Chapter 1: Baptism By Fire

[Rogue 4]

Nat sighed deeply, turning around on his right leg to face the corridor they would need to go down. His face and lekku were blanched, having abandoned their normal cerulean for a lighter hue. He was glad Jya hadn't brought up how he had almost collapsed on the stairs. Two squadmates down...but we're still doing better than projected.

The smell of Jareth's burned flesh fluttered up to his nostrills. That combined with the pain of his injury made his stomach curdle. "We have to leave him here for now. We'll come back for him once our task is completed and everything's settled down."

Without waiting for a response he began to limp off down the corridor towards the first gravity well, blaster in his right hand, his left hand running along the wall for support.

[Drake 53]

Once they were out of the engine room and back in the main ship corridor, Nat addressed Takeshi and Jya as they walked. "There are three of us and four gravity well generators."

"One of us will need to pull double duty" said Tak. "I volunteer."

Nat nodded. "Alright, Thirteen. You've seen the ship schematics. You take generators one and two. Seven, you will take three and I will take four."

They arrived at a corridor that ran perpendicular to the one they were currently following.

"This hall runs from starboard to port" said Nat Riamor. "Thirteen, you will go left. We go right. Let's move out."

Tak nodded and began the jog to generators one and two.

[Bad furday 57]

The pair of them walked the long hallway towards the two gravity well generators.

There's got to be a faster way to do this! thought Jya, watching Nat limp along. His leg was obviously bothering him.

They passed a door marked "Storage".

"Wait here!" Jya said, running inside. Nat stood in the corridor, warily looking from side to side for any stormtroopers.

Moments later, Jay returned, pulling a repulsor sled.

"Here, climb on this."

Nat looked apprehensive. "I'm an XO, not a cargo container!"

"Yes, but if you sit on this and I push, I think we'll reach the gravity wells much faster!" explained Jya.

Nat grudgingly climbed onto the sled. Jya went around to the controls, and broke into a run, with her, the sled and Nat flying down the corridor.

She runs unnaturally fast for a human... mused Nat.

[Drake 53]

At last, Takeshi made it to the hallway juncture that ran between the two generators. He turned left down the corridor, ran down it, and into the generator room. Inside, he found the large G-7x generator suspended on a catwalk in the middle of the giant bubble housing that was seen on the hull of the ship. He ran across the catwalk and found the controls.

Tak flipped on his comm to Nat. "Five, this is Thirteen. I have made it to the first generator." He pulled down the levers that controlled the power to the generator and soon it shut down. "It's down. Making my way to the second."

He raced out of the generator room. He focused his breathing and heartrate as to not overexert himself.

[Rogue 4]

"Good job Thirteen." Nat spoke into the comm, as he dismounted the repulsor-sled. "You both finish up and I'll meet you back at the bridge."

Nodding to Jya, Nat waited for her to leave before limping off towards his own generator. His leg was getting worse, he could feel it, and he didn't need her worrying about him right now. If they didn't get these gravity well generators down then Kaden Staal wouldn't be able to fly them out of here. As soon as the Star Destroyers discovered that they had taken control of the ship they would open fire.

And then this whole thing would end real quick.

Sweat dripped from his brow, lekku spasming against the pain of his wounds as he moved slowly down the corridor. He could feel blood dripping down his leg, soaking into his flightsuit in a patchwork pattern as he exerted it.

"Koahiko...just have to... shut this thing off..." He shook his head as he reached the catwalk, grabbing onto the rail with both hands and moving along as steadily as possible. As he moved, he felt everything begin to shift. The bloodloss must have been getting to him. His stomach lurched as he placed weight again on his foot, and he leaned over the rail, saying goodbye to the half-eaten breakfast he'd had that morning.

"I'll just wait here a moment.... He sagged against the rail, breathing heavily for a moment before continuing down towards the terminal. He was confused at first, thinking there should have been one terminal, not three, before his blood-drained mind could comprehend that two of them were a fabrication of his own dizziness.

