The Rebel Faction

In the quietness of space, not far from the Xliona system's asteroid belt, floated a single 900 meter long wedge shaped vessel. Its port side glistened from the sunlight that reflected off the metallic surface of the outer hull. In contrast to this gleaming half of the vessel, the starboard side was surrounded by darkness as it faced away from the system. Everything seemed dead and motionless until one shuttle and then another dropped from the ship's hanger bay. These two dark grey craft made lazy turns and proceeded into the asteroid field on their missions.

The Chimaera was one of the few ships bought by Stellar Enterprises from the Galactic Coalition. She had been fully modernized and armed more heavily than any other Victory Class Star Destroyer ever had been before. What had been just another broken starship hull ment for the scrap yards was now saved and restored to being a warship that it once war. The name given to this vessel was most befitting as it started its new service with the Stellar Enterprises Defense Force.

Visually this large vessel slightly differed from other Victory class ships. Unlike conventional Victory Destroyers, the Chimaera had no upper bridge structure. The whole former bridge had been removed, making the vessel look more sleek and streamlined. All command operations were now located within the ship inside a heavily armored internal bridge. This design kept the command crews safer from attack and through its wall to wall monitors, gave the captain in command a 360 degree view around the ship.

It was onboard this Command Bridge that Captain Rohnat Lo'maht stood and watched the two shuttles move causiously into the asteroid field on one of the large display screens around the bridge. The Dornean male looked out with his two large eyes and slowly blinked as the gaze he held shifted from the shuttles onto his ship's hull. He could see every fine detail of the ship's design and couldn't believe how she had been transformed from a piece of scrap into the once more beautiful vessel that she had been in her previous life.

This train of thought was interrupted when the woman seated at the sensor station called out, "Possible unknown contact at One-Six-Two sir! Thousand two hundred kilometers out..." The woman paused and hit some keys before leaning towards the screen. "Wait... it's gone Captain."

Puzzled the Captain moved towards the display on the wall that pointed in that direction. There was nothing there, but of course if that contact was so far out he wouldn't be able to see it at that range anyways.

"I want shields up and all weapons ready. Bring us around to face the possible contact." Captain Lo'maht ordered calmly. "Screen, zoom in on Grid Nine Zero, location One-Six-Two."

As he said this, the display in front of him quickly changed. The space out front zoomed in and began crystal clear. There was nothing to see, however, except for the countless stars sparkling in the darkness that lay beyond. Nothing moved and nothing seemed to exist. It seemed as quiet as it had been for the past two hours the Chimaera had been in system.

"Could it be a sensor malfunction?" The Captain questioned and turned towards the sensor station.

"It's possible, sir, but everything reads fine. I don't know what it could be. If something was physically there I would be able to detect it...there it is again sir! Thousand kilometers out this time, same heading. Computers indicate its roughly four hundred meters long. It's getting closer."

The Captain turned back around and stared at the display. He could now clearly see the ship ahead of them now as the Chimaera itself rolled on its side gently and turned towards this new contact. It was a ship he had never before seen in all his twenty years with various naval forces. The ship appeared to have a flat top with angular projections pointing down. At the rear and on top of the flat hull portion there was a vertical extention that stretched out towards the front and ended in a sharp point, almost like a talon. As he zoomed in on this mysterious ship, Rohnat could see that this vessel's hull was an offwhite color, not common in thie galaxy.

"Comms, open all channels." Captain Lo'maht said before starting to talk. "Unknown vessel, this is the Stellar Enterprises ship Chimaera. Identify yourselves and state your intentions."

Before he could even finish, however, a burst of static errupted from the bridge's communication speakers. This static seemed to come in a sort of pattern with highs and lows.

"Sir! Recieving massive comm Jamming. All communication off line. It's not just us either sir, seems like the whole star system is becoming effected."

As this was said, the ship moving towards them seemed to fizzle away. It didn't just disappear, but looked to have been disintegrated. Captain Lo'maht thought that he witnessed the ship becoming completely transparent just before it vanished from existance. It all seemed like a mirage. First it was there and then it had faded into nothingness.

"That did not seem like a friendly gesture to me..." The Captain stated just as something small slowly appeared in front of where the foreign ship had been.

