An entire wing of TIEs flooded from the hangars on the underbelly of the Chimaera. Sabine could feel the adrenaline being dumped into her bloodstream, drowning out the scream of the ion engines. All she could hear were her quickening breaths, accompanied by a pounding in her chest. She sat in the front turret of the Ghost, waiting. Her grip tightened around the joysticks, her hands damp with sweat. This is it, she thought. No turning back. One shot.
A tense silence blanketed the cockpit. Ezra's eyes were fixed on the Star Destroyers in the distance, as if they were caught in a tractor beam. He held his shoulders high and his arms tight to his sides, letting out a shaky breath as he became very still. Suddenly, he sat up straight and shook out his hands and took several deep breaths. Here we go.
Chopper rasped sarcastically and made a sassy gesture with one of his arms.
"Yes, I'm nervous," said Ezra. "You would be, too, if you were living."
The droid pouted and grumbled, turning back to the astromech port.
The Ghost's comm crackled. Ezra, in the pilot's chair, pressed a button on the console.
"This is Cham Syndulla speaking. I want to thank you all for risking your lives today, for a single rebel General and her child. All of us together have a fighting chance of saving her. I want no casualties today; pull away if it gets too dangerous, but leave no man behind. Fighters, on my mark. For my daughter. For Hera!"
"For Hera!" the comm channel sizzled.
"For Hera!" said Ezra, his hands tightening on the steering controls.
"For Hera!" shouted Zeb from the dorsal turret.
"For Hera," whispered Sabine.
The TIEs approached, their scream becoming louder, louder, louder. Ezra felt for a second as if he was totally calm, in another location entirely. His muscles relaxed momentarily. The Ghost's radar pinged to alert him of an object in firing range.
"Shields up!" Saw yelled over the comm.
All at once, every ship in the ragtag fleet raised their front deflector shields. The TIEs began to fire at them, the green bolts seeming to vanish before they could hit the hulls. The bolts became more frequent as the TIEs sought an opening in their shields.
"Hold your ground!" shouted Cham.
The rebel fleet hung suspended, motionless. The enemy ships continued to fire, flying directly toward their front viewports. Sabine flinched just before they broke formation and went around for another pass.
"Now!" yelled Cham. As one, the front rank of fighters accelerated to full speed, directly toward the Chimaera. Ezra did the same shortly after, following the formation a ways behind. More TIE fighters spewed from the star destroyers' hangars.
Cham's transports moved in to flank the Ghost. "Raise rear shields!"
Chopper twisted his manipulator in the astromech port, doing as he was told. Zeb wheeled the turret around and tracked the TIEs, which were just now banking. They sped toward the convoy, and the Lasat picked off eight of them.
"Four more to go. These ones are yours, Alema."
"Excellent!" he said over the comm. He stopped his transport, waiting for the TIEs to pass, then took down the rest of the squadron. He quickly rejoined the others.
The fighters ahead were swarmed with dozens of TIEs. Sabine watched closely for any that fell too far behind, and trained her turret on one that swooped down from a Star Destroyer. "Ezra, can you bring us in a little closer?"
Ezra pushed the throttle forward. Sabine focused on the TIE and took it down in one shot. As if gifted with the Force, she spun the turret at the next six and destroyed them all, not missing once. Whoops erupted from the comm.
A squad of A-wings broke left and chased down a group of TIEs, herding them away from the Ghost's convoy. Saw didn't see any more fighters coming from the Star Destroyers, and spoke.
"I think that was the last of them. Partisan One, heading in for boarding. We'll clear a way for you."
"Fighters, keep them busy!" ordered Cham. "We are headed in shortly."
Captain Pellaeon squinted out the bridge viewport. An oddly-painted U-wing had just disappeared underneath the Chimaera. Loosely following in its path was a VCX-100, surrounded by Rylothean transports.
"They're... trying to board us?" he muttered to himself.
A young lieutenant hurried to his side. "Sir, what should we do?"
"Order all TIEs to attack that VCX's convoy. Close the docking bays and send all ground forces to the hangars. Do not let them in!"
A spray of bolts buffeted the Ghost's hull. The whine of the TIEs' engines swirled around them, coming from every direction. "Cham, we've got a problem!"
"Keep going!" he shouted. "We will hold them off! Alema, Boc, go chase off those TIEs! I will stay here with the Ghost."
Zeb shot a TIE that swooped down on the Ghost, sending it spinning into space. He took a quick look at the hull plating around him, seeing a dotted line of dents and carbon scoring along the front right edge. "We're okay, it's mostly surface damage!"
Debris from an explosion in front of them struck the Ghost's viewport. The squad of A-wings was flying in tight formation, picking off any TIEs that came too close. A few Y-wings were hurling proton torpedoes, rendering the enemy ships immobile and sending them coasting along their current trajectory.
The comm hissed again. "The hangar door is sealed!" wheezed Saw. "Get those Y-wings over here! We need ion cannons!"
Two of the Y-wings banked to the left and approached the docking bay doors. They reduced their speed and raked the doors with cannon fire.
