TIE Fighter: Defiance
A Short Story set in the TIE Fighter Sequence
A/N: A brief interlude set between "TIE Fighter: Command Decisions" and "TIE Fighter: Resurrection." If you don't read TF: CD first, you won't have a lot of the context. That ended shortly after the Battle of Endor (ie "Return of the Jedi") and this takes place in the same general time period as "Tatooine Ghost", or if you prefer a little less than a year before the events of "Heir to the Empire.". INS Defiance is an Imperial-class Star Destroyer which had been part of the fleet assigned to explore the Unknown Regions, but which was pulled in to the Outer Rim fleet in the aftermath of Endor. Now, she's been sent on another of those fruitless raids by yet another would-be warlord that takes her to the edge of known space. There she encounters an alien menace barely seen before in the Empire, and painfully familiar to her starfighter squadron commander...
You would think dying would be easy for a TIE fighter pilot, but somewhat to Rurik's dismay, he'd managed to foul even that up. Despite four years of flying any fighter on offer no matter how archaic or un-spaceworthy, of leaping to volunteer himself or his wing for any duty, no matter how hazardous, despite refusing any offer to transfer from starfighters to safer, more stable bridge work or even first officer on a smaller capital ship, he had utterly failed to get himself killed once and for all.
Worse, all of that effort had gotten him promoted all the way to Colonel in command of all the Defiance's TIE fighters.
The asteroid field between the third and fourth planets of System V-2731-A (as the survey fleet had designated it) was the common intra-system sort, widely spaced with thousands of klicks between the massive rocks. Not like that debris field near the Hoth system that had chewed up half a dozen TIEs on Vader's quixotic hunt for the Rebel freighter (Rurik blinked away a memory of that same freighter dancing among the Rebel capital ships over Endor) but cluttered enough to hide a base in. What the Warlord-of-the-Week intended to do with a base practically in Wild Space Rurik didn't know, and as he'd pointed out to his wingman and second in command, Zeth Orono, he didn't care.
"The day you care about something is the day I'll start worrying, boss." Zeth triple-checked the air hoses on his flight suit. "You never care about anything. Not even what we're having in the mess this week, and that's something we should all be worried about."
"None of it's killed anyone yet." True, there had been that incident with a sudden outbreak of what could politely be described as the trots among almost all of Delta shift but as far as he knew, no one had actually died. They might have wished to die of embarrassment, but no one had actually done so. "And if it did, that just means an end to this pointless round of existence. Our long string of leaders can't even excel at losing to the Rebels. Dying of something would be a nice break in the monotony."
"Boss, with all due respect," and despite their being on far better terms than they'd once been, perhaps as close as Rurik was willing to admit to being friends, he knew when Zeth used that phrase he was about to say something exceptionally disrespectful, "I've said it before and I'll say it again: you desperately need to get laid."
"Tried that. Didn't end well the last time." Had that been the little supply clerk with the platinum hair? Or the tapcaf waitress on their last shore leave, whenever that had been? The tapcaf girl, with short-cropped copper curls and pale green eyes. Weeks? Months? He'd lost track and he didn't care. He certainly didn't remember her name.
"Oh?" Zeth had also spent the last few years perfecting being obnoxious without being too much so. "Promise to comm her, then lose her number?"
"No, the last thing she said before I left was 'Whoever this Thelea is, she's a lucky girl.'" Mentally Rurik patted himself on the back. Not a waver, not a crack in his voice, not the slightest change of tone at all.
"Kriff." There was no derision in Zeth's voice, at least. "Still?"
"I told you." Rurik slammed his locker harder than he really ought. "Until I die. I just didn't anticipate it taking so long." Maybe today. Maybe whatever fool's errand they were being sent on would be the end of it and he'd finally have blissful oblivion, no more dreams of glimmering cobalt hair and alien eyes, no more hearing her last transmission cut off mid-sentence even as he tried to turn and find her.
No more seeing Giriad's port solar panel shatter in a billion fiery sparks. No more relieving the blast that sent him tumbling as the Empire's last great weapon turned into a supernova and took the best and brightest of the fleet with it. No more.
