ABOARD THE MALACHOR, 40 YEARS ABE:
Breha stood in the open hatch of the shuttle above the half-lowered ramp, her eyes closed. With one hand she gripped the edge of the bulkhead; the other she held out into the darkness.
The shuttle was in blackout mode, its running and interior lights powered-down. Only the blue glow of its engine was visible against the black hollow of the hangar bay. That glow still provided the Imperials who had managed to find a secure perch something to shoot at, and they did so with dedication. Fortunately no one had found their way into a TIE yet, and their comparatively low-powered blaster rifles and pistols could barely scorch the paint on the bulkhead. That was good, because even with BB-8 here to slice through the shuttle's safety precautions, until Bail and Finn were on board with the ramp closed behind them they couldn't raise their shields.
It was a race to see who would get there first, a race being run at just slightly faster than a human could sprint in pitch darkness in a hangar full of unseen obstructions.
The low speed at which the Crystellium was moving had at least kept the three collisions they'd had so far (two with stacked supply crates, one with something that might have been another ship or might have been a cargo loader or repair lift of some kind) from doing any damage to the shuttle. If they hit another ship at the wrong angle, though, it wouldn't matter how slow they were going: if a bulkhead was pierced or a viewport cracked, they'd be stranded. Eventually the Empire would slice BB-8's hack of their systems and throw enough firepower against them to overwhelm and annihilate or imprison them all. Their window of escape was shrinking around them like a noose - but they weren't ready to give-up yet.
The shuttle nudged its way past a floating load lifter gently enough to do little more than rattle the teeth of the humans inside and make BB-8 whistle. Poe had taken over piloting. While Stella was more than adept in a cockpit, he had experience in combat situations that she lacked. Flying in the dark without running lights or guidance beacons, his instincts were their best chance of getting through unscathed.
Stella had found a pair of electrobinoculars in the shuttle's sparse stash of supplies and was using their night-vision setting to scan the hangar. She called out verbal warnings which Poe did his best to steer around until Breha shouted, "There - hold her steady!"
"We're twelve meters from another Lambda and closing," Stella muttered to Poe.
He winced and tightened his hands on the controls, but made no move to change course.
"Hurry, kid!" he shouted.
Breha, seemingly unconcerned by the occasional glancing blaster hit that the scattered stormtroopers struck on the hull beside the open hatch in which she stood, held perfectly still, waiting.
The whine of a TIE fighter powering-up filled the dark hangar.
It fired, and a blistering green turbolaser passed within two meters of the shuttle's nose. Still Breha stood, waiting.
Waiting…
Bail's hand reached out of the dark and slid into hers. A smile spread across Breha's lips as she folded her fingers around her twin's. Their grip closed, forming a human chain between her, Bail, and Finn, and she yanked them forward.
As they crossed the threshold of the shuttle's gravity field, Bail and Finn's languid drift through the air became a heavy stumble onto the deck.
"They're on!" Breha shouted, half-catching Bail by his partially-armored shoulders and tugging him in away from the hatch. Finn never quite managed to get his feet under him and went down to hands and knees, scrambling in crabwise.
Bail staggered forward and caught himself against the far wall, then slid down in a slow collapse to sit on the deck. Breha absently threw out a hand to Finn, who took it instinctively, and she pulled him back to his feet.
Poe and Stella had wasted no time; the moment they heard Breha's shout, Stella stabbed at the hatch control and Poe toggled the shields to full.
They weren't a moment too soon. The next turbolaser blast caught the shuttle right across the bow where it should have blown-out the transparisteel viewport and vaporized everyone inside. Instead, it splashed harmlessly off their shields. Alarms sounded, belatedly alerting the ship's crew to the attack they could not have failed to notice. Poe and Stella frantically flipped switches and punched buttons in an attempt to switch from low-powered mode over to full operational capacity before the TIE could blast them out of the sky.
BB-8 shrieked an even louder, shriller warning, which Poe translated anxiously: "Three more TIEs powering-up! The droids are cut-out of the circuit, they can't stop them!"
"It'll only take the Imps seconds to break-through the lock on the launchers, then!" Stella retorted.
"Let's not be here when they do!" said Poe. "Everybody hang onto something, we're taking off!"
Without waiting for an answer, he kicked the engines to full throttle. The Crystellium heeled sideways and turned for space, more green turbolasers splashing across its glowing stern as it pivoted. It's portside wing passed within a Wookiee's handspan of the Lambda-shuttle beside them.
"Your friends better be right about having control of the ship's turbolasers!" Poe shouted to his little astromech.
"And the tractors!" Stella added.
BB-8 squealed reassurances as the Crystellium shot through the magcon shield and out into space.
Behind them, the hangar's emergency lighting finally flickered on, bathing the room in a dull red glow. A second later the gravity turned back on as well, and all the crates and ships and equipment crashed back down to the deck.
One already-crumpled TIE hit hard enough to snap off an entire solar wing, the heavy black panel bouncing away across the deck like a skipping rock until it bisected a slanting Lambda-shuttle, leaving the damaged craft looking as though it had sprouted a fourth wing.
Out of the shattered blue carapace of the TIE a tall, gleaming suit of armor rose.
Phasma's cape hung from her shoulders in tatters but her armor was as undented as she was undaunted. The red glow of the emergency light made her beskar'gam look like it had been bathed in blood. She flung a section of snubfighter hull away from her and half-stomped, half-tumbled her way out of its carcass and back to the deck.
She staggered a little when she hit but didn't wait to recover her balance, launching straight into a desperate run in the wake of the Lambda -shuttle. "Stop them!" she shouted into her helmet's intercom. "Where are my tractor beams? My turbolasers?" Her only answer was the high-pitched white noise of comm-jamming.
The shuttle crossed through the magcon field and kept going. The weapons on the great Super Star Destroyer were silent.
Phasma let out a wordless cry of rage and ran back the other way. When she reached a hangar door she stabbed her finger on the internal communications button hard enough to crack its casing. "Phasma to bridge!" she snarled.
The hardline comm-line was unaffected by the jamming. "Commander - " an anxious voice began.
"Why are you letting them get away?" Phasma roared. "Stop them! Shoot them!"
"W-we can't, sir!" came the answer, more of a wail than words. "The turbolasers, the tractors - they're not working!"
"What!?"
"This whole section of the ship, sir - the circuits are cut. We're repairing them as fast as we can, but - "
"Then turn the ship! Bring another side to bear!"
"We can't, the engines - "
"How?" Phasma bellowed, the question less of a demand than a plea. "How did they do this?"
"Mouse droids, sir!"
Phasma went still, her whole body going as stiff as her beskar. "What," she said.
"There are...there are mouse droids all over the engine room, sir. They're cutting circuits, frying energy cells, welding connectors shut. We think that's what cut the gravity and the door controls, too, although there might be more droids sliced-in from other terminals - "
"And what are you doing about it, lieutenant?" Phasma growled.
"We're, er…" Phasma couldn't see the young officer from here, but she could practically feel the man wince as he answered reluctantly, "We're kicking them to pieces with our boots, sir."
Phasma gave a wordless snarl of rage and spun away from the comm, turning to stare out through the magcon shield at the stars beyond. TIE fighters poured out of hangars - other hangars - all over the Super Star Destroyer in pursuit, but it was two late. The two bright blue spots of the retreating shuttle's engines dwindled, then flashed and vanished as the ship jumped to hyperspace.
Phasma roared and struck-out sideways, her metal fist punching a hole in the durasteel wall besides the comm unit, but it was an empty gesture. The shuttle was gone.
She had failed Revan.