Unknown regions.
One by one, the three organics in the bridge of the battlecruiser saw the ships around them disappear and enter hyperspace before the massive ship was herself enveloped by the alternate dimension. It was at this time Ahsoka joined the table with one question on her mind.
"Where are you taking these ships?"
"Something has been harassing my fleet. I cannot allow anything to jeopardies these ships. We're destroying it."
"Isn't that a little rash?"
"Lady Tano, I understand that the Jedi tend to have a pacifist mindset and attempt to find middle ground between two parties. We don't have time for such a solution. They have already begun testing this fleet for weakness and as such they need to be destroyed. We cannot lose this fleet and we cannot allow the star forges to be known." Ahsoka was about to respond when the [Absolute] was suddenly pulled from hyperspace. Everyone began to fall. Seth used the force to keep Yuuki upright while he used his suit's magnetic boots to stable himself.
"What the hell? Noga report!"
"General, all ships have had their hyperdrives safety features triggered."
"Cause?"
"Unknown. Large gravitation mass was detected; however scanners are not picking up anything at this time."
"Rescan and inform me of any updates."
"Roger roger." Seth looked out the view port and saw nothing but the vast open nothingness of space. They were in between system, and nothing was around. No planets, no stars, hell there wasn't any damn rocks around them. True nothingness.
"Blaze? Flame? Any ideas?" Seth asked in his mind.
"Maybe the hyperdrives are not working. It's been years since they were used." Flame suggested.
"We all know that the droids would have informed us if anything was wrong with the ships. They should be working fine."Blaze responded. As Seth began to think Yuuki noticed the troubled expression on his face.
"Dear?"
"Oh, sorry Yuuki, just lost in thought. What's up? You holding up alright? I know this whole thing must be taking a toll on you. Wanna rest in my quarters?"
"What's going on?"
"We're having some tech issues. For some reason our hyperdrives aren't working. If we can't figure out why we're in some trouble. I'm sure it we'll figure it out."
"What about a device that mimics a planet's gravitational shadow?" Ahsoka suggested, having been brought up to speed by Noga.
"Interdiction technology? I was thinking the same, but if that was the case, scanners should pick it up."
"A cloaking device?"
"Not likely, cloaking devices are normally huge and one housing an interdiction generator would need to be massive to power both. Scanners should pick it up." Ahsoka had to agree with the former Sith. Jay was translating the conversation for Yuuki who began to think of a possible solution. Then it came to her.
"It's a network!" She shouted in Japanese. Much to the confusion of the former Jedi who understood nothing.
"A what?"
"It's a network of devices. Think there's dozens of these jamming thingies that are creating a net preventing us from entering hyperspace."
"If there's many of them, then they could be small and could mimic a larger gravitational body, while still having enough power to maintain a cloaking device. Yuuki, you're a genius! Noga, is the ion cannon ready?"
"It can be fired in 80 seconds."
"Prime the cannon and turn the ship 90 degree starboard."
"Beginning firing sequence." The droids on the bridge began to press several buttons before the sound of electricity could be heard running throughout the whole ship. It was soon after the massive battlecruiser turned to the right that a massive ion wave of purple energy blasted from the ship. From the bridge the trio saw a cluster of formerly hidden objects reveal themselves.
"Noga, retrieve three of those objects, blast away the rest." The droid nodded and began to relay orders to the rest of the crew to use the tractor beams and begin targeting the rest.
Several Hours later.
With the path cleared the ships reactivated their hyperdrives and continued onwards. While the ships were in hyperspace the Je'daii stared into the blue tunnel of hyperspace. For most people, staring into the hyperspace tunnel can lead a form of madness called Hyper-rapture, but for Seth it was soothing to look into the blue tunnel.
"General, we're reaching the location of the trackers."
"Very good. Noga, once the ships have exited hyperspace you are to prime the ion cannon and target the enemy ships``. Afterwards, you are to have the fleet open fire. Ahsoka, coordinate the assault with Noga. If my memory is correct, you had experience leading capital ship assaults."
"I'll do it. Where are you going?"
