"Frag it. We are going after them." Sohmer, captain of the Wraithis.

As a decision by a flag officer of the Imperial Navy, it didn't carry as much weight as that of a Grand Admiral, but it was to be of particular significance to the crews of the Wraithis and the Harridan.

Moments later, two full squadrons of TIE Fighters disgorged from her bays like a cloud of deadly tetse fly. Five of their number leapt forwards into the field itself, dodging the tumbling boulders.

On the vessel's bridge, the youthful Captain Sohmer had his nose almost pressed against the expansive windows which looked over his ship's bows and into the asteroid field.

His already ashen face paled at the thought of Lord Vader leading the Death Squadron through this, this minefield in pursuit of a single rebel ship, the Millennium Falcon.

They would follow their dark master anywhere to further the Emperor's will, but despite that, the news of the Harridan's situation gave him reason to pause.

As his vessel had orbited the ice planet Hoth, site of a Rebel Base, Sohmer had been watching the holos of the other Star Destroyer captains as they reported in to Vader, and had seen the Harridan captain's image fragment, white out and die. Telemetry had reported that the larger ship was in a spot of bother.

What was it the Ensign had called from his pit station?

"Sir! Harridan just took one in the face! She's tumbling without power and venting atmosphere."

Now, as Sohmer gazed at the pulverising rocks drifting in all directions, he mentally scrubbed Plan A. It had been a simple matter of taking his ship into the field, locking tractors onto the stricken ship and towing it out of the danger area.

"Frag me gently." The captain murmured. "If we pull this guano off, the whole drokking crew gets shore leave on the sunniest fragging planet I can find.

Carnegie, his aide, stood beside him. The slim lieutenant commander waited patiently to be noticed.

"Yes Commander."

"Sir, ComScan has been unable to raise the Harridan. Targeting has acquired her though. She is beyond the range of our tractors, but not by much. Permission to whisper freely."

Sohmer glanced at his colleague. "Go ahead."

"I am watching as you try to balance our actions with what the New Order says we can do. The survivors on that ship won't be saved if we are constantly distracted by being politically correct."

Both officers stole cautious glances towards the trio of COMPNOR observers standing in the darkness. Officially they were present to observe the Imperial military machine at work, but everyone knew they were spies.

"Banter status?" Sohmer asked hesitantly.

"I think it would be best for the situation."

"Go for it."

Carnegie turned to the deck at large, inhaled and raised his voice. "The ship is now on Banter Status. We need some innovative thinking to save that ship out there."

There was a tangible wave of relaxation as everyone loosened up and put their minds to the task. Attitudes had got a bit informal out there on the Outer Rim of the galaxy, but being this close to Lord Vader's fleet had meant that everyone had had to get used to the proper formal approach to doing things. Carnegie's point was that thinking like an Coruscant yes-man would not save the Harridan.

From the corner of his eye, Carnegie spotted the COMPNOR people approaching; he might have known this would set them off. He chose to ignore them as long as he could.

Sohmer spoke to his 2-in-C: "Carnegie. In case we need to enter that field, I want the rest of the command tower evacuated, and some people moved to the auxiliary bridge."

"Yes sir. Pit lieutenants? Ensure your staff is ready to work to 110 % efficiency. Anyone who isn't should leave the bridge now. Contact your second shifts and send a couple of your people to the Auxiliary Bridge; we may need to evacuate the Main Bridge in a hurry.

Another thing, anyone who leave now is responsible for ensuring the rest of the tower is evacuated."

"Captain, Commander." It was the men from COMPNOR, the Commission for the Preservation of the New Order. "We believe that it would not be in the best interests of the Empire for that ship to be saved."

That tension was back. Carnegie could feel everyone’s' eyes on them.

"Oh yeah, and why is that?"

"We have detected Rebel activity aboard that ship."

"Are all thirty-two thousand men on board implicated in this activity?" Sohmer enquired.

"No." the ISB man admitted, "but-"

"Security. Remove these men from the bridge." Carnegie ordered, signalling to the black uniformed guards standing by the turbolifts. Those worthies instantly drew their blasters and started walking forward past the crew pits.

Startled at this turn of events, the lead observer turned to Sohmer for support. "If I might remind you, Captain, it is illegal to remove Observers from your bridge by force."

For the first time, Sohmer's smiled. It was closer to the grin of a victorious nashtah than anything to do with mirth.

"It is also illegal for us to throw them out off airlocks, but we're drokking doing it."

Carnegie fielded the reports from a pair of lieutenants from Targeting and ComScan, nodding in response, while his superior watched the doomed COMPNOR men getting manhandled from his sight.

"Captain. ComScan reports that our TIE flight has reached the Harridan with the loss of just one ship. No-one is answering their hails. They request further instructions. I have told them to stay close to her."

