Chapter 40
A/N: So at the time of writing this chapter, I have 11 chapters of the other story completed and working on the 12th. The only reason I haven't posted the first chapter is because I'm struggling to come up with a good story title for it. However, it did make me think about something that may help with uploads a little bit. Since the beginning, I've written up chapters and uploaded them right after. Not having a title for the Percy Jackson story, yet still writing out the chapters, made me think about writing in advance so there's always spare chapters if I'm stuck on another chapter. I recognize this is something I should've been doing from the beginning so from now on, instead of updating immediately, I'm going to take the time to write more chapters in between updates. This should also make for upload scheduling, but don't expect a set schedule. I'm not the best with those since I'm impatient and if I know I have completed chapters just sitting an waiting it will drive me nuts, but I will do what I can to restrain myself from throwing everything in at one time. Thank you for your time and patience, and now, let's get on with the story.
...
"Ezra!"
I'm lying back on a bench press, lifting the max amount of weights my body can handle and barely managing five reps. The fleet is in hyperspace, on its way back to Epsilon as per orders of Hera Syndulla. With the assistance of the Force, I put the press bar on its rack and sit up, using a towel to wipe my sweaty face dry and taking a drink from a water bottle. I look around and find Luke approaching me.
"Luke," I sigh, smiling. "You're looking well."
"Yeah. That bacta tank really helped with my memory, too," he says. His face darkens and he scowls at the ground. "It still doesn't feel real though... Did we really lose everybody at Yavin?"
I nod grimly. "Yeah. But their sacrifice wasn't in vain. We theorized that while you repaired your X-wing you set off a beacon. We tracked that signal to our current headquarters."
"Sabine was filling me in on all of that," he says. "Is Kanan still alive?"
"Yeah, but he's quiet all the time. He spends most of his time meditating but he acts as an advisor to Hera," I explain.
"I can see him doing that," Luke says with a shrug.
"Oh, and we found Han Solo," I tell him and his expression sours.
"Solo... he abandoned us."
"I can't say he's sorry, that's for him to say, but he has been helping out. We have a contact that helps us make our Legacy star destroyers and Han has been ferrying supplies to him."
"I'm surprised he hasn't told the Empire anything for a price," Luke grumbles.
"Han hates the Empire as much as anyone. He wouldn't let himself be bought by them, I can trust that much," I say.
"I sometimes hear Obi-Wan talking to me," Luke says, quickly changing the subject.
"Really?" I ask him.
After the news Luke reported of Obi-Wan's sacrifice on the Death Star, right before Yavin, everyone felt hopeless. The only person there they could have their hopes in was Luke after all that. Then the battle happened and he was presumed dead up until now. We don't know where our hopes lied for a long time until we found Epsilon.
"He speaks to me. Trying to teach me the Force and everything," he says. "There was only so much I could do on that island, but I still have this."
He pulls a lightsaber from his belt and ignites it, the blue glow piercing my eyes.
"You still have it," I say, smiling.
"This was my father's lightsaber," Luke explains. "I'm lucky to have it. It's the only thing I have left in my family."
"If you'd like, I could try to train you," I offer. "I'm no Jedi Knight or Master, but either I could help you train, or Kanan can take you in."
Luke shakes his head. "Obi-Wan mentioned that a Jedi master can only have one padawan at one time."
"Then... Maybe I could take the trials. Kanan told me about them. It would not only let me train you, but it could open up his spot, too."
"I think for now we could just train together," Luke says. "If that's alright with you."
I smile. "Alright. I want to see how well you do."
I walk over to a wall panel and activate a training droid. The small, floating ball of a droid hovers over to us and Luke forms a small, sad smile on his face.
"Just like the one Ben had me use," he mutters.
"You remember what he taught you?" I ask him.
"Yeah. I'm definitely a bit rusty, but I never forgot that," he says, holding up his lightsaber at the ready.
I program the droid to fire off five training shots at Luke. Each shot is programmed on my wrist comm so I decide when to let it shoot that way Luke doesn't feel overwhelmed right away.
I tap my wrist and the first shot rings out. Luke tries to deflect it, but he misses and the shot hits his chest. He yelps and rubs his chest with his left hand.
"You good?"
"Yeah. Let's keep going."
I tap my wrist again and the second shot hits Luke's arm.
The final three shots don't end much better, but he did manage to at least deflect the last shot in some way. The training bolt flew towards me and I calmly duck to the side, letting it go passed me and into the wall.
"You want to take a break?"
"Not so soon," he says. "Give me more."
"Alright," I say as I program unlimited shots at my command. "Here comes the next one."
"Don't tell me when," he says.
I tap my wrist and he misses it again. "Remember what Obi-Wan taught you!"
Luke takes a deep breath and I see him close his eyes. I tap my wrist again and this time, Luke deflects it into the floor.