"Frotz..." he pulled down on the lever to shut down the generator, leaning against it for support. His vision was begining to grow dark around the edges, his eyelids closing tiredly from exertion and pain. Need to get...to the bridge...

He turned himself around, pushed off and started limping insistantly down the catwalk, the metal-rail in his left thigh causing immense pain to shoot through him with each muscle movement until it finally couldn't support him anymore. It gave out about halfway down the catwalk, and he fell forward, one long lekku dangling off the edge as if ready to take the plunge. Slowly Nat's world closed around him until all that was left was unconsciousness.

[Drake 53]

Takeshi made it to the second generator room and almost ran headlong into three Stormtroopers. They were clearly guarding the thing in a last-ditch effort to stop the Revenants from escaping.

He considered turning around to find cover but it was too late, they had already seen him and were now bringing their rifles up to fire at him. Tak pulled his dagger and hurled it with deadly accuracy at the nearest bucket-head. The blade sunk to the hilt into the trooper's neck. Blood spurted out and painted his white chestpiece crimson.

The other two Stormtroopers fired but Tak dodged and rolled, coming back up in a jump. He tucked his legs up and slammed both knees into the chest of one of the Imperial soldiers. Takeshi then pushed off the downed trooper and landed next to the last one standing. He already had his Ripper in hand and pointed at the side of the soldier's head.

"Don't move. Don't speak. Don't breathe unless I tell you. Now drop your weapon to the floor," ordered Tak.

"Rebel scu..." began the Stormtrooper.

Takeshi cut him off by pulling the trigger. The explosive-tipped bullet blasted easily through helmet and skull before scrambling the brain. With a gurgle, the dead bucket-head slumped to the floor.

"Wrong answer," said Tak. With a sigh, he added, "Why didn't I bring my swords?"

He went over to the second Stormtrooper, the one that he kicked down. The fellow wasn't moving but to be sure, Tak snapped his neck. Then he went over to the generator controls and deactivated it. The ship began to rumble as the engines kicked in. This gravity well must have been the last.

Moments later the ship rumbled again. Although, this time, it was from weapons fire.

The Star Destroyers were shooting at them!

He holstered his Ripper and sprinted down the corridor to the bridge turbolift.

Edited July 26, 2007 by Drake

[Andy 60]

Aston wiped the blood from his forehead. The wound stung as he touched it, and he crawled behind some of the bridge equipment to tend to it.

Picking up a piece of chrome that had been blasted from a console earlier, he looked at his reflection to see the cut just below his hairline on his left side, "Deeper than I thought..."

He rummaged around his pockets for his first aid kit, and wiped the half-dried blood from around the cut, and applied a bacta patch to it to stop the bleeding.

As he turned back around to face the last few stormtroopers he saw green light streaming towards the ship from the Star Destroyer.

"Sir!" Aston yelled for the Captain.

Aeric turned and saw, "everybody brace yourselves!"

He had barely gotten the words out when the first turbolaser blasts hit. The ship rumbled with the sound of the impacts reverberating throughout the hull. Aston scrambled to the nearest console as warnings flared up, and tried to figure out how to make sure the shields were up.

Edited July 26, 2007 by Andy

[Princess 35]

Nima scrambled around the bridge, her medical kit bumping into the backs of her legs with every lurch of the ship. "The Captain must've had a dead man's switch! Paranoid much?" She grabbed onto a console as the ship lurched and shuddered again and made it over to the shield generator controls. "Shields are down Captain! We can't take another direct salvo like that. We've gotta jump!"

Edited July 26, 2007 by Drake

[Andy 60]

Aeric took down the last visible stormtrooper, and no more seemed to come. "Stay alert, people. There could be more at any time."

Aston re-holstered his blaster, as it's power pack was almost spent, and grabbed one of the fallen enemies E-11 rifles, making sure it was set to repetitive fire. He crouched aiming at the door, waiting to open fire at the first hostile that came through it.