"Good." Sohmer stared through the windows at the maelstrom, the myriad array of planetoid fragments tumbling without rhyme or reason. He needed to come up with a plan fast. He mumbled something to himself, a half remembered ditty concerning a heroic figure in Imperial circles.

"Sir?"

"Sorry, Carnegie. What was that song dedicated to Lord Tion?"

"Umm. That went, `What would Lord Tion do, if he was here right now'."

A subordinate officer with four blue squares on his grey chest carried on the ditty as he approached "He would make a plan and follow through, that is what Lord Tion would do."

"Yeah. That's it. That's it exactly." Sohmer turned to his crew, spreading his arms expansively. "And let's face it gentlemen. We are the Empire. We can follow through on anything, regardless of how drokking stupid the plan is."

"Uh-huh. Take the Death Star." this was from an operator down in the crew pits.

"Yep. Let's build a space station the size of a fragging moon!"

There was laughter in the pits. The officers allowed this to continue. They had beaten some really serious troubles out in the Unknown Regions with this kind of banter.

Another operator stood from his console. "Ensign Inca. Telemetry. Sirs, if the Harridan is out of our range, why can't we commandeer a stable asteroid and have them tractor themselves to it. We can tractor the 'roid to ourselves. That would nearly double our range without endangering the Wraithis."

"Nice plan." countered another non-com from Weapons. "But she has no power to use her tractors."

Captain Sohmer listened as his people continued to bring up little points.

"We need to get people over there. Get them energised." someone was saying.

Sohmer moved over the walkway between the pit areas, and looked down at the areas where the most ideas and comments were coming from. "Acquire me an asteroid, either stable or as near as possible. We can stabilise it with unarmed concussion missiles if need be. When we have one, pass its co-ordinates to our TIEs, the Harridan and the Auxiliary Bridge.

Carnegie turned to the lieutenant, counting of fingers as he spoke. "Get down to the primary docking bays. I want spacetroopers; I want assault gunboats, astromechs and the Monster Squad. Move."

Outside, in the midst of the asteroids, one massive fragment could be seen flying on a straight course which on a clockface could be equated to going from 2 o'clock to 8 o'clock. It was not rolling, which meant that the fourteen concussion missiles angling to intercept it would not have the force of their impact shunted aside. They were not armed, as it was not desirable to blast this particular rock apart.

In due course the rock was grappled in the sticky fingers of tractor beam energy emanating from the Wraithis. Ten operators on the bridge attached and released their beams in an attempt to stabilise the object in relation to the distant vessel.

TMS-1 sandtrooper DLT-5921 sat at the controls of an ungainly landing barge, moving the bulky craft towards the craggy grey surface of the selected asteroid.

If he looked up and right of his viewport, he would be able to spot the tiny flotilla of rescue ships hip-hopping through the silicon shower towards the Harridan. Three Gamma-class assault gunboats filled to their brims with fully armoured spacetroopers and escorted by about fifteen TIEs; whatever you got in a squadron-and-a-half anyway.

Their task was twofold: to attach themselves to the crippled ship and use their thrusters to control the larger vessel's roll, and to deploy the sixty spacetroopers. Those men were to swarm across the hull and try patching up the hull as best they could. DLT-5921 (Twenty-One to his friends) didn't want to think how much oxygen the Star Destroyer had already lost; he was just happy to be flying again.

He watched the numerals counting down on the readout in front of him, these ones showing the number of metres between the ground and the bottom of the barge.

He felt the judder as metal scraped rock just moments before the counter reached 0000. He leaned forward and tapped the readout with a gloved finger, then turned and gave his boss the thumbs up.

ZTA-6479 (Seventy-Nine) smiled sickly back at him through the viewplate of his vacuum-suit. He, Twenty-One and the other half-dozen crewpeople in the cabin were all suited up. At any moment, a shower of micro-meteorites could drill through the hull and release the atmosphere.

Seventy-Nine released the g-locks binding him to his chair, and stood stiffly, turning to address his team.

"Okay, we split up here. I'll be leaving Beta here in charge of the ground team. You will take the Juggernaut out onto the surface, and wedge it into a fissure or crevice. Somewhere where you have a clean shot at the Harridan. Twenty-One will fly the rest of us up there in the Skipray. If we can contact the crew, we need them to lock their tractors onto this rock. Although we can tell them the co-ordinates, that might not be enough. You will need to fire low powered laser shots at the ship to act as a sort of directional beacon."

"Make sure your laser power settings do not exceed point zero five irgs." Twenty-One interjected.

"Why not?" asked one of the Ground Force members.

Beta (BTA-0113) answered that one. "We might trigger some independently powered auto-cannon on the Harridan. Suppose it takes exception and tries to dust us?"

"Oh."

