Madcap's Fiction Corner - "Minos Mayhem, Epilogue"

The festivities on Bogden's third moon were far and away removed from those occurring on Shuttle Obsidian. Corrin Dax had managed to successfully pilot the shuttle away from the Vigilant Warden and make the jump to hyperspace as the battle was joined between the Rebels and those that Critus had brought under his control. If that had been all, that would have been suitable enough. Dax, however, was not the only passenger aboard Obsidian.

MadCap's Fiction Corner - "Minos Mayhem, Chapter 19"

"He does not yet see. Why can he not yet see?"

"Defiance."

"How can I make him see? How can I open his Eye to Ascension?"

"Patience."

"The time is at hand. Please. Please tell me what I can do to bring him into your graces. Into the light of Ascension!"

MadCap's Fiction Corner - "Minos Mayhem, Chapter 18"

 

The ramp off of the shuttle opened up to a graveyard. The bodies of Stormtroopers and a few people that Calen recognized by their clothing as cultists from the Church of Infinite Perception lay strewn about Bay 327.

"Oh, by the space winds..." Bashin's snout wrinkled in distaste for the sight before them. Looking over the carnage, there were considerably more trooper bodies than those of cultists. A surprise attack, perhaps? The four organics and the one astromech droid moved through, weapons drawn and keeping their eyes open for any attack. None came as they passed into Bay 328, just more bodies and carbon scoring across surfaces where shots had not met their intended target.

"I think the Church finally decided to take over..." Niyasa intoned.

MadCap's Fiction Corner - "Minos Mayhem, Chapter 17"

The bridge of the Vigilant Warden was absolutely tense. The orders had been carried out, Admiral Ayro's new weapon had had its first successful test...with terrible results. No lifesigns were being reported, all at once, they had all winked out...and were gone.

"...the...the test was successful." The ops officer reported. "Gehenna is...Gehenna is gone..."

MadCap's Fiction Corner - "Minos Mayhem, Chapter 16"

 

Ayro was less than pleased as he watched the Grand Preceptor's lander slide into the docking bay and extend its landing gear. It had been the first time he'd been so blatant in utilizing their connection, and at one of the worst possible times, too. What in the galaxy could that man possibly want? A ramp descended from the ship, several members of the Church - each one wielding a blaster - descended first, which put the Stormtroopers there on guard duty ill at ease. Ayro raised a hand to tell them to withdraw, and they did so. . .still looking on with worry from a distance.

Down the ramp came Ijo Critus, clad in robes of pure white. Atop his head was not his usual turban, but an elaborate headdress with a jewel set in the forehead. The "third eye" that was opened to Perception that his cult was always ranting about like mad dogs.

"High Admiral." Critus bowed at the waist. "I am humbled by your hospitality."

MadCap's Fiction Corner - "Minos Mayhem, Chapter 15"

The hologram projector had been activated by Glin, displaying the two pieces of the map that the Rebels had gotten a hold of.

"Here we are, the Minos Cluster in all its splendor." He said.

MadCap's Fiction Corner - "Minos Mayhem, Chapter 14"

The shuttle coasted low enough to avoid Imperial sensors, heading not toward Capital City (which Calen still thought was a highly unimaginative name), but to some coordinates far out and away on Karideph. Farmland stretched out in virtually every direction from another the city, but soon gave way to hills and mountains, one of which they grew closer to. At the direction of Alliance landing control, Calen brought the vessel up over a crevasse and began to descend into it. As the shuttle did so, a hatch beneath opened up to allow them entry into an otherwise hidden hangar bay. The shuttle landed upon the pad, and Calen cut off the engines entirely. They were, for the moment, surrounded by darkness with only the lights of the cockpit to provide any illumination.

MadCap's Fiction Corner - "Minos Mayhem, Chapter 13"

By the time they had made it from the caves back to the shuttle, Calen having given his fourth explanation of the events that had just occurred, his shipmates were still heavily in disbelief (save for Niyasa, of course). Even Calen couldn't honestly say that he believed everything that he had seen, but there had to be some truth to it. Whatever was on Pergitor, it was something Critus wanted. If he wanted it, so would the Empire. The fortune hidden on the ship was nothing, nothing at all compared to this Gem this. . .Heart. Whatever it was called, it was something that couldn't fall into the hands of Critus or the Empire. This information, the map, the only chance they had was to bring it to the Alliance.

