The Mandalorians sent a frigate this time. After their scout fighters were destroyed it had been inevitable, but the reinforcements had combed the vast asteroids for days before finding Voidwalker's hiding place.
Without the ability to go to lightspeed all they could do was run. The frigate had launched two squadrons of Beskad fighters that Voidwalker's fighter wing struggled to match. With losses winnowing the ranks of TIE-Xs, Marasiah had decided to combine the remaining pilots into one squadron, redubbed Walker One through Seventeen. That left them outnumbered by two dozen Beskads, but they'd also launched all dozen TIE Demolishers, now called Breaker Squadron. The Mando frigate had tough armor, tough shields, and tough guns, but the Demolishers at least kept the Beskads distracted, which in turn allowed Marasiah's Walkers to pick them off one at a time.
Vendark and Loman kept close on her tail as the trio of TIE-Xs ducked beneath the hull of the frigate. Two TIE Demolishers were making a run, hoping to score a lucky hit on the frigate's aft that might slow it down and let Voidwalker escape. Coming in right behind the Demolishers were three Beskads, peppering laserfire on the bomber's aft shields.
The three TIE-Xs slowed enough to get locks on the Beskads but kept sliding back and forth to evade defensive fire from the frigate. Marasiah's green lasers lanced through space and nailed one Beskad through the cockpit. The fighter exploded brightly and the other two peeled away. Their small target profiles were as aggravating as ever, and a spray of well-placed fire from the frigate' turrets forced Marasiah and her pilots to break off pursuit.
A bright light flared to Marasiah's right and she swung her fighter around to see the Demolishers' torpedoes impact on the frigate's aft shields, scattering energy but not punching through to the engines.
"Peeling back for another run," Lieutenant Vull's voice sounded in her ear. "Thanks for the help, Walker One."
"How much longer until we punch through those shields?"
"Can't tell, Walker. Not supposed to work like this. Just hope we have enough torps left over for the next time."
Marasiah grimaced inside her helmet and switched her link to Vendark and Loman. "Walkers Two and Three, stay on me. We'll cover the Breakers for another run."
Her wingmen signaled affirmatives and kept tight on her tail. She tried not to let her grinding frustration get to her. Vull was right on all counts. Normally TIE Demolishers were deployed with capital ships and together their turbolaser volleys and projectile salvos would overwhelm an enemy's shields. Right now Voidwalker was on the run and the Mando ship stayed right behind it, pounding its aft with its heavy forward-facing guns. The hope was that the bombers and fighters could cripple the Mando ship and slow it down so Voidwalker could turn around and waste it with some broadsides, but that just wasn't happening.
Vull was right about something else. Sooner or later they'd run out of proton torpedoes for their bombers. They'd already run out of those shieldbusters that would have been so useful right now. Next they'd run out of TIEs. Then they'd run out of everything else and no matter how hard they hid in this vast spread of lifeless drifting rock the Mandos would find them and kill them.
There was no way out of that future. She knew that. They all knew that. But right then, in her cockpit with sweat on her skin and adrenaline in her body, all she cared about was fighting another day.
She just prayed Davek Fel could get them something more than that.
-{}-
The next blast- missiles, probably- nearly knocked Davek off his feet, but he clung to the back of Lorn's captain's chair so hard his fingers ached.
"Those aft shields are down to twenty percent," Lieutenant Renwar reported. He'd hastily promoted the communications chief to first officer, figuring there was nobody they'd be communicating with anyway.
"Engines?" He looked down into the crew pit.
Lieutenant Jaeger shook his head. "The dorsal engine is still stuck a fifty percent of normal. There's no way we can outrun it."
The only hope was going to be to stop and swing Voidwalker's starboard side to face the Mando frigate head-on. Maybe, just maybe, the Demolishers could help bust those heavy shields and destroy the frigate. Even then it would be exactly what he'd wanted to avoid: a slugging match. Even if they won they'd take damage, they'd take causalities, and every single person and piece of equipment on Voidwalker was irreplaceable.
But he'd have to risk it. Even if it meant they'd be utterly broken and helpless for the next attack at least they'd get a day or two of life.