Seventy-Nine nodded with approval as Beta departed the cabin with his two colleagues. There was a time he remembered when BTA-0113 had been a bit slow on the uptake, but their experiences as the Monster Squad had obviously been good for him. "Let's move out too." he said.

Everyone filed to the spiral stairwell at the rear of the cabin area, with Twenty-One bringing up the rear. Suddenly he rushed back to his pilot station to open the debarkation ramp at the front of the ship. He had just pressed it when he heard Beta's dulcet tones coming over the helmet comlink: "Are you going to open the ramp, or are we meant to prybar our way--ah thanks."

The old Juggernaut vehicle which descended the barge ramp and stirred up grey dust on the planetoid's surface was an enormous two-storey land cruiser. it was heavily armoured, and trundled on a dozen massive durasteel wheels, each the height of an average human biped. There were two identical cockpit areas at the front and rear of the vehicle, and it was topped off, literally, with an observation tower that jutted vulnerably from the roof of the vehicle.

That was the first thing to go, sliced off by a stray shard of stone that frisbeed into the side of a nearby mesa. The only sign from the outside that anything untoward had happened was a short geyser of silvery white gas that caromed skywards for a few moments, and some choice expletives, then nothing.

Inside was another matter. Both of Beta's companions were securely fastened into their seats at the front and back of the vehicle, and he was standing behind the front driver's chair when a giant hand tugged him clean out of the front cabin before the pressure door could slam down. He would regain consciousness later to find himself securely wedged into the stub of the observation tower, mere feet from being sucked out into oblivion. The others would only be aware of the hull breach by the loose objects rocketing past them prior to their respective doors closing. That and the finger marks clawed into the headrest of the front pilot's chair.

The Juggernaut continued on its mission.

Assault gunboats were already tractoring themselves into position on the Harridan when the tri-winged arrowhead of the Skipray arrived on the scene.

The ISD was tumbling slowly bow over stern, the entirety of it's rear dorsal section a open wound alight with dozens of fires amongst the darkness.

The Skipray flew over the top of the ship, still possible in spite of its movement.

The TMS-1 Engineer, seated behind the sandtrooper pilot looked out of his viewport, and double-checked his findings with the ship's sensors. "Doesn't look like the reactor has been breached, although parts of that deck might be open to space."

Twenty-One could see the same thing and ventured his opinion. "The damage doesn't look deep enough to have reached that section."

"I'll grant you that, but a couple of the turbolift tubes from the bridge went directly down to the engineering level."

"This is all very interesting, people." Seventy-Nine intervened. "Your only concern at the moment, is to dock safely with that ship."

"Yes sir." Twenty-One looked carefully at the ISD. The bow was coming up towards him, whilst the widest part of the wedge, where the seven ion engines were, was going away, which meant the stable part of the axis had to be the centre. More probably along the edges where the top hull met the bottom. There were plenty of access ports along there for the smaller fliers.

Twenty-One swooped the ship towards one of those parts, deftly evading some anti-asteroid fire which one of the Gamma ships sent in their general direction. The Skipray shuddered as a sprinkling of rock fragments hit their rear screens, then he powered the little craft's retro thrusters. The side of the ISD loomed larger in his vision.

With the landed Skipray at their backs, the five members of the TMS-1 team and a bunch of chirping astromechs stood on the ceramic deck of the docking port in almost complete darkness. The chamber was open to space, and would remain so until a powerdroid wandered over to offer its services.

Maria Van Helsing (long story), the only female on the team, turned on her glowrod, throwing an eerie blue-white light across the floor.

"Okay," she said, "now what do we do?"

ZTA-6479 added his glowrod to hers and gestured for the others to do the same.

"If we can run a power cable from our ship, we should be able to power up this section at least. Then we can establish a base camp in the gantry office and try to work something out."

"So we are making this up as we go?"

"Precisely."

Outside, the Gamma shuttles had each tentatively nosed onto the upper hull of the ISD, an expanse of ridged grey metal spreading around them like landscape.

The pilots fired up their ion engines, applying maximum thrust.. Almost two dozen blue-white nuclear flames flared silently out into the darkness on continuous burn.

A minute ticked by. Then another. And another.

Hardly noticeable at first, the great warship slowed its tumble. It seemed impossible, but it was these very engines that could slam the assault craft to the very barriers of supralight speed.

It would have been graceful but for the meteorites crashing into the hull at irregular cycles. The Imperial craft laid on suppression fire, their Taim & Bak KT6 blaster cannons tracking and destroying speeding rocks with a lethal lightshow that stretched off into the interstellar night.

Twenty hatches slipped open in backs of each ship disgorging sixty spacetroopers. Each headed off in a different direction to effect repairs, helped on their way by little spurts of gas from their attitude control thrusters..