MadCap's Fiction Corner - "Minos Mayhem, Chapter 12"

It didn’t take them long after that to find a vessel in good enough shape to fly. A lone Lambda-class shuttle was still in somewhat working order amongst the wreckage of vessels in the hangar. It wouldn’t be a comfy ride by any means, but they could at least get off the planet and back to Karideph - in theory, anyway. Niyasa spent some time tearing out the bits of their vessel anyway, when she found better parts in other ones that remained.

“You can fly this, I take it?” She asked as they finally got onboard.

“I can fly anything.” Calen replied. “I did say I was going to be a TIE pilot before, wasn’t I?”

“You probably did mention that before, yes.” Niyasa said, absentmindedly.

“How’d you think I could do that if I weren’t good?” Calen asked. “Those things are basically a seat strapped to an engine. Without shields.”

“Confidence is good. Overconfidence can be a weakness, but point withdrawn.” The Mrlssi held up her claws as if washing them of the whole thing. Calen took his spot at one of the two pilot seats, checking the interface.

MadCap's Fiction Corner - "Minos Mayhem, Chapter 11"

An Imperial prisoner transport was hardly a comfortable place by design. For the purposes of a night’s rest, however, it served well enough. When Calen settled into his small bunk, he did not expect that this night would be any more pleasant than any of the others he’d had of late. When he awoke in a familiar dreamscape...he found that he was right. The forest, the table with the feast, and Critus sitting at it in his robes and turban.

“Sleeping well?” He asked, languidly pouring himself another glass of some liquid from a crystal decanter.

“...oh, well, of course.” Calen replied dryly.“I often enjoy dreams where I’m assaulted by strange men in bathrobes.”

“Perhaps my previous attempt to convince you was...overzealous.” Critus quipped, ignoring the sarcasm dripping from every word of the younger man.

“What tipped you off? The blood cup? Maybe the feast of skeletons? The cryptic nonsense about the Path?” Calen asked as he watched the older man sigh, rubbing his temple. “Oh, I’m sorry. Is that annoying? Is it like someone invaded your dreams while you sleep?”

MadCap's Fiction Corner - "Minos Mayhem, Chapter 10"

Once more creeping up behind set of crates after set of crates, ship after ship, Calen found himself no closer to locating any sign of Ordos. This was a stupid plan, and he knew it well. Or, at least, he knew it now. Knowing Tessa, the rest would be taking off the moment they got that transport running, no questions asked. Some allies! Calen supposed he couldn’t blame them. To be a member of the Rebels was a death sentence as far as the Empire was concerned, so perhaps he was in good company. It seemed even this far out in the galaxy, the War wasn’t something that could be so easily avoided. Stuck in the middle of it now, he made the choice to save Ordos, if he could.

 The deck was still crawling with Stormtroopers, all searching. Calen watched their patterns, did his best to get through them without arousing suspicion. The lights were apparently on his side (either through Dax’s machinations or poor maintenance as had been with the stairwell’s coolant system), but how long would that last? How long could he creep from shadow to shadow to find what he sought? How long could-his eyes caught the movement, seeing the older man moving to a docking control terminal.

 ‘What is he doing?’ Calen thought, watching him manipulate the interface. It began to loudly shriek out yet another alarm.

 “There he is! Stop right there!” A Stormtrooper was drawn to the sound and received one of Ordos' blaster shots to the head for his trouble. Three others were moving in on him, Ordos ducking behind the lowered ramp of a freighter to avoid their fire and return with some of his own. Calen immediately began to rush forward, hoping to assist him in his defense and get him to the transport without further incident. It was then that Ordos managed to take out not one, not two, but all three of his attackers in rapid succession. It was then that the old man noticed him.

 “You shouldn’t be here! Go, now!” Ordos snapped.

 “I was just trying to-” Calen started.

 “Go, to the transport! Get out of here!”

MadCap's Fiction Corner - "Minos Mayhem, Chapter 9"

This was not proving to be the day for High Admiral Ayro. First, his prisoners had managed to escape due to the sheer incompetence of his men, as well as unleashing a bunch of others in a mass riot, and now he was being told that an entire stairwell had been demolished in a system overload. “How did a damn coolant system destroy all of Stairwell Six?”

“S-Sir, the internal sensors say that it was sabotage and the system was fed back into itself, causing an overlo-”

“Two humans and a damned Wookiee could not fit into that crawlspace!” Ayro roared at the man at the operations station, who shook from the volume.

