Shock Value (Open)

[Teuton]

Space; cold, dark and unforgiving. Space is deadly, both physically and mentally, spend enough time staring into the abyss of space and you're mind starts to die and when that starts to happen its better to step into airlock and let the cold of space embrace you.

At least it would end quickly...

Commander Longhaven sat on the command deck of the VSD mk II - Deus Ex as the technicians on board the ship programmed in the course in the nav computer. He grimaced; the entire mission was going to be based on stealth and the ability of the techs to program the course into the auto-pilot.

A long legged, raven haired woman approached the middle-aged Longhaven. Her youthful features sharply contrasted the salt-and-pepper mustache/goatee of the Commander. She had two mugs of coffee in her hand, once she reached Longhaven she offered him one of the steaming mugs.

"Thank you Cmmdr Brevis," Longhaven's voice was gravelly from his many years of smoking death-sticks. The woman he was sharing coffee with was the XO Lt. Commander Adrianna Brevis, it was her first mission on board the Deus Ex.

"No problem sir. How are the techs coming along?"

"Almost done, they are double checking the trajectory calculations. Do you have the duty roster completed?"

"Yes the crew will have to work on 12 hour shifts to keep the ship manned at the bare minimum requirements. I'll take the first ship, if that's alright with you Commander?"

Longhaven nodded as he glanced over the bridge crew and the engineering staff. Although the vessel ideally would never be helmed manually, a full bridge crew would be staffed at all times in case of an emergency reversion or any other auto-pilot misfunction.

"I suggest you take Lt. Freir and Ensign Greaves on your shift and leave me with Ensigns Thompson and Vishanov. You should take the more experienced crew Arriana, in case there is a problem."

Brevis took the datapad that contained the duty roster and immediately made the suggested changes.

"Yes of course sir." She appeared nervous, her emotions were displayed clearly on her face. She was young and the mission was a very dangerous one. Many members of the 2000 crew members had a distinct look of anxiety on their face.

Longhaven reached over and placed his hand on her shoulder; "Relax Arriana, when this is done with you'll be wearing a commander's bars and I'll be a captain."

His voice was light and even beneath the gravelly bass tone of his voice a bit of school-boy excitement could be heard in his voice. Longhaven seemed optimistic, the mission would strike a blow at the arrogant Rebels and make him a hero within the factions of the Empire. Brevis' seemed to have a weight lifted from her shoulder even as the weight of Longhaven's hand pressed down on her.

"Yes, of course..." As she spoke the lead technician approached them.

"Sir we're all done here, my crew should be off the vessel withing 15 minutes."

"Very well Mr. O'Leary. I trust you're work won't leave us out to dry."

"It won't sir, Godspeed."

The senior tech then saluted Longhaven and Brevis and gathered his tools. He nodded to a few of the bridge crew as he walked out, followed by his team.

"Brevis get me the heads of the two engineering crews and meet me in my ready room in 20 minutes."

"Of course sir."

Longhaven then rose and recieved Brevis' salute before he returned it and watched the attractive young women leave the bridge. It was only then that the solemnity of Longhaven's true feelings toward the missions could be seen on his face. However only the stars peering back in from the view port could see the face of the man, that seemed to have aged 20 years in a single breath.

[Pierce Tondry]

"What's the news, General?"

General Airen Cracken frowned, probably considering whether it would be worth it to tell Pierce off for not using the ubiquitous military 'sir'. It wasn't one of Pierce's favorite conventions, but he was busy trying to put together a scout map of the surrounding area. He and Tau Team had just finished a visit to Azguard, and caught up with a science vessel, the Rovanon. The two ships exchanged data, which Pierce was now taking the time to compile into a single entry and send it back to Coruscant. Anytime field work was involved, Pierce put more emphasis on accomplishing it than on propriety.

Airen cleared his throat. "We have word that something is going down. Something big."

Pierce looked up. Cracken wouldn't be able to see him- the visual screens were off- so the gesture was entirely useless. However, the General had his full attention, at least. "What kind of something, sir?"

Cracken cleared his throat again, but he couldn't keep Pierce from hearing the tiredness in his voice. "We have word that there may be an attack coming. We don't know on what planet, and we don't know in what form. Our source is a spy sent to investigate a fringe encroachment by a warlord faction, likely Imperial."

Pierce tried to ignore the cold, creeping feeling on the back of his neck. "With all due respect, sir, this sounds a lot like misinformation. Do we have any reliability cues?"

Reliability cues were signals Intelligence analysts used to determine the truthfulness and accuracy of gathered information. They could be anything from multiple ship launchings within a close time period to private journal entries from the log of a garrison commander. The more cues on an associated piece of data, the better.

"We have two things that make us believe this isn't a hoax," Cracken replied. "First, reports out of this particular sector point to the appearance of a new power- a previously missing Imperial Warlord re-emerging, or the like. We have very little hard information, but lots of rumor."

That wasn't much to go on, but it was likely something was up. New powers tended to announce their presence with sneak attacks of some kind. "And the second thing, sir?"

"Six hours ago, something passed through our long-range sensor network in the Spar sector. Unfortunately, whatever it was passed through a weak spot in the net so we don't have information enough to calculate any approach or return vectors. All we're certain of, is that at least one ship passed through, and that we could not achieve visual confirmation."

