вЂњBoss what about the other groups?вЂќ Jindo called out running over to her, firing a few blaster shots up the street and then back at her вЂњ.you know.вЂќ вЂGoodвЂ™ she thought fingering the controls again on the entire group's comms as she watched the normally stoic and calm Ubjay run past her, screaming like a frightened child and arms flapping around him as if he were going to take flight вЂњOKAY GUYS! BACK TO THE SHIP! BACK TO THE SHIP! WE ARE GETTING OUT OF HERE! REPEAT TIME TO BLOW THIS CANTO!!вЂќ вЂњLor, keep kriffing calm and prepare emergency lift off.вЂќ she snapped back вЂњ.send out the metalheads to cover our retreat. Static filled her ear a second, then the frantic and panicked voice of her chief pilot вЂњBoss? WhaвЂ™za gonninвЂ™ Boss? Wez bez fines and nows mezza wannas swims across dezz oceans.вЂќ Her hand flew up to the communicator at her ear an mouth as she turned a corner and fell into cover as Jindo and Kyndo gave some support fire down the street she and others had just fled down. Hard to do when she had to turn tail and run with three of her other comrades whoвЂ™d manage to keep it together back towards the park where theyвЂ™d landed the Spicy Witch.

вЂSave it drives them all in kriffing berserkers and my lot in screaming terrorвЂ™ she thought as she desperately used her anger to suppress the terrible sense of dread and terror boiling up in her stomach. One moment theyвЂ™d been looting the local's bank, with plans to grab slaves if theyвЂ™d have time to check for quality, before their militia and what they called a military could react, and then it was like a wave had passed through them. Things had been going so well.till they suddenly werenвЂ™t Khurid Thesh found she gunned down one of her crew whoвЂ™d gone into a screaming fit and started shooting at everyone and everything. and, for a just a moment, the doorway slammed open. Cowering in the flickering lights and shadows they prayed, some silently, some in sobs and whispered words as the hug their young and. Desperate a small group of females and children had fled into the ancient depths, to the excavated tunnels and old bunkers preserved there, to escape the danger. Brutal, vicious, and on a knifeвЂ™s edge for the defenders of this particular city and its surrounding territories as it found itself alone against raiding bands. Green-skinned defenders fought blue-skinned attackers from the stars in a savage melee upon the ground, a skirmish of flying craft above.

There were cracks in the universe, a fissure in the fabric as desperate souls prayed too long forgotten symbols as the battle raged above them as one faction fought another for dominance. Higher than the Gods of many other realms in power, but somehow lacking as well in the scope of its designs the great beast slumbering yet warring with itself across the stars.

For the Force was eternally at war with itself, a vast super-consciousness with no real intelligence as the sentient creatures that made up its вЂbodyвЂ™ would have understood.

With each passing year the Imbalance continued to grow slow, subtle, gradual.but the slide continued year upon year unnoticed, unhindered, towards the moment the scale would break. No, this region of space was one piracy, smuggling, and general criminality where the simmering discontent of centuries merged with callous apathy in the face of unchanging stasis.ДЇor a millennia what they called peace had reigned with the perceived victory of the Light over the Dark in times long past and, as was the way of the Force, such things as Ambition for a Better World, Anger at the World, Desire for Change, and Destructive urge for Freedom had been subtly, unintentionally, suppressed by the tremendous galactic subconscious. Like many words in this battered reality it had advanced for a time, but decay had set in just as it had with the Republic in general.and the Outer Rim had rarely been given a chance to develop in such a system that the Galactic Republic was. It was a backward world, in a backward star system, on the edges of what some species like to pretend was civilized space.

Shards of war ryudo