He turned, his flight helmet tucked under his arm, and the other pilots snapped to attention. Almost none of them had been with the fleet at Endor. Recruits, transfers, even a few conscripts, though they weren't often trusted with the no-longer-expendable TIEs. None of them really knew him as anything but Defiance's starfighter commander, remote and cold as hard vac, never cruel, but never really anyone's friend. Except Commander Orono, and they were, after all, survivors of Death Squadron, the finest ships of the fleet. Aloof, above, to get a smile from Colonel Caelin was a momentous achievement. Even now they were all watching him, half-afraid, half-hopeful that today might be the day they'd earn the supreme honor of an honest 'well done.'
He scanned their flight suits. No kinked hoses, status lights and switches where they should be, no worn patches or obvious repairs. A brisk nod, but they knew that meant they passed inspection. Whatever they were going out to face, they were prepared.
It turned out that was prowling around an alleged abandoned Rebel base. Personally Rurik thought the layout of the asteroid base looked more like pirates, or smugglers, with a few half-empty cargo containers and blast marks that did not look typical for a Rebel base they'd abandoned, rather than been driven out of. Either way, any defensive weapons had been either destroyed or disabled. There were no craft attacking them, no heat blooms, which suggested that whoever had left, they'd done it a while ago.
Rurik stared at his Interceptor's targeting display, only half-paying attention as he darted around the slow-tumbling asteroids. Zeth, tagging close on his right wing, said, "There's enough scorch marks out here you'd think they started target-shooting asteroids out of boredom."
"There is a lot of scoring." And some of it looked strange. Turbolaser blasts generally shattered rock, but some of it almost read like melting damage, superheated surfaces that had bubbled and cracked like overheated glass. "Mining debris, maybe?"
"Maybe." Zeth sounded about as convinced as Rurik felt, which was not very. "Sensors getting anything?"
"Negative. In fact, too negative." He adjusted the targeting frequency, frowning at the display.
"Didn't think you could be too negative about anything, Boss."
"I'm going to meet you on the sparring court later and beat the sarcasm out of you."
"I don't think that's appropriate treatment of a junior officer." Zeth swung out of formation just a bit, banking towards one of the larger asteroids. "Boss, take a look. Twenty degrees down, that big crater."
Rurik followed his wingman down and studied the formations dotting the rim of the ancient impact crater's wall. "Those aren't Rebel tech, whatever they are." They were inky black mounds, so dark they almost seem to draw light into themselves instead of reflecting. The crater seemed deep, too, cast in dark shadows and he couldn't see the bottom. "If it's alien, it's nothing I've ever seen before."
Deep in the black depths of the crater, something glittered, shadow-on-shadow, and moved.
Primal fear and instinct meant Rurik was throwing his fighter up, Zeth and Alpha Three, his other wingman, following him before their fighters could be caught in a cascade of increasingly-powerful explosions that blasted rock and debris into the space around the asteroid. That gave them the distance to be clear, barely, when the blacker-than-space, insectoid shape of the dark ship screamed out of the crater. Rurik knew the white-hot plasma weapons, the dark, spiny profile that made keeping a visual on the attacking ship borderline-impossible, and the shrieking sound of frequency jamming cutting off communication with their capital-ship home base. "Squadron, report in if you can hear me!"
He got eight of what should have been nine replies, including Zeth saying, "Two to Lead. Boss, what in the nine starless hells is that thing?"
"Something nasty, Two." Rurik felt a sick sense of deja vu. Years ago, when he and his dead squadronmates had been escorting a freighter, a ship very much like the insectoid nightmare rising out the crater, only larger, had yanked the ship out of hyperspace and destroyed it. Before shattering the freighter, they had jammed communications between the ship and its escorts, but left the fighters free to communicate. Just as they'd now cut the TIE squadron off from the Defiance.
"All fighters, turn back and defend the ship! Those were sensors of some kind on the crater and it just woke something up. Our blaster cannons aren't going to do much damage, but we need to buy time for Defiance to deal with her." He knew exactly what he was asking, and for once not even Zeth had a smart comeback. Eight lives against thirty thousand or so aboard the Star Destroyer-even if it wouldn't be his own final liberation he'd craved so long, it wasn't even a choice. If they could give Defiance just long enough to deliver a fatal blow, or even just to get away safe to hyperspace . . . that was what they were here for.
Rurik snapped his Interceptor in a tight, twisting curve, dodging the larger chunks of debris the ship's takeoff had thrown into the space around the asteroid. Zeth's fighter stayed snug on his wing, but he saw an enormous chunk of the spinning debris clip Three's starboard solar panel, sending him into a fatal spin before he shattered against one of the bigger asteroids. Seven lives left, and Rurik was mildly surprised at his own lack of envy at the quick end. If they lived, he thought, he had letters of condolence to write. What he'd say about how these men had died, he didn't know.
