(original .rtf file attached as download for interested parties)

THE FLASHPONT

Jorm stood on the Yavin Runner's small bridge and scowled at the inactive holocom. How in all the hells did anybody know about Excidium in detail in the first place? He had been assured the House would be on the secret side of the spectrum when he joined up. *And now, what should have been a pleasure... eh, shakedown cruise, is quickly becoming a combat deployment. Ah, damn it. Spilled blue milk.* he thought to himself.

"Skipper" he addressed the ship's commanding naval officer, "raise yellow alert. Have the fighters manned and fueled, but keep them docked for now. Same with our turrets. Pass out sidearms and rifles to the crew. And contact both the HQ and the Bothawui, As soon as they have any indication of spaceborne... insurgents, they should tell us. As detailed as possible." "Right away, si... boss!" came the reply.

As the heavy-set man with the moustache relayed Jorm's orders to the rest of the officers and crewmen, Jorm retreated to the back of the bridge and booted up the navigation computer. Cocytus wasn't a small place, so it was by no means guaranteed that his own position would come under attack.
"I'll punch up a few hyperspace routes for short jumps in-system, planet to planet."
"As you say, s... boss. I'll have the hyperdrive prepared."
Jorm silently chuckled over the man's unfamiliarity with his chosen title. The Knight, although in charge, had strictly turned down any naval rank since he wasn't a commissioned officer of any navy, and overruled "sir" on the grounds that he worked for his money. Plus, it was fun to see the skipper squirm. The usual lop-sided smile reappeared on his face.

"Message from the Bothawui! patching it through!" the young man at the comm station excitedly yelled a few minutes later. Too loud for the small bridge. He turned red like a Bespin sunset under the collective glares of his colleagues, and put the transmission on the speakers before he could be chewed out.
"Yavin Runner, this is the Bothawui. HQ has transfered the coordination of our rapid reaction forces to us. We have what you wanted. Caina's police force has lost two patrol craft. They managed to report a small force of correllian freighters and old starfighters, two each, before contact was lost. Affiliation not secured, but believed to be with the League for Liberation. Predictions show them en route to one of Caina's orbital unmanned freight depots, one which holds House assets. ETA about two minutes from now, designations and coordinates attached. Good hunting!"
The line with the spy ship was cut. Jorm selected one of his pre-planned hyperspace vectors and adjusted it with the new data; the skipper turned the Runner into the general right direction. A few seconds later the course was corrected with the updated vector, and the ship jumped into hyperspace.

Within the system, the journey took only seconds. The hyperdrive had barely reached top speed when it was disengaged again, dropping the GR-75 back into realspace right on target. The depot, basically just a collection of freight containers with an automatic surveillance system, was right in front of them. The skipper did not even have time to order a sensor sweep before the scanner officer picked them up.
"Contacts! Sensor profile matches the forces reported by the Bothawui. Running a scan... got it. Two YT-1300s, two old X-Wings. They're changing course to intercept us!"
"Fine. Skipper, turn the ship to face them. Boost the shields, unveil the turrets. Try to get a missile lock on one or both of the YTs, launch on your own discretion."
"Yes, sir!" came the reply.
"No dessert for you this evening, skipper."
"...sorry, boss."

The light transports reacted to the attempted missile lock pretty much as could be expected; they tried to delay and break the locks with rapid, frantic maneuvers, falling back behind their escort. The fighters still came straight at the Runner. None of them attempted to lock on with a torpedo, but that wasn't a big surprise. *These damn things are mighty expensive.* Jorm did not have much recent experience in capital ship combat, but enough in starfighters' cockpits to guess the X-Wings' next move.
"Barrage those fighters with the forward turrets. Once they get closer than a klick, drop our prow by fifteen degrees and open the belly. When they pass us, tail turrets and launch the TIEs. A pair apiece, last pair to launch flies around those transports and blocks their escape. Make those Elvin and Rage."
The officer acknowledged his commands and set to work. Things went pretty much as Jorm had calculated. The X-Wings, which had expected the GR-75 to be a lightly armed and sluggish transport, found themselves pitted against four quad laser turrets on the Yavin Runner's prow. They switched to evasive maneuvers and did not manage to fire very often. Thew few shots they actually managed to fire and hit with just sizzled over Excidium's ship without doing any damage. As the fighters passed the freighter seeking less resistance in it's rear, the belly opened and TIE Interceptors launched in pairs. The Runner's lowered prow protected them from the turrets of the closing insurgent transports while they turned on the spot, covered by their mothership's tail guns, and started their own dance of death with the League fighters.

