Chapter 36
The air around them erupted in laserfire as the aliens who had been concealed behind the gun emplacements boiled out of their hiding places and opened fire. Chiara ignited her lightsaber with a snap-hiss and leaped into motion, defending her comrades as best she could. Thisa stood back-to-back with her, picking off the aliens that had moved in behind them to cut off their escape. The other four warriors clustered around them, methodically working together to pick off their attackers, but they were impossibly outnumbered and pinned down in the open space between the laser canons. Chiara's stomach lurched as she saw one of the warriors in the Lieutenant's group fall with a smoking hole in his chest.
A shiny silver object arced through the air towards them. Recognizing it as a thermal grenade, Chiara paused in her intricate dance of defense to raise a hand, palm outwards, towards the deadly explosive. It reversed direction and landed back at the feet of the surprised alien who had thrown it and went off with a deafening roar. Her satisfaction at the havoc the explosion caused on the enemy ranks was short lived as a blasterbolt made it past her in the split second it took her to redirect the thermal grenade and struck Thisa in the shoulder. He lurched forward with a cry and went sprawling into the grass.
"Thisa!" Chiara called, whipping her lightsaber back into action. The other warriors converged on him, unleashing a hail of charric fire on the closest of the aliens, discouraging them from taking advantage of Thisa's vulnerable position.
Thisa groaned behind her and groped around with one hand for the charric that he had dropped. He rolled over and snapped-fired a bolt into one of the aliens that had crept in too close while she was distracted. "Keep going," he ground out. "Leave me here."
"I don't leave people behind," Chiara told him, thinking furiously. Retreating wasn't an option. If they didn't destroy the power supply to the defensive grid, Thrawn's force wouldn't last more than a minute after they dropped out of hyperspace and they had no way of warning him away. A brilliant flash to her left distracted and momentarily blinded her. She blinked against the purple afterimages that the explosion left behind, relying on the Force rather than her vision to guide her. When her vision cleared enough for her to look towards the source of the explosion, her stomach lurched. The Lieutenant's group of warriors had been all but decimated by another thermal detonator. The Lieutenant himself had taken the brunt of the blast, though two other warriors had seemed to have extensive injuries, as well. Even as she watched, Kres'hast'antro's glowing eyes dimmed and went out.
This is never going to work, she realized as she watched the aliens pop out from behind the gun emplacements, fire a few shots at the Chiss warriors and then retreat into cover again. Another one lobbed a thermal grenade at her group, but after she sent it sailing back at them, the rest of aliens seemed to get the idea that explosives weren't such a good idea. They're just going to sit here and pick us off slowly, one by one. As long as they can keep us pinned down, we're sitting ducks. We need to take back the initiative.
"You, get Thisa on his feet," she called over her shoulder, jabbing her free hand towards the nearest warrior. "Get ready to move on my mark."
"Where?" he asked, ceasing his fire and kneeling to help Thisa up.
Chiara pointed towards the massive power grid at the center of the defensive array. "There. If we can get there, they won't be able to keep shooting at us without risking damaging the power conduits." And we still have to take this grid down before Thrawn gets here, she added to herself.
"We'll never make it that far," he objected, pulling Thisa to his feet.
"Do as she says," Thisa ordered, his voice strained as he leveled his charric at the nearest alien and fired. "She's our best chance of surviving long enough to complete our mission."
She nodded at him in appreciation of his trust and then did something she hadn't done in a very long time: Instead of relying on the defensive form of Soresu that she had adopted after the death of her first Padawan, she went on the offensive and switched to the more aggressive form of Shien that she had favored in her younger days. Even after 350 years, returning to the form felt like slipping on a comfortable pair of boots. She launched herself at the closest group of attackers, drawing their fire as she abandoned her protective stance over Thisa and the other Chiss warriors. Her blade hummed as she whipped it through the air, batting away the handful of blaster bolts that actually came close enough to be a threat. The aliens broke rank before her as she somersaulted through the air and into their midst, her lightsaber flashing out to cut one of them in half before she even touched the ground. They frantically tried to bring their weapons to bear as she went into motion, dancing and whirling between them, leaving death in her wake.
