Tatooine's Open Orbit

Four flashes of light signalled the arrival of a quartet of Vindicator-class heavy cruisers, their bayonet shaped prows slicing through the airless wake of the open void, plunging into the star system as they slipped the lightspeed shackles of hyperspace. Shields were raised the moment they emerged from the swirling blue banded wormhole, followed closely by charging turbolaser banks as fleet technicians calculated firing solutions on any civilian vagrants found in and around orbit. Crimson lances of broiling plasma roared from the mouths of swiveling turrets, belched across the star speckled backdrop of space, to strike merchant vessels emerging from the planet's atmosphere. Burning shrapnel and fiery debris rained back down to the surface as freighter craft were ripped apart but concussive turbolaser blasts, immolating their crew and cargoes in an instant, while hails for clemency or mercy fell on deaf ears. These four warships were crewed almost entirely by Nu-Jakes, genetically enhanced clone soldiers from Kamino, utterly obedient to the Sith Eternal. Psycho-indoctrinated from the point of creation, their loyalty was absolute, as was their inherent lack of compassion. "Keep up the pressure." Said a dispassionate voice belonging to a third generation Nu-Jake in a captain's uniform, occupying the command throne of the lead Vindicator, 'Umbramoth'. In response, the gunners at their stations approached their duty with unusual gusto, going so far as to pick off wounded stragglers just to prove a point.

The Sith Eternal...was here to stay. Swarms of hornet-class interceptors buzzed out of the hangars of all four cruisers, set loose to stalk whatever prey they could scrounge up, which mostly consisted of smugglers attempting to make a break for it. The super-charged sting of their laser cannons tore through the protective durasteel shell of holo-net relays strung throughout orbit, blasting any such device found into molten scrap to be added to the ring of debris forming in orbit, effectively cutting off communication with the greater galaxy. This portion of the Fleet of Famine focused its efforts first on the region of space locked in synchronous orbit over Tatooine's largest settlement of Mos Eisely, then spread outwards to encircle the globe, with each warship occupying a different hemisphere. The Umbramoth to the north, the Hssiss to the south, while the Mutate and the Tuk'ata looked after the eastern and western continents. Nuclear blooms erupted from the sand swallowed dunes like wildflower blossoms in spring, as orbital lance strikes punched the planet's surface, reminding the population they were there as each rising mushroom cloud came accompanied by a rumbling ground quake as the barrage from space was playing havoc on Tatooine's tectonics. This created dust storms of radioactive particulate that drove the sun baked desert people to hide in their caves an ancestral safe spaces.

Then the shuttle craft launched, brick shaped atmospheric assault landers and low altitude assault transports in carrier configuration, joined by reinforced armoured drop pods that were engulfed in swirling orange flames that carbon scored their surface black and superheated the exterior plating until it glowed a blistering white, trailing long tails of choking black smoke as they hurtled through the atmosphere to impact across the surface of the planet. The launched ground forces coordinated with the Maw, which was already positioned over Mos Eisely, taking place in a scientific study looking in to the effects of gray-rot. The Freedon-class Star Pyramid was already responsible for the destruction of the Sand People Enclave, which was just another in a long line of ruined settlements across the planet. Previous the Dark Apothecary had visited Mos Espa in person, where he ordered the entire population flayed for its skin, a covetous resource to the professional flesh sculptor. Elsewhere, the criminal crocodilian haemonculus Don Dragleoni, had ransacked Jabba's palace with the aid of a group of Black Fang thugs. There was hardly a speck of sand across the surface of the world that the devious draconian mastermind hadn't violated in some manner.

"Sir." Said an NJ1 radar tech aboard the Hssiss, addressing the NJ3 serving as captain of the heavy cruiser, who swiveled in his seat to meet the vacant stare of the tech's black featureless visor. "We're tracking unusual movement on the surface. Seismological probes placed across the Dune Sea are picking up an unusual amount of tectonic activity."


"That's just it, Captain." Replied the radar tech. "None of our strikes have targeted that region. The probes data seems to suggest something...burrowing, beneath the surface. Something large. Very large."

Rising from his seat, the Captain stepped towards the view screen dominating the centre of the bridge, stopping a few feet from its luminous surface. A visual feed from a string of satellites strung throughout orbit provided a magnified image of the arid desert below, displacing dirt in a large hill sized mound that stretched back across the Dune Sea like an infinite snake. The captain touched a point on the screen with two index fingers, then moved his hands apart, sharpening the magnified image as he observed the greater area around it.