The Shadows of the Past Trilogy
Episode 9: Nemesis of the Force Part 13
On Korriban, the ST droid leaps atop the crates Bannick is hiding behind. However, Bannick is not there. Looking down, confused, the droid is shocked to find a cluster of ion grenades where Bannick should be. A second later, the grenades explode, and the droid has ionized lightning dancing all over its body.
In the wake of the explosion, Bannick pops out of one of the crates sideways, its opening sitting on its side. With his blasters in hand, Bannick fires at point blank over and over again. The ST droid, unable to stabilize itself due to ionization, falls to the ground, still shaking from the attack. Then Bannick holsters his blasters as he rushes up, rips its vibroblade from its hand, and proceeds to stab it over and over again in the chest. Sparks fly until, at last, the droid ceases to move.
He then stares up at the sky. Saydra’s ship, containing Nemesis, is seen just below the clouds. “Dang!” he says, and he starts to race for the banged up freighter.
And then, all at once, laser cannon fire begins blasting the escaping ship even as it begins to cloak. The laser cannon shots hit the cloaking device, and it instantly fails. Saydra’s ship performs evasive maneuvers, but the attacking fighter keeps right with it.
Inside the cockpit of a Black Dart, Li flies at lightning speeds trying everything in her power to shoot down the escaping shuttle. She makes her first pass, raking the top of Saydra’s assault shuttle and causing several explosions. She hoots in victory, but it is short lived as laser turrets from the shuttle return fire. The entire air above the facility becomes a hotbed for laser fire as the two ships enter a dogfight.
On board Saydra’s assault shuttle, the last ST unit besides Stalker pilots the ship. Meanwhile, Stalker is plugged into the ship’s terminal. A monitor near him shows a long-range transmission. He is connected to the ship’s communications relay, and he is beaming the Nemesis disease data to some remote site on another world. He is only 1% completed.
Picking her way through debris, Kika finds Zelia sticking partially out of the roof that had once been the ceiling of the lounge. Moving to her friend’s aid, Kika reaches down, unstraps Zelia’s helmet, removes a glove, and touches Zelia’s cheek with her hand. Zelia’s good eye looks up at her. “Stubborn…” she mumbles, but says nothing more. Then, closing her eyes, Kika begins to heal Zelia with the Force.
On a computer in a remote part of the Korriban cloning facility, the screen shows Kika’s image. Nearby, a timer counts down. “If I were you…I’d get out pretty fast.” These words are displayed, scrolling below Mirage's image. “Core meltdown in:” is above the timer. The timer reads “-“0:32…0:31…0:30…”
On the landing platform, Bannick gets the ship powered up just as he sees Kika running along with Zelia. IG-14’s main chassis is strapped to Zelia’s back as the bounty hunter leans heavily on Kika. Shadow scurries along at their heels. They hurry to the ramp. “We’ve only got like twenty seconds before the timer runs out and they realize the core wasn't actually melting down,” Kika shouts. “I've gotta go back and plant explosives on the core before the Zyn forces return.”
“Is Li in the fighter I saw?” Bannick asks as they transfer Zelia to him.
“If it’s trying to stop that ship from getting away, then yes,” says Kika, dropping Ziggy on the ramp.
"Well, no need to blow up the facility," says Bannick. "The ST droids took the Nemesis disease on that ship. They had a ton of crates with them. I doubt there's any left."
"Better to be safe than sorry," says Kika. Then without another word, she grabs the satchel that Zelia had slung over her shoulders, and she races back towards the facility at a full run.
As Saydra’s ship, piloted by the ST unit, rockets towards the jump point, Li continues to zip around it. "46% Completed" is displayed on Stalker's screen. From a space station hovering over the planet, Dart fighters are deployed in an attempt to stop Li. Meanwhile, aboard the freighter, Bannick helps Zelia into the co-pilot’s seat as he drops IG-14’s main chassis onto the floor behind her. Sitting in another chair, Bannick sifts through screens. Out the viewport, he spots the evacuated Zyn ships returning.
"Better hurry up, Mirage," he says over the com.
Kika is then seen in the reactor core room, frantically planting charges. She glances at her chronometer, gritting her teeth as she hastens to complete her task. "I'm almost done. Are they already landing?"
"I'd say you have maybe three more minutes until they're swarming the place," Bannick's voice returns over the com. "And they're likely going to wonder why I'm still sitting here with engines running."
Kika plants a final charge. "On my way now." And she bolts out the door.