A white-hot burst of energy that set his systems crackling reminded him if he wasn't careful no one was going to know what had happened to any of them.
"Boss, it's closing on the Defiance!" That had been Six, one of the younger, newer members of the squadron, and part of Rurik's mind noted approvingly he sounded only the faintest bit green. "I can't tell if our canons are even penetrating their shields."
"If they have shields." That was Four, one of the veterans who'd been with them since . . . two years? Three? It was easy to lose track. Rurik knew their names, of course, but except for Zeth, he tried not to think of them. "The energy doesn't dissipate, it just sort of vanishes against the hull."
"They absorb it," Six said, "it looks more like they just soak it in!"
"Watch the chatter," Rurik said. That was easier than watching the black ship, which seemed to curl and ripple around the edges, blending with the starfield and breaking up its silhouette. "If they're using our own energy against us, we deny them that source. Two Flight, target the asteroid at sixteen degrees from the front of that thing–watch those energy beams! Don't vaporize the rock, just break it into smaller chunks and come at it from the far side–I want those big pieces in its path." He wished, futilely, for the expensive, rare, but almost-invincible Defenders, something with more power or even a mini-tractor to use the asteroids more easily as mass drivers.
"Defiance to Alpha Leader," and he switched comm frequencies so the rest of the squadron wasn't listening. "You are ordered to return to the hangar for emergency jump."
A flare outside his cockpit canopy and a blink from his targeting computer told him Seven had just been vaped. "Complying, Defiance." No point in false heroics, considering he was down to six. Even if he wasn't overly worried about being reduced to component elements, there was no reason to take the squad down with him. And if he had to go, he thought with a shudder, no matter how much of a relief it would be, he realized he did not want it to be at the hands (or whatever appendages they had) of the dark ships. "All fighters, new orders, return to base. Break off and return to base."
He heard the acknowledgments and Six's very-young voice, "We're giving up, sir?"
"Orders, Six." He resisted the urge to tell the young pilot to enjoy this rare foray into discretion being the better part of valor. "Two, you're on me, we're last in. Defiance, stand by for docking, four coming in hot–"
There was a blast of ionizing energy and Rurik heard a scream, quickly cut off, and another blip flicked out on his targeting system. He would not have time to find out if Six was just too green to be easily-rattled, or just not bright enough. At this rate, he wouldn't have to worry about condolences and death papers, either, as someone was going to have to do them for him, as well. "Zeth, a slot just opened up."
"I admire pragmatism, Boss, but negative, I'm on you until we're in."
"Defiance, ready for flying pickup, need docking tractors hot!" He saw the remaining three wingmen racing for the Destroyer's underside, and kicked his own drive into gear. The targeting system was slipping around the dark ship, unable to get a lock, and then the computer was busy trying to deal with a field of debris–Two Flight's rubble barrier, and he was abruptly focused on not hitting any of the larger pieces, or letting the smaller stuff shred his cockpit. Zeth's Interceptor was hard on his tail, and the tiny part of him that still admitted sentiment was glad. His computer squealed as a far more concentrated bolt flared past, and he wondered if whatever variant on their enemy's tech this was didn't have the pinpoint targeting the small drone fighters did.
There was a blinding flash that for a moment overloaded all his systems, backwash from something big and close being hit and for one frozen, choking moment he was at Endor, the debris and plasma field of the Rebel frigate being incinerated by the Death Star enveloping him and he was certain he was about to be vaporized, too. Then his vision cleared, and he saw the fire and blackened hull. The dark ship hadn't missed them. It was targeting the Defiance, ignoring the pathetic little fighter gnats in favor of the richer goal, the bigger danger. Not that the heavy turbolaser bolts now flying past from the Destroyer's batteries were doing much visible damage.
"Still with us, Boss?" As the static started to clear he could hear Zeth's voice, crackling through the last of the jamming.
"No promotions for you today." He surprised himself by how there was still humor in his tone, dry and slight but still there. "Skim the surface and when we hit the midpoint, ninety-degree turn and down to the hangar. Too much open space if we make the normal run in."
