Balto: Star Wars Tale (III)

All things related to Star Wars is the property of George Lucas and Lucasfilm Ltd.

Balto, Jenna, Boris, Muk, and Luk are the property of Amblin Entertainment and Universal Studios.

A long, long time ago...

In a Galaxy far, far away...

(1 year after Balto: Star Wars Tale 2)

“Watch your back Rogue Leader! You have a coralskipper on your tail!”

“I copy you Rogue 4!”

Wedge Antilles was at his wit's end. No matter how hard the New Republic fought against the Yuuzahn Vong, they kept losing. Sure they had won a few skirmishes, but in the long run, it didn't matter how many coralskippers they destroyed if they kept losing Star Cruisers.

Wedge was brought back to reality as a flaming hunk of rock flew by his X-Wings viewscreen. The Yuuzahn Vong didn't use technology. In fact, they hated it. So instead of using lasers as their primary weapon, they fired burning hunks of rock. A.K.A Lava. Butunfortunately, this hunk of rock could burn thru the metal plating of starfighters.

They hardly ever missed.

Wedge spun his X-Wing into a tight turn and hit his thrusters. He watched with satisfaction as the coralskipper flew by. He quickly pulled up behind it and opened fire. X-Wings have two settings on their laser cannons. The first, is full power. It fires a powerful, but fairly slow, blast of plasma. The second setting fires many lasers at once. You are guaranteed to hit your target but it doesn't do a lot of damage. Wedge didn't really care about that right now.

The coralskipper had a unique shield generator. It created artificial,miniature black holes that capture and destroy anything small enough, and close enough. Lasers were small enough and they tried to get too close. But, it isn't a machine that generates the black holes. It is a living thing called a 'dovin basel'. And, as any living thing, it can get confused or wore out. Which is exactly what Wedge was hoping for.

The dovin basels could absorb only so much energy. The number of lasers was too much for it. It's defenses went down. As soon as Wedge saw some of the shots hit the ship, he switched the cannons to 'full power'. The coralskipper exploded.

“Yyyyeeehaaaa!”

'Yes!' thought Wedge to himself, 'One down...' He looked out his viewscreen glumly '8,400 more to go.'

 

Balto was sitting in the co-pilots seat on the Imperial 'Sentinel'Class Transport ship. He was leading his group of soldiers on a special mission to a Vong held world. He looked out the window at the other transport right alongside his own. Jenna was in command of that group of soldiers and they would merge into one force after arriving on the planets surface.

Intelligencehad discovered that on this planet, the Vong were growing materials vital to the construction of their ships. It would be harder too destroy the supplies because everything was organic instead of metal.

The vessels landed without interference for which Balto was grateful.He had a quick little chat with Jenna and then walked up in front of the stormtroopers. With his and Jenna's group put together, they had a small army consisting of 108 troops, 24 E-Web heavy repeating blasters, and 12 speeder bikes.

“Attention! Before we begin this operation, I want to tell you something. This is not going to be easy. The Vong are extremelydangerous fighters. They have no mercy or compassion.If they capture you, it will not be pleasant. Let's move!”

By nightfall they had arrived at their destination. Balto took out a pair of range finders (binoculars) and scanned the area. There were several structures that looked like plants all over the place.

One of the troopers leaned over to Balto and whispered “What are those thing?”

Balto looked back at the things and said “There pods. Inside each of those things is a growing coralskipper.”

“You mean they grow their starfighters?”

“Yeah. They hate technology. Every single weapon, ship, even the armor they wear, is alive.”

“Creepy.”

Balto turned to the rest of the men and said “Alright. Listen up. About forty men are going down there to plant explosive devices around those pods. The rest of you are to provide back up in case there's trouble. Let's go.”

Balto didn't go with the men planting the explosives. He stayed on the hill to provide back up. He held his breathe as the men started placing their explosives. Around 20 minutes later they had just about finished. He blew a sigh of relief as they started back. But he had done it too soon. The instant the sigh left his mouth, almost thirty Vong attacked the soldiers. “Open fire!” he shouted to the rest of the troops. They instantly let loose a volley. Balto saw with dismay another group of Vong, almost a hundred strong, join the fray. He was so focused on this attack that he forgot to look around.

