Chapter 49

Darth Kress had seen the device fly of into space and for a moment hoped that they were safe.

Until she had watched it detonate. And saw a wave of blue light expanded out from the explosion and start rapidly approaching the ships in the fleet.

"Evasive manoeuvres!" Kress shouted in panic, but In her heart she knew it was too late. "Brace for impact!"

The blue light hit the Terror and the ship shuddered before every electrical item onboard exploded in a shower of sparks. Leaving the Terror dead in space.

The blue wave of light kept expanding and soon Kress's entire fleet was reduced to immobile hulks with no power to move or communicate.

Kress cursed as her lightsabre began sparking too, everything electrical was fried by the blast including her personal weapon, reducing it to an expensive paperweight.

"Is everyone okay?" Kress asked the now darkened bridge, her species were adapted to live deep underwater, and so she could see in very low light, and she immediately tried to check on her crew.

A Chorus of groans came from all around the bridge. Some of the crew had been injured by the overloading electronics and a small amount, including the Terror's flag-captain, were dead.

"Someone give me an update." Kress ordered.

"All power is down, I can't reach any of the other ships, or any of the other decks on our ship. I-I don't know what's happening." A one of the bridge crew informed her.

Kress ground her teeth before gesturing to a handful of able-bodied members of the bridge crew.

"You, go check on the other decks. See if the power is down all over the ship and check on engineering. I want us back up and running as soon as possible." Kress said and the crew members ran off to obey her orders.

-

Major Manluc stared into the darkness of the cargo bay. He could hear the groans of pain from his injured men but couldn't see anything at all.

"Sound off" he called out into the darkness and was greeted by his men calling out their designations and conditions.

Twenty had died during the battle to take the cargo bay and five more had failed to call out their positions since the lights went out, Manluc didn't know if they were dead or if they were lost in the darkness.

Fifteen more were wounded and the medics were having to fumble blindly to apply bandages to them without seeing the wounds.

All power was offline. Their comms, torches, even their blasters were all useless hunks of metal. They didn't even know where the door to the cargo bay was to leave the room.

"Someone start a fire" Manluc called out to his men. If all power was gone, they might as well improvise.

Moments later light lit the room exposing a shirtless commando, his now burning shirt wrapped around his useless blaster rifle as an improvised torch. Cheers came from the rest of the commandos as they once again gained the ability to see.

"Alright we need to get the wounded to the med-bay then check on the rest of the ship." Manluc began organising his men.

"Lieutenant," He said pointing to his second in command, "take ten men and check on engineering".

"Yes, major," The lieutenant said before rushing off to organise a squad to go with him.

"Corporal" he pointed at the man who had checked on his injured shoulder during the battle, "Start making stretchers, we'll have to carry the wounded with us."

The commandos jumped to organise themselves, more of them lit fires to illuminate the way and they began heading out to search the rest of the ship.

-

It had been a week since they had lost power and moral was rapidly dropping on board the Terror.

"It's probably too late to expect a rescue team." Major Manluc said to Darth Kress tiredly.

The engineers had said the generators were totally destroyed, there was no way to repair them, and they would need to be replaced. And with no way to call for help that was proving to be a problem.

Harrower class dreadnoughts had plenty of supplies on board for long journeys, so food was not an issue for now. But the ships life support was a problem.

With the power down the air circulation had stopped and was becoming stale. They had tried to seal any unused decks and redirect the air manually to the decks that the crew were now sheltering on, but it could only last so long.

They had also tried to light fires to give out some light and heat, space was dark and cold after all, but Kress had quickly put a stop to that when she realised it was burning up too much of their remaining air.

The crew of the Terror didn't know what was happening on the rest of the ships in the fleet. They could see them through the Terror's view ports, but the other ships just hung silently like their own, totally devoid of power.

"Yeah…. It's been too long. We have been overdue for a while now…. I don't think anyone's coming." Kress said sighing in exhaustion. Kress and her bridge crew along with Manluc and his commandos had been working restlessly to try and keep the crew intact and were currently operating on only a few minutes of restless sleep between them.

"....I'm starting to think we got sent because we were expendable…..I think the higher ups knew that device was going to explode and just wanted it off of Korriban." Kress said mournfully. She wouldn't normally be this pessimistic in front of her crew, but she was too exhausted to care.

"Its starting to look that way isn't it" Manluc said quietly following the Sith lord onto the ships bridge.

