Shadow

I was searching for a distraction after the disappointment I had found in Federal Space. The news about my adopted home, the East Pardus Rim was bad. Pollution had fouled the space lanes there and I wanted no part of it. So I made a course for the Y-hole in Caroli and picked out NEX 003. You never get used to the experience of a trip through the Y-hole. You can feel the world behind you cease to exist and then in the lifetime of a second if you open your mind to can feel the very fabric of the Galaxy. Just when it feels like she is going to rip the soul right out of you the world come back. The disorientation is palpable. Trust the navicomputer I told myself.

I allowed myself a few seconds to recover but no more. I had to move swiftly because no sentient would be excluding me from their ambushes here. I had come to the South Pardus Rim. There were no friends here and NEX 003 is close enough to the Ska'ari core that you can smell it in the recycled air of your ship. I docked at a nearby imperial starbase for the morning. I tried to blend in with the other Keldons who worked and lived there but the Galaxy always sees through you and I don't think it paranoid of me to believe they all knew what I was.

A few hours later I embarked Galactic eastward. Feeling better as each sector passed me by. I could feel the Sister-grandmothers calling through the stars. I haven't been this close in a long time. These warm feelings died a quick death after I entered the Exbeur sector. I had my ships sensors and attitudinal thrusters on their highest defensive settings so I detected the thing early.

A Shadow.

The Shadow is proof that the Galaxy has evil interwoven into her fabric. No one has been able to analyze the shadows weaponry. I believe this is because because traditional measurements for energy weapons involve the frequency of light. Fear is the shadows weapon. Like the Galaxy the shadow can see right through you. It takes your fear and makes it tactile. It rakes your soul as it bashes your armor.

For a moment I was back in the Y-Hole. I could see all the love and light in the galaxy slowly being drawn into the shadow. The event horizon of everything that is evil lay just before me. I stifled a wave of panic. Panic is how the shadow feeds. It tricks it's victims into reacting to their fear, their own indecision kills them.

I said a quick prayer,taught to me by the Keldon wraith hunters on Cebalrai, for agility and steered the Baham toward the Shadow. Every cell in my body rebelled against the action but i gritted my molars and power the engines forward. The battle was long and intense. Several times I had to break away from combat and steer towards the planet. I bought overpriced robots from a seedy dealer on what had to be the worst neighbor hood on Exbeur.

I plunged back into the void on one last strafeing run. Fear glanced off Ebidium and magnetic defractor fire rended liquid hate. When the Shadow was defeated there was no explosion. However the imput of data caused by the Shadow's sudden disappearance overloaded the Baham's main sensor batteries.

I had to land the Baham by sight and claw power at the skyport on Exbeur. After I exited the cockpit I looked up at where I had come from. The night sky seemed brighter.

Olympic Crackdown

As the Olympics begin in imperial space the emperor's secret police are cracking down on dissident Keldon movements who might wish to use the spotlight of the event to gain exposure to the plight of two-thirds of the Keldon race. A promising young sonic-ring catcher named Meslet Carmfi'e'ler from Quator disappeared from the Olympic village this week after he announced that he would participate in his event wearing not the traditional imperial Red and Black uniform donned by Imperial atheletes, but instead would be wearing the two-toned blue colors associated with the Free Keldana movement. Sonic-Ring pundits agree that Carmfi'e'ler was a dark horse to win the gold medal in the event.

Union atheletes are being kept quarentined in their section of the Olympic village when not participating in athletic events for their "protection." We are sure they are not being kept separated from the local populaces because the imperial subjects might be exposed to a new-free idea or two.

The emperor is so terrified of his own subjects that he keeps them in the dark even during this event that promotes peace and the exchange of ideas and cultures. We hope that Union officials do not let the good feeling of these games go to their heads and keep a clear eye to the threat the empire poses, to the Union and to two-thirds of the Keldon species under Imperial control.


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