Storybot

a highlight of news highlights from across the galaxy: ———————————

The story played across holofeeds the galaxy over. Reports had been received by dozens of news outlets on dozens of worlds. Each one was the same. Shaky security footage from inside the nefarious Republic era prison, The Helvault. Footage that showed a red lightsaber wielding being cutting through security along with a variety of goons. Some footage was too graphic for all but the most biased news agencies to play. Footage of an octopus-like being suffering a grievous death at the hand of some murderous robot. Other footage was all but begging to be played, with a few faces blurred. Staff members struggling to escape as the g-forces aboard the ship pulled at them and threw them about like ragdolls. Reports indicated that the station had possibly been besieged by a variety of mechanical issues allowing an unauthorized ship to land in one of the receiving hangars. Pirates for all intents and purposes. Pirates, it seemed, wielding red lightsabers; the trademarks of the Sith. And then, as the station was careening out of control towards the planet below, sensors captured the shaky image of a warship. The ship slipped from the shadows of space, illuminated by the sun and stars. It did not take government clearance to recognize it as a ship of Sith design. In fact, it was an eagle-eyes investigative journalist who recognized the vessel as one seen fleeing the Battle of Nar Shaddaa. Dozens of stories, all with different insights and details, played across the holonews. Some had tear-filled interviews with the family of prisoners nearing the end of their stay in the notorious prison. Others had experts discussing the potential engineering flaws in the design of the station, flaws that caused it to too easily fall from the sky. Even others toted the story as a conspiracy, a way for the newfound Galactic Alliance to do away with old problems. Some stations speculated that the Sith were looking to replenish their ranks with the worst of the worst. Some stations swore that The Spider himself had returned to the galaxy after the disaster that was Nar Shaddaa. Every reporter had an opinion, speculation, or factoid they thought they could tie in. What ran common threads ran through them all were that a Sith warship presided over the destruction, the station had smashed into Nespis VIII, and lightsaber wielding raiders had stormed the station. All aboard the station were presumed dead. When pressed for an official statement, the Galactic Alliance Board had nothing to say. The Bureau of Justice’ Subdivision of Prisons on the other hand released this statement: The events surrounding the Helvault prison station are currently under investigation by the Alliance Department of Threat Analysis. At this time all aboard are assumed deceased and the station deemed a total loss. The Subdivision of Prisons wishes to express our deepest regrets and condolences to the families of those who gave their lives fighting to preserve justice and safety for the people of the Galactic Alliance. Their sacrifices were not in vain. Nobody aboard was deserving of a death sentence and the Sith soldiers who acted as executioner to those guards and prisoners will be brought to justice.

