The mess hall was empty at this late hour and the long dining tables stretched out in lonely rows, all of them empty except for one at the end farthest from the closed-down serving area. It was an inauspicious place to hold a conference of all Voidwalker's senior staff, but it would have to do.
Engineering Chief Daharr was standing up, leaning on one crutch for balance. "All the tests we've run on the hyperdrive have been successful," the Yagai said. "The coupling works exactly as we hoped. Voidwalker is now able to go to lightspeed again."
Relief passed around the table, rather than jubilation. Davek looked around the rest of the section chiefs and said, "You've all had days to check your systems after the last battle. Are any of your people not ready for a combat situation?"
That produced a stony silence around the table. Davek looked over them all just to make sure they weren't being timid. Lieutenant Jaeger looked eager to get moving again. Gunnery chief Pavel gave a tiny nod. So did deck chief Ohren. Doc Holden had his arms crossed over his chest, his brows tight; no fear there. He already knew what Marasiah's response would be but allowed his eye to linger on hers for an extra second.
Then he said, "Very good. I'm proud of everyone here. More than I can say. We may have fixed the hyperdrive, but we're not clear yet." He took out a small portable holo-projector, placed it on the table, and tapped it on. A web of pathways appeared before them. Straight lines cut, canted, and intersected each other, mapping out the jump points through the Shroud that Voidwalker's TIE Stalker complement- once two, now down to one working overtime- had charted.
"As you might guess, our current location is right here." Davek jabbed a finger at a green dot in the middle of the three-dimensional, non-scalar map. "The red marks indicate Mandalorian stations we've found inside the Shroud. While Chief Daharr's been working on the engines, I've been working with the tactical team to chart our best possible course out of here.
"We'll avoid any route that brings us close to a waystation. I wish it could be that simple but it's not. As you probably noticed, they've stopped attacking us after that last fight. They must have figured we don't have hyperdrive, because instead of trying to comb through this place to find us they've done something a lot simpler. They've gone to the various comm buoys that link clear pockets in the Shroud and fixed them with spatial sensors as well. That means if we leave this place, they'll know. If we revert to realspace in another location, they'll know."
Jaeger raised a hand. "Are all the buoys in the whole Shroud fixed like this?"
"All the ones our Stalker has gotten close to. I doubt they had the equipment or manpower to fix every single one, but I'm sure they've figured out our possible escape vectors and laid sensors at the most logical places."
Pavel asked, "Can't we just jam the buoys with our Stalker or blow them up like we did before?"
Davek shook his head. "We've been monitoring the comm relay on the buoys. They've been modified to send out a pulse once every standard minute. If one of them goes off-line for any reason, the Mandalorians will know as sure as we've set off the alarm."
He let that sober news sink in. The only one who didn't look deflated was Marasiah, and that was because he'd already explained it to her in private. That might not have been the most professional thing for Davek to do but he valued her input. He valued her.
"So," Holden cleared his throat, "We'll have to expect a combat situation."
Davek nodded. "We'll have no way of knowing where they've stationed mobile patrol units, but I've been working with Tactical to predict response times from their waystation depending on the routes we take."
Ohren raised his hand. "Captain, is our goal just to get out of the Shroud?"
"First and foremost, yes. After that it should be comparatively easy to escape Senex-Juvex. That was the operating principle when I went over it with Tactical."
"So do you have a preferred route?" Jaeger asked. He was studying the map carefully.
"We do." Davek tapped the transmitter and a yellow line appeared. It varied course a half-dozen times as it wound its way from Voidwalker's current location to the edge of the Shroud. "We saw the need to cool down, recharge, and recalibrate our course every jump as our biggest obstacle. We have to assume they'll scramble the second we trigger the first alarm. Speed is essential and this route is the fastest that doesn't get within two jumps of any waystation."
He let that sink in for everyone. Holden said, "You'll want all units on full combat alert when we jump, then."
"Absolutely. That means all medics, all of Razor Company, all of the air wing." He glanced at Marasiah, though she'd heard all this already. "We'll keep your birds in the hangar unless absolutely necessary, Lieutenant. Our goal is to move as fast as we can and avoid being caught in a fight."
"What happens in we are caught in a fight?" asked Lieutenant Renwar. The first officer had been nervously silent until now.
"Then we try to get out of it and punch forward," Davek said grimly. "If we can't punch forward we'll fall back. They might try to cut us off from behind, too, which is why I have a special request. Ensign Pavel, Chief Daharr, Chief Ohren, I want you all to work together. I want warheads modified so the thrusters are removed. I want us to be able to dump them in our wake."
