001 OYAY NAAST’ICH A MANDALORIAN CHRONICLE 002 HEREIN contained for your entertainment is a work of fan fiction utilizing elements of STAR WARS, its CHARACTERS, CREATURES, WORLDS, SHIPS, TECHNOLOGIES, STORIES, LOGOS, ARTWORK, NAMES, MAPS, TRADE ROUTES, and HISTORICAL ARCHIEVES including but not limited to ALL THAT ITS GALAXY CONTAINS, known or unknown, acknowledged or unidentified, which is trademarked, copyrighted, and the sole exclusive property of LUCASFILM LIMITED, GEORGE W. LUCAS ... ... and now MICKEY MOUSE via THE WALT DISNEY COMPANY. ABYLON PUBLISHING, ANDREW P. SPRICH, and/ or CAPTAIN NAAST’ICH is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by LUCASFILM LIMITED, THE HOUSE OF MOUSE, or any of its superdiaries, subsidiaries, employees, associates, Imperial Officers, Jedi or Sith Acolytes. 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Also ... thanks George! 003 OYAY NAAST’ICH A MANDALORIAN CHRONICLE Conceived, Created, and Written by: Mitth’Ankoy’Nich 004 OYAY NAAST’ICH A MANDALORIAN CHRONICLE Conceived, Created, and Written by: Andrew P. Sprich 005 DRAMATIS PERSONAE OYAY NAAST’ICH – Male, Chiss Mandalorian Captain (Sh’oy-Kara) N’MATTEFRIZOLIANA “FRIZ” – Mlae, Nagai, 1 st Mate (Sh’Oy-Kara) DNJAGX FURRO “JAG” – Male, Human, Freelancer (Pullox Orbiter Station) OROTHELIA NIMMFRIIK “ORO” – Female, Pantoran, Liberator (Gimmlik’s Legacy) RYI NAREZZ – Female, Nautolan, Missionary Medic (NASA) BN-L3 “BENLEE” – Mascuine, Luggage Droid, Black Spire Exports GRIMM MYNK’SA – Male, Human Mandalorian, Alor’ad/Captain (Rayshe’Taap) KRRYL CHAAB – Male, Human Mandalorian, Ver’alor/Training Operations (Reyshe’Taap) WYNT’R YELANII – Female, Human Mandalorian, Alor’uus/Tech Officer (Rayshe’Taap) DINIIA SYN – Female, Sephi, QueenMother (Dhali-Muh Enclave) 006 008 A LONG TIME AGO IN A GALAXY FAR, FAR AWAY.... 001 PROLOGUE The Sh’oy-Kara sat on a landing platform of a floating industrial city high above a gas giant in the Kril’dor System on the edges of the Mid-Rim as droids finished delivering the carbonite sleds of frozen tibanna gas. Friz secured the last magnetic lock into place as the last of the lifter droids glided across the loading zone. Hitting the wall switch as he made his way to the forward turbolift, the loading ramp rose like the mouth of a large beast closing its jaw. With a thud and a small pop, the ship was secured and Friz held a small commlink to his chin, “Cargo is loaded and locked down Sir. We are clear to head out.” Oyay sat in the central seat of the Kara’s cockpit browsing the data he had recently pulled from the Pullox Station archives. The records were in better shape than he had hoped for and while not entirely organized, he was making good progress on narrowing his search. There had been approximately two-thousand hits on the name ‘Nich’ spanning forty standard years. Several hundred of 002 the results were easily ruled out by narrowing the search criteria to Chiss-specific sub-searches. Somewhat as Oyay had surmised, there was a tight cluster of results, all within a year of each other. This suggested that there had been some sort of exodus around twenty years following the Battle of Yavin. By comparing this data to other Chiss-related records, everything seemed to point in the direction of the planet Rago being a touch off point for several dozen Chiss families. They seemed to spread and dissipate from there to the rest of the Galaxy. Tinkering with the data a bit, Oyay was able to extract this into the Kara’s analytics system, which was 003 significantly faster than the Pullox SpacePort’s mainframe capabilities. This had all boiled down to less than sixty individuals across ten to fourteen “families” who had transitioned to the Murgo System, or at least in that direction. There wasn’t much else further down that hyperlane, so this was a good direction for Oyay to explore. The access door to the cockpit slid open with a whoosh as Friz came bouncing in. “Hey Captain, the longer we sit the more time we give those pirates to suit up.” Oyay quickly shut off the datapad, moving into the flight seat at the forward console and started flicking the switches to fire up the Kara’s launch thrusters and prime the main engines. “I did not think you would want to miss the action.” Oyay recovered with flatly, in his distinctly monotone voice common to the Chiss race. Friz took the co-pilot seat to the right of the ships console and tapped the comm switch, “Kril’dor control, this is the Sh’oy-Kara, engines hot and ready to depart.” “Sh’oy-Kara, platform #343, you are clear to launch. Our long-range sensors show little activity along your course. 