The dimly blue radiance beyond the void-proof glass of the Grim Scythe fades as the Fury-class Interceptor drops out of hyperspace. A dull rumbling reverberates through the hull as the drive winds down. That mesmerizing blue is replaced with an ominous red-shift in the light as they emerge directly into the depths of the Dreighton Nebula. Here, within this cradle of stars, creation had not yet cooled.
Aeten.
Almost as soon as they arrive, the sensors begin to spit out error reports. She'd expected as much, but even still it was impressive to see how the massive star's highly potent radio-interference seemed to so effectively shut down even highly capable Imperial naval equipment. Here, they were blind. Sensor equipment failed to function through the radioactive noise of the region, and narrow-band communications were further disrupted by the nebula itself.
Blind, yes -- but invisible as well. Adastra taps at her command terminal, taking control of the vessel from the silent pilot droid besides her. A gentle push of the throttle begins their low-burn approach to their chosen fragment of Vorn's shattered station. The chunk had fallen into a decaying orbit around Aeten II, and would serve as the ideal spot for an ambush.
On final approach to the station, she finally caught sight of it -- the Khan's Wrath. Her other vessel had arrived, piloted by the second in command of her faux pirate crew, the Khanate. The ship's external lights flash in a quick pattern. With no way to communicate via comms relay, they'd fallen back on much older binary signalling.
"Station orbit on time. Two hours to shadow. Preparing distress beacon."
"Acknowledged. GS into place. No visual."
"Acknowledged."
With their simple coordination handled, Adastra releases control of the ship back to her droid. It responds as anticipated and begins to maneuver the Fury-class into a spot that it would be invisible to visual sensors; the near-lightless space between the station and the planet, amidst a myriad of other scraps of debris. Once in place, all non-essential systems are powered off that the Grim Scythe might appear (at first) to be nothing more than scrap doomed to a decaying orbit like the rest of the station.
Amanda Kyrne exhales a slow sigh as she flicks off the ship's external lights. A quick exchange of orders between her and the helmsman of the Ajuur-class ship is had, and the Wrath begins its slow approach to the station. Kyrne rises from her temporary place in the Captain's chair and steps forwards to the front of the bridge. Hell of a beautiful place, this.
She cannot help but admire the scene. The softly-glowing volcanic mass of Aeten II slowly encroaches upon the majority of the view from the bridge. Circling it, she occasional makes out orbiting shrapnel around the edges as it catches the light of the hidden star from which they hid. Slowly, one particular silhouette of jagged wreckage begins to dominate the viewport as they made an approach upon it.
"Ki, we're just about ready to anchor. Might want to sit down."
Shaken from the moment by her compatriot, she blinks away the brief lapse in focus. How was it she had found herself here? Her introspective appreciation of the moment could wait. She moves the length of the bridge back to the captain's chair, and set's herself upon it once more.
"Right. Just never seen a place like this. Soon as we are mounted to the outer hull, I want all power redirected as we planned. Count us down."
"Acknowledged." Several seconds pass. "...Ten, nine, eight..."
As the Wrath drifts into place, the team down in the cargo bay get to work preparing the landing gear for an atypical anchoring. A resounding 'thunk' reverberates through the ship's frame, and a crackle of intercom communications confirms they've successfully mounted. Now, to the task of diverting power externally and slicing into the high-output positional beacon.
Kyrne was a pilot, a captain (at times), and a soldier. She was not a slicer. Yet, from the perch of her seat, she'd still find herself admiring the apparent spell-craft her fellows seemed to work upon the station's carcass. The duo working to seize control of the structure mutter quietly between each other until, after nearly half an hour, the younger of the pair of twins turns to announce the results.
"Systems nominal. Or... well, as close at they can be. We're pretty sure the relay is going to fry after the first pulse, but we can juice it up to pierce through the nebula, at least. How long until we're fully submerged in the eclipse?"
By that, he'd meant 'how long until the giant nascent star stopped bombarding the station with enough radiation for long enough that the source location of the beacon was lost', but Kyrne understood him well enough. The helmsman answers for her.
"Fifteen minutes."
