, he should see it by now. He didn't. "The runway, where is it!?"

Kai flashed a glance at the instruments. "Half a mile!"

"One hundred feet!"

Andreus already had his spacecraft at maximum power. A thud could be heard from the right engine; it lost thrust and then revved back up again. It was beginning to give out.

He cleared the last of the ILS landing equipment by only thirty feet.

Finally, Andreus saw runway lights--800 feet right in front of him. He wouldn't make it to the runway's touchdown zone. Under full power, his spacecraft would strain just to make it to the threshold.

Another thud could be heard emanating from his right engine.

He touched down hard, at 231 knots, jolting the spacecraft and making an enormous and terrifying screeching noise with his tires, several of which blew out from the impact. Immediately, Andreus applied full reverse thrust, seeking to wring as much braking power as possible from his damaged engine before it gave out entirely. Because he couldn't use his spoilers to help him stop, that was especially important.

"WE'RE DOWN!"

"ON THE BRAKES!"

Andreus and Kai both slammed down on the brakes, hard. Andreus strained to keep the spacecraft on the slippery runway, and he found he had to use differential braking, much like he had used differential thrust to steer the spacecraft to this point, to do it. The brakes on the right side began to glow from heat.

The Number Three engine made more booming sounds before a NO 3 ENGINE FIRE alarm blared in the cockpit.

"Kai, shut 'er down!" Andreus had his hands full with braking at the moment...and it was about to get worse.

Fire from the right engine belched over the wing, redirected by the thrust reverser. Kai immediately activated the engine's fire extinguishing equipment, ensuring it would be forever ruined, before shutting it down. Immediately, the fire was replaced by black, acrid smoke. Andreus pulled the thrust reverser on Number Three so the smoke could dissipate behind the spacecraft.

"A hundred and fifty knots!"

Andreus thought he had applied maximum brake pressure--but he pressed harder.

With his only reverse thrust on the left side, Andreus found he had to release pressure on the left brakes just to keep the spacecraft on the runway. If he was to leave the runway, he sure as hell didn't want to do it at a hundred fifty knots.

"Seventy knots!" At this point, braking would do more good than reverse thrust. Andreus idled the engine and went back to full brakes.

"Forty knots!" By now, all the undercarriage glowed orange. Andreus had managed to land, but he had a huge brake fire brewing. By now, he had blown sixteen of the spacecraft's eighteen tires.

Finally, the spacecraft came to a halting stop, less than a thousand feet from the end of the runway. Andreus, needless to say, wanted to evacuate as quickly as possible.

"Evacuation checklist!"

"Parking brake, set!"

"Engine shutdown, complete."

"Reactors One, Two, and Three offline, evacuation checklist complete!"

Firefighting hovercraft raced to the scene and started dousing the undercarriage and destroyed engine with fire-retardant foam even before the crew could complete this short checklist. Meanwhile, Andreus thumbed the PA, battery-powered now with no reactors on, and uttered a single word.

"Evacuate."

 

[Prancing Yawn]

Smoke, fire. Huge, billowous(probably not a word)towers of smoke. Black smoke, the kind that clogs up your lungs.
Boy, this was a crash if Rascus ever saw one. He had only seen a handful of people come out so far, and most of them were burned pretty bad. If anybody else survived that crash it would be a surprise to Rascus.

Zooming onto the scene in his speeder, Rascus throttled the vehicle into park and pushed his heel off of the armrest, jumping out of the speeder. A Coruscant policeman was there to meet him - Rascus showed him his badge and the policeman let him onto the scene.
"What have you got so far?"
"Not much. It looked completely spontaneous. The engines, reactors, thrusters.. all blown out, looks at the same time."
"Is it safe to go in?"
"Yes sir, it should be fine. Rescue teams are still carrying out the passengers, however."

Running over to the unnatural entrance to the transport(a massive hole in the wall), where the rescue team looked to be running in and out through.
Rascus had to brush shoulders with many of the rescuemen who were carrying out bodies - alive or dead, Rascus did not know. But there was some awefully strange stuff in there..

Some of the bodies they carried out were covered in some green, gooey stuff.. and some of them had giant bruises on their heads, like they were killed by a blunt hit to the head. The same gooey residue was covered all over the bruises, tinting them to a strange olive color.

Looking at a spot in the floor which had been punched straight through by something, there was more of the goo. And it was all over most of the seats, the ceiling, the windows. Rascus was sure it wasn't blood from an ordinary humanoid. There was far too much of it, and it was far too gooey. Nothing made sense on this crime scene.