"I like to get up close and personal." Seth said as he entered the elevator.
Once he reached the main hanger he brought out [B.L.A.Z.E.]. Several droid starfighters located in the hanger activated. They moved behind the black IS as the hanger door opened with the barrier active to protect the inside from a violent decompression event. The tunnel of hyperspace vanished, and the fleet entered real space.
"All batteries open fire!" Seth ordered as he launched front the hanger with his droids closely following closely behind. He rushed in using the energy made from [B.L.A.Z.E.]'s green wings. As he closed in at the four ships, they began to fire back. He saw that there was two different warships of unknown origin, along with a Hammerhead cruiser and an old Harrower-class dreadnought?
"What the- those are ancient ships!" These types of ships may have been old, but they were still weapons of war. This was evident when the ships began to unleash a storm of blaster bolts and Seth received a notice that he was being locked on by a ion torpedo.
"Blaze!"
"On it!" Blaze began to transmit to the starfighter flying in formation giving them orders and choosing the best path to avoid the point defense systems of the battlegroup, while Seth took direct control over her body.
The black IS weaved through the incoming fire before Seth returned fire with a swapped-out weapon. Back at the moon base, Blaze had swapped out her GN/noise missiles for a new GN/Proton torpedoes, which technique were illegal. Since proton torpedoes were in a sense nuclear weapons, but unlike a nuclear chain reaction they don't cause a large runaway reaction, but rather its far more limited.
The reason for the change was the encounter with these unknown alien ships in his home dimension. Proton torpedoes can penetrate both particle and energy shields and they are devastating to any ship. As these natives of the Unknown regions were soon to learn.
Seth locked on to the closest ship, which was the hammerhead cruiser. The torpedo barrage unleashed a massive amount of damage on the 315-meter-long cruiser. Disabling most of the weapons instantly. However, it was still moving, as were the droid starfighters. The squadron of vulture droids targeted the engines of the cruiser with their complaint of two Energy torpedoes. Which was followed up by a barrage of laser cannon fire. This crippled the ship's engine, and having been under consistent fire from the fleet, the cruiser's shields were soon overloaded, and the hammerhead erupted in a fury of explosions.
"General, we are detecting the activation of the three remaining ships' hyperdrives." Noga reported to Seth.
"Not if I have anything to say about it." Seth said as he brought his two hands together and a black sphere appeared in his hand. He launched it into the space between the remaining ships and their hyperdrives failed to activate. The black hole gravitational field made the hyperdrives believe they were stuck in a huge gravity well.
The three remaining ships began to try and move away from the black sphere, but it's pull was so powerful that are full thrust, they were barely moving. This was a double edge sword as the droids starfighters had to pull away, if caught in the gravitational pull, they wouldn't be able to move. Most of the damage would have to come from the turbolaser batteries of the fleet.
Seth ordered the fleet to focus most of their fire on the Harrower and the closet unknown ship. While he flew to the second unknown ships that was the size of a frigate, he was heading for the elevated bridge. Without wasting a moment, the unknown frigate began to fire dozens of laser cannon fire in an attempt to hit the black IS, but it was futile. With little effort, Seth evaded the laser fire and soon used the Thu'um to become intangible. Seth was now inside of the bridge of the ship which was surrounded by an unfamiliar alien species, who were in shock of his mere presence in the ship.
This was cut short by the fact Seth open fire with his miniguns using plasma rounds and completely decimated the bridge of the ship. He switched to [F.L.A.M.E] and began to blast this way throughout the ship. Encountering more of these humanoid aliens that were similar to humans but were a little taller than the average human. But they had wider shoulders, and a tapered skull. On their faces they had these deep-set eyes and an angled brow ridges. He couldn't tell if these aliens were just males or a mix of sexes. All he knew was that he had to shoot them. Even though these aliens had never seen an IS they were fearless in battle and were throwing themselves in front of Seth. A few had even drew metal blades, but it was all for nothing as Seth made his way towards the reactor of the ship.