"The boys on the turbo batteries may take care of us for them," his wingman observed, but Zeth was hard on his wing, with the Defiance's hull flashing beneath them at eye-watering speed. Rurik could barely see the various laser ports, projectors, and other landmarks telling him how far they'd gone, but his internal clock told him they'd gone far enough they were almost directly above the main hangar entrance. He snap-rolled and they shot across the short axis, diving down toward the ship's underbelly.
The hard jolt of the tractor beams snagged him and he smashed down hard on his engine control switch, cutting power as his Interceptor was half-guided, half-flung into the hangar. Repulsors barely slowed him as instead of the normal delicate docking in their racks he simply pointed the fighter for the deck plates and braked hard as the tractors cut out. He could hear the scream of stressed durasteel gouging into the deck plates as his fighter and Zeth's both ground to a halt, but any landing where there were no hull ruptures and you could still open the hatch was a good landing. He ditched his helmet in the cockpit and scrambled out, dropping to the deck with just enough time to notice the other three fighters already safely landed before the entire ship's deck bucked like a dewback trying to toss a particularly-heavy pack and Rurik was thrown to his knees.
The alarms were screaming so loudly–collision, hull breach, he couldn't even sort out which it was–he could barely hear the voices shouting at him as he staggered upright. Zeth and two of the other pilots (Eight and Four, he told himself) were hurrying to help him up and he waved them off as a haggard-looking deck officer ran towards them.
"I'm fine, I'm fine," he snapped, waving the assistance away. "What just happened?"
The deck officer, eyes wild and any pretense of military discipline long gone, staggered to a halt. "Colonel, we've lost the bridge!"
"What?" He heard a stifled curse from one of the other pilots but didn't bother trying to sort out who it was. "What do you mean, lost?"
"The conning tower just took a direct hit. Another minute and we'd have lost tractors bringing you in. The alarm says hull breach but internal comm's cut off and the computer is showing no atmosphere on the main bridge."
"No abandon ship order?" He didn't hear the klaxon for that but if things were as bad as they appeared to be . . . .
"Not yet, but there might not be anyone to give it!" The ship heaved again, and the hangar lights flickered ominously. There was no alert of venting atmosphere at least.
"He's got a point, sir," and it had to be serious if Zeth was calling him sir. "If they vented the bridge, no one's alive to give the order."
"They could be on the secondary battle bridge." The lower control bridge was primarily a backup and an additional communications and control position, redundant during normal operations and generally the place for green, middling, or otherwise unexceptional crew and officers. Right now, though, if the main bridge was open to space, any hope for helm control, shields, or even authority to give an evacuation order, was down there. Probably in the hands of a terrified lieutenant commander, which made it a minor miracle they'd even had the tractor control to land. "Commander Orono, find out the status of engineering and report it to the secondary bridge. I'm going down there and finding out who's in charge. Deck crew, get anything you can ready to fly, pilots to their stations. If we have to abandon ship we can get as many people as we can off in the shuttles and troop transports if there's time. Escape pods won't last in this sort of debris."
"Aye, sir," and the deck officer sounded infinitely relieved that someone at least seemed to know what was going on.
If he could have seen the thoughts running through Rurik's head, most prominently What in the void am I doing?, he might not have been quite so reassured. But the deck officer was no Jedi, and as Rurik took off at a run for the lifts, he could hear orders being shouted behind him. He only hoped they were the right ones.
The secondary bridge was only slightly quieter, and the lieutenant commander who came rushing over, throwing a hasty salute, looked disproportionately relieved to see a senior officer, even one in a TIE pilot's flight suit. "Colonel! That . . . cruiser, or frigate, or-or whatever it is has backed off for the moment, but we've lost aft shields completely, we have 100% loss of atmosphere on the main bridge, no one answering our comm attempts, our starboard-side turbolasers are down to 22%, and we've sustained serious damage to our sublight engines."
"It could be worse, Lieutenant Commander . . . ."
"Sosabow, sir."
"Commander Sosabow, it could be worse." Rurik was uncertain quite how, but he'd worry about that later. "There's no contact from Captain Breutje?"
"No, sir," and Sosabow shook his head in a very unprofessional display of nerves. "We're showing bridge atmosphere at zero and the airtight doors closed automatically. We have to assume everyone on the main bridge is dead or incapacitated."
"Probably the former," and Rurik thought even to his own ears that sounded fatalistic. "Who's the senior officer remaining?"
"Well . . . ." Before Rurik could reprimand him for prevaricating, "since you came back aboard, well, Colonel . . . you are."
