Disclaimer: Not mine, as much as I wish I could claim otherwise.
Sorry for not updating sooner. I've been a little frantic lately.
Chapter 4:
"Myn."
"Lara."
"Hi."
"Hi."
"Um, not to break up this heartwarming reunion, but sooner or later, Corva's men are going to realize that we're still not dead, and come here to remedy that situation." Gus piped up. He received a glare from both of the pilots standing before him. He was fairly certain he'd never seen this man before, but he clearly had some kind of a history with the transport pilot he'd hired. Gus would have preferred not to have a pilot carrying that much baggage with her, but since the baggage had probably just saved their lives, he got the benefit of doubt. The young man had what looked to be a sniper rifle strapped across his back, which, if he was any good with it, he could have used to make the shot that had downed their pursuers. It would have been one heck of a shot, though, the Verpine realized. Long range, firing at a target about seven centimeters squared, moving at over one hundred and sixty kilometers per Coruscant hour. Off the top of his head, he could think of only six people who could have made a shot like that in the whole galaxy. And two of them worked for Corva.
"So, what are you doing here?" Kirney asked as the trio walked towards the speeder.
"You invited me." Myn shrugged.
"I know, but," Kirney paused, "I wasn't actually expecting you to show up."
"I can leave if it makes you…"
"No!" Kirney cut him off, "I mean, I could use your help on this one."
Myn didn't respond, but nodded stoically.
The three climbed into the speeder and Minos started it moving. Gus took it as his cue to leave the two alone in the cargo compartment.
"How did you find me?" Kirney piped up again.
"You gave me your address."
"No, I mean, how did you find me here?"
He shrugged. "I arrived at your ship just as you left this morning. Tonin was nice enough to give me the particulars about your client. Who he was, where he lived, where he was meeting you, and so on." He grinned a little, "I followed you to the tapcaf, but stayed outside. I saw the four would-be assassins enter, heard the gunfire, and saw you and the Verpine run out. It didn't take much for me to figure that they'd try to hit you somewhere between his house and your ship, and it was even easier to find them. They weren't very subtle about it."
"So you waited until now to help?" She frowned, "I really could've used your help back at the caf."
"You made it out, didn't you?"
"How'd you know what route I'd take?" She asked.
"I thought you'd take the most direct one from your client's house to your ship. You had to figure that whoever ambushed you in the caf would have blocked off just about every route from there; which, by the way, they had; so the most direct route was the one with the fewest question marks." Myn smiled gently, "Or at least, that was my reasoning."
"Mine, too." Kirney responded, quietly.
"I moved over the rooftops; an easy way of going directly from one place to another without being spotted."
"Always the sniper," Kirney half-smiled, "good shot, by the way."
Kirney was silent for a long time before she spoke again, "Myn, what are you doing here?"
"I told you, you invited me."
"No, I mean…"
"I know what you mean," he looked straight into her eyes, "I don't know, Lara." He paused, "there are… some things I need to work out."
This is not the Myn I used to know, Kirney thought to herself. The Myn of her past life would have wiped all expression off of his face, bottled every emotion, shown nothing but a blank visage which she had only just learned to read before she'd… left. It took her a moment to realize why she could not read the cast on his face now. He wasn't attempting to hide it; he simply did not know how he felt. There was a softness to his countenance, a gentleness in his voice which she'd never heard before.
He'd changed.
"I won't turn you in, if that's what you're worried about." He continued.
She wasn't particularly worried about that, but she let him continue uninterrupted.
"I'll help you here," he told her, "after that…" He left the thought unfinished.
She was glad he did. She didn't want to think about what would happen afterwards. For now, she just wanted him here.
Minos pulled the speeder into the hanger, and slid it expertly into the Hope's vast cargo bay. The restraint field installed in the large interior, detecting the entry of a new vehicle, automatically activated itself, preventing the three-ton vehicle from shifting in flight.
"Okay, everybody out." Kirney stepped down to the Hope's cold, metal floor, and watched as the entry ramp slowly lifted to seal the cargo bay, "I don't have much in the way of living amenities, but what we have is yours."
Gus nodded. He turned and watched as his six children stepped out of the speeder, and looked in wonderment at the cavernous interior of the Sentinel drop ship. "Thank you," he told her simply.
"Thank me when you're safe." She yelled over her shoulder, as she sprinted across the cargo bay, towards the flight deck where she knew she would find Kolot preparing the craft for liftoff. She was only distantly aware that Myn was no more than a couple of meters behind her.