This object slightly turned towards the larger Victory Class Star Destroyer and for a moment just hung in space. When this moment ended, the object instantly shot foward at a great speed. A speed and acceleration not seem on any known missile or torpedo in the galaxy, other then ones fired from magnetical launch tubes.

Rohnat was about to issue an order when the bridge lights darkened and full combat alarms blared out. At the same instant a computer voice called out:

"Incoming missile detected! Rapid acceleration registered, time to impact fifteen seconds"

"All weapons free! Lock on and destroy any hostiles. Engage and destroy any missiles." Ordered the Captain as he turned to jog back to his command seat.

"Missile tracking lost! Repeat Missile tracking lost!"

This came from the tracking station on the bridge. The officer sitted at this station had witnessed the same thing happen to the missile as had occured with the larger ship. One moment it was there accelerated towards the Chimaera and the next it was nonexistant.

As the missiles flew on, energy blasts from the damaged alien ship lanced out at the Chimaera. The Victory class ship's shields flickered with each hit, but held strong throughout the assault. It appeared that these turbolaser were somewhat weaker then the ones used by naval powers of today. Perhaps while advanced in certain technologies others were left alone. This was most fortunate for the Stellar Enterprises vessel because the alien ship seemed to possess quite a large number of these weapon emplacements.

The heavy weapons of the Chimaera, however, was having a greater effect on the alien ship. It's shields shuddered with each impact from Heavy turbolasers and held off until the rotating turbolasers powered up and fired. These batteries unleashed a hail of turbolaser energy fire into the forward shields of the other ship and soon pierces through them after causeing an overload. The stream of bolts slammed hard into the hull plating of the enemy vessel and vaporized it before pushing on into the ship. Decks underneath the hull plating disintegrated under the heat of each turbolaser blast. Whole sections disappeared and secondary explosions errupted from some of the damaged areas.

Within moment, though, another shield became operational and stopped the rest of the turbolaser blasts that continued to rain down on the vessel. The secondary shielding glowed with the impact of the heavy turbolaser batteries that become operational seconds after the rotating ones ceased fire. In addition to the heavy weapons, the rotating heavy laser cannons once again fired out at the missiles that crossed the distance between the two ships.

With the help of the Chimaera's movement through space and ever changing direction of travel, the missile systems had to emerge into space to reconfigure their guidence systems. This direction changed allowed some to be targeted and destroyed before they entered their invisible states. Four of the seven made it through the defensive fire, however, and proceeded to strike against the Chimaera.

As it happened, one of the four passed through the Chimaera's shields and armor, but somehow failed to detonate inside the ship. The others did, though, and once against caused more damage than their size would suggest possible. One reverted right behind one of the three populsion nozzels and exploded. This resulted in the destruction of one engine and the damage of another close to it. The blast expanded out and triggered a backup power generator to overload. It was only the quick work of surviving engineering droids, which managed to drain some of the building energy, that kept the explosion from ripping the rear of ship right off. As it was the detonation shook the whole ship and shot out of the top rear of the vessel. In the end a deep hole was formed in the hull of the Chimaera.

The other missiles exploded inside the hull as well, causing damage many other systems. None were deadly to the large ship, but that didn't make the situation better. Numberous weapons systems went off line as their power connections were severed or droid brains controling them were destroyed. Bridge crews raced to try to take over the firing of still operational ones while repair droids went out to try and fix the power supply problems.

Captain Lo'maht gripped the handle in front of him as the ship violently shook and looked out over his bow, seeing two explosions shoot out into space. These areas were quickly sealed off and the vessel pressed on its attack.

"Sir! warheads ready and solutions are plotted."

"Fire! Let them have everything we have. They will pay for damaged the Chimaera." The emotional Captain called out. He had just lost crew members and was not pleased at all

As he stood there, thirty warheads lept from their launchers and in seconds were joined by fifty more. After these came the next wave of the full eighty warhead launchers. It was a barrage more massive than Lo'maht had ever seen before. He watched these weapons arch towards the alien ship's starboard side and the first thirty impact in a tremendous blast. The Captain could almost feel the concussion inside him as the witnessed the ship shake and the starboard side shields flicker and collapse. The next fifty warheads passed through this gap and exploded against the ships hull, ripping away hull plating and destorying eveything in their path. Large fireballs shot out of the vessel's side as the warheads detonated.