The last pair of TIEs just accelerated straight down from the Runner and went to circle the pair of YTs. As this happened, the petty officer in charge of the missiles aquired a solid lock on the leading transport and launched the two rockets. They shot forward from their tubes in the ship's still lowered nose and turned upwards in a wide arc. The YTs were occupied evading the forward laser barrage that had shifted towards them as the X-Wings had passed, and did not manage a proper point defense. The orange glowing projectiles slammed into the belly of the light freighter, shredded the weakened shields and crashed into the hull with enough force to let a fireball errupt on the top side before the ship was consumed in a fuel explosion. The other YT was sent spinning.
"I want them alive. Maybe there's some extra cookie dough in for us."
Jorm's words led the weapons officer to catch the light freighter with the tractor beam, stop the spin, and blast the turret that swung in the Runner's direction without even cracking the gunner's canopy.

Jorm relaxed, stood back and had the engines stopped. The space battle had taken his attention to the point he didn't even notice himself holding his breath. The X-Wings were still trying to cheat death, but his fighters and tail guns had them under control. Time to sweep up.
"Prepare to..."
"Sir, text message from the Bothawui!"
Jorm rolled his eyes at both the interruption and the title as he turned to the man on the comm. The interrupting party blushed again and fled forward, reporting.
"Other House forces have attempted to take prisoners, only to find that the insurgents rather suicide than be arrested."
Jorm stopped watching the man like a cat watches a mouse and turned his gaze upon the enemy ship caught in the tractor beam, off the starboard prow. He had a good view on the engines. It was still twitching, trying to maneuver and flee, but could not get away from the now stationary GR-75. But that would change when - not if - the imperials boarded. *And here I was standing, fool that I am, and hoped I could go back to reading comics.And no dessert for that guy either.*

"Have the men at arms ready. Keep stable for now, rotate their engines away from us, ignore the airlock alert, and board that ship in five minutes. And call ahead to the quartermaster to stand ready with a few flashbangs!"
Jorm darted off the bridge, leaving a puzzled command crew.
"Siiiiiir.....?"
"Just fly me closer, I want to hit them with my lasersword!"
Jorm sprinted through the transport's narrow corridors. When he reached the armory, the quartermaster was just stepping out with a crate of flashbangs. The Kiffar grabbed a few and hooked them onto his belt without slowing down, leaving the bewildered man behind, and continued his way to the forward starboard airlock.

He closed the inner doors and took a few deep breaths in thesmall room. What he was going to do now was one of those crazy little stunts that had gotten him his nickname. Everybody just thought he was jesting when he narrated one of those. With a final deep breath and the push of a button, he closed his eyes and called on the Force to control himself. As the airlock cycled, his body warmth was no longer allowed to radiate outwards, warding him against freezing to death. The pressure difference would caure ruptures in his cells, but that issue would be handled by his Accelerated Healing for a short time - longer than he could hold his breath. That was the true catch. The outer doors opened. Jorm could not hear it in the vacuum, but feel the vibration through his boots. He opened his eyes and gauged the distance between his cozy little airlock and the caught YT's topside. *Close enough.* He grasped the handrail and deactivated the artificial gravity. Gauged the distance again, calculated the power needed. Then he launched himself at his target. One man without space suit, drifting towards an enemy... while there as still a starfighter skirmish going on.

In flight, he turned around; nothing he did now could change his course until he got close to the YT. In the distance behind the ship he just came from, he saw green and orange laser cannons firing. Two streams of green fire intersected, resulting in a bright orange fireball. One X-Wing less. As Jorm looked back to the Yavin Runner, he could see the ship's trademark patch on the prow, right above the airlock he had used. The stickman running on a jungle planet littered with temples was glistening in the sun. Jorm turned around again. Most people could do little more that flail helplessly in zero gravity, but the Kiffar had been a circus acrobat with zero-G shows for a long time. *If there wasn't the little detail of being in open space, I'd feel right at home here.* He reached the YT as planned. First thing to contact the hull were his hands, gripping at the edges and protrusions a starship hull had. His preserved body heat prevented him from being frozen to the metal as he swung his body around and vented the rest of his momentum through his boots and into the gunner's canopy. He looked down at himself and between his feet. If the quartermaster back on the Runner had looked bewildered, there were no words at his disposal to describe the gunner's face now. Jorm smiled, waved, and crawled to the topside airlock these little YTs always had. The man inside would probably raise a ruckus, but who was to believe him that a guy without suit had just landed on the hull?