[Mara 29]

With stormtrooper fire lessening, Kaden headed back over to the control console. Then everything vibrated. The captain and Nima were right, they couldn't take many more hits without shields. Kaden couldn't find those controls, however. They must be at another station.

Hearing the rumble of the engines coming back to life, he quickled fully engaged them, feeling the ship slowly turning from the action and gradually getting up to speed.

Kaden knew he couldn't jump from where they were located. The SDs and TIEs were too close. It wouldn't be a safe jump. He tried to think while looking around at the consoles around him. He found controls for a few of the 20 laser quad cannons. He activated the two nearest him.

"Let's get all these cannons going." Kaden motioned to the other cannon controls. A laser beam shot out from the Interdictor, heading towards the nearest Star Destroyer.

[Rogue 4]

"Easier said than done." Layla replied to Kaden, pushing debris off of a console chair and sitting down. "They're not automated like the internal turrets. They require gunners, and they're located throughout the ship.

[Drake 53]

Prin, I'm going to change a little in your post because it doesn't make a lick of sense. The ship has 12 shield generators so it can hold up a little more than one salvo.

Teroch hurried down a barren corridor on the ship. For the past while, he had been monitoring the in-ship communications and data flow from a terminal in one of the interdictor's labs. While the strike team was first leaving the bridge, the Imperial Captain had been working on lowering the shields. He had succeeded and managed to lock-out the system so no one could bring them back up.

The droid was unable to slice into the system from the terminal he was on so he had to hurry to the only one he knew that he could: the central computer core.

The ship bucked with another hit from one of the Star Destroyers and Teroch continued on. He would not have much time.

At last, he made it to the core. He jacked into it as he would taking over another droid, inserting microfiliment wires into the access panel. Teroch knew that he would need to work fast.

***

Takeshi and Jya met one another in front of the lift. They rode it up to the bridge. The door slid open as the ship lurched with another hit. A trio of blaster bolts whizzed past Tak's ear and burned into the lift behind him.

"Oh, sorry!" said Aston. "I thought you were more Stormtroopers!"

"Don't worry about it, kid," said Tak. "You missed."

They stepped over the bodies of dead Stormtroopers and went over to Captain Tunon.

"Excellent work down there, you two," said Aeric. "Although, I think your victory may turn hollow if we can't get our shields up and get out of here."

The ship shuddered again.

"They're trying to disable the engines, sir," said Tak. "That's good."

"How is that good, exactly, Thirteen?" asked Aeric.

"If they wanted to scuttle us, we'd be dead by now. They want this ship back, sir."

"Well, I don't want to give it back!" The Captain limped over to the shield control. His injured leg was annoying him. There was no time for pain. He bit it back with every step. "Where the hell are our shields!?"

***

Teroch breached the final firewall and infiltrated the shield system. It was an easy matter of finding the right controls and bringing the generators back online. It would only take thirty seconds for the shields to come back to full. Hopefully it wasn't too late.

***

The ship rocked again.

"That took out our communications array!" Arlan Vaar shouted from another console. "And our engine stability is down to fifty percent!"

Aeric looked mad. "Any more hits like that and we're done for."

Tak pointed to the shield display. A blue bubble outline started to appear around a diagram of the ship. "Sir, shields are coming back online!"

A sly grin crept across Aeric's face. "Well it's about damn time! Kaden...let's get the hell out of here!"

[Mara 29]

"Yes, Sir." The ship continued to move away from the SD's, getting to a better vector. Kaden glanced at his display. Close enough. He quickly pulled the lever, sending the Interdictor into hyperspace before they took any more hits.

When he saw the starlines, he let out a sigh and sat back in his chair. He turned to face the captain.

"Captain, I took the liberty to program in some extra jumps, so we won't be going directly to Coruscant."

[Rogue 4]

"We did it!" Several of the Revenants let out a whoop of joy as they burst into hyperspace, relief flooding over the group as a whole. They'd done it! Not even considered an operational unit yet and they'd infiltrated and captured an Interdictor! And against impossible odds.

