Table of Contents
COPYRIGHT
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
“Any sign of the Nallastian freighter?” Captain Breakiron asked, searching the skies.
“No, sir,” answered the helmsman of the Fondor Space Patrol ship, a twenty-five-meter-long vessel that was distinguished by its dual-flared radiator fins.
“Keep scanning,” Breakiron ordered.
“Yes, sir.”
From his seat on the bridge, Breakiron looked through the cockpit’s main viewport to the surrounding starscape, searching for any telltale sign of the missing freighter. Seeing nothing but distant stars, Breakiron grimaced.
The hyperdrive-equipped freighter and its five member crew had been in transit from the distant planet Esseles. According to the Esseles Space port Authority, it had departed on schedule through the correct hyperspace vector. But when the freighter was late for its arrival at its base on Nallastia, an inhabited moon in the Fondor system, the Nallastians alerted the Fondor Space Patrol. Five hours later, Breakiron and his team were still searching.
What had interrupted the freighter’s journey? Breakiron could imagine any number of bad things: engine or navicomputer failure, decompression, collision with an asteroid or another vessel, capture by pirates or slavers, mutiny… the list was endless. He swiveled in his command seat to face the remaining member of his small crew, the patrol ship’s navigator. “You’re certain we’re looking in the right quadrant?”
“Yes, sir,” replied the navigator. “That is, unless the freighter returned from Esseles by a different route through hyperspace.”
“Nallastians aren’t risk takers,” Breakiron said dismissively. “They would have stuck to the established route so they could return to the Fondor system by way of the designated vector. They would never…Wait!”
Jumping at the captain’s outburst, the navigator looked up from his console. “Sir?”
Breakiron pointed at the viewport. “Look there, below that star cluster. A dim sliver of light. It’s moving.”
The navigator and helmsman followed the captain’s gaze and located the object.
“Is it the freighter?” Breakiron asked.
The navigator looked at a screen on his console and answered, “Unknown, sir. It’s not appearing on our sensors.”
“No reading at all?” Breakiron asked, keeping his eyes locked on the moving sliver.
“None, sir,” replied the navigator. Anticipating the captain’s next question, the navigator added, “All our systems are operational, but I’m getting a dead signal from our electrophoto receptors as well as the full-spectrum transceivers.”
“Strange,” Breakiron commented. “Any chance this unidentified object is jamming our sensor array?”
“Unknown, sir.”
Breakiron turned to the helmsman. “What’s our shield and weapons status?”
“Fully operational, sir.”
“Then we’re not out of this game yet,” Breakiron said dryly. Aiming a finger at the navigator, he said, “Get a visual on the electrotelescope.”
The navigator looked confused. “But, sir, the sensors aren’t—”
“Use your eyes!” Breakiron snapped. “And adjust the scope manually.”
The navigator peered into a recessed oval monitor and manipulated the electrotelescope’s controls. It was frustrating work. The device was powerful enough to detect small freighters at distances of up to five light-minutes, but it was entirely dependent on data received by the sensor array. The navigator did his best.
“Well?” asked Breakiron.
“Sorry, sir,” the navigator reported. “The object keeps traveling out of my viewer, and I can’t focus on it.”
Breakiron drummed his fingers on his seat’s armrest. “It might be the missing freighter. We’d better check it out. Check our shields and move in.”
As the patrol ship sped toward the unidentified object, it appeared to slowly grow and elongate within the frame of the bridge’s viewport. The sliver became a thin stick, the stick became an oblong, the oblong transformed into a thick cylinder, and then the cylinder became…
A derelict starship.
It appeared to be about four hundred meters long, sixteen times the length of the Fondor Space Patrol ship, and it drifted at an odd angle across the airless void. Illuminated only by the light of the Fondor system’s sun, the derelict’s gray-metal hull was pocked by numerous small dents but otherwise appeared intact. At the stern, three tapered, swept-back wings were affixed to a single bulky sublight engine that was scarred by black scorch marks.
