Chapter 47

The Sith fleet floated dead in space.

It was made of three Harrower-class dreadnoughts. Two of the large battleships were orbiting the small moon but the third had succumbed to the gravitational pull from the moon to crash into its surface. It now lay scattered on the lunar surface.

Six terminus-class destroyers, seven Gage-class transports, a Delta-class carrier, and two large Keizar-Volvec bulk cruisers made up the rest of the fleet. Two of the destroyers had collided while orbiting the moon and now spread a cloud of debris across the rest of the ancient ships.

Three of the transports and one of the bulk cruisers had joined the third dreadnought in falling to the moons surface while the rest stayed in a slow orbit with the first two Harrowers.

All the ships were devoid of live and showed no reaction to the Speedy Vagabond as it flew towards one of the Harrowers that Sapphire had identified as the most likely flagship for the fleet.

The dreadnought's hangar bay doors refused to open up and stayed sealed by their heavy blast doors, so they were forced to land on the ships outer hull and cut their way in.

Scans showed that the Harrower was completely powered down and no traces of anything electrical were present on the dreadnought. The old ship's internal atmosphere had also drained away long ago and without power to restore it exploring it would be difficult.

The armour Alpha had given to Renn was capable of surviving in the void for several hours as it had its own internal air supply and was sealed against hostile environments. Alpha and the other droids didn't need to worry about the lack of air but for everyone else it would prove to be a problem so the boarding party would be made up of Renn, Alpha, the four Hk-50 droids, and Bolt.

Opal, Seela, Shae and Yaddle would stay on the Speedy Vagabond for now along with Clank who wasn't interested in exploring something if there wasn't anything for him to kill there.

Renn and his droids dropped down into a dark hallway from the entrance they had cut into the ceiling.

Narrow cones of light originating from torches mounted on their heads and weapons cut through the darkness to cast eerie shadows across the dead ship.

"Ooooh, Spooookyyyy." Spark whispered jokingly before Alpha smacked him on the back of his metal head.

"Shut it" Alpha growled and ignored the snickers of laughter from Spark and the other droids.

"Alright, if we want to figure out what happened here our best bet is the ships bridge." Renn said taking charge before the droids could start arguing.

"Yes, I recommend Bolt, Earl and Crow investigate the ships engineering section to see if they can fix the power while the rest of us check the bridge." Alpha said and Renn nodded in agreement.

Soon both groups split of and went their separate ways, returning that section of the corridor to the darkness.

-

"That thing is completely destroyed" Crow said uncaringly.

"Indeed it is." Earl stated solemnly next to him.

Bolt let out a string of beeps that ruffly translated to 'their technical opinion not being welcome or necessary,' as he sped round the dreadnought's engine room in frustration.

The three droids had made their way to the cavernous engine room in the hopes of restoring power to the ship. They were shocked to discover that all of the ship's generators had overloaded and now were just useless hunks of metal.

Bolt had immediately started examining all the damaged power generators in the vain hope that there was something there that he could salvage but it was quickly becoming apparent that there was nothing that could be done.

The two assassin droids watched him work as they observed the room. There didn't seem to be any signs of a battle or sabotage that could have destroyed the generators, they just seemed to have exploded on their own.

Bolt let out a mechanical of defeat sigh as he gave up on fixing the power to the ship.

"Its okay my little friend" Earl said as he patted Bolt on the head. "I know you wanted to seem like a big hero by fixing the power." He added cheerily before yelping in pain after the annoyed astromech electrocuted him.

"Hey boss, the power can't be fixed without bringing spare parts from outside." Crow said over the comms ignoring the two other droids.

"Understood," Alpha said back.

"I could bring the Lucrehulk over and try to link their power grids for now." Sapphire said over the comm.

"… It's worth a shot." Alpha said, "We are nearing the bridge now, hopefully we'll figure out what happened to the fleet there."

The three droids looked around the destroyed engine room one final time before leaving to search the surrounding area for anything else interesting.

-

Renn and the others entered the Harrower's bridge and stopped to look at the chaos all around them.

Skeletal Bodies littered the spacious bridge, the absence of an atmosphere on board, the ship stopping their decomposition after some time but not before they ended up as wispy decayed parodies of their former selves.

The bodies were arranged haphazardly as though a fight had broken out. Only there were no bodies of enemy boarders and no evidence of blasters being used.

It was as if the crew had turned on one another and used their own hands, knives, or blunt instruments to kill each other.

A ring of armoured corpses belonging to a group of Sith commandos lay around the ships command chair. Throngs of dead crew members lay surrounding them as if the commandos had been defending the chair.

In the command chair lay the corpse of a robed figure. One hand clutching a wound to their side and the other holding a small palm sized red pyramid.

"Wow, very Macabre." Spark said as he 'admired' the ships interior decorations.

"I wonder why they were fighting each other" Renn mused as they looked around the bridge.

"Unknown. We can't really tell anything else until we get the power back on through to check the computer records." Alpha said.

Renn hummed in agreement, but his attention was drawn to the red pyramid in the robed corpse's hand. For reasons he couldn't explain the object seemed to be calling out to him and he started walking towards it slowly.

"Did someone order a Lucrehulk" Sapphire's voice came over the comm as the captured ship jumped into the system.

"Excellent, now we can get this ship powered up." Alpha said before looking over to Renn.

"Renn?" Alpha asked but Renn stayed silent.

"Renn?" Alpha repeated and walked over to shake the boy's shoulder.

"Huh? Oh, Alpha what's wrong?" Renn asked confused.

"You were spacing out, what is going on?" Alpha said concerned.

"I don't know." Renn said quietly, "That red Pyramid, it's like I could hear it talking to me." He said staring at the object.

"Be careful, that is a Sith holocron" Alpha warned as Renn kept walking towards the object.

"It's okay, I'll be fine. Besides I've got this feeling that this will tell us what happened here." Renn said as he picked up the holocron.

As he held the pyramid, he instinctively used the force to open it and suddenly his vision was filled with red light before going black.