Layla wished Atzena was there to celebrate with them.

That thought brought with it another realization as she scanned the faces of those around her. "but where's....Aren't we missing two people?"

Edited August 8, 2007 by Rogue

[Mara 29]

He felt good. They had survived, well, most of them had survived, to see another day. And they had captured an Imperial Interdictor in the process. He felt he would like this new assignment. At first Kaden wasn't sure because it was more than a regular starfighter squadron, and he had wondered how he would fit in. But he had done his part, albeit a small one.

It hadn't been perfect; they had lost two members. He noticed that Lt. Daragon was pointedly missing from the bridge. That made two losses from Three Flight. His flight. Kaden swallowed his emotion, not letting himself go back there.

His thoughts moved on back to the present. He'd have to go down later and how Artie was. He was sure the little droid was wondering what was going on, but for now he needed to stay with his squadron. He knew they all were probably feeling some kind of wealth of emotions.

He wouldn't make that mistake again. But he knew, no matter the consequences, he wouldn't have changed his first mistake for all the worlds.

Even though it didn't accomplish anything...

She was still gone...

He glanced around the room, but didn't really see anything. He found himself staring into the starlines through a viewport. This time, he let his memory take hold...

Kaden saw himself running through the cruiser's hangar after vaulting himself out of his Y-wing. It was all the same as when he relived it all those times before. The empty fighter. None of her belongings were in there. It was sparse and clean. He found himself wondering again when there had been time to do all that, but he remembered that the injured Y-wing and EV pilot were taken in first, just in case. By the time Kaden had landed his fighter, it had been stripped down of anything personal to Tashi.

After that, he had gone running to the infirmary, screaming her name. He had ignored the rest of his squad and the immediate debriefing, but all that mattered to him was her. He had been angry while looking for her.

"Tashi, I need to see Tashi. Where is she?"

"We have no record, Lt. Staal. She's not here."

"Tashi, Tashi Ryn. She was just taken in. I want to see her." He kept pestering the droid.

"I'm sorry, Sir." It had looked down at its datapad again, even turned it to Kaden. "The woman doesn't exist."

"How can that be possible!? I want to see her!"

"Sir... " the droid looked around for security. "Do I have to call security?"

Kaden waved him off. Dejectedly, he left the medical bay. He had felt he had nowhere else to go besides back to the hangar, back to his ship. He slumped down next to one of the control struts and let the tears come.

Kaden focused back into the present. Right now, he couldn't handle any more. Besides, he wasn't alone. He glanced at his sack on the floor where his holo was. Kaden considered taking it out for just a moment. He reached down and pulled it out, but quickly shoved it in a pocket of his flight suit.

[Drake 53]

Aeric breathed a sigh of relief. They had beaten overwhelming odds and were now safely on their way to Coruscant where he hoped they would receive some much needed R and R. Granted, they had lost two valuable members of their team but their sacrifices would not be forgotten.

"Good, Kaden. Good work." Aeric dropped the formality of 'Ten', calling him by his name instead. Right now he didn't care about procedures. "Stay at the helm. Our engines were damaged and they could fail at any time."

After a moment of discussion with Takeshi, Aeric went up to the forward viewport and got everybody's attention. "Excuse me everyone, listen up. It is my sad duty to inform you all that Lieutenant Jareth Daragon did not survive. I have been told that he valiantly gave his life to kill the Imperial Captain. His life, and that of Officer Atzena Meling, will not be forgotten. As soon as we are out of this mess, I will have it be written in their personal files that they performed above and beyond their call of duty and gave their lives so that we could succeed. I am afraid I will have to ask you to mourn their deaths another time. We have too much work to do now. Thank you."

He made his way over to Arlan, Layla and Atuarre. All had been working on clearing debris from some consoles. "One Flight, I want you to go down to the main hangar and retrieve our astromechs. We may need them to work on repairs around here."