He was pushed over suddenly and started to yell at the soldier who had knocked him over. But then he saw that the soldier wouldn't be hearing anything else for a very long time. Then a shadow went over him. He looked up and found himself face to face with a large Yuuzahn Vong warrior.

Balto quickly kicked the thing in the stomach but it hurt his foot more than it did the warrior. It looked at him and laughed. He reached down to grab Balto but he managed another kick that sent the Vong straight on his back. It gave Balto enough time to get up and run.

He managed to run about 30 feet when he felt something slam into his left shoulder. He looked down and saw with horror and disgust, that he had just been hit by a razor bug. A razor bug is exactly what it sounds like. A bug with razor sharp claws and teeth. Yuuzahn Vong warriors throw the bugs at enemy's and when the bug hits them it begins to bite and slash at the victim.

And Balto just found out how much it hurt to have a nasty bug cut up the majority of his left shoulder to the bone. He gritted his teeth and managed to pull the bug out of him. He promptly smashed it against a rock. He looked at his shoulder again. “This is going to leave a scar.”

Then he was hurled backward as something struck him across the face. He put his paw to his cheek. It came away red. “That'll leave one too.” Then he saw what had hit him. The Yuuzahn Vong stood right in front of him.

“Oh. This isn't good.”

He squeezed his eyes shut as the Vong raised his staff.

“YAAAHHH!” shouted a voice.

'Jenna?' Balto thought.

She slammed herself into the warrior, knocking him over as well. He pushed Jenna off of him and was about to attack her when a blaster bolt knocked him over for good.

She turned to help Balto up. “We have to get out of here! There's another group of soldiers coming!”

Jenna looked at Balto's shoulder and whistled. “That looks like it feels good.”

As they ran, Balto told Jenna “I hate it how they figure out our every move! This was just another trap they set up! I wonder who's leaking this information to them?”

As they ran past the growing pods, a sudden idea came to Balto.

Jenna said “Don't even think about it.”

“Too late”. As he ran toward the pods he called to Jenna “Wish me luck!”

“Luck!? I don't wish you luck, I wish you SENCE!!”

Balto ignored her.

He ran up to the control box that one of the troops had left. 'Good. It's still here and armed.' He finished arming it and then took off running as fast as he could.

Jenna saw him coming and ran alongside him. “Did you do it?”

“Wow you're good. What do you think I'm running from? A Mosquito?”

After they ran for what they thought was far enough, they turned around to see the pods go up in flame and a big BOOM! They weren't far enough though. The force of the blast threw both of them to the ground. It didn't help Balto's shoulder any.

An hour and a half later they found the surviving troops. There were 18. Out of 108.

“We have to get off this planet somehow.”

“And how do you suggest we do that Balto? We have no shuttle, and no ship to dock with even if we did have one!”

“I don't know. I guess we'll have to wait and see if one of our ships comes back to pick us up.”

Balto and Jenna sat in silence for a moment. Jenna spoke up and said “Do we have that communicator?”

“What communicator?”

“The one we installed on the 'Anchorage' where we can actually call the ship to us.”

“I see where you're heading. We call the ship to come get us. Yeah, I still have it. I don't know if it will work out here or not. Even if it did, the 'Anchorage' is several systems away. It would take several days to get here.”

“Big deal. Try it.”

Balto took out the little device and said “I never actually thought we were ever going to use this thing.” As he keyed in their coordinates he laughed and said “Boy, what I wouldn't give to see the look on Boris's face as the ship suddenly takes off on it's own.”

The next day, Balto got the soldiers moving. “We need to get as far away from the Vong as we can. We also, Ouch!” He paused for a second. “We also need to find out if there is a doctor in the house.”

One of the soldiers walked up. “I have a little training with medicine sir.”

“I have some too” said Jenna.

“Good. Because my shoulder really, really, hurts.”

Balto learned the soldiers name was Vorin.

Vorin and Jenna got a med pack and started working on Balto's shoulder.

Vorin poked a probe in the shoulder. Balto didn't think it felt very good.

He pulled the probe back out and took a reading of

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