CFH1: The Adventure Begins - Mon 27/04/20 11:22 UTC
Quote
Star Wars Opening Crawl
The Galaxy is in chaos! Between star systems communications are failing.
The REPUBLIC has not recovered from the destruction of its capital and the RESISTANCE is left isolated without support.
Now, the SITH ETERNAL have risen under a phantom Emperor, threatening to join with the FIRST ORDER and bring an age of darkness to the Galaxy.
But there has been an awakening in the FORCE. A new generation of heroes discover they are more powerful than they could have imagined....
The Galaxy is in chaos! Between star systems communications are failing.
The REPUBLIC has not recovered from the destruction of its capital and the RESISTANCE is left isolated without support.
Now, the SITH ETERNAL have risen under a phantom Emperor, threatening to join with the FIRST ORDER and bring an age of darkness to the Galaxy.
But there has been an awakening in the FORCE. A new generation of heroes discover they are more powerful than they could have imagined....
A long-legged zymod lizard scurries along a thick vine, hung like rigging between trees, then freezes as it hears branches snap. Its chameleon-like eyes pan around separately, scaly hide changing colour to the background.
It squeaks as R2-D2 thuds into it, the astromech's motors whirring as it trundles along the path at top speed. Rose Tico follows close behind wearing Resistance khakis, hurrying, sleeves rolled up, swiping the same vine out of the way with her datapad and raising a louder screach from the zymod.
"Jeepers! Artoo! You know I always considered myself a nature-lover but there is too much mother-loving nature in this jungle! Hey wait up!"
The earthen path has been hard-compacted by engineers but there are few other earthworks or installations. Tents are set up under the trees, camo netting hanging over clearings. Thick cables snake alongside the vines and creepers. Other Resistance personnel are servicing what must be ships, hidden deeper in the jungle.
Behind Artoo, Rose enters the cool shade of a natural karst and is met by the gigantic hull of a Corellian corvette, settled on its massive hydraulic skids.
Resistance Base, the jungle moon of Ajan Kloss in the Outer Rim
The base feels makeshift and temporary, mostly tents, even though it's a year old, showing how under-resourced the Resistance is after the Battle of Crait.
The only reason they're still in the fight is because the First Order lack focus since Supreme Leader Snoke's death, its top generals mostly acting autonomously.
Artoo heads straight for the corvette's access ramp, slowing down to beep, buzz and whistle Binary at Klaud, a tall Trodatome working on an alluvial damper.
"Gree yong, goff lar." He says, flexing his spiny face-fingers at the ramp.
"Good," says Rose, "better if they're all together!" and jogs up the ramp with Artoo.
The placard above the entryway reads TANTIVE IV.
***
The briefing room inside the corvette. Officers in various Resistance uniforms gathered around a holo-projected star chart, most human, men and women, other species too.
Rose arrives as Captain Beaumont Kin speaks. His brown beard is immaculately trimmed as always. Rose has come to respect that. It shows discipline and dignity, something easy to forget when you're camped for a year on a jungle moon. (Something Poe Dameron often waives and he's spearheading the whole war effort!)
Like Rose, Kin is an intelligence officer, though his forte is more galactic affairs, Rose more technical.
He's delivering the briefing the two of them had put together earlier in the day, leaving Rose to continue working through the data dump that the Millennium Falcon brought back from Sinta Glacier.
"...So the Sith base is on Exegol, somewhere in this sector of the Unknown Regions, but it would take months for a ship to reach in hyperspace. That doesn't add-up; there must be some secret to it.
"We know that the First Order were experimenting with Phantom Energy though, allowing them to breach space-time with the Starkiller weapon. And we now know that the Sith Eternal have the same tech built into their Death Star Destroyers---"
"How did they even build such a fleet?" Grumbles Controller Dand, Logistics. The furred Tarsunt still struggles to believe the scale of the threat.