"Nat..." He looked around for his XO but did not see him. Aeric opened his comm. "Nat, come in." After a moment there was no answer. He went over to Takeshi. "Beskar, where is Lieutenant Riamor?"

Tak looked around the bridge. "I don't know, sir." He called over to Jya. "Hey Seven, where's the Lieutenant?"

Jya came over to them. "He was supposed to come back to the bridge. He told us not to wait for him because of his...oh."

"Oh...what?" asked the Captain.

"Lieutenant Riamor received a leg injury during our fight with the Imperial Captain, sir," Jya explained. "A shard of a metal rail was embedded in him. I gave him some bacta but he was stubborn and ordered us to continue with the mission. He was looking frightfully pale the last I saw him."

"Nima, grab your medpack and come with me. Jya, show me where he is." Aeric turned to Tak. "You say you captured a ship before? Well, you're in charge up here until I get back."

"Yes, sir!" said Takeshi.

Aeric and Nima followed Jya to the lift and rode it down.

Edited July 27, 2007 by Drake

[Mara 29]

Kaden nodded at the captain and turned in his chair back to face the engine controls. They would probably last through hyperspace, but it would be a matter of whether they could continue to their next jump and on to Coruscant. He was hoping the ship was strong and resilient enough to last that long.

Even after the captain's brief speech, he was feeling better. Artie would be coming up soon, and he wouldn't have to worry about him anymore. He smiled and stared off in front of him, keeping the console in the corner of an eye.

[Andy 60]

Aston was fiddling with the systems, or 'practising' his skills, as he liked to say. He gave a chuckle which caught the attention of Tak, who walked over to him.

"What are you up to, Six?" Tak said.

"Oh, I was just having a look around, and managed to edited the ship's ID code," Aston grinned.

"Oh? What to, or shouldn't I ask?"

"Well, let me just say welcome aboard the Revenant."

"I'm sure Captain Tunon will approve," Takeshi said with a smile.

Edited July 27, 2007 by Andy

[Ender 8]

Jaim walked out into the hall, checking through the downed Stormtrooper's equipment, bringing what salvageable powerpacks and weapons there were into the bridge. When that was finished, and he had loaded himself with fresh powerpacks, he walked over to Tak.

"Hey, uh... sithspit, Your Royal Temporary Bridge Captaincy? There's still a load of gassed Imps strewn about this ship. When they wake up, I'm guessing they're not gonna be too happy. We might want to think about finding a place to seal them off from the rest of the ship."

[Princess 35]

Nima ran behind Jya, desperate to get to Nat and see how badly he was injured. It had to be bad for him not to return to the bridge. They made it to the gravity well generator and Nima gasped as she saw Nat half dangling off of the catwalk. "Natri'amor! Can you hear me?" She ran over to him. "Jya, help me get him back up here. He's lost a lot of blood and I have to stop this bleeding. Captain, we've got to find out where the medlab is and get the bacta tank up and running."

She paused as Jya helped her pull Nat back onto the catwalk and put him on his back. "Sithspawn! His leg is totally impaled. This is not good. Jya, get me a pressure bandage, my laser scalpel, a pain killer injector and a tourniquet." Jya scrambled to get the things that Nima requested and stood by to assist them. Nima turned and looked at Jya, who was looking a little pale. "We can do this Jya. We've got to do this for Nat. Just hand me what I need when I ask for it. Give me the pain killer injector."

Jya handed Nima the small injector and she jammed it into Nat's leg and depressed the trigger. He groaned slightly and Nima suppressed a small smile, there'd be time for that later. "Ok, there's no time to scrub, but still, give me sterile gloves and the sterile field kit. I need to get this pipe out. And the tourniquet. I need you to tie that as tightly as you possibly can around his leg, above the wound." Nima took the gloves and set up the sterile field as Jya tied off the wound. Nima grabbed the laser scalpel and cut off the end of the pipe and then pressed it all the way through his leg. "Good, it only damaged muscle. Hand me the cauterizing tool." Nima cauterized all of the bleeders that she could find and sewed the larger ones back together. She put some stitches into his skin to keep the wound closed until she could get him into a bacta tank and then dressed the wound with bacta patches and injected Nat with a dose of antibotics so that it wouldn't get infected.