He charged up [ .M.E.]'s hybrids cannons. Massive twin red beams fired from the cannon and Seth quickly raised a shield. It started a chain reaction which resulted in this unknown ship exploding. Once he was outside he saw the [Absolute]'s ion cannon was primed and fired. The massive ring of energy traveled to the two remaining ships and bypassed any remaining shielding the two ships had.
Seth was a little surprised that these older ships, shields had held out for so long considering his much larger fleet. He pushed these thoughts aside and made his way towards the Harrower after he order the fleet to destroy the other smaller ship. He saw dozens of Droch-class boarding craft launching from multiple ships in the fleet along with one Sheathipede-class shuttle with a full droid escort from the [Absolute]. He was the first to land in the disabled ship and in the massive open hanger he saw several bodies of the same alien species floating with the artificial gravity disabled.
He deactivated [F.L.A.M.E.] and appeared in the hanger with his suit of armor. The magnet boots held him down on the floor of the hanger. It was then at the shuttle arrived with several droid gunships. The gunships had carried dozens of super battle droids on their backs. As the droids deployed from the gunships, two beings stepped from the shuttle. R8 rolled off the track and behind him was the female Jedi, who was wearing a suit that allowed her to survive in space.
Seth didn't bother asking why Ahsoka was here, he instead made his way towards a sealed door. With his purple lightsaber ignited, he cut open a hole for the assault to enter, but the moment he cut open a hole, purple blaster bolts flew towards him. He began to swing his lightsabers to return the shots back where they came from, and was soon joined by a pair of white lightsaber and a barrage of red blaster bolts from the droids, who kept pouring in.
Soon the group felt the gravity return, as did some of the lights, but then the group felt a massive explosion rock the ship. Seth hailed Noga as to the status of the ship they were in. The super commander droid reported that their fleet had destroyed the Harrower's engines, and had fired several rounds towards the location of the ship's hyperdrive, but it had caused a chain reaction and the Harrower was now in 2 pieces. Split nearly perfectly diagonally across.
Seth and his forces moved down the hall and were under consistent fire. It was getting to the point where both Ahsoka and himself were getting overwhelmed. He held his hands forward slightly and the purple bolts were frozen midair. He continued to capture more and more of the blaster bolts as he walked forward. Seth and Ahsoka could sense the terror coming from these beings, which fueled the former's power even more.
Once a sizable amount of blaster bolts was caught, Seth flung the bolts back slaughter many of the alien defender. Those that survived felt their weapons ripped from their arms. Many of the survivors were gunned down by the battle droids, but two were grabbed by an unseen force. They soon lost conscious before their neck were snapped. Seth was getting reports that other boarding teams of droids were making their way throughout the ship, shooting anything that wasn't a droid. Not without loss though. There were already more than 60 droid actualities, but there were millions to spare.
It was soon that his strike team found an turbolift that led to the bridge of the ship. This area had its life support systems still activated so Seth and Ahsoka didn't need their masks. R8 rolled to the data port and began to call down their ride.
"We have company!" Ahsoka stated as she ignited her white lightsabers once more. The super battle droids raised their left arms, armed with the double wrist blasters. However, it was not a group of aliens beings that attack, but instead a swarm of insects. But neither force users sensed any life from the bugs, but Seth's sensor was detecting a large amount of metal. So they were a swarm of micro droids. The super battle droids that were closest to the swarm open fire, but the swarm latched onto them and exploded, but this wasn't the droids' function. When the small body of the droid exploded it released a chemical mixture that solidified entrapping the droids. Once the former Sith lord removed his mask.
"Yol Toor Shul!" A massive blue plum erupted from his mouth as the swarm neared. This act stunned Ahsoka who thought Seth was just human.
"What was that!?"
"Later! R8 are you done?!" Seth said he continued to unleash fire at the incoming swarms. R8 let out a series of beeps before the turbolift opened. Without wasting a second the remaining members of the strike group got on. Once inside R8 sealed the door as another swarm was on the way. The group felt the turbolift activated.
"We need their computers intact. Avoid damaging them, even if it means your own destruction. Lady Tano, can you protect R8?"
