Chapter Text
Darth Zhorra watched the blue vortex of hyperspace speed by through the starboard viewport of her quarters on the Ellipse, her personal Fury-class starship. She had always found the infinite vortex interesting, for it was one of the few concepts that she couldn’t manage to fully wrap her mind around. The ability to make a ship travel faster than light and arrive in different star systems within hours was an amazing feat, and something that she would have to study at a later time.
Her gaze shifted from the swirling vortex to focus on her reflection staring back at her from the viewport. She was a Zabrak from the planet Dathomir; the black facial tattoos common among her species slashed across her face, stretching from her forehead to around her eyes, cheeks, lips, and down the front of her neck. Seven short horns grew on the top of her forehead and in her hair, which was cropped close to her skull. She stared back at her own amber eyes in the viewport, then her gaze drifted over her black, form-fitting robes to the weapon clipped to her belt: a lightsaber, the preferred weapon of those who battled using the Force.
Her lightsaber was a work that bespoke both grace and power: colored silver, the hilt had a black fitted grip along most of its length; the activation switch, energy adjuster, and blade length adjuster were recessed into the hilt so as not to obstruct the wielder’s hand when the saber was held; the pommel was rounded and featured concentric horizontal circles up to the grip; the blade emitter was surrounded by four short spikes. When activated, the saber itself was a rich amethyst color and small crackles of excess energy would intermittently dance around the emitter.
Zhorra had practiced with her sparring droid earlier; it paid to stay sharp, especially with the many dangerous situations she often found herself in. She was one of the few Sith commanders in the covert operations division of the Imperial military, and was currently en route to a rendezvous with a select few other covert-ops squads with the intent of ambushing a large Jedi strike force that had caused the Empire a lot of trouble on various worlds caught in the conflict between the two galactic governments.
Zhorra’s personal squad was known as Oblivion Squad. She was its commander, along with Major Korvus as her co-commander. He was an effective leader and the other squad members looked up to him. The Sith and her commandos had served together for over five years now, from before the Treaty of Coruscant and now into the resurgent war.
Korvus’ voice filled the room as he addressed Zhorra using the ship-wide comm, “My Lady, we require your presence in the cockpit.”
She finally turned from the viewport and walked over to her personal quarters’ comm interface, then pressed the button next to the speaker and responded with a simple, “On my way.” Then she exited her quarters and made her way to the cockpit.
The Ellipse was a relatively small ship, shaped like a sharp and angular U. The cockpit was at the front of the inner center of the U, and connected to the central activity hub. The hub was the central compartment of the ship, while other compartments served as either crew, medical, or personal quarters and were spread out in either of the ship’s wings. The very back of the ship contained the primary and secondary engines, hyperdrive, and other internal systems necessary for the ship’s continued functionality.
Zhorra entered the cockpit and was greeted by the sight of Korvus and the rest of Oblivion Squad at their respective stations, monitoring various readouts and the like, their helmets clipped to their belts in case of emergencies (when sealed from the environment, a soldier could survive in the cold void of space for a maximum of thirty minutes; any more, and the suit’s environmental stabilization systems would begin to fail).
Korvus was the first to notice her entrance. He was a human in his mid-thirties and spoke with a rough, drawling accent compared to the aristocratic accent typical of most Imperial citizens.
“Officer on deck!” he announced, then jumped to attention and saluted, just as the rest of the squad did. They all wore the jet-black armor of the covert-ops division, which featured an upgraded tactical heads-up-display in their helmets and slightly more resilient armoring.
“At ease,” Zhorra said. Buldun, Oblivion’s heavy weapons expert, and Gerrod, the medic, both sat back down at their stations and returned to what they were doing on their consoles. “What’s the situation, Korvus?”
Korvus glanced at the squad’s pilot, Kaylia. She was a human with a slight build in her early twenties, and was a distinguished technician and mechanic, as well as an experienced pilot. “Lieutenant?” Korvus nodded at her, giving her the go-ahead to brief their commander.
Kaylia spoke with the more common Imperial accent, “My Lady. As you know, we have to pass through the Maw in order to avoid detection by Republic forces while we make our way to the rendezvous site.”
Zhorra nodded. The Maw was a massive cluster of black holes on the edge of the Outer Rim. It was extremely dangerous to navigate, but the black holes would effectively shield the Ellipse from scans on all spectrums, since the presence of so many black holes in a relatively small area of space would distort and obstruct any and all scans looking for a small craft. X-ray scans could pick up the black holes themselves, but not the ship.
Kaylia continued, “The problem is that we just started receiving some disturbing scans from the cluster and-”
- and that was when the trouble started.