Well, shaffit.
He realized the crew and the officers behind them in the pit were looking up at him, and he saw far too many wide-eyes, ashen faces and trembling hands. Even Sosabow looked pale and there was a desperation in his eyes, a plea for someone else, anyone else, to take responsibility for the Defiance and what was left of her crew. Even if that someone was from starfighter command, and notorious among the crew for only two things, barely speaking two sentences to anyone not also a pilot, and never meeting a suicide mission he didn't volunteer for. Considering at least some of them had to know that, the faint, desperate hope in some of their faces looked horribly misplaced.
Then again, he had yet to meet a suicide mission he didn't like, and he was still standing here.
And come on, Rurik. What would she have done? In the back of his mind, a distant memory spooled out of storage, Thelea in the command room on Telamara, a blockade of similar ships ready to rain death on the world below. "We're the Imperial Navy. This doesn't happen to us." And she had set to prove that was true.
"Very well. As of now, I am assuming acting command of this ship," though he doubted any of them cared if he followed the proper formal phrasing or not. "You've said what we don't have. What's left?"
"Hyperdrive and navicomputer are operational," and the relief practically radiated from Sosabow. "Tractors, except for the number two projector," the farthest-forward on the starboard side, not surprising if the starboard turbolasers were gone, too, "life-support at 92% except on the main bridge, and we have forward shields at 78%."
"Proton torpedo launchers?" Rurik headed for the command bank, smaller than the main bridge but with similar tactical displays, and grimaced at the sea of red warnings and system failures.
"Both forward launchers are damaged and inoperative, Captain."
He flinched. "Acting Captain," he corrected. "Why have they backed off?"
It was a rhetorical question but Sosabow answered anyway. "One of the larger asteroids is between our forward bulkhead and the enemy ship, sir. We believe they're having to maneuver around it."
"Rather than just blasting it, or trying to move it out of the way." Why? "How large? The size of the one that ship was on when we woke it up?"
Sosabow tapped a few keys. "A little more than two-thirds the mass, sir."
Rurik grimaced. "Meaning they may be protecting it because they have something else stashed there." He studied the display a few more seconds. "And without torpedoes and half our lasers down, no chance of blowing it up. And that ship just drinks in energy beams anyway, we'd just be reinforcing them. We can't even shoot our way clear for a jump."
Then he paused. Stared a moment longer at the position of the asteroid and the computer's best guess at the position of the enemy cruiser. Then he keyed up the navicomputer and stared at the gravwell limits the system projected for any jump out of here.
"Did you say we had functional tractor beams? Other than the number two projector, I mean?" he asked, rounding on Sosabow.
The lieutenant commander blinked and nodded. "Yes, sir. Not that we can get a lock on that ship. Main bridge tried."
"I don't need a lock on the ship, I need a lock on that asteroid. Helm!"
The "Aye, sir, " from the crew pit that came in response was wavering, but loud enough.
"Plot a vector for a hyperspace jump. Anywhere, for the moment, just enough to get us out of this system and back towards Imperial space. Be ready to engage the moment the vector is green. Understood?"
"Yes, sir!"
"Tractor beams, lock on to that asteroid that's between us and the ship. I know you can't see exactly where their cruiser is, but make your best guess. On my mark, I want you to use the tractor beams to swing the asteroid straight into their ship."
"Captain, helm," and Rurik didn't bother to correct the officer, "I don't have a clean path ahead of us. We'd need sublight maneuvering to make a clear jump."
Rurik ground his teeth and stared at the tactical readout another moment. "Do you have docking bow thruster power, helm?"
The response was a bit more hesitant this time, but the uncertain voice said, "Aye, sir."
"Then on my mark, use both bow thrusters to push us nose-up, there should be a clear path if you angle us 85 degrees up from our current plane, and then engage the hyperdrive. Do you understand?"
"Not really, sir, but standing by bow thrusters on your mark."
Well, full points for honesty, anyway. "Good. Tractor beam, do you have the asteroid locked in?"
"Yes, sir, but my sensors aren't reading the enemy ship's location clearly." That voice was female, he thought, but relatively collected, more so than the helm officer.
"Use your best estimate, crewman," Rurik said, still watching the tactical display. "Helm, is our jump course locked in?"
"Based on eighty-five degrees positive pitch from our current position, yes, sir."
