“That won't be necessary," Veeren said. “You will do whatever you can to return me to Chiss space at once. If you do not, the ruling families of the Chiss Ascendancy will learn of the attack on Station lfpe’a, and will assume that the Galactic Republic and the Separatist Alliance have joined forces against the Chiss. Your Chancellor will be notified that the Ascendancy acknowledges the attack as a declaration of war.”
“What?!” Nuru gasped. “But we were all victims of the Separatist attack.”
Veeren closed her eyes, held them shut, and then opened them slowly, her gaze now directed at the empty area of the deck between her and Nuru. She said, “I am Aristocra Sev'eere’nuruodo of the Second Ruling Family of the Chiss Ascendancy. You will receive no other information from me as long as you hold me captive.”
“Captive?” Nuru said. “Aristocra, we aren’t holding—”
Veeren‘s eyes flicked to Nuru's face, and her expression was so severe that it silenced him at once. “I am Aristocra Sev'eere'nuruodo,” she repeated, “of the Second Ruling Family of the Chiss Ascendancy.”
Nuru could not recall ever having met anyone who frustrated him as much as Veeren. He took a deep breath, exhaled slowly, then looked at Sharp and Knuckles. “The Aristocra is not our prisoner,” he said. “Make sure she’s comfortable. But keep an eye on her and don‘t let her touch anything. For all we know, she's responsible for luring the Separatist attack on her own station.”
“That’s ridiculous!” Veeren snapped.
Nuru, the three troopers, and Cleaver looked at Veeren. She realized that she had failed to remain silent, and she lowered her gaze to the deck.
Nuru wasn’t sure, but he thought he saw Veeren’s cheeks flush to a slightly deeper shade of blue.
Knuckles noticed Veeren’s color change, too, and muttered, “Is there a Chiss word for embarrassed?”
Nuru kept his gaze on Veeren. Using the Force, he sensed that she was not only flustered, but also angry. And frightened.
“Aristocra,” Nuru said, “you have made it clear that you don't trust me. If you choose to remain silent, I doubt our relationship will improve. Still, you have my promise that we shall make every effort to return you to Chiss space as soon as possible. And I want very much to assure you that neither I nor anyone aboard this ship alerted the Separatists to your station‘s location.”
Veeren looked up at Nuru. She said nothing. Nuru assumed she was ready to listen.
“As I understand the facts,” Nuru continued, “you provided the navigational coordinates to Chancellor Palpatine, and he relayed them directly to us. The Chancellor expressed concern over the possibility of Separatist spies in Chiss space, and you maintain that unidentified spacecraft were recently sighted near your borders. If you transmitted the coordinates to the Chancellor, is it possible that the Separatists intercepted the transmission?”
Veeren pursed her lips, then replied, “I am Aristocra Sev'eere'nuruodo of the Second Ruling Family of the Chiss Ascendancy.”
Nuru grimaced, then shook his head sadly. Tearing his gaze away from Veeren, he looked to Knuckles and Sharp. “We have a long ride ahead of us,” he said, “I'm going to the cockpit. Don’t let the Aristocra out of your sight.”
He turned for the passage tube and was about to exit the main cabin when he sensed another emotion radiating from the Chiss girl who remained seated on the couch, watching his back. The emotion was so intense that he came to a dead stop.
She hates me.
He turned and looked back at Veeren. Red eyes ablaze, her expression might have appeared unchanged to the troopers, but Nuru felt the difference, an increased tension in the air. She radiated fury.
Nuru‘s brow furrowed, and then he turned away and proceeded into the passage tube. He wondered why Veeren hated him. He doubted there was any point in asking.
An alarm blared in the cockpit, waking Nuru. He had fallen asleep in the copilot's seat, which Chatterbox had vacated so Nuru could get some rest and also keep his distance from Veeren, who remained in the main cabin. Nuru sat up fast and straight, and looked at Gunn just as she was slapping the alarm off. He said, “What‘s wrong?”
Gunn was in her own seat. Keeping one hand on the flight controls and both eyes at the luminescent flow of hyperspace outside the cockpit, she said, “We're gonna exit.”