The towering stone walls of the shadowy fortress seemed as if they would fit in better in a b-grade horror holo flick than where it sat atop the highest steppe in the area. In it’s shadow sprawled the slums; homes of hundreds of thousands of humanoid-esque beings. Each of them seemed to sport an evolutionary variety of extra growths that ranged from vestigal wings, sensory organs, growths, fur, fangs and more. They lived in squalor eeking out an existence subsiding on the meager amounts of food the cold poor soil could yield. Hunting seemed to be their main subsidy of survival. Those who could trekking across the barren treeless on month-long hunting trips to bring back food and water. They were allowed little more than primitive tools, leather armor, and medieval steam-punk technologies. Those few pieces of advanced technology were held with reverence and secrecy, lest their oppressors, the Imperial Empire, enthroned in the ancient fortress above, discover them. Those found with som much as a glowlamp were harshly punished, their children carted off to the yawning blackened moat-spanning bridge into the castle. Most were never seen again. Those few that were, were found wandering the steppes, their minds broken and their bodies mutilated; never to be the same again, babbling about incomprehensible magics and tortures. The Nusp-Ashla Nest which occupied the fortress were an outcast Nediji family that had for generations rules over vast swathes of the planet with impunity. Their enforcers donned stolen Imperial equipment and carried arms ferreted from galactic shipments the galaxy over; stolen from thieves of purchased on the black market. To the locals, they were the Empire. They had no way of knowing any different. The Nest was wealthy and wanted for nothing. The highest ranking members never left the solitude of their towering gargoyled spires and state of the art laboratories. They ate extravagant meals and entertained only the most select clientele within their walls. Even then, guests were closely monitored. They were escorted by armed soldiers. Their movements were monitored and controlled so that they would never see the squalor and suffering of their test subjects that lived outside. Business was done cash-in-hand. Once business was complete, any clientele, bound by iron-clad non-disclosure agreements and knowing that their purchases would invite scrutiny from the Imperium, Sith, Rebellion, Republic or whatever force happened to be in control, were taken to the single small landing strip on the far side of the fortress where they were whisked by private shuttle to a third-party location where they were returned to their craft. Delivery of serums and purchases would be done elsewhere in the future by agents of the Nest. The rest of the planet was comprised of windswept deserts. The small tribes of men that moved about the world survived by hunting and herding. They gave a wide berth to the fortress in the north, a place they referred to in their native tongues as Munstroen Jauregia, The Palace of Monsters. The people that live in the shadows of the fortress were known as the Accursed; their mutilated and mutates bodies ravaged by generations of experimentation until they were barely recognizable as what they had once been. Hunting parties from the nomadic tribes were pitied, and kills left for the Accursed to ‘discover’ beneath the scrub. The Nusp-Ashla Nest ruled, unchallenged by any but their most foolish vassals. Hordes of stolen Imperial tech supplemented their own bio-engineered adaptations. Rumors whispered about dying fires the world over spoke of creatures, demons, failed experiments that were entombed within the deepest bowels of the fortress. Legends tell of hellspawn bursting from the earth to devour entire tribes in a cacophony of wails and gnashing of teeth late in cloud covered black nights. A pair of Ho’din missionaries somehow managed, by a stroke of luck, to completely bypass the sensory blockade that lurked within the rubble-strewn asteroid belts that encircled the world. They were some of few who had ever done so and the first to have done so completely by accident. More importantly, they were the first to manage to get off world before being apprehended by Nest Imperial agents racing across the landscape in Imperial speeders and walkers.

The floating fortress hung silently in orbit over the pristine world below. From the outside, nobody could tell anything was amiss. Even from within, aside from the fee glitches that seemed to be popping up in the network, all seemed relatively, well, normal. Of course, mealtime was 15 minutes late. That was almost unheard of. If anything, the station ran like a machine, punctual, routine, boring. Prisoners were gathered together in the bulbous opaqued recreation area-another of the many built in security measures. Nothing was there by chance. Normally only a handful of the best-behaved high priority inmates were allowed in there at once, if at all. The fact that a majority of them, 112 to be precise, were gathered there now under the watchful scanners of three dozen armored, tamper-resistant, stun baton wielding security droids. Behind the screens and within the secured corridors where prisoners never went, the limited crew of the station were on high alert. Things were wrong. Lights flickered and computer screens flashed. The finer workings of the station were under attack from an unknown unseen attacker. In the main control room, the lights flickered and powered down for a full thirty seconds within the secured core of the station. Then the power returned. The computers began to power up in a secure mode. All outside communications were cut off. The station was cut off. Emergency protocols instantly went into effect. None but the stationed warden could override it; and that cybernetic Rodian was currently swinging a stun baton in the yard trying to break up what was fast becoming a riotous brawl. Blast doors slammed into place cutting the yard off from everywhere else. Automated turrets deployed at every junction point and every hallway. Anyone not bearing a security-encoded chip would be turned into holey cheese as the turrets locked onto them and opened fire. As the station began to go into anciently encoded lockdown procedures, the external protective measures of the ship flickered, once, twice, three times. Then they powered back up. A minute later, a flicker, once for ten seconds, twice for ten seconds, a third time - ten seconds. Then back to normal as the ion turrets began to power up again scanning for threats. Security measures fully engaged, the ship began to slowly rotate. The thrusters briefly fired beginning a slowly accelerating decent towards the planet below. The main computer screen in the control center began to flash a countdown. If order was not restored in the next thirty minutes the station would enter the planet’s upper atmosphere, unable to be salvaged as it plummeted towards the mountain ranges below.