He looked desperately out the forward viewport. All he saw were space rocks, most of them massive, all drifting very slowly through the void. His eyes caught a pair of ovoid asteroids that seemed to be moving almost in sync from port to starboard. He slipped back to the tactical station and asked Por Dun, "Ensign, do you see those two rocks at, say, two o'clock?"
She jabbed a claw at the tactical holo. "These ones, sir?"
"Right, those two. What's the distance?"
"Not far, sir. Five hundred kilometers."
"Can we pass between them?"
"There's enough space. But what do you-"
"Helm!" He spun for the crew pit. "Set course for the asteroids drifting at two o'clock, five hundred klicks out. Do you see them?"
Jaeger frowned. "I do. Are we going between them?"
"That's right." Davek slipped back to the tactical station. His heart was racing fast; it was a stupid idea, a crazy idea, but it was their own chance to avoid a punishing battle. If it failed, well, he'd look like an idea, but he'd be dead soon after.
"Ensign Korak!" he said. "Get me a line to Breaker Lead. I need to speak to him personally."
-{}-
When Voidwalker veered between the two asteroids, Marasiah's first thought was that it was proof how desperate they'd become. Voidwalker would slip between the two space rocks. The Mando frigate would follow and the Demolishers would try to ambush it where it had no space to move. Its shields were still durable so there was every reason to believe the ship would survive that kind of choke-point ambush, especially since it was so obvious the Mandos would be prepared for it.
The Mandalorian commander seemed equally confident. His frigate didn't change course and plunged toward the gap. The Breakers were pulling their birds away, leaving the Walkers to keep the Beskads busy while the bombers crept around the edges of the asteroid and prepared to pop off a few heavy volleys on the ship when it slipped out from between the rocks. The only question was whether the Mando ship would speed up and try to power through the telegraphed ambush or slow down and give the Beskads time to pick off a few more bombers.
It charged ahead. Marasiah dodged a pair of Beskads and swung toward the closest asteroid. She saw to her surprise that every last bomber in Breaker Squad has arranged itself behind the same rock, a though they planned to punch through the frigate's starboard shields without even bothering to squeeze the port side. It was a gamble, but everything in this was a gamble.
The Breakers let their torps fly as one, a rapid one-two pair from each bomber. As she got closer she realized the bombers were still fully behind the asteroid, not edged out in front of it, and their torps were arcing right toward the rock rather than to where the Mando frigate would be.
She realized what they were trying to do but couldn't believe it would work. She watched as explosions blossomed on the side of the asteroid, watched as the heavy concussive kick not only halted its slow drift across the void but reversed it, sending it swinging back to the other rock right behind it.
The Mando frigate was fast. It almost made it out before the two asteroids collided, but its engine section got squeezed between the rocks so hard its particle shields burst. The frigate spun away from the asteroids as they ground hard together, its damaged engine flaring erratically. Voidwalker had already stopped and spun around so its starboard cannons could deliver volley after volley of turbolaser fire onto the crippled Mando frigate.
The bombers didn't even need to help. Within a minute, the Mando ship was a hunk of debris smoldering at the heart of a dissipating fireball.
-{}-
Davek had never thought he'd hear cheers on Voidwalker's bridge, but he was wrong. The crew greeted the Mandalorian frigate's death with such ebullience that he barely heard Por Dun report that the Beskads were all jumping to hyperspace, no doubt bringing news of the defeat to their kin elsewhere in the Shroud.
It was the first thought to sober things. As the fires on the dead frigate burned to nothing so did the cheers. By the time the ship was visible only as a black gnarl against the colors of the Shroud, reality was settling in for them all. By a stroke of luck they'd managed to survive this fight. They could hide for another or day or two, maybe a week, but sooner or later the Mandos would find them, and it would be a fight to the death all over again.
Again and again and again, until it ended the only way it could.
-{}-
"I'm sorry I wasn't there to help you out," Rakash'mor smiled from his bed. "Doc Holden says I'll be fit to fight in a few more days."
"Let's not get hasty," the chief medic called from another bed. "Within a week, maybe."
