Episode I: Part 1

A loud crack and flash shook the humid evening air. Four meters away, a grayish alien tree, split wide from the lightning strike, fell to the jungle floor. From his vantage point in a crude shelter of rocks, Imperial Stormtrooper 3342 could see the dim trail through the lash of rain from the lightning storm. At the trail's end, sat a squat one-story building he had searched almost an hour to find.

Two more bolts of purple lighting descended into the jungle canopy. Clang, 3342's nickname among his squad mates, narrowed his eyes.

Never seen natural lightning come so regularly, he mused. I almost see a pattern to it. So, if I'm right, then there will be a break in all this in three, two and one.

On the count of one, he burst from the rocks, rushing through the trees, rain and wind. He came to a crashing stop against the building's durasteel doorframe and punched in a code into the door's keypad. The keypad's indicator light glared an angry red.

"Bantha Spit!"

He typed another code. The indicator light remained red. On the third try, the light turned green and the door slid open. Clang raced through the opening. Outside, another volley of purple lightning erupted. The door snapped shut behind him, locking out the local weather.

The trooper triggered the chin switch in his helmet to change between the low-light enhancement vision system in his helmet then the thermal version. Convinced he was alone, he changed back to the normal view and powered a small glowrod to illuminate the room.

"Now, where'd they put a console in here?" he muttered. He slipped between the odd crate and repulsorlift part until he uncovered a dusty console that still showed some signs of power. At a touch, the control screen flickered to life with an impressive array of on screen commands. Reflexively he checked his chronometer, "If I can hotwire a tramp freighter, I can figure this thing out." He sat down and tapped one of the on-screen menu choices. Abruptly, the screen showed a new menu list with a complicated wiring diagram. He sighed. "Demolitions are so much easier. "

Once the hiss and pop of the arc cutter finished, the airlock hatch opened easily to the dimly lit corridor beyond.

"Door clear." TK8321 said into his helmet comlink.

An Imperial Biker scout, TB2921, stepped through carefully, hold out blaster drawn and eyes sharp for any signs of motion. "Good work on the door, Echo."

"Thanks Sarge. Nothing to it." Echo replied and put away the portable arc cutter in the utility belt at his waist.

"Clear, lets move in." With a short nod to a second biker scout, and a woman dressed in a close-fitting gray jumpsuit, black tunic and hood, Sgt Jammer slipped down the corridor towards a door and terminal at the far end. Both the second scout and the dark garbed woman followed. When the far door obediently slid open, they stepped carefully through and were gone in a moment.

At the first open hatch, Echo stood, then walked through followed by the rest of Fireteams Alpha and Bravo, two of the three brother teams that composed his squad. They were only partway down the corridor when Jammer's voice crackled over their helmet comlinks.

"Station maintenance agrees with mission brief, no one's aboard. Ghost, Dron-Ilis and myself will do a sweep for anything odd the sensors might have missed. Jammer out."

Lieutenant Kells, standing two troopers back from Echo, thumbed the switch on his comlink. "Roger that. Check in on the top of every standard hour. Alpha and Bravo out." He slipped the comlink into the front pocket of his gray Imperial officer tunic then looked at the stormtroopers in the corridor with him. "We've got a station to make operational. Clang, Echo, break out that crate of parts we brought and get to station engineering. Make sure we're not about to lose any critical systems while we're here. The rest of you, get a move on, we've a relay station to get back online. We'll need damage assessments on the Observation array, CNC, station defense batteries and the central computer core. Anything else has to wait."

An hour and a half later and several decks above, Jammer rapped gloved fingers on a console while in thought. Nearby, his brother clone and trooper nicknamed Ghost, or TB2130, methodically read through station logs. On occasion, his dark complexion would turn into a deeper frown than he normally wore when he read something interesting. Nearby sat both scouts' helmets on a table. Jammer, while he was a clone from the same batch as Ghost, was more animated in his expressions. A subtle difference that sometimes was the only way to tell the clones apart.

"A station this size has a crew of what? Fifty, including a security squad? That many do not simply vanish."

"If killed quickly, they would."

"Then where are the signs of a ship docking? Blaster fire?"

Ghost looked up and stared silently at a wall for a moment, then opened a new log file to read. "The hunter was careful."

"Careful or not, something would have been noticed or recorded by station security."

"He was very careful."

Jammer rolled his eyes while the door to the small security office slid open. The trim, long black hair and athletic form of the Adept Gerri Dron-Ilis entered. She smiled slightly, and nodded towards Ghost and the terminal that held his attention. "Anything?"

Jammer shook his head. "Not yet. Normal entries. As if one moment they were there, the next not. You have any luck?"

Gerri brushed at her tunic instinctively to straighten it. The tunic was a dark brown cloth, with a black leather tabard-vest over it that matched her black armored boots. Under that she wore a set of close fitting gray coveralls. A style that held a passing resemblance to the Jedi tunics and garb of the Old Republic and the now vanished Jedi Order. The major difference here was this outfit was closer fitting and darker in shade. "Nothing I would call luck. A bloodstain, a burn mark. That, I would call luck."

"Been through command and control?"

Gerri shook her head. "No, just this deck. I was heading to CNC after here."

Ghost stopped scrolling through the logs and scowled. "Found something."

Jammer and Gerri walked over while Ghost explained.

"Ten hours past the last communication received, there was a power spike in the station's systems."

"Reactor breach?" Jammer offered.

Ghost shook his head. "No, this repeated at regular intervals. Like a switch being toggled." Gerri shuddered from a sudden thought.

"Where?" Her voice was a rough whisper.

"Observation off of CNC." By the time Ghost rose to follow Jammer, Gerri had raced from the room, a look of concern on her face.