Chapter 1
Flyboyz
Anoat System
Lackey 3 didn't engage in the banter surrounding their unease, instead keeping his compound eyes focused wholly on the object they were near, signs of activity began to make themselves known. Cranes on the surface began to move objects from the bowels of the ship. "This is Lackey 3, go dark." He kept the transmission short, but they all obeyed trusting his instincts, he'd always had feelings and they had learned to trust them.
Almost as soon as they could shut down their fighters colossal doors large enough to fit a CR-90 through sideways opened across the vast hulk. Dozens of ships emerged making beelines for the asteroids, firing massive grappling hooks or lashing them with beams of energy drawing them in. They could only watch as the frenzied industry began, mining drills and other machinery they could barely identify began to modify the asteroids without even a pause. Lackey 3 leaned back and watched realizing he had a very big problem.
They were all nestled too close to an unknown mothership for a fleet of unwanted, unwelcome and unidentified miners. With their fighters dark they couldn't communicate safely, but neither could they get out easily. And his sensitivity told him, practically screaming, that if they were there in the next five minutes they were all going to die.
Working fast he tried to boost the range on his helmet comms. "This is Lackey 3. We need to go. Hot start and all power to engines." He said while practicing what he preached.
The drives flared to life and he poured every erg of spare power into the drives, shooting off into the field like a bat out of hell, with his colleagues mostly following him.
"This is Lackey 1. We've been spotted and whatever they are, they're comin!" Instinct said the flight leader was right, and yet his blood ran cold when he checked the sensors and saw almost forty craft in pursuit. "Lackey Squadron, we need to get the Eyeball's home. Break and cover them." With a twist he flicked his 8-Q back towards the oncoming swarm of strange fighters, smoke billowed from their engines into the void of space and their ramshackle appearances were even greater than the massive asteroid they called home.
Suddenly his vision was lit up as a wall of fire came towards them, poorly aimed it seemed the ramshackle crafts noses and wings exploded with fire as they began their assault and Lackey Squadron was turned to the fight of it's life. Forty craft against six old Toscan 8-Q's. The odds were enormously against them as their own laser fire spat out, launching a concussion missile from the small bank of four his own craft had been fitted with one of the craft detonated as laser fire destroyed another.
But the Toscan's shields weren't the greatest, never had been, and the withering volleys of fire came from enough sources to make it problematic and he counted down the seconds until his shield failed. He refused to think about the two people who'd already disappeared from communications as their craft were shot full of holes. As his own shields failed Lackey 3 discovered that their guns weren't really all that powerful, but the number of them was the telling point. The crude ballistic weapons were finding weak seams and points in armour and burying themselves deeply.
"Fall back! The Eyeballs ha..." Lackey lead dropped from the line and Lackey 3 felt his own systems failing, his intuition was no help here, the numbers too great... with a pause he pulled the ejection lever and prayed they didn't simply murder his ejected cockpit.
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A startled moment of awareness as he came to in what looked like a Jawa's workshop was not helped by the fact he hung a foot above the ground from thick chains secured to manacles around his wrists and neck. Beyond the curtain he could see parts of Toscan fighters being unloaded from another ramshackle craft. But what he saw was bizarre. The creatures looked like a warped copy of a gamorrean. They were hunched creatures, and yet far far bulkier, they seemed entirely corded in muscle and while they lacked horns, their tusks were significantly more prominent. Smaller creatures ran around following the alien directions given by the beasts, accentuated by swift kicks, violent backhands, thrown boots or the occasional staving in of their heads with massive wrenches.
The small ones terrified him almost as much as the larger, they looked like a Kowakian monkey-lizard had mated with a Gamorrean and successfully produced offspring, and they were as vicious as their masters, the pecking order obvious until...
The curtain was pulled aside and he recoiled, the beast that entered was head and shoulders above the others, and its skin was almost five shades darker, verging on being nearly black. Two more of the beasts entered and looked up at him before moving to the workbenches, they were smaller and their colouration closer to that of the others he'd seen in the bay beyond.
The huge one picked up a wrench and called out.
Writhing with horror as something else came in, his skin prickled in terror as it came in, his sensitivity to the force too small to be taken for Jedi training was nonetheless developed enough that it was screaming at him to get away, escape anything to avoid the creature. It capered about covered in shamanistic fetishes with a copper rod in one hand and two minders with some sort of equipment.
It's brain was exposed and crackled with emerald lightning as it looked at him. The big black one grunted out words to it and he felt his mind crashed under by a wave of power that plucked at his synapses.
Da Mekaniak Boss asks who you are.
The words were in his brain and he gibbered in terror, this was no force manipulation.... "Gaidan Melka!" He screamed and the sparking creature spoke up only for the big one to begin talking at length.
Gud dis werks. Time da figga out wot u kno.
Gaidan began screaming as the creature dived into his mind fully.