"I've been stuck here long enough." The Twi'lek turned his eyes to Marasiah. "I want to fly with the rest of you. It doesn't feel right sitting here when the rest of you are risking your lives. Did we lose any more this time?"
"Only one," she said. "Another one of Norvok's pilots."
"Grey Squadron, then," he said, a little relieved.
Marasiah shook her head. "No. It's all Walker Squad now. And Breaker Squad for the Demolishers."
"That's right, I remember."
"We'll need someone else to go in on Norvok's wing. Walker Seven."
"Keep the space open for me. I'll be back in my bird in no time." He sounded like he believed it, like he was eager for another fight. Like he thought any of them might really survive this.
"I'll let the rest of the pilots know," she told him. "I'm sure they'll be glad to have you flying with them again."
"I wouldn't be anyplace else."
When she left sick bay she had no place else to be, so she wandered the halls. The ship had entered nighttime hours and the lights were dimmed, the corridors quiet. Voidwalker had found a new asteroid to hide inside which meant the engines were turned down and inaudible. It still didn't feel right, this ship being so quiet.
Marasiah had been coming to see Rakash'mor once a day on average. It was more than doing her duty as CAG; in a way these visits helped her more than him. He was, frankly, the only person on this ship who seemed to have a spark of hope left. Being away from him, out in the halls again, was a grim reminder of what their situation really was.
She made her way to the hangar. The TIEs were all in their overhead racks, and the two stormtrooper transports sat on the deck. A few of Chief Ohren's deck crew were finishing repairs on Rakash'mor's TIE-X but everything else was still.
She walked into the middle of the open space and stood to look out the hangar mouth. Instead of stars or nebular gases there was only cold rock dimly lit by glow escaping the hangar. She closed her eyes and savored the deeper darkness, the stillness. She breathed in and out, in and out.
She wondered if she could touch the Force like this. Normally the feelings and intuitions that came to her- which she'd never suspected of being anything but that- came of their own volition. She knew Jedi had some way to control them but didn't know how. On Kolfax Minor the Jedi Order was still typically referred to as the 'Jedi Cult,' and many didn't believe Force powers were real at all. Davek Fel seemed sure she was touching the Force, though, and if anyone on this ship would know, it would be him.
She tried to empty her mind and enter a meditative state. Fel had said that a Jedi let go of conscious thought and let herself touch whatever greater power the Force was, and in that way become attuned to something invisible that bound all life together.
It sounded like mystic gibberish to her, but Fel had said it very earnestly. She breathed and out. She listened to the work of the deck crew above her, and the faint white noise of atmosphere cycling through the ship's air filters. She let her awareness drift over to the deck crew and tried to make out their words clearly. She heard more and she heard the emotions behind them: professional attention to detail warring with weariness, behind that nagging doubts and a dread that waited to rear up in silent moments. She felt those things, but she didn't know if she was really feeling what the mechanics felt or if she was just projecting what was inside her onto them.
She left the hangar and began walking the corridors. She forced herself to take slow steps instead of her usual brisk ones. She listened all the time for the sound of voices and the hiss of air through vents. Sometimes she even thought she picked up the hum of the dormant engines in the rear of the ship.
She rode a lift up to the habitat decks. It was night hours and many were asleep, but others were restless. She passed down the halls and paused outside the entrances to different barrack. She closed her eyes and tried to sense the feelings of the men and women on the other side of the door. She felt weariness and quiet despair and also boredom, plus some brief flickers of amusement. She couldn't hear voices through the door but it felt like they were trying their best to amuse themselves and their best wasn't enough.
Footsteps down the hall. Her eyes popped open and she looked around to see two flight officers coming toward her. They were both bomber pilots from Shieldbreaker and their names escaped her. She walked toward them, brisk like usual, and exchanged curt nods as she passed. She kept walking under they'd turned a corner. Then she sighed and went back to the barracks doors. She walked from one set down to another and then a third, trying to tell if she was feeling anything different between the rooms. She thought there was something- more boredom and weariness in the third room without the slight balm of amusement- but that might have been wrong. She was still far from convinced this wasn't all in her head. Given the circumstances, she wouldn't be surprised if she was going a little mad. She'd learned she was more than what she'd thought all along, and in the same conversation learned that they were all about to die.