004 Stay vigilant.” The electronic-distorted voice came over the comm. “They probably say that to all the supply ships heading out...” Friz commented. Oyay pushed the thruster control forward and the Kara smoothly rose off the platform, climbing to a sharp angle through the atmosphere. “I believe they would be more efficient and effective by telling us they were bribed to calm our nerves.” He said with a slight look towards Friz. “Prep for Hyperjump”. As the Kara shot into the darkness of open space, the planet shrinking behind it, the stars elongated into a blue swirl. The complicated part of this commission wouldn’t come for another three revolutions of the chronometer on the Kara’s display. While usually a ship would move through space in a single hyperspace jump between planets, the stretch between Kril’Dor and Rago had a deteriorating star which had been causing gravity distortions in the last several months. The result was a forced two-jump course that created a perfect ambush point for pirates looking to grab a free load of tibanna gas. Oyay had attempted to chart a three-point course to 005 avoid the area, but this part of the Mid-Rim was also notorious for complicated space travel, and some ships had simply disappeared while attempting the same method. As an alternative, Oyay planned to drop out of hyperspace much further ahead of what the course was actually charted for. This would expose them to the “gauntlet” longer, but should give them a greater chance of not being caught off-guard. “Friz, inform me when we are a quarter from the drop and have the shields set to cycle just ahead of the choke point.” Oyay commanded as he pointed at the chronometer before grabbing his datapad and heading to his private quarters at the top rear of the ship. • • • The flashes of hyperspace never grew weary in his mind as Oyay watched the blue light bounce the shadows of the room around him. The Sh’oy-Kara, had nearly seventeen decades on its current owner, but Oyay had spent the last six years rebuilding and tuning everything from the plating to the hyperdrive. It was HIS ship through and through, painted to match the blacks and greys of his armor. The blue diagonal strip cutting the 006 craft vertically, mirroring the blue Kar’ta-Beskar adorning his chest and the thick crimson cutting the ship horizontally to match his Cape and Kama, both designed to conceal and distract. Oyay was more a citizen of open space than any planet or territorial region. A Mandalorian at its truest, he owed his life to the creed, regardless of trivial things like politics and whoever held power over who at a given time. Oyay had dedicated himself to the Six Tenets of Mandalore; his Code of Honor was his Nation; the Mand’alor his Monarch, and his Alor’ad, Captain Mynk’sa of the Rayshe’Taap, his guiding commander. A century and a half ago, the Kara operated in an unknown planetary fleet as a large gunship and troop transport, but in the generations since, the ship had been stripped and repurposed many times over, prior to being acquired by Oyay. An industrial transport commission had taken the Taap deep into the Unknown Regions, near Rakata Prime, and left them holding vacated ship parts 007 along with the heap of scrap Oyay and Friz now called home. Apparently, there was a corporate coup happening and the transport was lost in the mix, likely stranding the escorting Kara in the broken state they had found it in. Payment had already been transferred to Captain Mynk’sa and while seeking out the owner to no avail, the Taap came across several destroyed and ruptured hulls. The Kara was the most salvageable scrap in the lot, but that wasn’t saying much. The crew would normally have towed and sold the ship, but its registry files were somewhat illegitimate and the Taap crew was forced to drag the ship to an unrecognized moon to be stripped and dismantled. When a high-payout mission came across the feed as they were prepping the ship for processing, Oyay put in a request to Captain Mynka’sa to be left behind with the dilapidated ship and some of the newly acquired parts as a test of his Mandalorian survival skills. The Taap would be passing back through the system and could recover Oyay a few weeks later. Though Mynk’sa wasn’t fully invested in the idea of leaving Oyay behind in unknown space on an uncharted 008 barren rock, he did see merit in the “test” and Oyay closed the deal by laying out the scenarios. Either he would die on a cold moon and his training was a waste and a failure costing the captain only an underaged inferior crew member; or Oyay would complete the test and prevent anyone else from picking up the scrapped ship, also giving Mynk’sa a more seasoned crewmember. With a salute and a send-off; the Koor, a binding Mandalorian contract, was agreed upon. To the Captain’s surprise, when the Taap returned, they found Oyay had not only repaired the Kara’s core systems, he had sufficiently reformatted the registry files to hide all prior ownership. Oyay proceeded to convince Mynk’sa on the idea of adding the ship to the Taap’s “fleet”, which at the time consisted of only the Taap. The venerated captain had an unacknowledged soft spot for Oyay and he let himself get strung along on the concept of building a fleet of ships to have at his command. It seemed every time the Captain brought up Oyay’s “side project” over the proceeding years and inquired when it would be ready for service, Oyay