"You mean we'll be laying mines?" asked Ohren.
Davek nodded. "Every time we come through a new jump I want to drop a few warheads behind us. If they try to surprise us, we'll surprise them. Can we do that?"
All three of them were thinking. Ensign Pavel, bumped up to de facto gunnery chief after Lieutenant Sarl's death, looked frankly over his head, but Chief Daharr said, "Modding warheads won't be too difficult. If we take out the propulsion systems we can place directional sensors in their place. They'll trigger once anything gets within a certain range."
"Deploying them wouldn't be hard either," said Ohren. "How many warheads do we have?"
Pavel thought a moment. "Fifty-three concussion missiles, sir. About one-third our initial load."
Missiles would be their first offense in a brawl and Davek didn't want to run out. "Lieutenant Valtor, do you know how many warheads the TIE Demolishers still have in their tubes? I'd rather burn through those before Voidwalker's payload."
"I'm not certain, sir. The number won't be high."
"We don't need many. We'd drop no more than three mines per jump."
"I'd be happy to work with the chiefs."
"Do it. Plan for twenty modified warheads total. All of you have work to do and you've best get to it. Once we have minelaying capabilities we'll be ready to make our run. There's no point dawdling."
The looks that passed around the mess table were grim but determined. Davek called dismissal and everyone rose to their feet. Holden helped Daharr hobble for the door on his crutch. Jaeger followed, then Pavel, Ohren, Renwar. Marasiah curved around behind Davek as she made her own move. For a second she slowed, reached out, and gave his hand a firm squeeze. She released it just as fast but as she passed him she tilted her head back so their eyes could meet and he could see her tight, encouraged smile. It was a small one, but on a face he'd gotten used to seeing serious it seemed to light up the room. Even after she'd gone, after they'd all left Davek alone in the wide, dark, empty mess hall, he clung to the memory of that smile on her face, the smell of her hair, and feel of her shoulder-blades and back muscles beneath his palms.
As long as he kept clinging he really did believe they could win.
-{}-
Sabacc was not ordinarily a game for only three players, but Lukas had found a way to make it work over the past few days in sick bay. He was strapped to a bed now, a patient instead of an impromptu medic, and to relieve boredom he and his neighbor, an engie who'd taken a shot to the shoulder on aboard the Mando frigate, periodically cajoled one of the medical staff into sharing a game with them. Voidwalker was still rationing its bacta supply so instead of getting soaked in the stuff Lukas had a bacta-soaked cast over his right side, held in place by layers of gauze around his midsection. Sitting upright didn't hurt any more, though sudden turns still did.
Lukas had a pretty good hand and by the look on his face his neighbor didn't. Vorman was hard to read as always, and right after he threw a decent-sized bet into the pot (Baldavian chew-sticks again), there was a rap on the door.
"Ooh, sorry, am I interrupting a big game?" Leila Marsh said as she walked toward his bed.
Lukas laid his cards flat against his chest. "I'm about to win a fortune. Couldn't you tell?"
"Yes, a very tasty fortune." She eyed the pot and leaned against his bedframe. Her face got serious as she looked him over. "Your color's better. How's moving around?"
"I've been practicing standing, some walking," Lukas said.
"Think you'll be able to run and gun any time soon?"
"Give me a day or two and I'll be fine. Right, Neel?" He glanced at Vorman.
The medic shrugged. "Three or four."
"How's the rest of them hanging in?" Lukas asked her. C Squad had fared the best out of any of the units in Razor Company but it had still lost a quarter of its people. A Squad and B Squad, the ones who'd held the choke point at the frigate's midsection against almost a hundred Mandos, had lost more than two-thirds of their people, even worse than the air wing.
"They're doing okay, considering," Leila shrugged. "I notice Holden's not around. Word has it Prince Fel's holding a big meeting with all the senior staff."
Lukas looked at his neighbor the engineer. "Heard anything about the hyperdrive?"
"Only that installation was going according to plan."
"Then that's it, then," Vorman said with a quaver of hope. "We might actually be ready to move."
"We're still deep in the Shroud," Leila reminded them. "Might have to fight our way out."
"I'd help if I could," Lukas told her. "You know that, right?"
"Yeah. I do." She gave him one pat on the shoulder. "One medal's not enough for you, is it?"
"A medal?" Vorman frowned.