Tap...
Pew! CRASH!
I look over where the training bolt went and see a rack of weights had collapsed. Oops.
"Sorry about that," Luke says.
"Don't worry about it," I tell him, tapping my wrist and having the droid zap him in the back. He yelps and spins back around towards the droid.
...
"Ow..." Luke hisses as he rolls his shoulder.
We had just finished sparring and I let Luke stay on offense. I showed him the basic forms for offense and defense and he did alright. The training mode on my lightsaber made several connections with him, though. Add that with the training shots from the droid and Luke was turned into a sore mess.
"What were you two doing?" Sabine asks me, showing a lot of concern for Luke.
"Training. I wanted to see what he remembers and what he needs to work on. I went easy on him," I say.
"It was my idea," Luke says, yelping when Sabine taps a bruise on his shoulder. "Stop it!"
"Hera doesn't want him hurt, Ez," Sabine scolds me.
"He's not hurt!"
"I'm not hurt!"
We say at the same time.
"Could've fooled me," Sabine snorts.
"Uh huh, like your training would've been any better," I retort.
Sabine glares at me, but she knows I've got her there. I give her a victorious grin.
"I'm going to kick your ass next time we train, Ezra," she warns.
"Is that a threat?"
"It's a promise."
"Oh, even better," I snicker.
Sabine tries to look upset, but I can sense she's fighting a smile.
"The admiral wants you on the bridge, too, by the way," she tacks on. "That was twenty minutes ago."
"What? Why didn't you call me?"
"I tried," she says. "You just didn't pick up for once."
I sigh with defeat. Guess you can't win against Sabine. If you do, it's never for very long. "Alright, tell him I'll be right there before he can even say gundark."
Sabine smiles mockingly at me and tells the admiral what I said as I walk away.
When I get to the bridge, the admiral is standing at the holotable, monitoring nearby systems we'll be passing through on our way back home.
"Admiral?" I ask him.
"I said gundark and you still weren't here," he says, his voice professional, but his face betrays him. He's grinning.
One of his officers can't help but crack up.
"You and Sabine..." I mutter, shaking my head. "What did you need me for?"
"There was a transmission from Hera. It wasn't priority one, but she needed to tell you something."
"I'll take it in private," I say.
He nods and I head to the ready room at the back of the bridge. The holotable in the room lights up as soon as I close the door and Hera appears.
"Ezra," she says. "About time you showed up."
"I was helping Luke with something. What can I do for you?"
...
I watch as Luke's X-wing jumps into hyperspace. We gave the coordinates of Epsilon to R2-D2 and sent them off.
"I thought Hera wanted us to deliver him," Sabine says to me.
I watch the holotable then as every ship commander in my fleet enters an emergency briefing.
"Admiral Narada's fleet is engaged in heavy combat and we are the closest fleet to him. If we go now, we can get there in time to provide assistance," I say with absolute seriousness.
Sabine studies my face and I know she can tell that I'm dead serious about this. No time for games or goofing around.
"Admiral, are our calculations completed?" I ask him.
"Yes sir!"
"Let's get going."
Her message wasn't priority one, but it quickly became that. Hera was just trying to fill me in on recent reports around our headquarters and surrounding systems when she received a transmission from Bastian. He quickly explained that he was outnumbered against two fleets with no escape. He never got to say who was surrounding him. The message cut out due to jamming.
The viewscreen at the front of the bridge shines blue and white as we jump into hyperspace, pushing our hyperdrive to the max without risk of blowing up.
"Our ETA is 2 hours at current speed, sir!" the nav officer reports.
"Let's hope Bastian can hold for that long," I say. "Sabine, go to the weapon's bay and the armory. Make sure we have everything secured for battle."
She nods and runs out of the bridge. As she leaves, the commanding officer of ship security enters, giving me a crisp salute, which I return.
"Sir!"
"I want you to call up everybody you can throughout the ship. Make sure everybody is in battle stations. We're likely going in guns ablaze so I need everything and everyone secured," I tell him.
"Right away, sir!" he says. He salutes me and I return it again before he rushes out. I turn to the comm's officer.
"Get me the chief engineer on comms. He cannot leave his station."
"Sir!" He nods and taps on his console. I turn towards my commanders and greet them.
Within a minute, the chief engineer appears on my holotable. "General! What can I do for you?"
"I need weapons and shields at 110% as soon as we arrive," I tell him. "Think you can get that for me?"
"Yes sir! I'll get on it right away," he says.
"Good man. We don't know what we're up against so we need to be cautious, but quick."
The engineer nods and the call ends. I open a map of Bastian's location and study it a little, ready to start the briefing. I explain the situation to the commanders as quickly as I can. There's a lot of work to do and little time to do it.