managed to find other reasons to expand the fleet in different directions while the ship was continually tinkered with. 009 Along the years, the Captain allowed and even assisted Oyay in getting the ship up and running, furthermore to a point that the Kara now boasted more upgrades than most luxury yachts. The ship was mostly of a box design with the front swooping out like a broad bottom jaw holding a cockpit large enough to crew five and the main cargo-hold capable of comfortably housing a small fighter, such as a Galactic Alliance relic, a Kuat A-Wing. The middle deck was divided into four cube sections with a maintenance and workshop in the rear, a communal living and operational entry comprising the middle sections, all three situated above the main hold. The forward most section contained the cockpit, which sat above the lower secondary hold, which also housed the 010 dual oversized rocket tubes that had been installed, giving the outer profile of the ship a menacing offensive touch. Most pilots, unless they were packing a capital class ship, would be heavily deterred at the sight of such a large ordinance onboard. This addition was largely from Captain Mynk’sa when he was in the process of replacing the Taap’s own rocket tubes. He may have been joking when he suggested they just slap on the biggest guns they could find, but Oyay engineered a way and made it happen. The top deck consisted of a forward bunking area that could house eight, stretching back to the “captain’s suite” and a smaller guest cabin on the starboard side. Situated to either side of the top decks were the elongated engine pods, each having a wide wing spanning out and downward, both terminating at an anti-ship laser canon. A single turbolift ran the height of the ship just behind the cockpit and it connected all three decks, giving easy access to all parts of the ship. The stars had always called to him, and he felt less at ease when on-world than off. A holding cell was located just behind the starboard side of the cockpit, granting 011 easy access to the small ramp access hatch just forward of the ship’s midpoint. A large rear loading ramp provided open access loading and unloading the primary Cargo Bay. Oyay was particularly proud of the seven triangular viewports he had carved out above the housing areas on the top deck. They created a pyramid shape that pointed starbound no matter what port you might find yourself in. This particular layout allowed the Kara to be used for transporting goods and beings, as well as keeping a small crew to run bounty, mercenary, and support or security contracts. This versatility was certainly something imparted to the Kara by its mother, the Taap. Both ships had various capabilities well-suited for a wide range of undertakings. Though not officially part of the fleet Oyay once sold Captain Mynk’sa on, when Oyay had made the proposal to the captain and his friend Friz that they venture off on their own, he was met with warm respect and a mutual understanding that the ship was welcome to rejoin or 012 leave the parental umbrella of the Taap Fleet at any time it wished. The Captain was content with this arrangement, as Oyay had actually helped the Taap to acquire several similar relationships with other ships and their captains in the recent years, thereby giving Captain Mynk’sa the ability to call on a very real fleet of several ships should the need arise. Currently, the Kara was on the first leg of its first solo assignment, heading into paths unknown while Oyay searched for a reliable crew of equal versatility and desire to traverse the stars. Oyay had been reviewing applicants to an open call he had sent through several local system’s comm feeds and was not happy with his progress on hiring a new member of the team based on a rudimentary profile and account of their experience and skills; however, it was helping him to narrow down his “qualifications”. Like Friz, Oyay was part of a commonly misunderstood variety. The Chiss as a race nearly exclusively hailed only from Csilla in the small area of the Unknown Regions that was actually charted. The Chiss Ascendancy had long ruled their corner of the galaxy unharried by events of 013 the Core, The Empire, The Alliance, or any of the political factions which had risen or fallen across the millennia. Most Chiss stuck to their own kind and their own ways, eschewing the majority of other cultures as a whole and their wars or conflicts. If not for Admiral Thrawn bringing the Chiss into the light of the Galaxy approximately one- hundred and sixty standard years ago, most beings in the known systems would have gone their entire lives never knowing of the blue-skinned race. Even now, decades later, Oyay’s origin people were rarely ever seen and he had never met another of them personally, despite Captain Mynk’sa and several others of the crew assuring him that they had dealings with other Chiss across the galaxy’s massive stretches of space. This made the facets of Oyay’s origins even more intriguing to him.