Chapter 9
Even the three working together couldn't move the clone's weight, his mechanical body carrying far more mass than he would as a whole person. For a moment, Jocque feared the clone would wake while they still struggled to move his body, the three of them trapped within reach of his mechanical hands and their crushing strength. However, when their combined strength proved insufficient, the young Jedi took a step back and raised a single hand. Rayjer lifted gently into the air, floating as though carried by unseen behemoths then falling gently onto the lone bed of the medical suite.
Jocque had never seen a Jedi before, let alone witnessed their power. Stories of Jedi laying waste to entire droid armies, moving things with their minds, and controlling the thoughts of others followed in their wake. Mystic supersoldiers were a common myth across thousands of worlds. The overwhelming abundance of stories but scarcity of evidence had led Jocque to conclude long ago the Jedi were more charlatan than hero, using physical skills and psychological manipulation to con those with weak minds. Seeing a Jedi standing over him using the Force to fling more than 100 kilos of flesh and alloys challenged Jocque's understanding of the universe. In spite of the pressing issue of the Republic attack, he couldn't help but stare in shock. He only came to his senses when a violent tremor ran through the ship.
"Captain, the deflector shield can not handle this volume of fire. Expedite the safety override."
D4-N1's annoyingly calm voice jarred Jacque back to his mission. He wasn't much of an athlete, but Jocque pushed himself to his limits as he sprinted to the engine compartment. He only had one trick remaining that might save them, a lucky quirk of Hadron's design. As a prototype ship, the propulsion engineers integrated circuitry in Hadron's sublight drives limiting power to 85% of maximum thrust. Although her sublight engines were already in use on other CEC-designed starships, Hadron had a unique configuration strapping a propulsion system surpassing the C70 frigate's output onto a ship with significantly less mass. That made her fast but also short on space for an adequate cooling system. The safety limit prevented engine output from exceeding the ship's cooling capacity while the manual override allowed the ship to achieve full engine output for short durations during testing, assuming a full crew was available to monitor systems and throttle back when temperatures hit a critical point. Jocque didn't care about the throttling down part.
After the struggle with Rayjer and compared with the danger of their pursuit, disengaging the safety overrides was an anticlimactic affair. The engineers had installed two parallel sets of circuitry in the sublight control system, one with a governor limiting propulsion to 85% and one without. A simple switch deactivated one circuit and activated the other. Jocque flipped the switch, the secondary circuit engaging with a satisfying click and hum of power. D4-N1 already had Hadron at full throttle and the effect of switching control circuits was immediate, the sensation of acceleration that slipped past the inertial compensators increasing with a jolt. Jocque keyed his comm, "Dani, I cut the anchor! Get us the hell out of here!"
D4-N1 wasted no time with reassessing the situation. "Captain, the V-wings are keeping pace. We cannot continue combat maneuvers and escape."
"Then stop combat maneuvers! Divert all spare power to the rear deflector shield." He didn't say it, but Jocque thought they should all pray that deflector shield held. If the V-wings could keep pace they would have an easy time targeting Hadron. The moment any of their laser fire penetrated the shields Hadron's engines would bear the full brunt of their attack and she would come to a sudden and spectacular end. Jocque didn't have high hopes, and another transmission from D4-N1 eroded them further.
"Captain, we have three standard minutes until the jump to hyperspace. My calculations indicate the heat generation of the sublight engines will exceed the cooling system's maximum capacity by 21.87%. The heat transfer shells will reach a critical failure point at 14.05% past maximum capacity. The ship will explode before we clear the gravity well."
"Blast!" Jocque slammed his fist into the nearest bulkhead, feelings of hopelessness pressing in against the edges of his mind. Jocque was smart. Everyone that worked on Hadron's development was the best talent CEC could get their hands on, but propulsion was not his area of expertise. The day-to-day maintenance and repair of Hadron's propulsion systems fell to an R2-series astromech and several less sophisticated maintenance droids. They kept the ship's propulsion system operating within the ship's original specifications, but now Jocque wished he had a sentient technician. He needed a quick and creative solution to bring down the cooling system's temperature. Think! Jocque demanded himself. Heat transfer is basic stuff. It shouldn't take a genius to figure out how to supplement the cooling system. He banged his fist against the bulkhead again, then again, and again. Every shudder of incoming fire on the deflector shield a painful reminder that their clock was quickly running out. A gentle and concerned boop from behind him prompted Jocque to look over his shoulder where his R2 unit sat behind him.
Suddenly, his own words from mere minutes before came rushing back to him: his feet magnetize like a droid. The solution hit him harder than Rayjer had. He was thinking like an engineer trying to fix the ship when he should have been thinking more like D4-N1 and trying to outmaneuver the enemy. "Dani! Reduce speed to match the coolant system's maximum capacity." Luckily, the engineering control room included a console that could tap into all ship-wide systems, a contingency that allowed the ship to be operated from the control room should the cockpit become compromised. He entered his access code and opened a comm channel to the ship's cargo hold.
A few computer commands and a barked order later, rank after rank of BLX labor droids engaged their magnetic feet and dutifully marched off the ship's rear cargo ramp onto the hull of the ship. Anywhere else in the galaxy a small army of labor droids wouldn't mean much, but the droids on Jocque's ship were far from ordinary. After months of scavenging battlefields for parts, he and Inchinn had upgraded each with wrist-mounted blaster cannons, rocket launchers, and programming scavenged from fallen B2 units. From the cargo ramp the droids took position on the rear section of the ship, using their magnetized feet to hold tight to Hadron's hull. In moments, the V-wings' safe zone aft of Hadron's engines filled with plasma bolts and rockets. The droid's blasters couldn't match the power of Hadron's turrets, but their numbers more than made up any lack of power. Seconds later, the V-wings were taking evasive action and breaking off pursuit.
Tense moments passed as Jocque waited to see if his gamble worked. The presence of the V-wings had one positive effect: the Star Destroyer withheld fire for fear of endangering their own pilots. Now that deterrent was gone and Jocque hoped Hadron was either too close to the planet or too far from the Star Destroyer for its batteries. He counted slowly to sixty and no impact tremors ran through the ship; no warnings of incoming fire came from D4-N1. Jocque ordered the BLX units to return to the cargo hold and restarted his count. Before reaching 60 a second time, a slight sensation of acceleration passed through the ship and D4-N1 made the announcement of a successful jump to hyperspace. Jocque collapsed to the ground: back against the bulkhead, knees to his chest, hands shaking. Close calls and the occasional fight wasn't uncommon for a smuggling crew, but skirmishes with pirates failed to compare with an attack by Republic capital ships. Jocque had never come so close to losing it all, to all of them losing it all. He didn't know how long the panic held him there, but when his feet were under him again a new emotion caught him in its grasp: fury.