Suddenly, the ship jolted, sending the medical droid off balance. Startled, Hera struggled to sit up from the bench where she lay. Her pounding headache worsened, and the rocking motion made her queasy. She began to feel very hot, and furiously fumbled around for her jumpsuit zipper.
The droid regained its balance and stepped toward her. It said something like it was gently giving an order, as a teacher would a student. Hera couldn't tell whether its voice was masculine or feminine. At that point, she didn't much care; she just found it annoying. She finally pinched the zipper tab and yanked it down, peeling her jumpsuit down to her hips and revealing her under-tunic soaked with a band of sweat beneath her breasts. Keeping her head angled downward and her eyes closed, she pulled the wet garment over her head and felt instant relief.
"Please lie down," said the droid, more firmly this time. "You are nauseated."
As soon as Hera's back hit the damp wall, she felt her lower back and belly become very tense. Her leg began to quiver. She didn't know if it was from the pain or because of fear.
"What's going on?" she asked abruptly.
"Command tells me that some rebel forces are attacking this vessel. Do not worry; I will make sure you are completely safe."
Safe, she thought angrily. I would have been a lot safer had you gutkurrs never found me! Besides, she didn't want to be safe on an imperial Star Destroyer; she wanted to go home.
"Wait, rebel forces?" Her heart jumped at the word. Is it my crew? she hoped. Then, her contraction became stronger. She bared her teeth and focused intensely on a blood stain on the bench in front of her.
"Indeed. I can see you are entering another contraction. Your previous one was three minutes and six seconds ago. You should begin the second stage of labor in approximately thirty minutes. Is there anything I can do to comfort you?"
Hera became more annoyed with each word it said. "Just..." she hissed, "shut up."
"All troops to hangar bay 3, I repeat, all troops to hangar bay 3. Enemy forces have breached the docking port."
Saw smirked as he heard the loudspeaker over his crew's blaster fire. He stood on top of his ship, gunning down every stormtrooper he could see. He dodged a few bolts from troopers in opposite corners of the hangar, then casually swung his heavy blaster to shoot them both. A pilot climbed into the cockpit of one of the TIE fighters and powered it up. Saw's crew was quick to notice, and one of them fired a rocket launcher through the viewport. The solar array wings scraped against the floor as it dropped.
Saw unlatched the breathing tube from his breastplate and took several deep breaths. "Looks like it's all clear," he announced into his comm. "For now. Ghost, you'd better hurry. We've got a whole shipload of them coming."
"On it, Saw," said Ezra. Saw gave no response; another stormtrooper scurried out from behind a wall, and he cut him down efficiently.
The Ghost banked to one side to avoid a collision with a TIE underneath the belly of the Chimaera. The gray mural above them was now dotted with carbon scoring, blurring the painted spines on the legendary creature's neck. Cham's transport warded off the rest of the TIEs pursuing them. The Ghost rose up through the docking port and landed next to Partisan One.
"Don't crash it this time, kid," said Zeb sarcastically. He reached for his bo-rifle on his back and got into position.
"Not now, Zeb. Also, I didn't crash it. Just scraped it." Ezra set the Ghost down gently on the metal floor, immediately lowering the ramp. "Chop, you stay with the ship." The droid mock-saluted him. He jumped down the ladder and ignited his lightsaber.
Sabine reached the cargo bay, adjusting her helmet with her blasters in her hands. She looked over at Saw, and Cham's transport just now landing.
"Just give us a minute to get the assets ready," said Cham over the comm.
"You'd better hurry up!" urged Saw. "We've got another wave coming!" He crouched behind the cockpit and ducked from incoming fire.
As soon as he saw the stormtroopers run out from the hallway, Ezra closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and became completely still. He heard the first bolt exit the barrel of the E-11 in the lead trooper's hand, then time seemed to become very slow. It approached the center of his chest, but he deflected it directly back at the trooper who fired it. He felt Sabine run down the ramp and duck behind some crates, occasionally poking her head up to fire a few shots. More blaster bolts were headed toward him. Zeb followed after Sabine, picking up a crate and throwing it at one of the squads. The contents of it exploded on contact with the ground and it sent bits of flaming oil high into the air. Ezra moved his saber to deflect the four bolts. He felt Zeb's knuckles crack a trooper's spine. In the distance, he heard a woman howling in pain.
She's here.
The troopers kept coming. Sabine became more careful about when she got up to fire. A stray blaster bolt hit her helmet, surprising her. She crouched lower behind the crates and pulled out her comlink.
"Cham, are you ready yet? We need you out here!"
"Almost. We are coming."
Sabine heard guttural grunts from his end. The ramp of his transport lowered, and after a few long moments of silence, a dusty blue blurrg burst from the door. It roared and took the first stormtrooper in sight in its huge jaws. Cham was perched on its back, shooting any stunned troopers in sight. Four more blurrg bolted from the transport, each with a rider, trampling everyone in their path.
"Numa, Gobi, secure the corridors!" shouted Cham. "I'll stay with the Ghost crew."
Sabine smirked and pulled her helmet back down, readying her blasters. "All right," she said. "Let's save Hera."