MadCap's Fiction Corner - "Minos Mayhem, Chapter 8"

As he quickly stripped one of the two troopers and began to strip off his own outfit to replace with the Stormtrooper armor, Calen took a few milliseconds to reflect on how absolutely insane his life had become over just the past few days.  After that instinct that had told him to run, things had been fairly quiet for a year afterward. Then his captain was killed, he willingly went along on a quest for revenge against the Twi’lek who had murdered him, he’d found there was a cult on a dead planet that was seeking a mysterious power, and that the Empire in the region was looking for that power, too, because of a heist gone wrong decades before.

And now, he was being sprung from prison by a bird woman Jedi.

MadCap's Fiction Corner - "Minos Mayhem, Chapter 7"

His unconscious state was no longer troubled by the disturbing dreams of Ijo Critus and the banquets with incredibly poor health care standards. In fact, his state was no longer troubled by anything at all until he woke up to the feeling of his head being split open as if by a massive hammer. It was the clear result of being stunned so many times over the last few hours, though Calen more acutely remembered it as the same feeling he’d had the morning after he’d spent a night out with his classmates upon their graduation from the Academy.

He did his best to force the feeling from his mind and focus more on figuring out where he was. The blinding light made that difficult by sight, so he tried by hearing...and was treated with a vast, empty void. Feeling, too, was restricted as he seemed to be unable to move his hands. A weight was pressing down on them at the wrists, yet his arms ached with the soreness of strain. His arms were being forced above his head. Again. His vision finally began to clear, and he soon realized the truth of his surroundings - an Imperial interrogation chamber. ‘So, not dead. Still in Hell, though.’ Calen thought. It didn’t look like the ship, so it was likely he’d been transported from there to...somewhere else.

The doors as the far end of the room unlocked and a hissing followed as they slid open, revealing to him a man in an Imperial uniform. Calen recognized the swatches and code cylinders that signified the rank of a High Admiral. The man himself was clearly one who had seen his younger days some time ago, his hair was gray and his eyes a black that peered from sunken sockets. They reminded him of Ordos’, but they were an absence of something rather than its presence. The man stood there for the longest moment, appraising him. After a few moments of neither of them speaking, he began to click his tongue.

“Y’know, you can stop that whenever you like.” Calen groaned out. “The reverberation off the walls is terrible. Seriously, if you’ve never been stunned, I wouldn’t reco-”

“Do you ever stop talking?” The man asked. His tongue clicked. Calen’s brow quirked with the irritation and pain.

MadCap's Fiction Corner - "Minos Mayhem, Chapter 6"

The room was dead silent. Calen remained rooted to the spot. From what little peripheral vision he had from looking down, he could see that Ordos wasn’t moving, either. The room was still filled with hushed, excited whispers.

“If you will not reveal yourself, then I shall have to reveal you, Calen.” The man in white spoke again after a long pause. “Come along now. What would your father think of his son acting like a coward?” Calen knew exactly what Thaddeus Darkhaven would have thought. Even so, he held fast, his fist clenching tight.

“Look up.”

It had been in his head. There was no echo, no distortion. In his mind, he’d heard it, clear as a bell. The man in white, speaking to him...through...his mind?!

MadCap's Fiction Corner - "Minos Mayhem, Chapter 5"

The two made their way up to the Ascended Level without a word between them. The Ascended Level was Gehenna’s topmost by the helpful diagram on the lift wall, and it was the place that the Church of Infinite Perception called home. One of them, at least, since Calen was given to understand that the Church was at the topmost level of all of Pergitor’s domed cities - each one had an Ascended Level and, presumably, the vision he saw before him.

As the lift breached the floor beneath, they rose up to see banners hung from virtually every wall, all of them depicting the image of a closed eye with a few tears falling. Beneath them were several buildings that, unlike the well-constructed labyrinth levels below, had clearly been designed more for form than function. Calen could see several buildings that were clearly meant to be residents, meant for the super wealthy. Or, at least, what must have passed for super wealthy out this far on a mining colony that had long since stopped being used for that purpose. That being said, however, the buildings were decorated with tempered durasteel and precious gemstones to be as gaudy and ritzy as any of the manor houses of Coruscant.

At the center of it all, however, was a massive complex. It towered over everything, at the exact center of the great chasm that was the Ascended Level. If the other buildings had been gaudy and garish, this was something beyond even that. Calen was convinced that it would draw the eyes of the blind.

“The Grand Cathedral of the Ascended Path.” Ordos announced as they approached.

“Reminds me of Glin’s backroom.” Calen muttered, half-jokingly, and earned a ghost of smile from Ordos and a sound that he could have sworn was a stifled snort. The Cathedral was at least three times the height of the next tallest building, and was uniform in how it was covered with a mosaic of flawless stones, each caught the artificial lights coming from all directions and reflected it in a rather unpleasantly blinding way.