It was at this time at the next eight converged on the striken ship. These angled in from the topside and slamed into the area of the hull housing the missile launchers. When they detonated, they caused the missiles stored in these launches to explode as well. The result was something Captain Lo'maht had not seen in so many years. It was also a first for many of the crew onboard the Chimaera.

In a blinding flash of light the whole enemy ship came appart into three sections. All of these spread out from an massive erruption along its center line and curved up and out. These large pieces of a once great warship burned at the edges as their metallic structure was heated to extreme tempertures. Debris slowly spread out around this now dead ship into the coldness of space.

It would have been one ship or the other, the Captain thought as he looked upon this destruction. He was glad it was not his.

Out of the surrounding ring of asteroids emerged a small fourty meter long vessel. The oval shaped craft moved slowly through the floating asteroids and towards the large planetoid's surface. Its smooth hull glistened in the light that reflected from the brownish colored surface below it of a barren landscape. In the back two engines gave off a blue hue as they propelled the ship forward towards its destination.

This destination had been picked from the scans conducted by a recon drone no longer than a day before. The scans had revieled a large concentration of a dense metallic deposit. After scientists and computers failed to identify this substance a sample mission was drawn up to extract as much of this substance as possible. Once this extraction was completed the scientists could analyze the substance further and develope possible uses for it, if it could be used at all.

It was on this mission that the mining drone had been sent. As it neared its designated sample area, four arms extended out front around the forward section of the craft and spread out to the sides. While they extended and locked into position the whole rounded tip opened up, reveiling a plasma mining drill. All the while, the drone's internal systems analyzed the environment outside and adjusted to the slow rotation of the planetoid as well as the different gravatic effects that occured outside it. For reasons yet unknow, the planetoid seemed to have a variation in its gravity fields depending on where one was. Some areas were low in gravity, while others were twice or even three times the normal for an object of such size.

It was this high gravity region that the drone now decended into. The forward thrusters fired quickly to slow down the craft and repulsor fields were erected around the craft to stop its motion completely before hitting the surface. These fields had to be readjusted quickly do to the increase in gravity and hold the ship in place as each of the extended arms moved down and dug into the ground below it. Once the task was accomplished the legs bent as one and lowered the miner's nosed right against the rock beneath it.

As contact was made, the foward plasma drill came online and quickly vaporized the rock beneath. It slowly pushed down deeper and deeper into the planetoid's surface to extract the minerals underneath. This job was taking longer than expected, however. The material make up of the upper layer, while not that dense, seemed to be quite resistant to the plasma do to a yet unknown magnetic field around each particle that composed it. The task would only get more difficult with each meter of crust the drone drilled into. It soon become apparent that this mission would take much longer than estimated.

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The Hellfire class frigate moved slowly through the space that was the edge of the Xliona System. She was only one of very few such ships that had not been sold off to other clients. With the Hellfire class in high demand around the galaxy, it was chosen to keep only a limited few and sell as many as possible to make profit. The few that had not been sold off and in turned kept for private use in the Stellar Enterprises Defense Force, had all been upgraded with the latest sensors and other Stellar Enterprises technologies. While they weren't the most advanced ships in the SE Defense Force, the Hellfire Class frigates were great ships for the price they cost.

This particular ship, which had been dispatched to protect the Xliona System, had now been sent on a system patrol mission. Its long range sensors, working in conjuntion with the scattered sensor net , would hopefully help it detect enemy formations at long range and give the other ships time to prepare for their arrival. Micro jump coordinates had already been preprogamed into the computer systems so that the ship could quickly jump back to the asteroid field and join formation with the others.

The Hellfire had been built for defensive duties and that was why it had been sent into the system. While it was proficient in dealing with some capital ships, it was much more compitent against fighters and projectiles. It was hoped that now with the newly discovered detection method this vessel could intercept more of the warheads before they could do damage to other ships.

With it being over three days now since the attack and no sign of the enemy coming back, it was proposed that with the destruction of one of their vessels, the unknown aliens could not return for some time. Today, however, would prove those theories wrong. At the very edge of sensor range, a group of radiation signitures became visible, out of nowhere. Unmoving, the sensor reading indicated them just hoving in space, as if waiting. For what it was not yet appearent.