The thought roused despair so intense it was physically painful. She winced, opened her eyes and tried to clear her thoughts, but the pain didn't go away. Neither did the despair. It wasn't hers, she knew somehow. She was feeling someone else's agony but it was the same as hers, the kind everyone on Voidwalker was desperately trying to keep buried. This agony had gone wild. A mind not her own was drowning in it.
-{}-
The sabacc game in F Barracks had drawn players and spectators from all over the ship. The walls between Razor Company and the rest of the crew had been breaking down slowly, and now a mix of soldiers and crewmen sat on double-layered bunks and on benches and watched the remaining players measure each other's cards and place bets over the only things that seemed worth playing for now: tasty Baldavian chew-sticks.
It had seemed amusing at first, but like every faint touch of pleasure it drained away fast. Lukas had enjoyed the game as long as he'd been playing, or at least he'd allowed himself to be distracted, but once he'd washed out and retreated to a bench he saw that none of the other spectators were smiling anymore. They weren't talking to each other either. They were all just watching with dull eyes and blank faces. They only reacted when somebody else washed out.
When Mynar lost his pot, Lukas had expected him to throw a fit like he usually did when they played sabacc. Instead he'd slumped in his chair and stared at the table without even opening his mouth. The player next to him had tried a friendly tease but he hadn't even reacted. Finally, Mynar had gotten up from his seat and muttered something about having to use the refresher before leaving the barracks.
The game had dragged on and on after that, maybe ten minutes without anybody else washing out. Nobody was making aggressive bets anymore; they were all afraid of losing even though this was stupid game for Baldavian chew-sticks. The game was all they had to care about anymore, the only place where any of them could expect to snatch the tiniest victory before the inevitable attack came that killed them all.
This game was turning into the grim slog it was supposed to prevent. Lukas was about to get up and leave when the door to the barracks opened and a woman with lieutenant's bars staggered through. Valtor shook dark hair out of her face and looked around, wild-eyed, like she'd been chased in here or like she'd been chasing someone.
"Can we help you, Lieutenant?" someone asked.
Her head swung to the right and she seemed to scour the faces of everyone on that side of the room. Without a word she ducked out the door.
"What the hell was that?" another man asked.
"She looked out of her bloody mind," said a third.
Then the door opened again. Valtor swung half her body into the room and said, "Can someone open the door? Next door, the refresher! Can you open it? It's locked from the inside."
Lukas remembered that Mynar had stormed off ten minutes ago. "Lieutenant, I think, um, it's in use..."
"You have to get it open! Now!"
She dashed back out into the hall. Lukas and a few others, more confused than anything else, followed. Valtor was out there, pounding on the door to the men's 'fresher with balled white fists.
"Open the door!" she called. "Open it! That is an order!"
A man beside Lukas stepped forward. "Lieutenant, what do you think-"
Then there was the sound, muffled but unmistakable, of a single blaster discharge. Right after that, something hard and heavy clattered to the floor.
By the time they got a sergeant to come and use his override codes on the 'fresher door, the entire sabacc-watching crowd had gathered in the hall. Lukas had been there first so he was in front, looking over Valtor's head as the door slid open. The sergeant kicked open the stall and there was Mynar, slumped but upright. His head was titled far back and that was a mercy. Seeing the black scorch mark on the wall behind him was enough.
Lukas felt faint. The sergeant called for everyone to go back into the barracks and called for Doc Holden on his comlink. Lukas stayed where he was and so did Valtor.
The rifle Mynar had used rested between his boots. It was his rifle, the BlasTech military-grade weapon every stormtrooper got along with the white armor. He remembered that Mynar had been the first of his family to carry the rifle and wear the white. He said he'd been the first one to leave Kolfax Minor in generations, and this was where he'd ended up, dead in a refresher stall on a doomed ship without using that gun on anyone but himself.
Valtor was still staring, jaw dropped, eyes wide. Lukas remembered what he'd heard about her and said, "He was from Kolfax Minor too."
She jerked in surprise and looked back at him. He realized the absurdity of what he'd just said and muttered, "I just… Thought you should know."
