"Bloody hell!"
Flung to the ground by the explosion, a shaken Commander Piett felt a sticky liquid trickling down the left side of his face. His ears were ringing and it took him a few seconds to realize the noise was outside his head as well. Red alert klaxons howled all around him. He knew he had to get back up, quick, but he couldn't coordinate his suddenly rubbery legs. Smoke and sparks obscured part of the bridge amid shouts and screams.
"Direct hit! Hull breach on the secondary bridge! We're venting air!"
"Seal off the—"
It came out as a croak. He forced himself to cough, tried again. "Seal off the bridge, now!" This time his voice was loud enough, and he felt a twinge of pride. He hoisted himself up, leaning heavily the half-askew command console. "Casrah, get Colonel Tyfas on the comm, fast! I want his space troopers suited up and into that breach in five minutes!"
"Lieutenant Casrah is—I'll call the colonel, sir."
Young Mikam's voice, unsteady. Turning, Piett could see Casrah's olive-garbed unmoving form, slumped over the main comm station. His gaze took in the port side of the bridge, where most of the ship's complicated electronics seemed to have burst out of their panels in a mess of wires and burnt durasteel. The Empire's Revenge bridge seemed horizontal enough now, but that was because the gravity compensators had kicked in. It had felt like being kicked upside down, and from what he could see around him, it was pretty much what had happened. Those men who'd been in the way of unsecured heavy equipment would never have to answer for their negligence in checking that everything was bolted fast at any time. That imbecile Corlag has never run a tight ship in his life, but I'm just as much at fault. I should have pushed for drills no matter what frelling Corlag said.
He pressed a few keys on the command console, to no effect. He had to know what hit them, fast. "Tactical!"
"Sir?"
That one would come out unscathed from a direct sublight torpedo hit. "So those pirates were going to surrender, were they, lieutenant?" he hissed. "Find out which of these Duros failed to conform to your artistic predictions, on the double. And where the prakking Judicator vanished. Then parallel your controls to the main comm station and take over Lieutenant's Casrah's post; I'll command from the tac station since the captain's chair has been trashed."
The handsome blue face was perhaps a shade paler, but otherwise expressionless. "Aye, sir. The Judicator seems to have microjumped back behind the red dwarf with—part of the pirate fleet." Thrawn's left hand hit several keys on the tac console. "We were attacked by two ships that weren't part of the original pirate configuration. They—could be the cruisers that were being repaired at the Shi'sla dockyards. I'll find out more."
He did mention those in his earlier report, Piett remembered, watching Thrawn enter the tactical codes into the network before standing aside from the console. The First Officer took a wobbly step to the tac station. "Lend me your arm, lieutenant," he snapped testily, annoyed that his legs still refused to act normally. Thrawn was at his right side in an instant, offering a firm elbow across the forward bridge. Piett grasped the tac console durasteel casing with relief. "Comm! Get me the Judicator's captain! Weapons officer! Status report, now!" The tactical holo occupied most of the viewspace, with five-second refreshes. "How do I size this down, lieutenant?"
With his left hand, Thrawn had pulled the station's chair up for Piett, and helped him into it. He called up a side control panel, then stepped aside as Lieutenant-Commander Janred's battered and blackened face appeared in one of the small comm displays. "I've lost half my crews, Firmus. That hit took the aft starboard laser batteries. Levels 31 to 35 are gone—we've had to seal them off. I've got some torpedo and missile launchers left there, and I can rustle you up enough firepower to kill a Theta Shuttle or two, but that's about it. Portside's still structurally intact and armed, but we got human casualties when the Revenge flipped."
Piett had known things were critical the instant his old friend had called him by his first name, instead of the rank Navy etiquette demanded—something Janred would normally be the first to insist on. "I was there when the Captain countermanded your drill schedules, Saki," he said wearily. "Now we've got to fix up things as best we can. Draft whatever techs and troopers you want—we're not about to start a land attack any time soon. I'll let Tyfas know. How long will it take before we have 30% firepower?"
Janred frowned. "Probably an hour, but I'll make sure we can at least pulverize one thing out of space in ten minutes' time. Just chose it well."
Piett smiled in spite of himself. "What else do you need?"
"Medics, med droids, whatever you can spare."
