Chapter 29: The Unifying A/N: to GAKDragonMCP; this was under construction for a time. Therefor when I wrote that those things were not completed, and are now. In continuation...
In the expectant silence of Maw Installation, the cockpit of the Orion was absolutely still.
Paqs slept in their harness, folded up around themselves in a deep sleep they had learned to take when it could be taken. The nearby screens monitoring hyper- and real-space for friends and foes began to gather blips, the higher screen green and the lower red.
Master Kell and De'shar rested in the small common room between Orion's humming engine nacelles, the Lizz-Sur lounged over the arm rest of an acceleration couch. The suggestion of white teeth glaring though her face was placid, as if entranced in the ways of the Jedi. De'shar lay in a webbing of similar make to Patra's pilot sling, her hands on her stomach. She absently watched the bulwarks connected to the ceiling and wondered if there were a cure for the mind-numbing that came with stakeouts. If there were, she figured, she of all beings would have figured it out by now. But the time would come, bringing with it that little fear. The Republic would come...
Kell's eyes opened. De'shar thought she saw a reflection of orange on the dark metal of the ceiling, then feet clomped on the desk and Patra awoke, talking about 'incoming'. De'shar got her legs over the side of the hammock and dropped to the floor, and by the time she had padded across to the others screens were filled with red. Low beeping punctuated a digging emotion of regret at the loss of her own ship. Patra's arms and wing claws skittered over the console while Master Kell sat at the shunted-aside copilot's seat with her knees bent, staring into nothing. What Jedi datastream was running through her mind?
De'shar slid into the second cramped seat. After all this time of waiting, thoughts alternated between Corran Horn's vague mission and the boredom resultant. Now, finally--engine whines at the edges of her hearing. She could feel her ears swivel.
"No gunner?" Kell exclaimed.
Paqs responded as the first ships flashed across the relative horizon; raindrop shaped insectoids with double, flat wings. "I fly alone, Forceworker."
Kell's eyes narrowed, and then any resentment she felt or any care De'shar had for the bickering was wiped away in the thrill of true, indescribable danger gripping the small space as Patra banked the Orion in an angle that let laserfire skitter overhead. A bug fighter rumbled out from above the viewport and Patra clicked at it, lined up reticles and fired. The bug jinxed, showered sparks from a port wing and sped away. Patra cursed in Basic this time. The ship flipped around and there were a pair of the little craft that split right and left and poured in lasers; Patra dove, and they twisted away, dodged their own fire and flipped back onto Patra's tail. De'shar felt the G's catch in her lungs.
"Fast..." Patra muttered, the installation swinging beneath them.
"There," Kell spoke and pointed. Over their heads to the right a bug ship angled down and Patra swung around in his webbing and threw a missile at it. It missed the body, took a wing strut off, and the bug and the missile both slammed into the station. Kell's teeth showed for a second.
"They're Force users." She realized. "Give De'shar the controls."
"What?" They said together.
"We'll never out-fly the Force unless this works." Her voice was deadly serious.
Patra, driven by superstition and self honesty, was already jumping from his web. De'shar followed Kell's gesture toward the center console. Kell looked at the setup, tipped her head and scrambled onto the hanging net in a crouch, her footclaws curling over the front of her sandals and gripping the holes in the ropes. De'shar thought she would look more natural sitting in a tree, waiting to drop down on something. Patra stood in front of the console to the right of her; the weapon array.
"Go," Kell said, and De'shar shoved the sticks forward. There were fighters coming up behind .