Which meant the ship was likely under cloak, and no one travelled under cloak unless they had something to hide. "One ship, sir? It sounds like a surprise mission."

"We can't be sure it was only one ship," Cracken cautioned. "If it was multiple ships under cloak travelling on a single vector, our network wouldn't be able to discern them very well unless there were large time gaps in their passage."

The Spar Sector. Spar Sector. Pierce frowned. "I'm not exactly in the neighborhood, though, sir. It'd take me four hours to hop to the other side of Coruscant regardless. Why me?"

"High Command believes," Cracken began in the voice of a man about to admit something he didn't want to say, "That with your unique capabilities, you are the single best choice for locating this possible threat, discerning its nature, defusing it if it is intended for the Republic, and getting word back to us. And, I concur with their assessment."

"I see. So you think as a Jedi Knight with Intel training, I can stop whatever's out there?"

"You'll have access to any equipment or personnel you require, as well as information classified up to the level of GS-6 for the duration of your mission. Also, we've quietly contacted the heads of state for each of the planets between here and Cerea. They've been warned of the possible danger and most of them are willing to cooperate with our representatives."

Representatives meaning Pierce. Still, Pierce could tell when someone wasn't telling him the whole truth, and Cracken was playing something close to his vest. "All right," Pierce said in a neutral tone. "What are you holding back?"

"We don't think this is an ordinary attack. We think it's a suicide mission against one of our military targets in the area, and we think that as of this moment, you have less than twenty-four hours to accomplish your mission."

[Teuton]

The cloaking device seemed to be in perfect working order; at least it seemed that way. According the computer's calculations they should have passed through the network of long range sensors in the Spar sector an hour ago. If the NR was own to them they would have been reverted from Hyperspace by now and more than likely all be on ships towards some prison planet to be interrogated by Republic Intel. Longhaven cringed at the thought of the Republic Intelligence getting ahold of him, they were nearly as vicious as the Imperial Inquisitors and they had a chip on their shoulder when it came to Imperials.

Longhave stoked his greying beard as he sipped his coffee.

I finally get a promotion to command a Destroyer class ship and my first mission is this...

It irked him to no end. He had trained his whole life to command a VSD or an ISD. The 45 year-old commander had never had visions of being a fighter jockey or a storm-trooper he had wanted to be an Admiral, he had wanted to lead one of the illustious Sector-fleets that imperial legend waxxed so poetically about. Instead the Empire shattered just as he thought he was on the edge of getting thos Line bars. He was this close to be coming a captain and being able to distinguish himself, then the Empire fractured and he was left without a benefactor, the Warlords didn't know him and didn't care. So he waited dillegently for his chance to come, for him to prove himself worthy of command to someone who would offer him a post that he so eagerly desired.

This mission was to be his chance, but when he got the details it sounded more like a swan song than a glorious march to power and honor. But he was resigned to his fate, to die for his Empire was an honor he could not ignore or refuse. He had lied to Vishanov, all of them were expendable, they would be captured, killed or die with the ship, the only promotions they would be recieving would be post-humously.

Longhaven looked at his chronometer, he was supposed to relieve Brevis at 00:00 hours and it was 23:45 as it stood. It would take him 15 minutes to get to the bridge from his quarters anyhow so he got up, straightened his uniform and made his way towards the main turbo-lift.

As he made his way down the sterile, durasteel corridors he was saluted and acknowledged by the few members of the skeleton crew that were on board the ship. It was strange to see the halls so empty on a vessel of this size. He seemed so alone as he rounded the corner towards the turbo-lift, but something just seemed wrong. Something was out of the ordinary, he felt as if he were being watched by someone or something.

Longhave shook it off and made his way into the lift. He exitted and walked the short distance to the command bridge. He was duly saluted when he entered and he dismissed them.

"Anything happening?" He asked Brevis, almost hoping for an anomaly so that he could fix it.

"Nope everything is running perfectly. We are about 14 hours from the target."

"Very good, dismissed."

Brevis snapped to attention and saluted Longhaven, he returned the salute before picking up his datapad. He entered his own access codes into his command console and began to go over the log of the last 12 hours. Then he saw it, a blinking light on his datapad informing him of a message on his personal link.

What the devil?

He entered his access code in the data-pad and he waited for the encryption system to finish running its routine.

Greetings Admiral Longhaven,

[Pierce Tondry]

The two hours post-mission briefing filled quickly with workload intensive tasks. First, Pierce needed a probability cone drawn up. To do that, he required some basic assumptions about the nature of the attack and the size of the force against him. Since the attack relied heavily on stealth, Pierce could rule out a force greater than two or three caIncoming stealth vessel, typed Pierce. Requesting sensor sweep focus along the following projection cone, for the next three hours. Authorization code: xxxxxxxxxx xxx xxxxxx

Request confirmed, the screen replied after processing the data. Data will be forwarded as requested. Please leave this channel open to receive updates.

With only one scientific array at his disposal, Pierce was not likely to discern any hard facts about the ship itself. He would get some of those with his next call.

With the Codian area actively seeking his prey, Pierce began keying up another call.