"I'll do it." The togruta female replied.
"You have my thanks in advance."
"Never thought a Sith lord would thank me one day. Let alone work beside one."
"The force works in mysterious ways." Ahsoka would have said something more, but just then the lift stopped. Both force users ready themselves as did the battle droids However, inside they found no one. The bridge had been abandoned. Seth looked on the screen of a nearby terminal but couldn't read it. He ordered R8 to dock with the data port and see what the droid could find out.
"They left the as soon as they realized they lost?" Ahsoka said out loud to no one in particular. It was at this moment that Noga contacted Seth stating that several escape pods had launched from the Harrower and were being pulled towards the [The Sword of Serenno] one of the Providence-class ships in the fleet. Whose crew were ready for the capture of the survivors. It was now that R8 reported that the ship had tried to send out a distress beacon, but the GN particles generated by the Separatists ships blocked the transmission. R8 also switch the language on the monitors to Aurebesh and now the two could read what on each screen.
"It appears that this is a military group. Look." Seth began to go through the files on the ship and saw all sorts of data. The two most useful was the captain's log and an unwiped navigational computer. As the group was finishing up, Seth and Ahsoka both sensed something in the room with them. It was brief, but they knew what it was. Something was scared, and they were in the room with them. Seth closed his eyes and focus the force to his ears. He heard muffled breathing. Looking up towards a certain section of the floor he ignited one of his lightsabers and cutting a hole in it. Using his free hand, he called on the force to pull the newly cut section of the floor up and revealed a alien child. However, she was not of the same species as the ones they had fought early.
Seth retracted his blade and looked at the small child whose fear was now clearly visible for all to see. He was far more humanoid than the others but had distinctly blue skin and these piercing red eyes. The Je'daii removed his helmet from his face to see her with his own eyes.
"Is she a Pantoran?" Seth didn't know many species with blue skin, but her being a pantoran made no sense. The Pantora system was in the Sujimis sectors, which is very far away from the unknown regions.
"I don't think so. Those eyes are different." Ahsoka responded. The small girl tried to hide, but there was nowhere to go. Seth lifted her up with the force and place her on the floor gently. He crouched down to meet her at eye level and held out an arm for her. The red eyes stared in a mixture of confusion and fear.
"It's okay, I won't hurt you." Seth said out loud while making his presence in the force warmer. The girl was hesitant for what seemed like a long time, but she soon gave Seth her hand. R8 had finished copying the data from the ship and the group made it back to the [Absolute]. Once the girl was on the ship filled with these scary battle droids, she began to cling to Seth's leg. He comforted the small child, but he had business to attend to. He placed the small blue girl in the Yuuki's care, while he interrogates the surviving aliens. Once fleet had restocked on gas from the nearby planet's atmosphere for organic, Seth arrived on the [The Sword of Serenno]. He was standing in front of the pods, with a sizable number of battle droids, he ordered the pods be cut open. Once the pods were cut, the droids readied themselves for a fight, but nothing came out. Seth had his lightsaber ready and approached the pod, he could feel the aliens through the force. But now that he was focusing, he felt their lives fading away. Rushing into one of the pods and saw that the three aliens inside were collapsed on the floor, twitching.
"They chose to kill themselves?" He began to probe the mind of one of the alien and was searching through the mind alien trying to get any information. He learned this species called themselves the Grysk and the small girl was a member of the Chiss species. However, he ran out of time and overstayed his search and felt a massive pain in his head. He felt the life end in the alien while he was still inside. With weak legs he collapsed on the floor of the ships, before his mind blanked out.
With his shooting open, the former Separatist general found himself in a field. He didn't see anyone near him. As he rose from the ground he noticed that he was in grey robes and couldn't find any of his weapons. Even when trying to summon [Kurikara] nothing happened. In the distance he saw a cluster of lights. He began to follow these lights, which led him to a crystal-clear lake. Inside the pool of water an image began to form in front of Seth's eyes.