"The Chiss Ascendancy spans most of the Unknown Regions. Probably why that whole arm is still unknown to us. Mark my words, the Chiss are up to their red eyeballs in this." Commander D'Acy chimes in.
Captain Kin brings the focus back to his briefing.
"My point is, there must be something else out there, some phenomenon, a transit, a vortex or something. A point of condensed Phantom Energy that would allow a ship to jump right through it all the way to Exegol, instantly. There are legends about such things."
"You'd need some highly unusual navigation." Comments Lieutenant Connix, Operations.
"The Sith Wayfinder that Luke was searching for." Says General Leia Organna and all eyes turn to her, remembering what Luke Skywalker had sacrificed for everyone of them.
She looks tired, sadder than ever before, but smiles to Kin, not meaning to draw focus.
Captain Kin clears his throat awkwardly and continues.
"Exactly. If Rey and the others can find the Wayfinder, well, it's probably a modified holocron. We'd only need the nav instructions it contains, not the thing itself."
"And then we can broadcast the route to Exegol to the whole Galaxy!" Says Colonel Ackbar, Special Forces. The Mon Calamari is son of the late, great Admiral Ackbar and eager for revenge.
"It won't matter!" Interupts Rose, bring the briefing to a sudden halt.
Kin stares at her, confused. The two intelligence officers get along -- get along too well on some nights, and that has a way of complicating a work relationship.
"Lieutenant Tico?"
"It won't matter." She says again, "No-one will come."
"The Colossus has been building an alliance of every pirate, smuggler and independent in the Outer Rim for the past year." Kin counters, "They'll answer the call."
Rose shakes her head, "The data says we only have sixteen hours before the Sith Eternal fleet have fuelled their superweapons. We won't get the message out in time and I know why." At this, holding up the datapad.
R2-D2 blurps and moves to the console, jacking into a socket, whilst the room watches Rose intently. She's changed a lot from when she was a technician. Since Crait she's confident, stern even.
"Thanks Artoo. I've been combing through data dump from our mole in the First Order and I came across this...."
A pulsing, ever-shifting root network appears on the display. It looks almost like a hydra.
"Ever wondered why no-one came when D'Qar was attacked? Why no-one came when we were trapped on Crait? Why the Republic can't reorganise."
Connix: "The HoloNet has been borked ever since Hosnian Prime."
"And this is why it's borked." Explains Rose, "A cybernetic surveillance system under construction by the Imperial Military before Endor. It reached early-testing phase but wasn't brought online until the First Order showed up and took it over.
"They call it Ghidrah. It's like a distributed droid-brain array that actively monitors the HoloNet. It can track and block any information it touches, based on the parameters you feed it, and it has a long reach. It can even disguise itself in other code and jump channels.
"This is why the only reliable communication we have is between our own repeater ships. Ghidrah is watching and when it sees any comms traffic it doesn't like, it swots them."
The faces in the room are downcast. Despair. Alone, a Resistance assault on the Sith Eternal might take out one or two of the Death Star Destroyers, and that would be time bought for one or two free worlds to organise a defence or an evacuation... it's not hopeful though. Only Leia is unshaken, sensing there's more. Her eyes meet Rose's and the young officer's widen. She speaks up.
"We can stop it though. Ghidrah. We can bring it down! ... I just need a late model Imperial Star Destroyer."
***
Later. Leia's quarters, under an awning overlooking the Corellian corvette. Personnel bustle in the background. Foreground is just Leia, Rose and R2-D2. The two women are close. Leia has spent a lot of time training Rey but there's a sadness underpinning that relationship. Rey will never be Leia's protégé. Rose just might be.
"And you think we can find one on Jakku?" Asks Leia.
They peer at a ruggedised lumi-display, set up on a packing case. It shows a vector map of the desert planet Jakku with red pinpoints.
"Jakku's desert is a starship graveyard. At least two wrecked Star Destroyers from the battle in '82. Rey and Finn told me all about it, they even flew the Falcon through one." Rose replies, with a slight grimace. Did she sound like a starry-eyed little girl?