The helmsman gaped. “That is definitely not the Nallastian freighter.”
“No kidding,” Breakiron replied. “Still nothing from the sensors?”
The navigator shook his head. “According to the sensors, we should be looking at empty space.”
“Then something must be wrong with our sensor array,” Breakiron said. Eyeing the cylindrical derelict, he inquired, “Either of you familiar with the design of this heap?”
“No, sir,” answered the two crewmen in unison. “The dents on the hull were probably caused by micrometeorites,” Breakiron observed. “Looks like it’s been adrift for a long, long time.” He surveyed the derelict’s stern and said, “There’s a marking on that wing. Bring us in closer.”
The helmsman matched the speed of the drifting derelict and maneuvered the patrol ship so they had a clear view of the wing through the viewport. The marking turned out to be an icon, faded by many years of radiation exposure. The icon was a gold circle that was divided in half by a single white line.
Everyone in the Fondor system had heard of the story of the starship that bore the sign of the divided gold circle. There was a moment of silence in the patrol ship. The silence ended when the helmsman gasped, “The Sun Runner.”
“It can’t be,” said the navigator. “The Sun Runner is just a legend.”
“Every legend has an origin,” Breakiron noted, his own voice a cautious whisper. “And we may very well be looking at the legend itself right now.”
“You…you really think it’s the Sun Runner?” the navigator stammered. “I mean, if it is, it has to be what…three thousand years old?”
“More like four thousand,” Breakiron corrected. “Deploy a salvage-claim buoy immediately.”
The helmsman punched a button, and a torpedoshaped buoy launched from the patrol ship and flew to the battered starship. The buoy extended its retractable manipulators, clamped onto the derelict’s hull, and began blinking yellow and red lights in a steady alternating sequence.
“The buoy’s secured,” the helmsman said. “Should we send a transmission to notify space patrol headquarters of our find?”
“We can’t,” Breakiron answered. “Not with our transceiver on the blink. And even if we could send a transmission, there’s a good chance the Nallastians would intercept it, and then they’d accuse us of hunting the Sun Runner instead of trying to find their missing freighter. Fondor Space Patrol would never hear the end of it, and neither would we.”
“Then what should we do, sir?” the helmsman asked. “I mean, if this is the Sun Runner, we can’t just leave it out here.”
Breakiron thought for a moment, then asked the navigator, “Can you establish the derelict’s coordinates and current trajectory without the sensors?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Do it
,” Breakiron ordered. “Then enter the data into Little Brother, and send him home.”
Little Brother was the nickname that the crew had given to their vessel’s Seeker, an orb-shaped messenger droid. Equipped with a scaled-down hyperdrive, the Seeker was designed to make a one way journey through hyperspace and deliver confidential information to a specific recipient. In Little Brother’s case, the recipient would be the Director of Fondor Space Patrol.
It took the navigator fifty-five seconds to prepare and deploy Little Brother. Ejecting from the patrol ship via a pressurized hatch, the messenger droid quickly located the position of the Fondor system, then vanished into hyperspace.
“Since we’re still in the Tapani sector, Little Brother will reach Fondor in about thirty-five minutes,” the navigator reported with confidence.
“Good work,” Captain Breakiron said. “Now, much as I hate to leave this relic, we must resume our search for the freighter. Take us out, helmsman.”
The patrol ship began to move away from the derelict’s stem, but it had not traveled far before it was struck by a sudden, bone-jarring jolt.
Captain Breakiron nearly fell out of his seat.
“What happened?” he shouted. “Did we hit something?”
Before the helmsman or navigator could answer, all of the bridge’s lights blinked out. Then the helmsman exclaimed, “Captain! We’ve lost all power!”
Breakiron looked through the patrol ship’s viewport. They were no longer moving away from the derelict.
They were headed straight for it!