*There, the airlock.* Jorm sunk deeper into concentration; this part would be tricky. Not so much doing it, but doing it without losing his self-control and suffocating. He felt through the Force and noticed a total of six life forms aboard, but that was a secondary concern now. Getting back to the task at hand, he sought and found the emergency manual override for the outer door, and used his Telekinesis to pull that lever. The door opened, releasing a squall of air which immediately crystallized. It looked like a cloud of snow was falling away from the freighter. *Pretty.* Jorm relaxed a little and swung into the airlock feet first. A wise choice, as the gravity in here was not switched off. He reset the emergency lever and closed the outer door. The airlock began to cycle. As atmosphere streamed in, Jorm's hearing returned. Humidity came with it and froze into his clothes and his braided hair, which had not held any preserved heat. As the pressure rose, he released his mental grip on his body and took the first deep breath in a few minutes. *One more thing to add to and cross from my bucket list.*

There was an argument going on on the other side of the inner door. One agitated human voice, one alien voice strained but dismissive. The words were not discernible through the inner door. *The topic of that conversation is a no-brainer anyway.* He called on the Force again, this time in one of the ways that came most naturally to him: augmenting his reflexes. He felt the tension in himself rise, and his perpetual smile turned into the sadistic grin that haunted the survivors he had left behind in all his years on the wrong side of the law. There would be a few more haunted souls soon. Then he drew his unignited lightsaber and opened the inner door.

The human gunner was in front of him and to the right. To the left of that one was a Gran. Jorm didn't wait for them to turn around, but bolted out of the tiny chamber like a hawk-bat out of any given hell. The gunner had a blaster already drawn and pointed in Jorm's direction and actually managed to raise and fire it. Jorm's reflexes and a nudge of the Force let the blaster bolt pass harmlessly between his arm and ribcage before his blade hissed into life and cut through the barrel before the gun was level again. The Knight stopped his forward momentum with a volatile kick to the man's ribs, sending him flying and crashing into the wall. Jorm turned to the Gran at his left and dropped into a low crouch to let a blaster bolt pass overhead. A short lunge, and his yellow saber twisted vertically in his hands, creating the illusion of a disc centered on his stomach, severing the alien's forearm at the elbow. The nonhuman looked at the stump, baffled, then screamed in pain as it hit his brain. Jorm swung the saber in a high horizontal arc and took the alien's three eyes in one strike. The Gran passed out from the heavy trauma.

Jorm extinguished his lightsaber and inspected the human gunner. Shallow breathing, but in no condition to do anything.
"Hey! What the hell is going on up there?" somebody shouted from the gunnery well. Probably the bottom gunner, trying to keep the blockading TIEs in check. Jorm readied a flashbang and dropped it into the well, then shut the door. A muffled scream and a dull *WHAM* was all he heard from there as he repeated the process with the engine room. This time the sounds were a little clearer.

Jorm counted. He had been on board for roughly thirty seconds and downed four insurgents. Two to go, in the cockpit. He blasted off into another sprint. On this small ship, a few steps took him through the angled tunnel and into the cockpit. One person was occupying the pilot's seat and still trying to pry the YT from the Runner's invisible grasp, the other one was working on a console. This latter person. a Duro, already had a blaster in his left hand, but instead of pointing it at Jorm he was raising it to his temple, locking eyes with his attacker.
"NO FLEEING FUNTIME, PEDUNKEE!"
Jorm shouted and launched himself into a flat-bodied jump kick. He hit the Duro's wrist and bent the arm back, dislocating the elbow. As he flew past, the Knight grabbed the Duro's face in his free hand and dragged it down with him, introducing the back of the non-human's head to the hard floor.

Jorm's forward momentum was once more negated by his boots hitting something solid; this time it was the command console. His jump had carried him right between the pilot's and copilot's seats. The one to his left was empty, the one to his right occupied. A doe-eyed woman leaned and twisted to see the face belonging to the boots that had just crashed next to hers. Her hands fumbled with the seatbelts. Jorm pointed his hilt at the back of her seat and ignited his lightsaber through the back rest. In the light it provided, he could see the blade sticking out of her abdomen, mirrored in the canopy. He switched the saber off again while his latest victim went slack and lost consciousness without a sound. Then he laid back, a knocked out Duro at his side and the smell of burnt flesh in the air, still melting ice in his braids. *Finally a moment of respite.*

*Except, no.* The comlink he carried in his pocket vibrated. Probably had done so the whole time, he just had been so preoccupied with ruining someone's day that he hadn't noticed. With a sigh, he got back on his feet and answered the call.
"Na'trej."
"Good to hear your voice, s... boss." came the relieved reply. Jorm took a look at the console the Duro had worked on.
"You're a terrible liar, skipper. You can dock and send the boarding party now. Heavy on medics, I suggest. Most of these guys should be alive, but they sure as hell are damaged goods."
The console displayed a dialog window. DELETE ALL FILES? Jorm declined the prompt.
"Call ISI. They might have a field day with this ship's data core, the crew tried to delete it. Aaand... make sure there's hot water available. I need a shower."
"Yes sir. Also, the Bothawui has called us again, and sent us coordinates for two more groups of ships."

Jorm let that last one slip and cut the comm. This whole deal wasn't over, but hell, the next five minutes were his and his alone. The next flashpoint could wait THAT long.