"Sir, do you think we can get there on time?" the admiral asks.
"We're going to have to," I say. "We can't lose that fleet, much less the admiral and his crew. Our objective will be to protect whatever's left of the fleet. If the enemy doesn't leave the system before we withdraw we'll have to abandon search and rescue efforts. He said there were two fleets. We don't know their location in relation to his fleet, but we have to assume he's cut off from escape."
"Meaning he's surrounded," the admiral suggests.
I nod. "Our command ships and carriers will be towards the rear of the formation, alongside and behind our long range cruisers. Our heavily armored and shielded warships will take the front of the formation. Support ships will scatter throughout the formation and form a defensive grid, especially around capital blind spots. Destroyers on down will provide anti starfighter defenses while cruisers on up will focus on anti capital warfare. Bomber wings with fighter escort, will spearhead the advance and take out the enemy's shields. There's no time to rotate our flights. I want our Y-wings armed with ion bombs and our X-wings with proton torpedoes."
It's a good thing we got our resupply...
"Will we send in everything, sir?" an officer asks.
Everything is risky. Leaves us vulnerable. But if we divide our forces, we won't have as heavy a hit that we might need. With any luck, Bastian should have fighters and bombers on hand that we could reinforce.
"I want everything in space, but we can't leave ourselves vulnerable to attack. We split our forces. Our heaviest hitters will push forward while our best defenders will hang back," I say.
Because of the route we have to take, we'll need to exit hyperspace, realign to Bastian's coordinates, and jump again. I point that out with the bridge officers.
"We could use that time to launch whatever we can," a flight officer suggests. "That way we have more fighters ready to go as soon as we arrive, plus the next wave of starfighters ready to launch."
"Good idea," I say. "We'll need to do this quickly. As soon as we exit hyperspace, I want fighters and bombers launched while the fleet aligns. Once the fleet is in position, all remaining fighters and bombers will stand by and we make the last jump."
"Shall I send a stealth fighter ahead of the fleet, sir?" the flight officer asks.
"Yes, send a Stealth-X out," the admiral says. "We don't want to jump in blind."
"No indeed," I agree. "Make sure that pilot is ready to go. He's the first one out when we're in subspace."
"I'll give him the order," the officer says.
"Gentlemen," I say, looking at each one of them. "These are our friends. Our brothers in arms. Defend them like you would defend your homes. Your families."
"Sir!" they say in unison.
"You all have your orders. Let's get this done quickly. Simple smash and grab operation. We must reach Bastian's fleet," I say. "Dismissed!"
Everyone leaves the call except for a few key commanders and we discuss the situation a bit more. Sabine runs into the bridge and approaches me.
"Everything is secure, Ezra. What's the plan?" she asks.
"We're going to smash through the enemy fleet. Our long range cruisers will use BACs on key targets at high power. Not high enough to disable them, but enough to pack a good punch. LRACs will support the advance until our main fleet gets within firing range. During that time, fighters and bombers will push forward and try to take out their first line of ships and fighters. This won't be an easy fight.
"We'll jump in en mass," I continue. "When we drop out of hyperspace to align, we'll launch as many fighters and bombers as we can until we jump again. Whatever is left in the hangars will launch as soon as we arrive at our destination."
"We push forward as soon as we arrive? That's risky," Sabine says.
"One of our carriers will deploy stealth fighters to scout ahead while we align."
"Okay, not so bad, then," she says. "Will you go out in a fighter?"
I nod. "I'll take Spectre squadron out, but Sabine, I need you to remain here."
"What?!"
"Sabine, you need to help the admiral keep things together if it gets out of control. You're the only other one who can do it," I explain to her.
"You're just worried I'll get killed out there!"
"Yes, but that isn't why I'm keeping you here! We don't have time to argue, Sabine!" I snap. "I need you here to help the admiral. In the possible situation we're boarded, you're the best fighter we have on this ship. You can hold them off."
"The best next to you?"
I look into her eyes expectantly. "No. You are the best."
Her eyes soften and she looks surprised.
"Okay. I'll stay here and coordinate the offensive," she says, her voice softening as well.
"How soon until we have to realign?" I ask the admiral.
"We will be there in an hour," he says. "The halfway point. For the rest of the fleet it will be an hour left after that point, but that Stealth-X can get there within ten to fifteen minutes at full speed."
"Good. We'll need all the information we need on the situation. Locations, strategy, who it is, how many, everything," I say.
I haven't been this serious since the Death Star. It's scary to be like this. Easy to make mistakes because you freak out so much. I take a few deep breaths and concentrate on the Force...
It feels cold...
...
A/N: Starting now, I'll just write the chapters ahead and think of when I would like to upload them. That way, if I'm stuck on another chapter, I should have the extra ones ready to go so you all aren't just hanging.