He saw a massive space battle with ships he did not recognize, but were familiar, followed by a duel between two individuals wearing his armor. Both the blades of the two in armor were missing, but one visor had green lights, while another had white lights. It then shifted to a battle on a desert planet, with troopers in white armor, fight a force wearing very little in terms of protection. Suddenly a massive ship, larger than anything he saw before fell from the sky. It was at this moment when the world around vanished, and he saw the concerned faces of Blaze and Flame.
"Master, are you okay?"
"Flame? Where's the lake?"
"What lake? You've been out for about 3 minutes. Are you hurt?" Blaze asked.
"His vitals are clear." Flamed added.
"I'm good, we need to return to the [Absolute]." He took Flame's extended arm before the trio got back to the nearly 5-kilometer-long ship. Once there he made his way towards the living quarters.
Once he arrived in the organic living sector, he saw that Yuuki was playing with the small child. Who was still acting shy, but she appeared to be warming up to the young woman. Ahsoka was there as well, but she was meditating. Seth sat down in front of her and waited for her to finish.
Once she opened her eyes, the two talked about the next course of action. Ahsoka would need to learn this hyperspace guiding technique as she would be the only one who could check on the fleet if anything happens in the Unknown regions.
Several Days Later
The fleet made a jump to two systems he had mapped out during the Clone War. There was nothing in this system. Both systems had no planets capable of holding life. No one would think to look here. After setting up the Star Childs in these systems. He made another jump to the Veroleem system. During the war, they had officially remained neutral, but in secret they allied themselves with the Confederacy of Independent Systems. Now wanted to see if he could call on these people support again, even if in secret once more.
The fleet of ships arrived in the system and immediately came under fire. Seth in the bridge of the ship looked outwards and saw two massive wedge shape ships, firing a massive barrage of green plasma bolts.
"Get in formation! Disperse GN particles!" Seth ordered as the two Imperial-class star destroyers were unrelenting on his fleet. For their size of 1,6000 meters it had a lot of turbolaser batteries. He couldn't let them call for reinforcements. If they were discovered now the fleet would be lost.
Two of the Munificent-class were already severely damaged as they had taken most of the barrage. With the fleet in a full battle formation, their counter attack began. The turbolasers of the fleet began to attack the Imperial ships.
Droids starfighter engaged TIE fighters. The TIEs were agile and could turn tighter then the [Vulture] droids, but there were just so many [Vulture] droids that they were taking down TIE fighters with their sheer numbers. It was at this time a squadron of [Hyena] Bombers broke through the intense fighting and unleashed their full payload on one of the Star Destroyers. Pink and yellow explosion erupted on the hull of the ship. One bomber targeted one of the dome shape objects on the tower of the massive star ship and the shields of the ship retracted.
"All batteries, concentrate firepower on the ship on the left!" Seth said and Noga relied the order to the rest of the fleet.
The remaining Star destroyer and her crew watched in horror as she companion was engulfed by countless red bolts of destruction. Though she did not go down without a fight. Even as her hull erupted with explosions, the green turbolaser fire continued. And for her continued valor, the two heavily damaged ships were destroyed and several ships in the fleet had taken moderate damage. With now just one ship left, the fleet focused their fire on the remaining ship. Yet like her companion, she fought on. After firing the [Absolute] ion cannon, she was dead in space. Like with the Harrower days prior, he ordered a boarding party to get the schematics of the ship, but there was another issue. Noga reported that on the surface, there was a large number of troops on the surface. It was an occupation, but there was only one major city on the planet. New Promise was small by most city standards, but it contained most of the planet's population. He knew a full scale orbital bombardment and while out everything, but such an act would not go well with his new and former allies.
Ahsoka said she would handle the ground assault while Seth would lead the boarding of the capital ship. The two force users had begun to warm up to one another. Granted the fact the former Sith had killed dozens of Jedi during the war was not something she would soon forget, but she was starting to see him in a better light.