Surprised, Nuru automatically buckled his safety belt as he turned his head to examine a navigational readout. According to its inset chronometer, almost ten hours had passed since the Hasty Harpy had left Chiss space. He said, “We're not supposed to exit for another three days!”
Gunn activated the intercom and shouted, “Everyone hang on! We're dropping out!”
The Harpy shuddered. Nuru’s safety belt bit into his lap as the freighter practically tumbled nut of hyperspace. The hyperdrive automatically winded down at the same moment that the sublight engines kicked on. One of the sensor scopes emitted a loud burst of static. Outside the cockpit, distant stars rolled into view, followed by the tendrils of a wide cloud of gas and dust. The Harpy had arrived at the edge of an interstellar nebula.
Gunn turned down the volume on the sensor scopes with one hand while she used the other to tap the flight controls, bringing the Harpy to what felt like a slow, hovering stop. Nuru realized he’d been gripping the rim of the control console, and he eased his grip as he gazed out the cockpit windows. Although the nebula dominated the view, he could see many distant stars as well as what appeared to be a nearby star. Despite his extensive study of astronomy at the Jedi Temple, which included memorizing stellar configurations, constellations, and nebulae from numerous vantage points throughout the galaxy, nothing outside the cockpit looked familiar.
Nuru said, “What star system is this?”
“Just gimme a sec, will ya?” Gunn replied as her hands danced over the controls, calling up a diagnostic readout as she glanced at a navigational scope. She cursed under her breath, then readjusted the scope and checked it again. “Well, the good news is we didn't suffer any damage.”
Turning to face Gunn, Nuru said, “But where are we?”
“That‘s the bad news.” Gunn made another adjustment to the scope. “I don’t have the faintest clue, and the navi-computer doesn't recognize this sector, either. And just to top things off, radioactive interference is scrambling the sensors. The hyperspace compass is on the blink, too. We may be officially off the charts.”
“But we must be somewhere on the route that the Chancellor provided. Right?”
“Don’t make me repeat myself,” Gunn said. “All I know for sure is how many hours we were in hyperspace, and that we’re not back where we started, or any place we've been before.”
Nuru glanced at the navigational scope, then said, “Can we do another emergency transposal to get us back to Chiss space?”
Gunn scowled. “If the last transposal failed to retrace our path, there’s no tellin' where wind up if we try again!” She shook her head. “This doesn’t make sense. The transposal should have worked.”
“You've done it before?”
“I’ve done most things before,” Gunn said irritably. “But I’ve never fallen out of hyperspace at the wrong time!”
Nuru returned his gaze to the nebula, and realized the Harpy was drifting. A moment later, a dark void came into view at the edge of the nebula. Nuru‘s eyes grew wide. He said, “Maybe we didn't just fall out of hyperspace.”
“What do you mean?”
“Maybe something pulled us out.”
“Huh?” Gunn looked at Nuru. “What are you talkin’ about?” She asked as she followed his gaze through the cockpit windows. Then she saw the dark void, too.
It was a black hole.
“A black hole?” Sharp said to Nuru. “A real one?”
“No, a fake one, you lummox!" Gunn interrupted. “Of course, it's real! Are you sure your name isn't Not-So-Sharp?”
“Sorry,” Sharp said. Gesturing to the three other troopers in the Hasty Harpy‘s main cabin, he c
ontinued, “We learned about black holes during our training, but none of us has ever seen one before.”
Gunn rolled her eyes. “Far be it from me to spoil your holiday, boys," she said, “but in case you didn't know-”
“Captain Gunn,” Nuru said.
“-a black hole isn‘t exactly a tourist attraction, or a place to go for-”
“Captain Gunn, please!” Nuru made a discreet gesture to the acceleration couch, where Veeren was seated. Cleaver stood beside Veeren, watching her. Veeren was staring at the deck. Nuru suspected she might be in a state of shock.
Nuru reached toward the wall and pressed a button. A panel slid back from the wall, revealing a viewscreen that displayed a periscopic view of the surrounding star system. Nuru adjusted the scope to bring the black hole to the center of the viewscreen. Shifting his gaze hack to the troopers, he continued, “I believe this dark void is an intermediate-mass black hole. Obviously, we’re outside the radius, beyond the pull of its event horizon, or else the gravitational forces would have crushed us already. However, the hole's radiation seems to have rendered the Harpy’s sensors useless. We can’t determine our precise distance from the hole, or even measure its gravitational radiation. That’s really all we know about our present position.”