Adastra paced. She was not impatient, per se -- but she couldn't help but feel a nagging anxiety at the back of her mind. Her and her silent droid pilot had been waiting nearly an hour and a half by this point, and with her ship both sensor-blind and unreachable by comms that time passed in agonizing slowness. She'd just moved to step away from the cockpit again when a sensor flares to life.
Moments later, it dies again. Sitting down in her chair and sliding it back into place at the controls, she tabs to the captured data. A grin splits her cold expression. She laughs, and exhales a sharp sigh of relief.
Coordinates packaged in the standard formatting that a distress beacon would have.
She flicks through the controls on her dash, bringing on several additional screens on which she places displays of any external cameras the Fury-class has. Drifting debris, the black and crimson splotch of the planet below, and the station were the primary characters in the world's most boring reality show.
Four hours pass.
Slumped in her chair, her eyes felt heavy as she watched each screen intently. She was almost certain her eyes had gone bloodshot from staring for so long, and when she closed her eyes she felt them water from the strain. When she opened them again, her attention snapped to the faintest hint of movement in the distance.
She'd have missed the approaching ship and confused it for orbiting debris catching the light had it not been moving in the opposite direction. She slowly begins to power the ship back online, leaving off the shield, as well as the accelerator. Until the time came for the ambush to spring shut, she'd be relying on the minuscule maneuvering thrusters meant for navigation within space ports and capital hangars. The Grim Scythe begins to slowly reorient out of the aimless tumbling orbit it had been in.
With her preparations complete, she need merely sit and wait. She watches the station closely, at least a little impressed that not even she could make out the Ajuur-class vessel nestled within the ruin. Minutes pass in agonizing silence. Adastra spends them alternating between watching for her ship to make a move, and trying to discern the model of ship their target flew.
She supposes she will not get the chance to discern that before combat begins -- Ziitch's ship dispenses a smaller one; a shuttle craft clearly intended to recon the station and discern if it is worth investigating further. For Adastra, however, this meant they'd have easy captives to leverage later.
As soon as the shuttle is too far from it's parent vessel to safely make the return trip, she sees the crimson hull of the Wrath suddenly emerge from out of sight. Within moments, the illegally modified cargo vessel begins to bombard Ziitch's ship with turbolaser fire. Ziitch's crew are quick to return fire, but not before the shields power back online and protect it.
Adastra runs her hand along the dashboard, flicking on all systems. Shield. Weapons. Primary engines. She slams the throttle forwards and her ship explodes out of the eclipse of Aeten II. A duo of fighters emerge from the other vessel to help thwart the ambush, but the Scythe is lethal in it's tightly aimed bursts of anti-fighter lasers.
One detonates. Then the next. She sweeps in low, free-firing her interceptor's missile launchers. With sensors blind, several of them miss, but enough of them strike true that she manages to cripple Ziitch's defense weaponry. She sees the Wrath's shield fail them as a few lower-yield turrets manage to punch through, but the damage is to cargo bays that should be empty at this time.
The return volley is a bloody one. Turbolasers bombard Ziitch's ship and strip it of several more defense options. As the Wrath sweeps out and around, a broadside volley catches on the ship's engines. A chain reaction rips the hull in half and leaves it dead in the water.
Perfection. Without much effort, she cleans up the last of the defense turrets and clears for a final, utterly lethal volley from the Wrath. Explosions rip through the bridge, and even as the ship dies there is no flight of escape pods. Where would they escape to? A planetary landing meant catapulting oneself directly into the planet's mantle.
A prolonged series of shots into the ship's core sets off the reactor. When the blindingly bright flat of light has passed, the ship has been nearly cracked in two with a building-sized crater at it's center. She hands controls over to the droid and moves towards the back bay.
By the time she has boarded the Wrath, the shuttle had already been seized and it's occupants kidnapped. Whilst another crew scraped the wreckage of Ziitch's ship for it's blackbox, Adastra would do as she had been told. She makes her way into the brig to meet her new guests.
By the time they have expired from the numerous injuries inflicted upon them, she had extracted all she could from the pair.
"Get us out of here. We'll send word as soon as we have reached Imperial space."