Tonin tweedled excitedly as she burst onto the flight deck at a flat run. She guessed that he was saying something akin to "look who's here," as she realized a moment later that Clink stood silently next to him. Both were interfacing with the ship's computer. She guessed that they were calculating a jump to Coruscant.
Astromechs, especially those of the R2 series, are generally fairly solitary types. As a rule they generally prefer to work alone. As far as she could tell, Tonin and Clink seemed to be working rather amicably together. Although she could not understand any of their bleepings at each other, they didn't have the angry tone that Tonin's had when he was admonishing her for something. And so far, neither astromech had drawn its arc welder. She took that to be a good sign.
"Kolot, we have maybe eleven standard minutes before we get blockaded in, tell me you're ready to lift off." She slipped smoothly into the pilot's seat next to the small Ewok, and buckled herself in.
"You do realize that whole Kettch thing was a joke, right?" Myn's voice was slightly strained as he strapped himself into one of the jumpseats tucked in behind the pilot's seat.
The Ewok, however, seemed to be quite comfortable as he quite expertly prepared the shuttle for liftoff. The prosthetic extensions protruding from each of his four stubby limbs danced smoothly over the dials and controls as the quiet whine of the engines rose to a high-pitched crescendo. Having met Piggy, Myn was willing to accept that the little guy could fly. Stranger things had certainly happened.
But he couldn't for the life of him figure out how the little guy could see over the instrument panel.
"Okay, here we go," Kirney muttered to herself.
The oversized landing craft lifted shakily off of the ground and clawed hungrily for space. The Sentinel was designed for a rather rapid ascent and descent for a craft that size. Designed to drop through enemy air cover to unload its cargo, then rocket up just as fast to load up again without being shot down. Myn had always found it to move unnaturally fast in the ascent and descent configurations. Disproportionately fast, at any rate, when compared to its speed in space. In space, they moved at a speed which made them near-ideal for target practice.
"We've got uglies." Kirney announced as the blue sky darkened to a deep purple, then black.
"How many?"
"I count six, no, eight." She scanned the sensors, "can you handle a ship's guns?"
"Pretty well."
"Good, see if you can buy me about forty seconds. Tonin, Clink, whatever you can get out of the engines would be greatly appreciated." Kirney's voice was steady, but hard.
The two astromechs bleeped enthusiastically at her, as they went about convincing he ship's computer to play with the power settings.
Myn wasn't intimately familiar with the exact configuration of a Sentinel landing craft, but he seemed to recall there being three gun emplacements. One in the rear, two in the front. He ran in the general direction of the rear turret, hoping that the internal configuration of the craft was as simple as a landing craft should be.
Darting around a corner, he slammed facefirst into Gus, who was coming up to the flight deck.
He hit the metal floor in an undignified sprawl, as the much smaller Verpine was flung against the wall of the narrow hallway.
"What's going on?" Gus picked himself up of the ground.
"We're being attacked. Eight fighters. We need to buy some time."
"Can I help? I can operate a turret." Gus told him.
Myn looked at him, carefully. Two guns certainly were better than one, and if Minos could operate a gun they'd have all three operational.
"No," he told him, simply.
"But…"
"Your family needs you more than we do." Myn held up a hand, cutting him off.
The Verpine nodded, the expression on his face was one Myn interpreted as gratefulness, but he wasn't all that good at reading Verpine expressions.
Myn turned and ran for the gunner's seat in the rear. The ship was already rocking as the improvised fighter craft strafed the large landing vehicle, stitching its shields with laser fire. He slid into the gunner's seat, and slipped the headset over his ears, adjusting the microphone to sit just in front of his mouth.
"Talk to me, Lara," Myn spoke into the microphone.
"Forty seconds 'till we're clear of the Corellia's well, but Tonin and Clink may be able to shave a few off of that. Shields are still holding steady, but that won't last too long if we can't talk them into keeping their distance." Kirney was making no effort to keep the strain out of her voice.
He watched the fighter craft swing around and dart at the Hope, bright green laser fire striking the powerful shields.