What he'd said got through to her then. The look in her eyes was the saddest thing he'd seen since this nightmare began.
-{}-
"If this is all the good they do me I don't want your damned Force powers," Marasiah growled. She was back in Fel's quarters again. She found that she didn't want to be alone and it felt like the only place she could go. She sat cross-legged on his bed, head bowed forward so hair hid her face from view.
From the seat at his table, Fel said, "They're not mine. They never were, not a bit."
"But your mother, your brother…. How do they turn it off?"
"I don't know. I wish I could."
She dug her hands in bedsheets and turned them to claws. "No one should die like that. No one."
"I know." After a long pause, Fel said, "I'm honestly surprised this was the first. We have to be ready for more."
It was the last thing she wanted to hear, but she knew he was right. If anything that stormtrooper's death could spur more to end themselves rather than wait for the Mandos to do it. She sucked in ragged breath and asked, "Isn't there anything you can do?"
"Like what?" his voice was brittle, bitter, angry. "Without hyperdrive, we have nothing. The only thing we can do is fight until we run out of torpedoes, out of fuel, out of TIEs."
"And then they kill us. Captain, what about surrender?"
"They'll probably kill us on the spot. And if they don't they'll take us back to Savyar so she can kill us, probably on the HoloNet so all our families can watch."
Marasiah's chest tightened at the thought. She thought of her parents back on Kolfax Minor, her brother with his stormtrooper company. They were all certain she was dead already and must have been grappling with grief for weeks. To put them through that a second time would be abominable.
Yet there was that nagging hope. Savyar and the Mandalorians had to know what was going through the mind of every being on Voidwalker. If they surrendered they just might be allowed to live. It was a tiny pathetic chance and it was a betrayal of every oath they'd sworn as soldiers of the Empire, but it was the only way any of them might survive.
Everyone on Voidwalker knew it, and so did the ones hunting them.
Quietly, as if he'd been reading her thoughts, Fel said, "No. There's a third option."
She picked up her head. "What is that, sir?"
He was slumped in his chair, staring at the cabin's starless porthole window. He didn't shift to look at her as he said, "If I offered the surrender of myself, and maybe some high-ranking officers, I might be able to negotiate freedom for the rest of the crew."
"They weren't interested in negotiation at Karfeddion. After what we did to their waystation they're out for blood."
"I know, but… I think… it might be worth a shot."
"Captain, no. It will never work."
"I'm nobody's captain. I'm a Lieutenant Junior Grade, just like you."
"Exactly. That's why it won't work."
He kept staring at the blackness outside. "I owe it to the crew, Lieutenant. All of them. It's my fault we're trapped here."
"Sir, what happened at the waystation… Lorn and Dobriss made the call to attack. If it's anyone's mistake it was theirs. You're the reason we've survived as long as we have."
"You don't understand." He looked at her, finally, with pain in his eyes. "We had an opening. We could have recalled all our TIEs and left that fight after Shieldbreaker was destroyed, but we didn't. I wanted to scoop up those escape pods and save as many people as I could. That's when the other frigate knocked out our hyperdrive, not before."
"Sir, you tried to save your people-"
"Lorn warned me. I should have listened but I didn't. At Karfeddion I tried to recall all our birds before we jumped. I wanted to wait and if we had we'd have died there. Lorn made us jump and we left six pilots behind. At the waystation I had the same choice- the exact same choice- and I chose wrong. I should have left those forty people in the pods to the Mandos, but I didn't, and now we're all going to die here." His lips curled in an angry snarl. "I should have made the smart choice but I didn't. I made the right one and that's why we're stuck here. I'm not your captain, Lieutenant, but if I can offer myself to the Mandos and maybe get some of this crew home, I owe it to them to try."
She wanted to tell him not to blame himself for a situation so wildly beyond his control but she knew entrenched guilt when she saw it. More, she could feel it from him through this strange Force of hers. Despair and dread brewed together with anger and self-loathing and he was desperate for a way out.
What he was contemplating was another kind of suicide. He didn't deserve that. He was as good an officer as anyone she'd never met, as brave and earnest and fundamentally good as anyone she'd ever met. But they all deserved better than they'd gotten. Especially that stormtrooper from Kolfax Minor.
