Chapter 21: Saving Plo Koon.

I emerged from the portal, to face the pitch black vastness of an unfamiliar universe.

Stars dotted the farthest reaches of my sight, not a single habitable location in my field of vision.

Slowly, I turned the ship, scanning the surroundings, when it came into view.

A planet, glorious, glowing red, clouds streaking across it's atmosphere like stretch marks on a pregnant woman. Ok, bad analogy, but you get the meaning. It was fucking beautiful.

For a moment, I just sat there, stunned, as tears of joy and gratitude pooled in my eyes.

For the first time, I felt glad, truly glad that I had entered the multiverse. This beauty, I'd have had no chance of experiencing it otherwise.

Then I saw something, like a dust particle, but bigger entering my sight.

Squinting, I saw in the distance, opaque against it's majesty, stood 4 dots.

"Enhance!"

I commanded the ship, and the picture enlarged, auto resolving to the highest degree, till I could distinguish them from each other.

They turned out to be four ships, three forming a battle line against the singular ship resting closer to the red giant.

One would think it was an unfair matchup at first glance, being 3 to 1 in odds, but looking closer, it was obvious how misguided that statement would have been.

The lone ship was nearly twice the size of the others, and it sported some sort of weapons array on it's side nearly wide enough to swallow all three ships in its volley.

Speak of the devil.....

Just as I was analysing the weapons array, it powered up on the massive ship, sending arcs of electricity across the launching platform.

And I finally remembered where I was. And when.

This was the Abregado system, in 21 BBY.

And that mechanical colossus of a ship was the Subjugator-class heavy cruiser, Count Dooku's Malevolence.

And I had an idea how I was going to get my bearings in this world.

I took hold of the wheel, and put the metal to the pedal, accelerating towards the battle.

If this went well, I'd get on the good sides of both of the parties engaging in the civil war.

Halfway to the battlefield, the Malevolence had charged up enough, and released a massive wave of emp, disabling the three republic ships.

Now with their enemies inactive, the Malevolence turned it's more traditional armaments at the enemy and made easy pickings of them.

Now from what I knew, this was just the beginning of the clone wars and most of the good stuff was still ripe for the taking. And I had plans for every last little doodad they had.

But first, let's deal with the Malevolence situation.

The majority of the republic crew was either already dead or soon to be dead. But one character survived this battle.

Jedi Master Plo Koon.

Someone who could connect me to the protagonist of the present story, and the many, many benefits that came with being part of his circle.

Of course, I am no fan of the moody little sand hating turd, but he is crucial to a plethora of dicoveries that could make me filthy rich and powerful.

So getting in his good graces is objective numero uno!

I sent out a scan for any and all living signatures in the sector, and hid the van behind one of the many debris from the newly destroyed battleships.

Within minutes, the scanner had pinged them on the map.

Good.

Taking count of time, I figure I have a good half an hour before Anakin arrives to the rescue.

If all goes well, it'll be enough time to get through with all of my plans.

I donned my power armor and exited the van, touching the downed battleship, activating my power on it and downloaded all the data on it's computers onto mine.

I was severely lacking in the data department. But no more.

With a new navigation system and star map downloaded, I was now free to travel the galaxy, even if this mission went completely sideways.

Taking a deep breath, I opened the holomap, and charted a path to the escape pods, at least the ones with people still alive in them.

There were three still left, one of them not far from me.

"Alright. Let's do this!" I said, activating the thrusters on my back, jettisoning towards the pods.

Dodging debris, weaving across the battlefield, I jumped from hiding spot to hiding spot, till I reached the first one.

Grabbing onto the pod, I climbed along it's length, slowly and carefully, peeking at in the window.

Trooper, trooper, trooper, officer, trooper. I counted.

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Useless. I can only save like 4 people at most and it's not like the Separatists were gonna pay me a bounty for them, given they just wanted them dead.

As a wise man once said, where there's cash, there's a way out.

