Target Earth: Arrival/Chapter 2 - Blackshade

It was dark.

That was all Trazon could comprehend as consciousness flickered back to him. Groaning, he felt around, and his hand came into contact with what he recognised as the leather surface of his command chair. Picking himself up, he stumbled on something. Feeling downwards, he came into contact with skin. Warm skin. So, at least I'm not an only survivor, he thought.

He didn't know what had happened. One moment, they were desperately trying to evade an Imperial cruiser-- a cruiser belonging to the 888th Legion, no less. He had given the order to hide in a cloud. As soon as they entered the cloud, the lights began to flicker, and everything began to distort. The last thing he remembered was a crewman reporting an anomaly of some sorts before he had blacked out.

"Er..." he tried to speak, but he found his throat too dry to pronounce any comprehensible words.

"Who's there?" said a flat, whining voice. Trazon groaned. Of all the bloody things, he hazily thought.

"Kriff you, Tel..." he mumbled. He recognised the voice only too well. It was TL-87, the ship's onboard supervisor droid, designed as some sort of experiment by high command to find a way to bolster the alliance's officer numbers. Trazon often had difficulty suppressing the urge of tracking down whichever idiot had okayed this and shooting him. For three months, he had endured constant whining about keeping budgets in mind, conserving supplies, and other such nonsense that he neither understood or cared about. He was not a patient person, as his comrades constantly reminded him, but Tel, as it was nicknamed, could try even a Jedi Master.

"Oh, it's only you." said Tel. "Are you alright?"

"Nah, I'm fine." groaned Trazon, stumbling through the darkness. "What the kriff happened?"

"I'm not sure. We appear to have crashed somewhere. That's the extent of my knowledge."

Crashed? thought Trazon, as he focused. Crashed where? There were no planets in the nebula, and the whole nature of it prevented any solid celestial bodies from forming inside or near it. Feeling around, he touched what he recongised as the control console. Immediately he noticed that it was not warm and whirring as it usually was.

"If you have difficulty seeing, I can provide illumination. My Cybot Galactica 67-H photoreceptors can provide a..."

"Kriff you, Tel, now you tell me..."

"Mind your language, sir. Complying." Trazon immediately brought his hand to his eyes as light suddenly flooded into his vision. It took a few moments to adjust from pitch darkness to bright light, then he looked around. The bridge was in shambles. Crewmen were spread-eagled everywhere, consoles were smashed or smouldering, and in general the whole place looked like a nexu had torn through it. Standing a few metres away as Tel, his eyes glowing brilliantly, his chassis covered in dents. But apart from him, there was no operational machinery working in the bridge. Clearly, power was offline. But if that was so, then artificial gravity would also be off, and that was clearly not the case. So, they had landed somewhere.

"Gotta get outside..." mumbled Trazon to himself. He still felt shaken, and he could barely think straight. Stumbling past Tel, he approached the emergency escape airlock tucked away in the wall at the back of the bridge. Instinctively, he pressed the 'open door' control on the wall. When nothing happened, it suddenly occurred to him that a lack of power would also result in the airlock doors not opening. But there was more than one way to open a door, he thought. Taking a thermal detonator from his belt, he placed it on the side of the door, and stepped right back. A few seconds passed, and the detonator imploded, blowing the door down more easily than Trazon had expected. He took a step forward. The blast had blown in the outer airlock door as well, and now natural sunlight was seeping in. Trazon poked his head out, tasting fresh air. He looked up, and saw a clear blue sky that immediately brought back memories of his home on Corellia. He looked forward, and saw that the transport had landed in what seemed to be some muddy crater dotted with patches of water. Surrounding the crater was an expanse of fields and small, primitive-looking dwellings dotted here and there. What looked like wheeled speeders had parked around the edge of said crater.

"Tel, where are we?" asked Trazon, dreading the answer.

"My inbuilt navigational sensors have provided no answers. I have not detected any nearby HoloNet stations. In short, I don't know."

"Well, I intend to find out." announced Trazon. "I'm heading down to the armoury to gear up. If we're in the kind of situation I think we're in, it's better to be safe than sorry..."