The scene cuts to Li firing at Stalker's ship a few more times as the two zigzag around in space. Now a swarm of Darts are also coming into range. She jerks on the controls and tries to maneuver to the opposite side of her enemy's ship, putting Saydra's ship between her and the Darts. Inside the ship, "83% Completed" is shown on the screen.
Then it returns to Kika as she flees from the facility just as Zyn ships land all around their freighter. Zyn clone troops are swarming off their transports, racing towards her with weapons drawn. They are about to fire when the freighter suddenly ignites its engines and streaks across the landing strip. The clone troopers take cover to avoid getting hit by the low flying ship. It then lands hard not too far from Kika, and she is seen racing up to the ramp.
"I'm here! Go, go go!" shouts Kika as she hurries up the ramp and hits the switch. The ramp raises behind her, and though she looks exhausted and drenched in sweat, she doesn't stop until she is in the cockpit. She immediately slides down in a chair behind Bannick and begins to type at rapid speeds on the terminal.
“What are you doing?” asks Bannick, glancing over his shoulders as he lifts the ship into the air. Out the viewport, a myriad of clone troopers are seen firing upon the vessel.
“Helping us and Li,” she replies. “I’m gonna try to take over those Darts and…Wait! Son of a Rancor! A ship out there is transmitting some sort of message on an encrypted long-range transceiver. It’s uploading something to a remote server of some kind. I need to try to trace the signal; cut it off. No doubt, it’s trying to upload a huge amount of data. Could be the disease.”
Bannick just shakes his head. “Do what you gotta do, I guess.”
Li narrowly avoids a Dart fighter as she spins and twists for another pass on the shuttle. In that moment, several Zyn warships drop out of hyperspace. Seeing them, Li’s hope dies. “Are you seeing what I’m seeing,” she says over the com. "Bannick? Are you seeing this?"
“Yes!” says Bannick in reply. “Listen! We have a tracker on it. Let’s just get out of here. There’s no way you’re going to do any more good out there.”
Li looks at the ship’s systems. “Can’t. No hyperdrive on this thing.”
Bannick sets his jaw. “We’re not leaving without you.”
“Don’t be stupid,” says Li, resolving herself to what she has to do. “There’s no way you can save me. Too many ships. They’ll just capture you.” Then she cries, “Blaze of glory!” And, switching off the com, she aims her ship straight for the shuttle, she throws the ship into full throttle. “All my life…for this moment,” she mutters to herself. Then she closes her eyes and braces herself for impact.
Aboard the shuttle, Stalker sees the craft incoming. He spins in his chair, disconnecting from the terminal that reads "100% Completed", and he rushes towards the back of the ship. Smashing open one of the crates, he grabs a case filled with the disease. The case reads “Nemesis” in the common language. He then rushes to a nearby escape pod and jumps in. At the last second, he launches it away from the shuttle. Li’s ship smashes into the shuttle, and both ships explode into a massive fireball sending a greenish/yellowish cloud of chemicals and fire into space.
In the cockpit of their freighter, Bannick, Kika and Zelia stare out at the dissipating distant fireball, tears streaming down their faces. Kika’s jaw then sets. “For Li,” she says, and then she punches a button. Her computer screen reads, “Trace found. Transmission hijacked. Transmitting.”
On a computer screen on a remote world in the remnants of an old Sith fortress, a download screen is shown. The task bar reaches completion, and suddenly an image of Mirage appears. “Download THIS!” And the image of the cartoon Mirage is focused on, depicting her with her fully clothed hind quarters sticking right out at the screen in the viewer’s face, pointer fingers on both hands pointing right at her rump. A green gas cloud emits from her rear. Her face is squinched as she sticks out her tongue. A message below the image reads: “Delete All”. A new task bar appears in red showing the status on all of the files being deleted, and it scrolls slowly towards completion.
On one of the Zyn warships, an officer reports to a random captain. “An escape pod launched at the last moment from Saydra’s shuttle.”
The captain replies, “Bring it in at once!”
Seeing the pod being brought onto the warship via his ship's long-range sensors, for they still have not reached the jump point, Bannick points out the viewport. “Are you kidding me?”
“What?” asks Zelia, holding her right hand over her wounded eye.
“An escape pod made it away from that freighter at the last second,” Bannick tells them.
Kika spins to look out the cockpit viewport. “Crap. One of the ST droids escaped. It has the stupid disease. I can feel it. We have to go after it.”
Bannick looks back at her. “Seriously? With what? This bucket of bolts?”
Kika looks at him. “We have to at least report where it goes so someone else can stop it.” Then she pauses, as if someone has just whispered something in her ear. “But I already think I know where it’s going.”
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