As the C-9979 launched from the fleet and began to descend down to the planet surface, Seth entered a boarding pod alongside several droids. Arriving in the middle of the ships, Seth entered the destroyed halls of the Imperial craft. He saw bodies laid around the floor, and noticed several troopers wearing white armor. He didn't have time to look as several red bolts of plasma came from another hallway. The accuracy of the plasma bolts was true, but so was Seth in returning them. He reflected the plasma bolts back to a squadron of Stormtroopers. Soon the battle droids fired in their direction as well.
It didn't take long for Seth to arrive at his destination. It was not the bridge, but the hypermatter reactor on the ship. The layout was similar to a Venator, so he had a general idea where the reactor was, since both were made by the same company. Inside the droids and Seth saw a team of Stormtroopers rigging the reactor to explode. The team tried to fight back, but they were gun down by a blaster fire. More droids entered the room and began to secure it. With this area secured, Seth made his way towards the the bridge of the ship. Inside he found the officers with blasters drawn. As they were about to open fire, they felt the blasters torn from their arms. With no mercy, Seth began to slaughter the officers on the bridge. Once it was clear, he called the team waiting for his single. R8 arrived with a full escort and docked with the main console's data port. Seth was a little surprise he didn't have to try and rig a solution to get the main terminal back online, it had some sort of shielding, protecting it from data loss, though it wasn't accepting any commands to execute. They couldn't do anything but copy the data. As he was about to leave, Seth noticed that several of the officers were aging clone troopers, but several were not. They were normal humans.
Regardless, with his mission completed, Seth ordered the ship to be destroyed once all remaining forces left the craft. He entered one of the hanger of the ship and found a shuttle with dead bodies and broken battle droids around it. It seemed that this team tried to get a ship repaired in order to escape the battle but were stopped. Though the former General noticed that it took a significant number of battle droid losses before they stopped them. He need to program better machines and make new one. He was gonna have to phase out the B1s and replace them with either a newer model or commando droids.
He finished the dead imperial work and used the [Sentinel] class shuttle to arrive on the surface of the nearby planet. He forgot to transmit that he had taken the shuttle, so his own force had open fire on the damaged shuttle. He was going down. Though Seth was gonna try and make uses of a bad situation. He aimed the crashing shuttle towards what he thought was the main Imperial encampment. Jumping at the last possible moment, the shuttle crashed, and a massive fireball took the life of many Imperials. He couldn't let himself rest, and immediately ignited his blades.
"Focus fire on the Jedi!" An Imperial officer commanding from the battlefield command was momentarily stunned when from the corner of her eyes she saw several of her men being cut apart by a purple lightsaber. As the Stormtroopers fired on the Jedi their blaster bolts were flung back at them before an invisible wall of energy blasted the troopers away. As the troopers tried to get up, they were surrounded by battle droids led by Ahsoka. The remaining Imperial troopers lowered their weapons and held out their arms. As Ahsoka was about to move, with the intent of taking the remaining Imperials prisoner, Seth snapped his fingers. The battle droids fired on the surrendering Imperials.
"Nooo!" Immediately Ahsoka glared at Seth with watched his droids execute his command.
"Why did you do that!? They surrendered!"
"What else should I have done? We do not have the means to take care of prisoner. Lady Tano I understand this wouldn't sit well with you. But there no other choice. CIS ships were not made in mind to house large amounts prisoners." Ahsoka knew what he was talking about was true. There were barely any accounts of prisoners of war held by the CIS during the war. Guess when most of your military is made of cold metal, there no needs to house basic necessities for living beings.
Several Days Alderaan.
After their cleanup operations were finished up and the alliance reestablished against the Empire. The remaining fleet returned to the uninhabited system and the Star Child had already grown. With Noga receiving maintenance so he could function for several years, he would oversee the two Star Children. Now back on Alderaan, Seth handed over the data collected from the aliens in the unknown regions and a copy of the schematics of the Imperial class Star destroyer. They would use these to find weak points and build on top of it.
Then came a personal request from Seth. He asked Organa if it wasn't any trouble, if he could spend his honeymoon with Yuuki on Alderaan. The senator was more than happy to let the couple spend time on his planet. Alderaan was a popular location for couple to come and be engulfed by the planets lush natural beauty.