"Won't the scavengers have picked those clean?" Leia presses, testing Rose's foresight.
"Scavengers are only interested in the alloys and precious metals. No-one wants out of date astronav computers.
"But Ghidrah used the processing power of the astronav computer when it wasn't in use, which when you think about it is most of the time.
"We just need to slice into the astronav computer, General, and that will lead us to the nearest Ghidrah node. Then we go in and take over."
"With Ghidrah we could co-ordinate Galaxy-wide surprise attack..." Leia ponders, relishing the idea though doubts remain, "It's a bold plan, Rose, but we have so little time. Jakku is the opposite direction to the Unknown Regions."
"I'll go." Rose volunteers immediately, "I'll take Artoo, he's the best droid in the Resistance."
Artoo meeps and spins on his bogies, illiciting a chuckle from Leia and Rose. But then Leia frowns regretfully.
"You and Artoo are needed here, Rose. I'm sorry. We still need to find a vulnerability in these Death Star Destroyers."
Maz Kanata: "We can task someone else. I think it's worth it."
The old pirate queen had crept in, remarkably lithe for her age.
Leia: "We can't divert Poe from the Wayfinder mission. Vi Morandi is still tied up on Batuu."
Maz steps up onto a footlocker and stares at the display, adjusting her goggles with a flick. Her wrinkled yellow face smiles.
"I'm a thousand years old but this plan makes me feel like a young corsair again!" She says enthusiastically, and turns to the General.
"Leia, we should send the Awoken. We've trained them well. They've completed lightsaber construction with Professor Huyang."
"Maz, I---"
"They are ready."
At this, Leia averts her gaze, unable to hide her anxiety. Maz jumps down and goes to her, holding her hand.
"I sense it too, Leia, but the Awoken need not share the same fate as the Skywalkers. They are not Jedi, they are not Sith. We've taught them simply to be true to themselves, trust their own heart."
Somewhere outside, a technician working on the corvette drops a hydrospanner. There's some joshing. Leia looks out. Her people are all hard at work but pause to swap banter. Which one of them hasn't lost friends and family? Which one isn't willing to make the ultimate sacrifice? Leia looks at Rose. Parents, sister, gone. The Resistance is her family now and she's still fighting for them. Everyone will make sacrifices before the end.
A ray of sunshine appears from one of gaps in the rocky karst above, brightening the tent.
A BB unit rolls by outside.
"2BB-2!" Leia calls, straightening.
The faded blue droid stops and swivels its head with a confused blurp. General Organa!? It bounces into the tent and extends its fine manipulator into a smart salute. 2BB-2 has a stripped head-dome with tele-photoreceptor and high end crypto-upgrades. It tweets in Binary as if to say Ma'am, yes ma'am!
"2BB-2, talk to R2-D2 here. You're going to Jakku." Says Leia.
Rose shifts excitedly as the General nods to Maz.
"You'd better brief the Awoken then." Says Leia, "And they'll need a ship."
New Republic, Resistance, Sith Eternal, First Order, The Force, Zymod, R2-D2, Rose Tico, Corellian corvette, Ajan Kloss, Outer Rim, Battle of Crait, Snoke, Binary, Klaud, Tantive IV, Captain Beaumont Kin, Poe Dameron, Millennium Falcon, Sinta Glacier, Unknown Regions, Exegol, Hyperspace, Phantom Energy, Starkiller Base, "Death Star Destroyer", Controller Dand, Chiss Ascendancy, Commander D'Acy, Lieutenant Connix, Sith Wayfinder, Luke Skywalker, General Leia Organna, Rey, Colonel Ackbar, Colossus, D'Qar, Mole in the First Order, HoloNet, Hosnian Prime, Imperial Star Destroyer, Jakku, Finn, "Battle in '82", "Astronav computer", Maz Kanata, Vi Moradi, Batuu, Lightsaber, Professor Huyang, Jedi, Hydrospanner, 2BB-2