The three spherical combat remotes hovered into a triangulated attack configuration, targeted Anakin Skywalker, and fired. With his eyes closed, Anakin counted off three shots and instinctively sensed the trajectory of each approaching projectile. He moved fast, tilting his head back and bringing up his lightsaber at a sharp angle. As one energy bolt whizzed past his ear and buried itself in the polarized wall of the droid hold, the other two bolts connected with his lightsaber. He slammed the bolts back at two of the remotes, then spun and brought up his lightsaber fast, cleaving through the third automaton. The shattered remotes clattered on the metal floor.
From the droid hold’s hatch, Anakin heard his Master’s voice ask, “Preparing for our mission to Fondor?”
Anakin opened his eyes, deactivated his lightsaber, and turned to see Obi-Wan Kenobi. The droid hold was located on the mid-deck of the Republic cruiser Unitive, a scarlet-colored, 117-meter-long diplomatic vessel that was traveling through hyperspace to the Fondor system. Behind Anakin, three astromech droids, two power droids, and a sanitation droid were braced against the wall. The astromechs rotated their domed heads to view the bearded man who had just entered the hold. Obi-Wan did not look pleased.
“Imagine my surprise, finding you here,” Obi-Wan continued, “after I instructed you to go to your stateroom and meditate.”
“I did meditate, Master,” Anakin replied as he clipped his lightsaber to his belt. “But I was restless.”
Obi-Wan sighed. “Well, now that you’ve stretched your limbs, perhaps you’d care to join me on the bridge. We’re about to exit hyperspace.”
“Yes, Master,” Anakin said. He picked up his robe from where he’d placed it, on the flat top of one of the power droids, and took a step toward the hatch.
Obi-Wan held up a halting hand and glanced at the remains of the three remotes that were scattered across the floor. “But first,” he said, “you may clean up your mess.”
“But the sanitation droid can—”
“You didn’t have to destroy the remotes, Anakin.”
Anakin shrugged. With one hand, he made a sweeping gesture at the remotes’ fused pieces, using the Force to make them rise from the floor. A moment later, the debris whipped through the air and neatly passed through a trash slot in the wall.
Obi-Wan raised his eyebrows at Anakin’s handiwork, then commented, “If the sanitation droid develops an inferiority complex, it will be your fault.”
“I can live with that,” Anakin replied with a grin. He followed Obi-Wan out of the droid hold and into the mid-deck corridor. Heading for the lift that would carry them to the upper deck, Anakin said, “Master, have you any idea why the Jedi Council has sent us to Fondor?”
“You know as much as I,” Obi-Wan replied as they entered the lift. “Our orders are to pick up Bultar Swan at Fondor Spaceport. I trust she’ll fill us in from there.”
The lift came to a stop, and the door hissed open. The Jedi exited into the cruiser’s crew lounge, then walked down a corridor until they arrived behind the captain’s seat on the Unitive’s bridge.
Captain Pietrangelo, like her crew, wore a crisp blue uniform and black leather boots. In front of the captain, two copilots operated the controls that were positioned under the main viewport, through which they could see the cruiser’s progress through hyperspace.
Anakin squinted at the bright cascade that filled the viewport. As a child on the desert planet Tatooine, Anakin had often dreamed of the day he would journey through hyperspace, the dimension that allowed for travel at speeds faster than light. He had left Tatooine when he was nine years old, half his life ago. Now eighteen, and with many interstellar missions behind him, he still gazed at hyperspace with a sense of wonder, as if it were a confirmation that good dreams could come true.
Anakin didn’t even want to think about the other kind of dreams. He did not know whether he should tell Obi-Wan, but his recent efforts to meditate had been interrupted by disturbing visions of darkness and distorted memories. Anakin wished he could forget he had once been a slave.
Even more, he wished he knew if his mother was all right. The last time he had seen her, she was still a slave, owned by Watto the junk dealer on Tatooine. Before Anakin left her, he had promised he would become a Jedi and return to free her. Nine years later, he remained determined to keep that promise.
The Unitive shuddered slightly as it dropped out of hyperspace. Outside the viewport, light seemed to wash past the cruiser and dissolve into darkness, while distant stars presented themselves in apparently fixed positions across the ever-expanding cosmos.