"Sir," she said carefully, "You need to think about that. Long and hard."
"I know. But whatever I decide, Lieutenant, I need you to back me." He needed someone he could trust.
She wasn't cruel enough to deny him. "I'll back you, sir. You're the captain."
The word made him flinch, but next he nodded and rose from his chair. "I need to think on this long and hard. And try and sleep on it."
She suddenly remembered she was on his bed. "Of course, I'm sorry, sir."
She popped on her feet and lurched for the door, but her legs wavered beneath her. Fel caught her on by the arm and straightened her.
"You need to sleep on it too, Lieutenant," he said without letting go. "And try to forget what happened today."
"I know." She looked up into his eyes. "It's going to be… difficult."
He nodded sadly and let his hand slide down her arm before releasing. She stepped through the door and it closed behind her. As she walked down the hall to her inherited cabin she hoped for sleep without dreams.
-{}-
Since Karfeddion, Davek had woken up every time with a nagging doubt that he'd ever go to sleep again. That morning it was different. As he dressed, quickly ate, and went up to the bridge he felt that a grim certainty had settled over him. The plan to offer himself had been formulating in the back of his mind gradually since the waystation, but saying it aloud to Lieutenant Valtor had finally made it real. She was right; it would probably fail. But he owed it to his crew to try. If he was going to die in this forsaken void he could at least die acting like the captain he was supposed to be.
All he had to do was wait for the Mandos to come again.
When he found Nemez Daharr on the bridge waiting for him, his first reaction was dull surprise. Even as he let the engineering chief lead him to the corridor aft of the bridge for a private talk he felt only vaguely curious as to what was weighing on the Yaga's mind.
"I'm sorry I didn't come to this earlier, Captain, I truly am," Daharr said as he brought something up on his datapad.
"It's fine, Chief. What is it?"
"Voidwalker's technical database was updated right before leaving Bastion, and that included a dump about Mandalorian ships and tech that isn't usually in our libraries. That includes full specifications for their ships, including notes on construction, equipment, even design and layout."
"I didn't realize we had all that."
"Our intel people are very thorough. Now, the big ships that have been chasing us are MandalMotors Teroch-class assault frigates."
"I know that, Chief."
"Of course. But the point is, we have all their specifications in the database and I was reviewing them. This is something I should have realized from the start, but it just never occurred to me. MandalMotors is kind of unique as far as shipbuilding corporations go. They produce a variety of designs for commercial and domestic consumption, but-"
"Chief, I'm sorry, but you'll have to be more direct."
"Of course. The point is, sir, those frigate us a lot of parts bought from outside suppliers, especially Kuat Drive Yards." He tapped the pad's screen. "They use the exact same model of hyperdrive power coupling as Voidwalker."
Davek understood what that meant. He just didn't believe it. "Are you sure, Chief? Mandalorian fleets have a reputation for being patchwork, all sorts of modifications to individual ships."
"That's true, but it's mostly in regards to weapons, shields, things that effect actual performance. A hyperdrive power coupler doesn't do that."
"Unless is stops working entirely."
"Well, there's that. But sir, if we can get to it, I can remove that coupler from the Mandalorian ship and install it in Voidwalker."
Davek blew out a sigh. "Chief, how many crew can we expect to find on one of those ships? I know they run lighter than we do."
"That depends. Those frigates carry a lot of infantry for deployment, but if it's just engaged in space deployment, one ship can run on less than two hundred crewmen, closer to one-fifty."
"I don't suppose you know how many of them would have guns and beskar armor."
"Intel reports don't go that deep." Daharr shook his head, then stated the obvious. "We still have Razor Company, sir."
Seventy-odd Imperial stormtroopers versus twice as many Mandalorians. "Do you think they're up for this?"
"I think they'll have to be, or we all die in this forsaken void."
Davek's first instinct was to say it was too risky, but the only better option he had was a self-sacrifice that had felt inevitable five minutes ago and now seemed just a fool's bargain. If this plan succeeded, it just might get them all home.
He took out his comlink and said, "I'm going to call Major Sligh up here. Then all three of us are going to talk this through. One step at a time."