Uglies, appropriately named for their reputation as an eyesore, were not exactly an uncommon sight in the space surrounding Corellia. Slapped together from parts from different fighters, a skilled mechanic could actually construct a fighter with reasonable performance for a relatively cheap price. It was difficult to tell exactly what these craft were made of, but he they had a cockpit and body which looked like that of a Y-wing, and a pair of trapezoidal solar panels that seemed to come from a TIE interceptor. Judging by their maneuvers, the looked to have performance which very nearly approached that of an X-wing.
He strongly doubted that they had hyperdrive, however, so if they could hold together long enough to make the jump, they were clear.
The craft circled around as a group and dove straight at the Hope again. He opened fire on fighters and watched as they scattered in all directions, breaking off their attack. They were remarkably well organized. They weren't as skilled as the Wraiths, the Rogues, or even Talon squadron, before they'd been obliterated, but the pilots had clearly been working together for some time.
"How much time?" He demanded, firing a burst at the fighters as they circled around for another pass. The burst was little more than a wild shot, intended to keep the craft from getting too close, rather than to actually hit them. He swept his turret in a smooth arc, filling the space behind the Sentinel with blaster fire.
"Twenty seconds."
"Oh, sithspit," Myn swore as he realized what the fighters were doing. Each of the eight fighters had just drawn back to lie just outside the effective range of the blaster cannons he commanded, to line up wingtip to wingtip to face the much larger landing craft "See if you can speed that up at all."
"Why?"
As if to answer her question, the eight fighters fired simultaneously, but not their laser cannons, each fighter launched a pair of concussion missiles.
It was possible, of course, to shoot a concussion missile out of the sky before it hit you. Myn himself had done it on a number of occasions.
Destroying sixteen of them, fired at relatively close range, was near to impossible.
But he didn't need to get all of them. If he could sweep away ten of them, the remaining six would damage the craft, to be sure, but the Hope would probably survive. He concentrated his fire on the centermost missiles. If he could make sure the impacts occurred over enough of a spread out area…
"Give me time to impact every second." Kirney's voice was steely over the headset. She had something planned.
"Ten seconds."
He swept the turret back and forth, tightly, and was relieved to see some of the missiles explode far short of their target.
"Nine… eight…"
He counted eleven missiles. He wasn't going to be able to destroy enough of them. Perhaps the crew compartment and the cargo bay would retain some integrity.
"Seven… six…"
He increased his firing rate, as he saw another pair of missiles detonate. Nine left.
"Five… four…"
What he knew would be his final shots missed as the missiles spread out, programmed to loop back at the target striking it from all sides simultaneously.
"Three… two…"
He closed his eyes tightly, knowing full well that the fragile bubble in front of him would never survive the impact. For a split second, he wondered what explosive decompression would feel like.
A single missile streaked over the canopy in front of him, so close that he was certain he could read the registry number on its casing. Then, impossibly, he saw the eight missiles curve away from the craft, and arc back towards the eight fighters who had fired them.
What's going on? He saw the telltale steadying of the missiles as they locked on to the fighters and designated them as their targets. He knew now that the cockpits were filled with lights and klaxons which were designed to be impossible to ignore. It seemed that the pilots had more pressing things to think about than large landing craft which was now making its getaway.
A few seconds later, Lara's Hope blasted into hyperspace.
Myn stepped quietly into Kirney's room. She sat heavily on the bunk, her head in her hands.
"Hoth?" Myn asked, "Why Hoth?"
"Seemed like a safe place for the time being." Kirney shrugged.
"How did you get those missiles to turn back?" He demanded.
"I didn't. Tonin did."
"How?"
"There have been rumors floating around that Corva was being bankrolled by an Imperial Warlord. I suppose it made sense to me. Especially considering that the gunmen in the caf and the bikers in the street were equipped with stormtrooper rifles and Imperial speeder bikes. Now, to discourage treason, every missile in the Imperial navy is equipped with what amounts to a 'return to sender' command. If a pilot fires a missile at an imperial vessel, they sent a signal over a coded frequency to that missile and it turns around and attacks the vessel that fired it. Tonin picked up a lot of Imperial codes while we were on the Iron Fist, and that was one of 'em."
"There's something you're not telling me."
"No warlord would be dumb enough to tell another how to turn his missiles against him." Lara told him, "So, the only code Tonin had was for Zsinj's missiles."
"Zsinj is bankrolling this guy?"
Kirney nodded, "it sure looks that way."
"So, what now?"
"Zsinj can wait. I don't see any reason he would take a personal interest in this. Now, we take Gus to Hoth."
"And then?"
She smiled, "Then, we let Corva find him."