"For rescuing Chief Daharr," Lukas said. All eyes were on him and he felt sheepish. "You weren't here when the captain came down, were you? He, ah, told me he'd put a recommendation in for a medal once we got back to Imperial space."
Once they got home. It still felt strange to say, almost as strange as that visit from Davek Fel. The ship's brevet captain was barely older than Lukas, stiff in the way naval officer usually were but not, he sensed, out of any haughtiness. The weight of their situation had fallen on Fel harder than anyone. It was succeed or die for every Voidwalker and for Fel most of all.
"Rest up and maybe you'll get another shot at things," Leila told him.
"Hopefully it won't get to that," Vorman said.
"Hopefully," Lukas echoed. "But if it does, I'll try to be ready."
"I know you will. I'll see you later, Briggs." Leila turned to go, took two steps, then turned and told Lukas' opponents, "By the way, he's got two Commanders, an Ace, an Endurance and Demise."
She cackled on her way out. Lukas threw down his cards, spilling a few chew-sticks off the table, but he couldn't be mad, not really. Not when they really did have a shot at living.
-{}-
In the end, twenty warheads had been removed from the TIE Demolishers for refitting into mines. The remaining ones had been reapportioned into the surviving bombers so that each bird had just four left. Marasiah and Lieutenant Vull had spent the past three hours watching Chief Ohren shuffle torpedoes around on the flight deck, and now that it was done they wound their way through the halls to the rooms where the remaining pilots slept. Attrition had thinned their ranks and emptied beds; Marasiah still felt uncomfortable in Commander Samar's widowed cabin but the barracks felt haunted too.
"I'm not happy about giving them up, you know," Korosh Vull said, more tired than angry. He was big for a pilot and over a head taller than Marasiah. She took long strides to keep pace with him.
"Ideally we won't be launching our birds at all," Marasiah said. "The captain was quite clear on that. The goal is to get out of the Shroud as fast as possible. If we have to fight, well-"
"It means we've already lost."
"We've won tough battles before."
"We've only been badly outnumbered once, at the way station, and we know how that went." Vull wasn't normally this negative. He caught himself. "As long as we move fast, we stand a chance."
They reached the main barracks. Vull went through first and with a little trepidation Marasiah followed. She was surprised to find the room packed with pilots, sitting on bunk-beds or benches. Walkers and Breakers intermixed freely. People were talking with bright expressions and the air smelled of alcohol.
A few eyes fell on Marasiah and filled with panic. Ioran Jayk hopped off the nearest bunk and said, "Lieutenant, I can explain."
She sniffed the air and glanced at Vull. The bomber pilot shrugged a little sheepishly; he'd known this was happening. Voidwalker's alcohol supply had been limited from the start and used up quickly after Karfeddion. That had been the best overall, surely- drinks did a despairing crew no good- but she found she didn't mind the impropriety at the moment.
"Where," she asked Jayk, "Did you find something to drink?"
Jayk scratched his hair. "You see, Lieutenant, we finally got around to opening up Rakash'mor's locker. It was sealed tight, but Vendark, he used a bar to pry it open and, well, we found two casks inside."
"Casks of what?"
Vendark, who sat on an upper bunk next to a lady Breaker pilot, picked up the fat blue-tinted bottle between them. "Labels says… Kala'un'rof'lok…. Or something."
"Twi'lek ale," Jayk smiled sadly. "Wonder what he was saving it for."
"How does it taste?" asked Vull.
"Interesting. But you get used to it."
Attention fell back on Marasiah. She could sense their apprehension, on their faces and in the Force. They were afraid she'd shut down the celebration. They were intimidated by her now; they always were. She'd thought, before being forced into the role of CAG, that being authoritative and intimidating was the proper way to command. She hadn't learned until it was too late how lonely that could be.
"Walker Two," she called, "Please bring down that bottle."
Vendark awkwardly clambered down from the top bunk and brought the bottle over to Marasiah. Without taking it, she glanced around the room and asked, "Does anyone have a glass?"
Faces relaxed back to smiles. Someone even clapped. Lieutenant Norvok appeared with a glass tumbler and held it out. Vendark poured. Marasiah took it and sniffed. A few pilots chuckled at their CAG's expression. All eyes were still on her but it was different than before, better. Death felt far away, like it did when Davek put his arms around her.
She raised the glass. "A toast to Rakash'mor, then. And to Commander Samar. To Sharen Marth. To-"
"Lieutenant," Jayk said, a little awkwardly. "We already called them all out."
"All of them?" It was a lot of names.