-

The madness had started not long later.

An engineer driven insane by the cold and the dark, and the impending doom, had attacked his bunkmates in the night.

By the time the commandos had arrived to pull the crazed man away he had already killed five people with a sharpened blade made from scrap metal and was bathed with his crewmates blood and laughing maniacally.

Kress had executed the man personally, in the hopes that his death would stop any more people snapping by serving as an example. She was wrong.

Chaos descended on the crew. A large group of crewmembers that felt that Kress was to blame for leading them to their doom tried to mutiny.

A weapons technician crept up behind Kress when she was distracted and stabbed her deep in the side with a knife. A commando noticed the danger too late but quickly reacted and swung his useless blaster rifle like a club to cave the technicians head in.

Manluc shouted to his men to try and protect their Sith lord and soon the ship was filled with bitter and bloody fighting.

The commandos and those crew members still loyal to Kress fought back against the mutineers, with knives, clubs, or even hand-to-hand. Others who had been turned crazy by the situation used that as an opportunity to attack whoever was close to them with whatever was close to hand.

"Retreat to the bridge, we'll make our last stand there!" Manluc yelled as one of his men, the same corporal who checked on his shoulder all those days ago, hoisted Kress up in a fireman's lift and began retreating out of the room they were in while being covered by the other commandos.

They fought their way to the bridge and sealed the door behind them. The mutineers would be able to break through soon, but for now they had time.

After the corporal placed Kress down on the bridge, he called over a medic to try and stop the bleeding form the deep wound in her side. Her face had gone pale with blood loss, and it was clear she wouldn't survive much longer, but then again neither would any of them.

"They will be coming through those doors soon lads." Major Manluc said to his men.

"I would like you all to know, I have hated every single one of you from the bottom of my heart since the moment I first laid eyes on you." He said grinning at them.

"Us too sir," His lieutenant said smiling at him and the remaining commandos laughed and grinned, ready to face their deaths like warriors.

Darth Kress stood and pushed her way into their defensive line one hand clutched tightly to her bloodied side the other held shakily in front of her. She nodded to the commandos who nodded back in silent comradery.

The doors to the bridge opened up and the mutineers poured in.

Kress unleashed a powerful wave of force lightning. The arcs of electrical energy shot trough the charging mutineers, jumping from person to person and incinerating the first few men it hit.

The first wave of mutineers lay dead but more followed them through the door. Kress stumbled back exhausted and collapsed into her command chair. The blood from her wound was draining rapidly, running through her fingers and staining her robes a dark red colour, and she grimaced in pain.

The commandos were outnumbered and quickly became overwhelmed. They tried to work together but couldn't overcome the mutineers' superior numbers.

Soon only a small ring of commandos were left surrounding the command chair fighting desperately against the mutineers.

Kress reached into her the pocket of her robes and pulled out an empty Sith holocron she had been given by her master when she had become a fully fledged Sith Lord, for her to create her own record of her knowledge with.

She used the force to pour her consciousness into the holocron. She wasn't sure if it would work, due to her current wounded state. But she wanted to leave behind some kind of record about what had happened aboard the Terror.

She watched as the young corporal who had carried her away from the battle previously and onto the bridge was dragged into the crowd of mutineers and saw how he tried in vain to protect his head with his arms as the mutineers kicked and beat him.

She saw how the commando lieutenant and one of the other commandos tried to go into the crowd to rescue the corporal and watched as a crewman snuck up behind him and buried a knife in his neck. The other commando turned to try and help the lieutenant but was struck by another crewman wielding a metal pipe and was sent to the deck next to the corporal.

She watched as major Manluc headbutted a mutineer and then sent a vicious right hook into the face of another before he was tackled to the ground by a group of three more. They all went down in a tangle of limps, and punches, before more came in to dog pile into the fight on the ground.

Darth Kress watched the last of her loyal crew members died defending her and a primal rage burned inside her. She let those emotions fill her, the power of it coursing through her, and screamed as she let out a powerful wave of the force.

The energy of the force push crashed into the mutineers and threw them across the bridge, shattering bones and snapping necks. The force push was the last thing that Darth Kress ever did, her lifeless body falling back into the command chair. One hand still clutching the now glowing holocron.

-

Renn gasped and staggered as visions of the past filled his head. He held up a hand to tell Alpha that he was okay and just needed a minute to calm his head. Then a small voice sounded from in front of him.

"Who are you people?"