The Monster Squad meantime, had been busy. Thick shiny cabling ran from the power plant on their Skipray to an energy conduit close to the commandeered gantry office. Although a grisly situation, the team had been forced by the urgency to work around the two dead Imperials who were already in the room. They had clearly been asphyxiated when the air disappeared.

The squad leader, Seventy-Nine, was alone with Maria and a jet black astromech.

Abruptly, the overhead lights powered up, illuminating the red and silver interior design, along with the furniture the team had been stumbling around.

ZTA-6479 winced as his suit comlink echoed with jubilant cheers from the others.

"Maria, plug the droid into the system. Tell it to connect the power to as much of the local area as it can. Mayhap it can kick-start the reactor."

Mayhap? Maria raised a surprised eyebrow and did as she was told, pushing the enthusiastic astrodroid towards an information interface on the wall.

The stubby little droid extended a rod and spun it into place.

She monitored its speech on a translator datapad while it chirped happily to itself. Abruptly, the little thing became excited about something, it's silvery dome spinning crazily. It was a fragging Bleepfest.

"What is it?" Seventy-Nine asked, concerned.

Maria looked from the datapad to the droid and back. "I'm afraid I'm not quite sure, sir. He keeps saying `it is here'."

"What is?"

"The proxy."

"The Proxy Codeword? It's here?!" ZTA-6479 was savvy enough to know what that meant. The Wraithis could use it to remote control the Harridan from afar.

"I'm afraid it is scheduled to be deleted." Maria updated blithely.

"No! Transmit the proxy code to the Wraithis. Now!"

After a suitable pause, Maria shook her head. "It can't. Something wrong inside the ship. And it hasn't got the power to send the signal by itself that far. Um, it suggests you use the TIE fighters we came in with."

Initially irritated by the droid's failure, Seventy-Nine's demeanour brightened at this. "Well done that droid. Hold on a second."

The sandtrooper switched over frequencies on his helmet comlink with his tongue. The Imperial version of the Discovery Channel intimated that nothing in the galaxy had a tongue as dexterous as a stormtrooper. Presumably, they had never seen the Sarlacc.

"TMS-1 to all TIEs. Set your recording equipment, and take the data we are sending you back to the Wraithis. We have the proxy code to take control of this vessel."

He waited a moment for the flurry of confirmations, then gave Maria a thumbs-up.

"We have incoming. Friendlies."

Sohmer and his officers stared out the bridge windows at the tiny light specks now visible against the maelstrom.

"Captain?"

Sohmer turned and glared down towards the pit lieutenant for ComScan.

"Sir, we are receiving a transmission. It's the proxy codeword for the Harridan!"

"Excellent. Inform the auxiliary bridge that they are taking control of the Wraithis. We will handle the Harridan from up here. Standby to lock over controls. Now."

A low-volumed but familiar alarm echoed from several of the terminals. Intruder Alert. But over there, not here.

There was instant consternation from the Weapons Bay. That wasn't in a pit like the rest, but back and to the side of where the officers stood.

"Whoa, whoa." The being struggling with his controls was dressed in light grey coveralls and cap. Perspiration glistened on his brow. "Someone cut power to the turbolasers! Now please. Harridan auto-lasers are tracking the shuttles attached to the hull and that asteroid we tractored. Acquiring targets now. Firing. Stang!"

"What happened?" Carnegie asked. Sohmer watched his lieutenant-commander striding to the other man.

"All auto-lasers disabled sir. We, ah, exchanged fire with one of the assault shuttles. Those guys are tough, sir. Concussion missiles on the head!"

"And? Was the hull breached?"

"Fragging A!" The gunner suddenly realised that his excitement was ill-placed, and wilted under Carnegie's gaze. "Sorry Commander."

Sohmer spoke first. "Tractor operators. Have the Harridan lock onto our captured asteroid, and pull the ship towards it. Auxiliary Bridge, once the Harridan is confirmed as moving nearer to ourselves, start reeling that asteroid in. Bridge out."

Carnegie: "Have rescue ships and medical teams standing by to receive casualties, ours and theirs."

Sohmer: "Any news from Fleet?"

ComScan: "Hospital Cruisers are enroute. The first has finished picking up our people from Hoth, and will be here in half a Timepart. Two more will arrive in three Timeparts.. Fleet says that if we manage to get the Harridan out, we are to evacuate her crew and secure her for hyperspace."

"Destination?" Sohmer wondered if she would be dry-docked or sent to Endor as spare parts. She had taken a pounding but still...

"Repair yards. Black 15."

Sohmer smiled, relieved. Harridan was too good a ship to give up. Koornacht Cluster was a bit remote, but he expected the ship would be good as new in six months.

As it turned out, the first hospital ship dropped into normal space as the Harridan was being drawn clear of the asteroids.