Breaker said, “Commander, do you think the black hole's gravity yanked us out of hyperspace?”
“It's certainly possible,” Nuru said. “What's puzzling is that we were supposed to be on a transposal course, heading back the same route through hyperspace that delivered us to Chiss space. But if we're on the exact same route, we should have bypassed this sector without any difficulty.”
“In other words,” Gunn said as she moved beside Chatterbox, “it's highly likely that we left Chiss space on an altogether different hyperlane. Don’t ask me how that could’ve happened, because I really don’t know. Chatterbox entered the transposal commands correctly, just like I taught him.”
Looking, at Gunn and Chatterbox, Nuru said, “Right before we made the jump from Chiss space, we swerved to avoid hitting a droid starfighter. Did that cause us to enter the hyperspace portal at the wrong angle? I mean, would that have altered our Course?”
Gunn chuckled. “I don't know how much you know about navi-computers,” she said, “but mine's a top-of-the-line Microaxial. We could‘ve approached the portal from any angle and our approach vector would have been automatically corrected.”
Nuru considered what Gunn had said, then responded, “Are you absolutely certain that we won't return to Chiss space if we try another transposal?”
Gunn shrugged. “We might return to the vicinity of the space station, or what's left of it. But given our proximity to a black hole in the Unknown Regions, and the fact that the navigational sensors aren't working, we might wind up heading straight into the black hole instead. All bets are off.”
The group was silent for a moment as they contemplated their situation, then Knuckles said, “If we didn‘t travel back the same way we came, is it possible we’re still in Chiss space?”
Nuru lifted his eyebrows. “Good question,” he commented. “But there's only one person on board who might know the answer.” He looked again at Veeren, and the others followed his gaze.
Veeren continued to stare at the deck.
“Aristocra,” Nuru said as he stepped toward the seated girl, “if you’ve been listening, then you're aware that in a very unexpected predicament. If you have any knowledge of black holes in Chiss space, or of a specific black hole within ten hours of travel through hyperspace from your-”
Nuru was interrupted by a noise like thunder at the same moment that the Harpy was struck by a violent shock wave. Everything that wasn’t bolted down within the cabin's interior went flying. Nuru fell toward Veeren, but stopped short when his chest met a length of metal. It was Cleaver's arm, which had lashed out to catch Nuru. Cleaver swung Nuru onto the couch beside Veeren, who held tight to her safety belt.
Gunn and the troopers had been knocked off their feet. The troopers rose fast, reaching for any surface area that provided a grip or traction. Gunn scrambled up from the deck and glanced at the viewscreen that Nuru had activated. On the viewscreen, bright lights streamed past and burst against the Harpy's shields.
Gunn shouted, “Chatterbox! Move it!” She darted into the passage tube that led to the cockpit. Chatterbox raced after her.
Another explosion. Another shock wave. The remaining troopers had braced themselves for the impact, but ducked as various bits of debris sailed and bounced across the cabin's interior. Cleaver clutched at the side of the couch while he adjusted his body to shield both Nuru and Veeren from the debris.
“Stay with the Aristocra!” Nuru shouted at Cleaver as he vaulted past the droid and into the passage tube. A third explosion launched Nuru against the tube's curved ceiling. Twisting his body as he returned to the deck, he landed on his feet and sprinted to the cockpit.
Moving up behind Gunn and Chatterbox, Nuru gazed past their shoulders and through the cockpit windows to see three starships hovering close to the Harpy. He immediately recognized two long, needle-like ships as old Vangaard Pathfinders, and was fairly certain that a saucer-shaped vessel was an Ugor salvage ship.
Three small starfighters whipped past the Harpy's cockpit. Nuru didn't recognize any of them, but the third passed so closely that he involuntarily flinched. Before he could comment, yet another ship, an armored frigate, came into view, moving ominously into position directly above the Harpy. Nuru guessed its length to he at least two hundred meters. The frigate resembled a massive hammer attached to an assortment of thrusters, and it moved at a sidelong angle, displaying its portside hull. The hull was blistered with turbolaser emplacements and quad batteries, and all were aimed at the Harpy.