They were in the Tapani sector of the Colonies region of the galaxy. The nearest and most brilliant star in view was the sun Fondor, which shared its name with the most heavily populated planet in the system. Completely industrialized ages ago, the planet was covered by factories and cooling towers, and was famed throughout the galaxy for its extensive orbital starship yards.
The Unitive angled toward Fondor Spaceport, which, like the yards, was suspended in planetary orbit. The spaceport was a sprawling affair of linked modular hangars and docking platforms, built up and modified many times over several hundred years. It was a busy location, with dozens of starships and shuttles landing and departing at any given time.
As the Unitive descended upon a wide docking platform, Anakin nodded toward the planet that loomed outside the viewport and commented, “Fondor looks peaceful enough from here.”
“Looks are often deceiving,” Obi-Wan replied.
* * *
“I’d welcome you to Fondor, but we’re not staying,” Bultar Swan said as she boarded the Unitive.
“Always a pleasure to see you too, Bultar,” Obi-Wan responded wryly as he fell into step beside her and headed back to the cruiser’s bridge.
Bultar Swan was a Jedi Knight, and, like Obi-Wan, she was human. She wore a pale aqua tunic under a dark leather cloak, and her lightsaber’s polished hilt gleamed at her side. She asked, “Where is your Padawan?”
“Waiting on the bridge.”
“I have heard he is strong with the Force.”
Obi-Wan was cautious, even with other Jedi, of discussing the extent of Anakin’s awesome powers. His own Master, the late Qui-Gon Jinn, had told the Jedi Council that he believed Anakin was the prophetic chosen one who would bring balance to the Force. Few beings beyond the members of the Council knew of Qui-Gon’s assertion, and Obi-Wan thought it was best to ke
ep it that way. If word leaked out that Anakin Skywalker had the potential to become one of the most powerful Jedi of all time, it would most certainly make him a target of those who opposed the Jedi.
“He still has much to learn,” Obi-Wan replied truthfully.
“Then I hope he’s a fast learner,” said Bultar.
“And why is that?”
“Because we may need a great deal of strength if we’re going to prevent a civil war.”
“Have either of you ever heard of an ancient starship named the Sun Runner?” Bultar Swan asked.
“No,” Obi-Wan answered. Anakin shook his head. The three Jedi were seated at the round table within the Unitive’s salon pod. After the brief layover at Fondor Spaceport, the Republic cruiser was once again soaring through hyperspace, its course established by a set of navigational coordinates that Bultar had given to the captain. Anakin could not enjoy the spectacle of hyperspace travel from where he was sitting because the salon pod—for security purposes—was without viewports.
“Four thousand years ago,” Bultar began, “Fondor and most of its moons were already being exploited for their raw materials, but one moon escaped industrialization when it was purchased by a man who proclaimed himself the Margrave Octan.”
“Octan?” Obi-Wan repeated. “As in the royal Octans of the Darpa sector?”
“The very same,” Bultar confirmed. “The Margrave planned to terraform the moon, which he named Nallastia, after his wife, and establish a colony. To transport his family and 867 colonists, the Margrave commissioned a starship, a four hundred meter-long Corellia StarDrive Alpha-class heavy transport named the Sun Runner. According to legend, the ship also carried three power gems, said to be able to disrupt magnetic defense shields. It is believed that the Margrave’s ancestors had obtained their wealth by using these power gems to overtake enemy ships and seize their property.”
“You mean, the Octans were pirates?” Anakin asked.
“More or less,” Bultar allowed. “Some historians believe the Margrave kept the power gems on the Sun Runner, but others believe he may have hidden them somewhere on Nallastia. In any event, a week after the Sun Runner’s arrival at Nallastia, Margrave Octan and his crew left their families and other colonists to make a supply run to the planet Mrlsst. But before it could reach Mrlsst, the Sun Runner vanished.”
Star Wars Adventures 001 - Hunt the Sun Runner Page 1