When she was done, she realized that she was sweating and feeling sick to her stomach, which hadn't happened since she was in med school. Of course, she'd never had to do emergency surgery on a friend either. She stood and was a little shaky. "That's all that I can do right now. We need to get him into bacta as soon as possible though. And who's the next wounded person?"

[Rogue 4]

"Let's locate that med-bay and get you situated there." Aeric told her, hoping the knockout gas they'd used on the ship's crew was going to last the long journey to Coruscant. They would have to think of something in case it didn't. It was going to be important that they had the freedom. "We'll send the injured over that way in turns."

His comm beeped and he answered it. "Captain, we've got all the astromechs free." Layla's voice came across. "We're sending them to the Bridge to see what work they can do there. From there on we can dispatch them to trouble areas."

"Good job. Have Arlan see what he can do about convincing some protocol droids or something to drag our limp Imperials to the Detention Area."

"Sure thing, sir!"

[Princess 35]

"Sounds good to me. Especially since I'm running low on supplies. Should have known that this wasn't going to be a blue milk run." She helped pick up Nat. "We have to move him carefully."

[Drake 53]

Takeshi nodded at Jaim's suggestion. "If only we were all Jedi. We could use the Force to move the crew of two thousand plus. We should wait until Officer Vaar returns. Perhaps he could recruit some of the ship's droids to help move all that dead weight."

***

They carefully moved Nat out into the hallway where they found the hoversled that Jya had moved him with earlier. After laying the Twi'lek Lieutenant on the sled, Aeric called up to Takeshi on the bridge.

"Lead to Thirteen. Come in, Thirteen."

***

Tak answered the comm. "Thirteen here, sir. What can I do for you?"

"We need to find where the medlab is. Have Six call up the schematics for us."

"Copy that." Tak went over to Aston at the console he was working on. "AK, the Captain needs a route to the medlab. Call up the floor plan, for me?"

"You got it," said Aston. "Here you go."

"Thanks." Tak leaned over Aston's shoulder then gave the directions to the Captain. "Lead, you need to go back to the main lift and ride it down three levels. Then follow the corridor right until you come across a hall juncture. Hang a left. You will pass the ship gym and then the medlab is just beyond that."

"Thank you, Thirteen. How are things up there?" Aeric asked.

Tak surveyed the bridge. "Everything is fine. We will be finished our first hyperspace jump in sixteen minutes."

Edited July 27, 2007 by Drake

[Rogue 4]

"This is Three to unlucky number Thirteen. We're sending the astromech droids your way. Anybody want to place bets which one gets there first? I think it's a toss up between Kaden's droid who wants to get to him, and my droid who wants to get away from me." she laughed warmly.

***

His eyes felt heavy as he slowly woke up to the sound of footsteps and the rhythmic hum of low powered repulsorlifts beneath him. One lekku shuddered as he forced them open, trying to figure out where he was. He thought back. Everything seemed kind of hazy, as if it had been a bad dream. They infiltrated the ship; his squad pursued the stormtroopers; taking the bridge; stalking after the crazed Imperial Captain.

That slimeball called me a Wormie, didn't he?

He remembered that he had a pipe sticking out of his leg. How it got there was kind of foggy, but he bet it had something to do with a Stouker concussion rifle and Hazard Trooper gear.

Then they had gone off to shut down the gravity wells. Had he finished? He half expected a Stormtrooper escort, but instead when he opened his eyes he was greeted by the sight of Nima looking down at him in concern.

It might have just been whatever meds she had given him talking, but at that moment she had to be the most beautiful thing in the galaxy.

Edited July 27, 2007 by Rogue

[Drake 53]

Tak smiled at Layla's words over the comm. "Tell Sixxa I give him permission to use whatever means neccessary to win."