Nuru said, “Pirates.”
“Ya think?” Gunn said. “I wonder if they speak Basic.”
Four more starfighters swooped past the cockpit. Nuru leaned past Gunn and looked at the scopes. From what he could see, the Harpy’s sensors were still only picking up static signals, but a moment later, the commo board sounded with a general override broadcast. “Attention, Corellian transport!” a deep voice erupted from the comm. “Shut down your engines, lock all systems except commo, and prepare to be boarded.”
Gunn muttered, “They do speak Basic.”
“If you are carrying blasters,” the deep voice continued, “leave them in your cockpit. If you attempt to escape, we will open fire.”
“Stang!” Gunn cursed as she brought her fist down on the edge of the commo board. “I'm getting pretty sick of people telling me to shut down my weapons!”
Nuru craned his neck back to look at the freighter overhead. “With all the firepower they have trained on us, and our lack of navigational sensors, I don’t think we have much choice.”
Gunn cursed again as she shut down energy to the Harpy’s laser cannon. Nuru’s mind began racing, trying to think of a way to protect Veeren and everyone else on board. Looking at Gunn, he said, “You‘ve dealt with pirates before?”
Gunn chuckled. “Hasn’t everyone?”
“Can you think of any way to keep them off the Harpy?”
“No,” Gunn said truthfully, “but I might be able to stall them.”
“Then do it!”
Without hesitation, Gunn pressed a button on the commo board. Adopting a nervous tone, she replied, “Oh, thank goodness you answered our distress signal! Do you have a tech droid who can fix a reactor leak and a-”
Gunn interrupted herself by pressing a switch to break the connection. “That ruse should buy us a few minutes,” she said as she leaned away from the commo. “If they think the ship is contaminated, they'll send over a droid or some other loser first.” She reached down to remove the compact blaster pistol that she kept in her right boot, got up, and placed the pistol on her seat. “Let them find at least one blaster, and they won’t look too hard for others.”
Nuru said, “I’m not leaving my lightsabers
,”
“I didn't expect you would,” Gunn said. “C’mon, you two.” She moved past Chatterbox and Nuru, heading into the passage tube.
“We can't let them take the Aristocra,” Nuru said as he followed Chatterbox and Gunn to the main Cabin. “Is there any place she can be concealed?”
“Nowhere they wouldn't find her eventually,” Gunn said.
They entered the main cabin, and found Breaker, Sharp, and Knuckles fully suited in their armor, holding their blaster weapons ready. Cleaver stood beside Veeren, who remained seated and wore a stern expression as she looked at the cabin’s viewscreen, on which the enemy ships were visible. Breaker said, “What’s the situation, Commander?”
“We're surrounded by pirates,” Nuru said. “At least four ships and seven starfighters. They've demanded that we surrender our weapons and prepare to be boarded. If I can talk with their leader, I might be able to negotiate for the safety of-”
“Negotiate?!” Gunn said. “With pirates? Forget that!”
Nuru asked, “What do you suggest, Captain Gunn?”
Gunn surveyed everyone in the cabin. “I know a thing or two about how pirates think,” she said. “If we're all going to survive, the pirates have to believe each one of us is uniquely valuable, and not in any way expendable. But under no circumstances can they learn that Nuru is a Jedi.”
“Why?” said Sharp.
Gunn scowled at Sharp. “Because pirates don't like Jedi, and our goal is to stay alive. Better to pretend we’re willing to be friendly with them than try to defy them, at least at first. We just need to stick together. Unfortunately, there’s one person on board that I'm not sure I can count on.” Then she turned to Veeren and added, “You listening to me, little lady?”
Veeren lifted her gaze to Gunn, but remained silent.
“You're smart to keep your mouth shut,” Gunn said. “Because if you think your ‘I'm the Aristocra’ routine will cut you any slack with pirates, you may as well jump out of the airlock right now. And if you do anything to endanger the rest of us, I will shove you our personally. Got that?”
Star Wars - The Clone Wars - Secret Missions #2 - Curse of the Black Hole Pirates Page 5