Sadly, he nodded.
"All right," Marasiah breathed. "To all the dead pilots."
The living echoed her, then drank. It was strong enough to make Marasiah cough, which got a few chuckles. The flavor was like nothing she'd tasted before either, not that she'd ever been much of a drinker. Twi'lek liquor, a last gift from the dead. The galaxy was full of surprises.
Conversation just started to resume when a shrill alarm blared, once. Panic shot through the everyone before the overhead speaker clicked on and Davek Fel's voice filled the room.
"This is the captain speaking," he said. It was the first time she'd heard him refer to himself by that title. "This will be a short address to all hands. By now, you've likely heard from your commanders that Voidwalker's hyperdrive is functional again. That means we will soon attempt to escape the Shroud and get home.
"This will not be easy. The Mandalorians have laid sensor traps across the Shroud. When we leave this space, they'll know, and they will try to stop us. At 0500 hours tomorrow morning we will make the first jump. All crew will be placed on red alert at that time. Every unit should stand by for combat."
Marasiah watched the expressions on her pilots change. First they wilted from happy smiles, darkened with fear, and now they settled into hard determination. She closed her eyes and listened to him speak.
"We have been trapped in the Shroud for over five weeks. All our families believe we're dead. I know many of you gave yourselves up for dead too. Many have sacrificed themselves so we could survive as long as we have. That includes Captain Lorn, half of Razor Company, two-thirds of the air wing, and almost the entire crew of Shieldbreaker.
"Please, take this moment to look around you. Look at the men and women who've served with you. Five weeks ago most of them were strangers. Today, all of them are your family. We will trust each other. We will fight together one last time. We will make our way home. Good luck, everyone."
The signal cut off. The room exploded in silence. One by one, people started to clap. A few raised wordless toasts and drank. Marasiah stood in the center of it all, glass in her hand, too stunned to move until Vull clamped a heavy hand on her shoulder.
"Lieutenant?" he asked. "Are you all right?"
"Yes, of course," she sniffed, and realized something cold was tickled her cheeks. She wiped them dry, tapped her glass against his, and drank.
-{}-
When Davek stepped foot on Voidwalker's bridge at 0400 hours, it was already thick with crew and they all snapped to attention. He still wasn't used to that, so he told them to stand down and prepare for section checks. At 0430 they began running through each division, and one after another they reported battle-readiness. At 0500, Lieutenant Renwar called for red alert. At 0505, all combat crew reported they were standing by to engage. At 0510, Voidwalker pushed out from its hiding place inside the drifting planetoid and soared out into the open.
Even as they neared the exit vector nothing new jumped into the system. The sensor range of the buoys wasn't exactly known, but Davek figured that Mandalorians would try to jump ships a step or two ahead of them and wait to intercept.
"Telemetry reading is good, sir," Lieutenant Jaeger reported from the crew pit. "We're ready to go."
Davek nodded. "Hyperdrives?"
"Warmed and standing by."
"Very good." He took a deep, deep breath and braced himself against the back of Lorn's chair. He'd almost gotten used to calling himself captain but he still couldn't bring himself to take the dead Muun's seat. "Jump!"
Because he'd been doubting it deep down it all happened in slow motion. There was a low rumbling from the after of the ship, and the jerk of acceleration that tried to tug his fingers off the chair-back. Then the nebulous gases were washed away in a blur of light. Nobody on the bridge cheered as they passed lightspeed but he could hear relieved breaths and, in the corner of his eye, saw Ensign Korak throw a fist in the air.
These jumps were all short ones. After forty-four seconds they dropped back into the space they'd fled a month ago. The scorched wreckage of the Mandalorian waystation and frigates still drifted through the vast open space. So, Davek saw, did the remains of Shieldbreaker. It was a grim sight that sobered the crew.
"Weapons, drop one mine behind us," he ordered.
"Yes, Captain," Ensign Pavel responded.
Voidwalker realigned itself and lurched for the next exit vector. Davek had ordered only one mine dropped because he didn't expect any enemies to try and jump them from behind, nor did he expect to be ambushed here. The wreckage made it dangerous to both sides as a battle-zone and there were too many places where Voidwalker could escape to. If the Mandalorians tried to stop them it would be at one of the next three jump points.
When Jaeger confirmed they were lined up for the next jump, Davek gave the order. This leap was shorter, a mere twenty seconds in hyperspace. They dropped into a small pocket of open space. Davek ordered Pavel to drop only one mine again and wondered if he was being too conservative. It took them a shorted time to line up for the next jump and when the engines were ready he gave Jaeger the go-ahead.