Unfortunately for these poor sods, there was nothing to be gained by helping them.

And if I have to leave them here, might as well spare them the misery of a long and painful death.

At least that would be mercy, compared to waiting for rescue, only as a vain hope, dreading every passing minute as the lack of oxygen drives you slowly mad, until finally the void of space takes you as it's own.

No help was going to arrive for them. They weren't the main characters after all. They were barely important enough to exist.

No grand destiny or prophetic fate keeping them safe and alive.

I snorted. Truly, lives wasted. From beginning to end.

Aiming my arm forward, I pushed off the top of the pod, twisting backwards, coming into view of the pod's windows.

With one clean shot, my arm mounted laser burst through the glass, instantly boiling the soldiers alive in their pod as the air superheated to equilibrium, before the glass burst, dragging their crisp corpses into the vacuums of space.

Poor bastards. Just unlucky they ran into me first.

One down. Two to go.

Finding the other two pods, surprisingly close, I realised this was it. One of the would die, and the other had my targets.

My jetpack burned behind me, rocketing me through the debris, as I raced against the time crunch.

My laser arm forward, I dogded, twisted and burned through the field, searching every nook and cranny for the pods.

You know, space is a lot more confusing to maneuver than it looks.

For one, everything is pitch black. The fact that distances between objects loom large didn't help that either. The lowest lay in the range of miles, and the largest, lightyears, or parsecs, as they liked to call it in this part of the multiverse.

For another, the range of motion is 3-dimensional, unlike the regular old two dimensional placement of the planetary surface I was used to.

In theory, it sounded freeing, offering infinite possibilities for movement, it was equally as confusing to get used to. Especially with my crippling fear of darkness, and thalassophobia, which just made space look like a death trap, which admittedly, it was.

Now, I'm no trained pilot, so half the time I was looping around the same region, from different angles, not knowing which way was up and down. Mostly because on space there is no frame of reference. There is no up and down except from your own perspective.

It's one of those things space stories like to conveniently ignore, even Star Wars, what with Battleships 'falling' in space, and people almost always fighting on the same axial planes, when firing from below or above would be more beneficial.

Hardly any admiral except Thrawn even tries simple battle tactics like flanking, or defeat in detail.

And now, after experiencing the nausea of the absent frame of reference firsthand, I kinda get why they do it.

It's just more efficient given that most soldiers were human, with their very human perspective issues.

Note to self, integrate visual display for gyrometer. I am not putting up with this rolly polly bullshit after this.

Suddenly, my holomap beeped lightly, notifying me of the proximity to survivors.

I looked around, front to back, up and down, till I found them.

In the distance, to the top right corner of my display, I spotted a dim light, glowing blue, amidst four metal prongs.

Yup, found them.

Changing directions, I circled the debris field, around the hunter ship, emerging at its back from below, my laser ripping it in half, right down the middle, even if it came at a great cost to it's already low battery.

Still circling around from the sheer momentum, I took out another two droids, before they started firing back.

"New arrival!" A droid barked orders at the two droids left, "Take him out!"

"Roger roger." The soldier droids intoned and raised their guns taking aim at me.

But before they could fire, they were thrown off the hunter craft, missing their shots, as they tumbled away.

Not wasting my chance, I strafed my laser arm at them and took them out.

Finally, with the immediate threat taken care of, I landed on the prongs still holding the pod, cold welded from the vacuum, I took a good look at the man who had saved me.

A man sporting goggles and a metallic breathing aid, mandibles poking out of his pockmarked orange face.

Jedi Master Plo Koon!

I balanced myself on the roof of the pod, causing the Jedi Master to back off, still cautious of me.

He raised his lightsaber at me, looking me over, head to foot, and raised an eyebrow when he couldn't recognise the make of my power armor.

I, on the other hand, pretended to press at my chin, and cleared the tint off the front of my mask, revealing my face.

"So...you kids need a ride home?" I asked, with the toothy grin of a used car salesman.

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