Piett looked up. Medical teams, with agrav stretchers and IV drips, had started working the bridge among the debris. "I'll see what I can send. Piett out." He turned to the comm stations. "Where the frell is Colonel Tyfas? And I need a sensor status, now! Lieutenant Theel?"
But the relaying comm station was unmanned. There's one loss I'm not going to mourn overmuch. Searching the nearest crew pit, his eyes spotted a young officer whose technical bent he'd noticed in the past. "Lieutenant Dorja, can you slave the sensor station to the relaying comm and give me a merged status report? Then come up here and snap to it." He glanced at his wristchrono, and found he'd broken it when he fell, the last reading now frozen behind the shattered transparisteel. One look at the tactical time stamp told him they'd been hit eleven minutes ago. Why isn't anyone firing at us now? And how long before they start again?
***
Dazed, Wynssa Starflare tried to pick herself up from her stateroom's plush carpet, and cried out the moment she tried to put some weight on her feet. She couldn't stand on her right ankle. She looked around her in dismay. The furniture was still in the same place, but everything that wasn't bolted to the floor had been violently flung about, me included, she thought. The pieces of the comm center littered the floor among the sofas' throw cushions and the shards of the glass she'd drunk a juri juice from. Her small travel bag was wedged between one sofa and an end-table, and she reached for it, clutching it to her. She couldn't see her large trunk at all. Where in stars can it have gone—
An angry hiss called her attention to the viewport, and she got her answer. The huge travel chest was strangely stuck mid-height against the transparisteel, and she realized with a sick feeling in her stomach that what kept it there was the pressure of the cabin's air venting into space through hairline cracks. I'm lucky it missed me—I would have been squished like a ripe moonglow. Ankle or no ankle, she had to get out, now. She had no idea how much pressure transparisteel could take before imploding, and at any rate, the stateroom's oxygen would soon be gone. She hoisted herself onto the nearest sofa, and pulled herself up painfully, eyeing the distance between her and the cabin's door. It doesn't matter if it hurts. Hurt is better than dead. She cried in pain as she hobbled as best she could across the room, the venting air loudly hissing in her ears. Finally reaching the door, she palmed it open, and dragged herself outside, hurrying to hit the exterior lock command. When the stateroom's door swooshed back down, she released the breath she hadn't realized she was holding and stood trembling in the corridor, leaning on the doorjamb.
I can't stay here. I don't know how much this door can take. I've got to get somewhere safer.
It was a terrifying replay of the previous hours, and this time, she was crippled and didn't even have a comlink to Thrawn. I'm never, ever not taking public transport again. Doesn't matter if I get invited on yachts, on space limos, on racing craft, on a Golan space station. All members of the Antilles family are flying commercial from now on. She looked down, and realized she'd dragged her carryall with her. She hesitated, then sat down on the ground, and fingered it open. She had stupidly taken Commander Piett's cue, and changed back into an elegant dress and heels. She might look silly wearing her running boots with this, but silly, too, was better than dead. She slipped her good foot into the left sporting shoe and laced it up and around her ankle, then delicately slid her right foot into the other boot. Searing-hot pain lanced her entire leg the instant she tried to fasten it, but she clenched her teeth and laced up the boot as tight as she could stand—it would give her damaged ankle a modicum of support. She threw her black suede pumps into the carryall, closed it, and passed the shoulder strap over her neck. There.
Now to get up again. She managed somehow, but once upright, she looked up and down the corridor in momentary indecision. The bridge was not very far, but it was on the side that had taken the enemy hit. She had no way of telling what shape it would be in if she reached it, or even if it would—still be there. No. They have to be all right. He has to be all right. But assuming they'd scraped through—and if they hadn't, she didn't want to think too clearly of the consequences—the last thing they needed was to be saddled with their extra passenger's dead weight. She'd made herself useful earlier on, but that was when she could move. She took a tentative, wobbly step in the direction of the turbolifts. Sickbay. I need to get this stupid foot fixed, so that I'm not a millstone lumbering anyone who might help. If I manage to get this in bacta soon enough, it'll be like new in an hour. If I have to wait my turn— Bacta worked fastest if applied straightaway, before the tissues had started their own healing process. Then the effect could seem nothing short of magical. But even the perspective of a simple painkiller hypospray sounded too good to pass. She remembered the location of the main med bay, for once thankful that Corlag had asked her to pay it a ridiculous travesty of an official visit. She started limping to the turbolift bank.