Three jumps down, three to go. Instead of feeling hopeful he tensed.
The next place they dropped into was another expanse filled with drifting asteroids, a smaller version of the one they'd hidden in for a month. They had to maneuver around several chunks of space rock and all the while Davek watched the tactical display. There were three vectors in and out of this pocket and he expected Mandalorians to jump out of any of them. He tensed, gripped the back of Lorn's seat hard. After seven interminable minutes Jaeger told him they were ready for another jump.
"Go," he exhaled, and they lurched into hyperspace.
Two jumps left to freedom. Two jumps to life.
The next passage was a narrow one. Green and blue stellar gases, star faintly visible beneath, formed long all around them. It would take only a minor adjustment to angle their ship for the penultimate leap. The gases stretched out like walls of a corridor on either side as Voidwalker pointed its nose for a clear look at twinkling stars.
Then the tactical holo lit up and Ensign Korak reported, "Incoming Mandalorians! Two, no, three corvettes, two frigates."
Davek hissed between his teeth and lurched over to Tactical. "Position?"
"Right in our exit vector, sir," Por Dun's voice tightened.
"How far away? Can we punch through before they tighten formation?"
Before Por Dun could answer, Korak said, "Detonation! All three mines!"
It was exactly what Davek didn't want to hear. On the tactical holo four more red markers appeared. They'd jumped in from the same vector Voidwalker had just entered from.
"Did we damage them?" Davek asked, not that it mattered.
Korak looked at his screens. "Looks like we knocked out one corvette but their other heavies are still coming."
Nine ships. Routes to run were all cut off and Voidwalker could never survive again nine. He stared at the tactical holo as if appealing for some last-minute rescue that would never come, then shook his head clear. They couldn't go forward. They couldn't go backward. They couldn't fight.
He could comm them, offer to surrender himself in exchange for his crew. He'd been almost ready to do that once. The Mandalorians had no reason to accept it, not when they had him so badly outgunned. It would be a useless gesture. It would only waste time.
"Captain," Por Dun croaked, "What do we do?"
He could think of only one thing. He tapped the console, killed the tactical holo, and brought up the chart of the Shroud constructed from their recon flights. Another tap changed it from an informational chart to a scalar one that marked every bubble of void inside the nebulae. Voidwalker's location was still marked in green, tantalizingly close to the Shroud's edge but so far away.
"Helm," he called, "New course! Max sublight, point seven-five-oh-four."
He could hear Jaeger's confusion. "Sir, that's taking us into the nebula!"
"We won't be able to see a thing in that soup," Renwar said.
"Neither will they." He pointed at the tactical holo. "Look. We can dive into the nebula and cut straight to this pocket over here. Once we get into the clear we'll have one jump to get out of the Shroud. One jump."
"We'll have to keep shields up all that time to protect us from stardust and radiation," Renwar warned. "How long will it even take at sublight speed?"
Por Dun did fast calculations. "Assuming max speed, sirs, five days and four hours."
"We can do that. Take all main power offline, put everything into sublight and shields." Davek hidden. "Helm, what's our status?"
"Ninety seconds until we enter the gas cloud," Jaeger reported.
"They won't reach us before we hit the nebula," Korak added.
"But sir, they'll know where we're going," Renwar insisted. "They'll just set up another trap. In five days we'll have to fight this all over again!"
"Then it's five more days alive. Weapons! Once we enter the nebula start laying mines. How many do we have?"
"Eleven left, sir," Pavel said.
"Put down a mine every minute for the first five minutes. Then one mine every ten minutes. That should keep them from following us." He stalked over to the comm station. "Get me Chief Daharr! Now!"
A minute later Voidwalker plunged into the nebula. Blue and green gases swirled around the edge of their viewport, then filled everything. Their exterior sensors burst to static. Even if the mines went off in some Mandalorian faces- and Davek hoped they did- they wouldn't be able to read a thing until they excited the soup. Five days from now.
The bridge shuddered as the lights went dim. Per his orders, Daharr had shunted all power from the main reactor to engines and shield generators. As long as they didn't burn out after five days of straight use Voidwalker would be able to get out of this stretch of nebula safely. Every other system was shunted to the backup generator, including lights and life support.
The coming hours would be cold and dark. The battle waiting would be fierce. Davek could feel the hope that had accumulated over the last few days wither and die. They felt farther from home than ever.