MadCap's Fiction Corner - "Minos Mayhem, Chapter 4"

Pergitor was even more dreary than Ordos had described it as being. Even from orbit, the planet was a dull gray, the same gray Calen remembered being the color painted onto trash collectors or the panels of a Star Destroyer. Like the Star Destroyers, it really only looked intimidating because it was a lot of gray.  Descent through the atmosphere sent them through equally dull, gray clouds down into a landscape of jagged, gray rocks that were disturbed only by the occasional blue-white lightning strike from the heavens to break up the overpowering mediocrity of the environment.

Also, the rain.

Pergitor was, it seemed, a very rainy planet.

"It’s a good thing we have the sensors going.” Calen commented through the sound of the pounding on the viewport. “I can’t make heads or tails otherwise."

"Sorry about that," Ordos had returned to the cockpit, standing behind the pilot's chair. "Had to check on an old friend. How's our ETA?"

"On our current path, it's uh..." Calen spared a half-glance over at the monitors that detailed their approach. "Roughly..."

"We are eleven minutes and fifty-six seconds from the appointed dock at the domed city of Gehenna." Red reported dutifully. When the droid realized both men were looking at it, it made a sound that almost sounded like a scoff. "I cannot help it if the efficiency of organics is limited."

MadCap's Fiction Corner - "Minos Mayhem, Chapter 3"

Capital City (as it was called in an amazing lack of imagination, Calen thought) was indeed something that Calen thought earned Karideph’s title of “Little Coruscant”. The place was utterly massive, stretching out as far as the eye could see as the Dawn descended from the atmosphere. Calen was treated to row after row of skyscrapers that stretched out in every cardinal direction from a large, center point...the local ISB branch.

Charming.

He brought the ship along the path they were given by flight control, bringing them to a series of rounded holes that descended into the ground just enough to allow ships to land within them, protected by vast, stone walls that followed the outside edge of the hole - docking bays. The chatter from the Port Authority could be heard as they got confirmation and coordinates for their particular circle, Calen steering the Dawn toward it, landing without his usual flourishes, much to the relief of the RX unit that sat in the co-pilot’s seat.

MadCap's Fiction Corner - "Minos Mayhem, Chapter 2"

The command deck of the Imperial Star Destroyer Vigilant Warden was a quite and orderly place, even for the command deck of an Imperial Star Destroyer. The crew did not speak to each other in anything above the lowest of whispers for fear of bringing the attention of their commanding officer down upon them. High Admiral Maltus Ayro was not a man to be trifled with, they all knew only too well. He was a manic man, given to fits of high rage and deep melancholy. They also knew that he was all that existed as a semblance of control within the vacuum that existed in the Minos Cluster. With the death of Moff Dacar by Rebel saboteurs (or so the official reports went), the man was effectively the Moff of the Cluster in all but name...the lack of name being a bit of a sore subject for him.

Despite the rumors that he might have been involved in Dacar's demise, his inferiors were not wont to go questioning it and his superiors seemingly could not have cared less.

It was all of this that went through the mind of Lieutenant Corrin Dax as he approached Ayro, looming above one of the command pits and staring out of a viewport into the void of space, broken up only by the planet Karideph.

"Admiral?" He questioned after several seconds, gauging the man's disposition.

"...what?" The answer came several seconds later, Ayro not looking back from the planet they orbited around at that very moment.

MadCap's Fiction Corner - "Minos Mayhem, Chapter 1"

Hello, everyone! You might remember my ill-advised attempt at NaNoWriMo back in 2017. It was a hoot! And I actually managed to get to the 50,000 word goal with my essentially Star Wars fanfiction known as "Minos Mayhem", based on a Star Wars d20 game that some of my friends and I never managed to fully get off the ground.

...and then The Last Jedi happened.

...yeah.

So, in the time since, I've finally gotten to where I'm comfortable with writing this again, so I'm aiming to finish it up. Because I came to the conclusion that my love and appreciation for Star Wars should be far greater than my hatred of the idiots trying to destroy it.

...yes, I have managed to find a way to be both enlightened and vindictive about this.

In this particular instance, I'm going back over the already published thirteen chapters (which will still be available on this blog for those who wish to read them/laugh at my incompetence) and cleaning them up, editing for grammatical errors and the like, and working on making them better! Then I'll get to Chapter Fourteen onward! Hopefully, with it looking as though it wasn't written over the course of a month by an insane, gibbering man on a caffeine binge, maybe people will like it.

And Disney won't attempt to sue me.

...I hope.

Anyway, without further adieu...