In one particular row, there was even more of the substance. It completely covered the seats and the trays, and there was a giant puddle on the floor. It almost made the Captain Agent sick. There were also a large amount of metal bits caked in the goo, like shrapnel. He could tell at first glance it might have been part of some explosive. Rascus didn't want to, but he stuck his hand down in the gooey mess, his hand returning with a handful of metal bits and his hand covered in goo. Even with his gloves it felt uncomfortable. He took a seal-lock bag out of his coat and put the metal bits inside of the bag, also smearing some of the goo inside of it.
He handed the bag to a rescue-man.
"Tell the policeman outside to get the metal inside of this bag examined. Also get that.. gooey.. whatever the kriff that is, examined. And tell him to get the results to me at once."
"Ok."

Further examining the cabin, Rascus saw more of the same - the strange alien goo, blood, metal bits. It would be a perfectly normal crash scene if it wasn't for that kriffing goo.

Walking into the cockpit, where Andreus and the co-pilot may or may not be alive - Rascus could not see them anywhere. Rascus took a look at the dashboard. Everything was red. Warning lights in all parts of the ship. Repulsor malfunctions. Engine fires. There was no way a simple technical malfunction could have caused this state-of-the-art vessel to crash. Rascus had a feeling - no, knew - it was a saboteur job. And he also bet that the gooey green kriff were the remains of the saboteur.

 

[D.C.]

The Sith Lord flew over the spacecraft and watched it burn. The evacuation had not started yet, but Oseth knew it wouldn't take long. He could sense that two Jedi were onboard the vessel--or at least; two lightsiders. He could also sense that his target; Andreus Makaryk was still alive. He'd missed killing his target by less than ten meters.

The Sith grinned. So it wasn't over yet. It wasn't that bad, really, because this meant that the hunt had only just begun. This was merely the end of the beginning, but certainly not the beginning of the end.

Oseth searched for Andreus' signature in the Force. He easily found his target, because this one was outstanding. There were but a few with such a connection to the Force. Oseth decided to send the young man a message, one that the young man had to remember. And he would remember, Oseth was sure of it.

~Hi there...~ Oseth's deep voice resounded inside Andreus' mind. ~That was quite impressive, captain Makaryk. Darth Oseth sends his regards. But o... why so serious? You could've let those peeps die, y'know. Anyhow, my friend, till next we meet. This was fun! Bye for now!~

To Andreus, it was probably a weird experience. To suddenly hear someone else's voice inside your mind, speaking to you, addressing you with your real name. And Darth Oseth would probably ring a bell. Maybe Andreus had never heard of the name Oseth, but he'd surely heard of the title Darth. It was a Sith title, one that only the strongest of the Sith Order may bear.

Hopefully, Andreus would now realize that he'd been targeted by a Sith. Hopefully, Andreus wouldn't react too serious. 'cause hey! It was all just a game, after all!

* * *​

Tarn sat in his seat. His chest went up and down as he panted. Sweat dripped from his forehead and he was shaking. He glanced out the window real quick and saw the fire.

Okay, he thought, that's it. He got up from the seat and rubbed his eyes. He looked through the cabin and saw the terrified people. He had sensed the deaths of some of them, when the blob exploded. It was a sad thing, but there was absolutely nothing he could do about it. There were also people who eyed him angrily. They had these looks on their faces that said: you are a Jedi, for the Creator's sake! Why didn't you kriffing save us!?

Of course that was unfair, but that's exactly what a Jedi's life is. It's unfair.

Tarn closed his eyes and let his arms fall to his sides. Then the voice of one of the pilots sounded through the PA. 'Evacuate.'

The Kiffar immediately opened his eyes and looked up. He saw some of the cabin crew already moving to the doors, to open them so the passengers could get out. The evacuation slides were being activated.

'Go!' one of the cabin crew shouted to Tarn. 'Don't just stand there, you're blocking the way! Jedi or not!'

Tarn glanced once more to master Galak, but then turned to the exit and hopped out of the spacecraft. He slid down the evacuation slide and when he reached the ground he rose to a stand.

He looked up to the grey sky above and could see a Z-95 headhunter flying away. He didn't sense the Dark Side anymore and he just knew that the source of the Dark Side came from that headhunter, high in the sky.

More people began to leave the ship and slid down the evacuation slides. Some of them were wounded, but most seemed to be okay, just a tad scared.

Tarn glanced over to the cockpit. He hoped the pilots were okay. They did a great job flying that aircraft. If only those pilots had known that a Dark Jedi was nearby... would that've scared them? Perhaps. But this Dark Jedi (or was it a real Sith?) was gone. All that mattered now was the evacuation of the passengers.

 

[Brand]

Galak followed Tarn out as he slid down but stopped at the end of the ramp, standing by the side. He helped a few of the passengers down before jogging to the front of the craft. The darkness had left, escaping unjudged, and now the most important objective for both Jedi was a safe evacuation of the passengers and finding the crew alive.