She accelerated them into the network of girders and walkways threaded through the asteroids of the station, better to dodge overwhelming fire. Bridges flashed overhead, looking like horizontal jail bars. Bug ships behind them spurted lasers that angled off into vacuum as Orion spun through blackness. They never hit, and De'shar turned back when she met open space again. A bug but across her path as Orion swept around the side of a building and Patra sprayed lasers at it. It juked, skimmed sideways across the metal wall and got behind them. De'shar felt strange, just a little like her hands were not her own and Kell gripped the bar above the netting, her eyes closed. De'shar was caught up in the excitement, the gut-deep thrill, the slightly out-of-control vitality of the moment. Kell hissed. De'shar heard several quick metal-screeches as lasers ripped at the unshielded ion drives, and she turned the ship relative-down under an asteroid. Two bugs came from starboard and below, and Kell thumped Patra's legs with her tail so he would shoot, and De'shar started for a dive on the second one when the first became roiling fire that sunk back in on itself in seconds.
The next target wasn't there.
"Blast." Kell said. De'shar turned on some unfathomable instinct, and there it was. Patra shot again.
Then, De'shar understood in the lee of that fireball. "What're you doing?" She exploded, turning from the controls, feeling in the sudden lack of...presence that those movements of success had been only partly her own.
"I need you to do what I say." Kell said. "They're too fast."
There was a patrol in triangle formation at the perimeter of the installation, cruising against the multicolored Maw.
"I'm trying to figure out what those are because they're not normal."
"It's glitterstim spice." Patra said, as if looking from a distance. "Augments or creates latent psychic powers if enough's taken."
De'shar shook her head, just as Kell gave out a little "Oh," of surprise or understanding. "You can't get in my mind. I won't let you."
The Orion shook. Screens showed three ships on their tail, stationary and pouring lasers. De'shar gasped, grabbed at the control sticks, and sent them forward and down-starboard. One ship followed, one unerringly angled to their front and one kept beside, just hemming them in and annoying, nearly bumping shield-energy. Patra shot point-blank at it's the front and the bug peeled away in a roll, shooting back. Now both points fore and aft flickered blue with dying shield. De'shar ignored everything and cut for open space, anger burning in her gut somewhere.
"My ship!" Patra wailed.
Klaxons whined that rear shields were failing. De'shar slapped the audio alarm off; "Stang!"
Kell leaned toward her ear. "You can't do this without us, let go of your pride. Patras, keep the thinking mind dominant."
"They both think, Jedi."
"Ok well let me hang on!"
Let go of your pride, Jedi.
They were coming from anywhere. No time to plot escaping the Maw, no her heart letting them leave Corran Horn behind. Old words De'shar consoled herself with as a teenager...she had wanted to be a Jedi.
"Fine!" De'shar sighed. "Take over."
"Go toward that beacon." A light blinked at the edge of a blob of pastel yellow.
De'shar shoved the sticks forward. The buglike starships had kept their distance for a time, assured of their victory with numbers, assured of their confidence in spice. Now as the Orion moved a set of them closed again, weaving though there was no reason. De'shar spun to meet them.
The next minute, maybe--a navicomp clicked numbers down from sixty, but no one noticed--De'shar's hands on the yokes, Patra's sharp eyes and claws, Kell's mind reaching, knowing...all these came together. Again De'shar felt out of control but executed nonsensically perfect maneuvers, and Patra dealt in coordinated death. In one position relative to the blinking beacon they spun, the Orion's ion drives firing randomly like a pilot had gone mad had taken over. Where a bug ship went, that place dictated by precognitive ability, Orion was there before, and fireballs the lasting evidence. Within, Patra and De'shar held looks of deep concentration, and Master Kell's emotions could be seen not in her closed eyes but in the set of her shoulders, but in the riding of the ship's jukes and twists as the Force and Lizz-Sur spacial senses aligned in her alien mind. Stars whirled.
There was a jolt, a shock that sent fear-pain through De'shar in a bloc. Kell pitched forward onto knees and forearms, and Patra clicked loud then, when Kell was up again, translated for themselves.
"Tractor beam!"
"Wow," De'shar breathed, and she had not heard Patra.
Kell breathed through her mouth and gills, and spoke still panting. "It's all right."
"These little ships have beams!" Patra kept on, but Kell shushed him and pointed at a blue-green screen. The numbers had finished counting down, and it now showed the identification signatures and silhouettes of a group of capitol ships.
The Republic was arriving.