"Move!" she snapped to Thisa and his warriors. She didn't need to tell them twice. They sprinted across the newly opened ground toward the power grid, jumping over the alien bodies that littered the ground. Catching on to their plan, the remaining aliens unleashed a withering barrage of blasterfire, trying to cut them off from shelter. Chiara switched fluidly back to the more defensive Soresu form to safely shepherd the warriors across the open ground between them and the bunker. One of the warriors stumbled as he ran and took a blasterbolt between the shoulders. He pitched forward, dead before he hit the ground. Chiara gritted her teeth as she did her best to cover their retreat. The lead Chiss reached the power supply bunker and Chiara noted with some satisfaction that the blasterfire did indeed drop off as he entered its shadow.
Chiara waited until all four of the warriors reached the relative protection of the power grid. "Thisa, start laying charges. Thrawn will be here soon," she ordered as she went cut a path towards where the third group of warriors were clustered, their backs to one of the gun emplacements as they tried to hold off the advancing waves of the feline aliens.
"Alright, kids, time to go!" she called to them with a touch of dry humor as she cut a swathe through the enemy line that had separated them. They didn't need to be told twice. Breaking away from the scanty protection of their gun emplacement, they hurried towards her. Chiara held the enemy fire at bay in their brief moment of vulnerability as they crossed the open space to join Thisa and his warriors. One group down, one to go, she thought, focusing on the remnants of the Lieutenant's group of warriors. The two warriors who had been injured by the thermal grenades were either dead or unconscious and the other two were badly outnumbered, but she had no intention of abandoning them to the enemy fire.
Chiara went back on the offensive, whirling and dancing through the enemy ranks, wreaking havoc on their formation. They did their best to bring her down with concentrated blasterfire, but in such close quarters, every shot they fired was deflected into one of their comrades. She laughed in grim satisfaction as two of the aliens broke and ran as she approached. She was half way there when one of the aliens leaped down at her from the emplacement he had scaled. There was no way to halt her headlong sprint before she collided with him and the wicked-looking vibroaxe that he wielded, so she settled for leaping over him instead, doing a complete somersault as she passed over his head and striking with out with her ligthsaber. She heard the muffled thump of his body behind her as she landed and continued on towards her goal.
The aliens abruptly shifted their fire from her to the two Chiss that she was trying to reach. Chiara swore as one of them was cut down by the enemy fire and redoubled her pace, calling on the Force to help her leap over the enemy instead of pausing to deal with them. She completed one final flip and landed in front of the remaining warrior as a laser struck him in the calf and his legs buckled under him.
"Get up," she snapped at him as she tried to hold the withering hail of blasterfire at bay. To her relief, Thisa and his companions opened fire on the rear of the enemy ranks now that she was no longer darting through them, forcing their attackers to split their attention. The wounded warrior struggled to his feet and limped along behind her. Chiara hated leaving the two unconscious warriors, but the aliens seemed content to leave them alone now that they were out of the fight and she had no way to get them back to others without putting them and her in unnecessary danger.
"How long until the fleet gets here?" she asked Thisa when they rejoined the others and she resumed her defensive stance between them and the enemy line. The Chiss warriors picked off the enemy with deadly accuracy now that they didn't have to split their concentration between survival and attack.
"Less than two minutes," Thisa told her tightly, taking down another of the aliens with expert marksmanship, despite the pain he had to be in from his wound.
Chiara grimaced. "How long until the charges are ready?"
The demolitions expert straightened from where she had been attaching another charge to the base of the bunker. "They are ready, now," she said.
"Okay, people, let's move!" Chiara snapped, leading the way towards the aliens and away from the bunker. Once they were safe distance, the demolitions expert triggered the explosives. The roar of the explosion was almost deafening and the shock wave sent them all sprawling in the grass as bits of flaming debris rained down around them. One of the aliens screamed at them in some unintelligible language and charged, firing wildly at the prostrate warriors as he came. Chiara leaped to her feet and met him halfway, her lightsaber slicing through sinew and bone to cut him in half.
She risked a quick glance at her chrono as the warriors around her got to their feet, bringing their charrics to bear on the remaining attackers. Ten seconds. She heard the distant rumble of approaching transports bringing reinforcements and desperately hoped that Thrawn was right about the aliens shifting their attention to his forces once they dropped out of hyperspace. She doubted that their little group could hold out much longer. She counted down the seconds and gave a small sigh of relief as she reached zero. Somewhere above them, Thrawn would be dropping out of hyperspace and opening fire on the ships that remained in orbit.
Her relief quickly turned to horror as, with a cacophony of whirs and clanks, the gun emplacements swiveled towards space and filled the sky with their fire.