"Very good." He drew a deep breath. This was either going to work, or get them all killed, and he wasn't sure which was the more terrifying option. "Tractor control–bring the asteroid about, twenty-five degree yaw to starboard, pitch at 45 degrees, maximum power." If the blur, metal-but-not, ion charges, and some sort of distortion of the starfield that the sensors were showing was the enemy ship, that course should shove the massive rock directly into it. Hopefully it was more vulnerable to heavy mass than energy weapons.
"Tractor beam aye," came the response, and as he saw the asteroid begin to swing up, propelled by the beam's invisible sling, Rurik spun on his heel and looked to the helm.
"Bow thrusters at full, 85 degree up angle!" The deck plates shuddered, and he saw their position begin to change on the monitors. There was a horrible shuddering, and a scream like overstressed metal that somehow reverberated through their hull as the asteroid found its target. The sound cut straight to his bones, like something living shrieking in uncomprehending pain, and he saw Sosabow and others grabbing for support or covering their ears against the inhuman noise and the rattling as pieces of something, most likely the asteroid as it shattered into the enemy vessel, impacted on their shields. He could see a bright-white flare on the monitors but he also saw the navicomputer's projected course change from red to green. "Helm–emergency hyperspace jump, now!"
For a heart-stopping moment, there was a new, violent shaking, and he was certain they weren't going to make it, that Defiance was going to tear herself apart trying to break free. And then, with the bone-grinding sound of the dying enemy ship still ringing in their heads, the deck trembled with the familiar, comforting thrum of the massive stardrive engaging and outside, the streaks of light changed to mottled white and blue as they made the jump and were away.
There was a long, long pause, where the only sounds were the comforting hum of the engines and the ragged sound of anxious breathing, maybe a few choked sobs. Rurik gave himself a count of ten to make sure his voice wasn't going to crack and he wasn't going to break into hysterical laughter, and said, "Status report."
For a second, Sosabow looked absolutely lost, as if he couldn't remember what the command meant. Then he shook himself and went to the tactical display. "Hyperdrive is fully operational, Captain. Hull integrity down to 78% with impact damage on decks eight through twenty-seven on the forward starboard side. Life-support is operation and no further breaches are reported. No reports from medical yet on any casualties."
"Well, they've hardly had time," Rurik said. "And it's acting captain. I'm just in charge until we get somewhere for repairs and to report to fleet command, whomever that is at the moment. Assuming we don't burn the hyperdrive out as soon as we revert to realspace. Navigation, calculate our options for Imperial-controlled repair facilities. On this vector that's probably Bilbringi, but I want options in case we can't get that far. Command Sosabow, begin compiling the data recordings of that . . . encounter. Holos, flight recorders, ship's system logs, everything. I doubt whoever's running things this month will care enough to do anything about it, but we're coming back with a dead bridge crew and I've run into those ships before. I want everything documented just in case this time someone cares and so whomever they draft as the next captain will know what happened to the old one."
"Yes, Cap–Acting Captain," Sosabow said, then paused. "That'll be our fourth, sir."
"Fourth what?" Ruirk tugged his flight gloves off, and after a moment's pause, started unstrapping the life-support harness he was still wearing. He could change into gray blouse later, once the reports were compiled, but until now he hadn't even realized he still had the heavy vest and gloves on, let alone worried about appropriate bridge attire.
"Our fourth captain since Endor, sir. Not including you, or my ten minutes before you got here." Sosabow had an expression somewhere between a smile and a grimace. "We've been something of a hard-luck ship."
Rurik knew his own smile was mirthless. "At this point, what ship in the Imperial Navy isn't, Commander?" He looked around, and felt an odd sort of pride at how most of the crew were slowly starting to relax into their stations again, tasks assigned and something to focus on again. A few glanced up at him, and their shoulders straightened to a more proper, disciplined posture. Because their Captain–acting captain, he thought firmly–was watching. "You thought you were a hard-luck ship before," he murmured. "If you're looking at me for leadership, the Navy really is in desperate shape."
"Pardon, sir?" Sosabow looked up from the computer terminal he was tapping at, trying to call up the tactical holos.
"Oh, nothing," Rurik said, tucking his gloves into his belt. "Just thinking out loud, Commander." About this ship, and who should be here instead of me. But at least we're still the Imperial Navy, Thelea, and this kind of thing still doesn't happen to us. Then he turned back to the command display and watched as the navicomputer counted down to reversion.
