"Sir, a New Republic task-force has jumped into the system. It's expeditionary in appearance, and approaching from the stern side at full sub-light speed," a human male reported over the enter comm to Moff Blister, who waited in quarters for reports from the moons. He'd anticipated nothing like this for another standard day.
He sneered, but revealed a slightly cunning expression in the light-bounce bulkhead.
They're not going to stick it out if they're mere scouts, and even if they do, my TIE-bombers are showing their invincibility.
"Tactical Situations," Blister hailed neutrally.
"Looks like a flight of Redthorn class scout ships, four Mon Calamari Assault Frigates, one X-wing squadron, two Y-wing squadrons, and two corvettes, possibly Corellian, or maybe Marauder class," Sensors reported with his usual light tone. "Sir, your presence is required on the bridge." Blister, irritated, inwardly admitted that's where he was supposed to be.
"I'm on my way." He cut the feed, straightened his coat, and headed briskly toward the bridge of his flagship. "Mr. Weber, deploy the TIE-bombers for a duel-echelon bombardment directed against the frigates at once," Blister ordered in a confident tone. However, his mood would soon have reason to change.
"Aye, Sir, but 320 bombers have been tasked against the remaining colonial targets," Mr. Weber reported, troubled.
Five fifty. OK. Two seventy-five in a row, and sixty proton bombs for each ship, Blister decided, would take out a Mon Calamari Frigate, or is it a Cruiser? Anyway, he was sure he had more than enough.
"Oh, Web, who tasked all those other bombers to the moons?"
Weber fidgeted.
"Awe...Miss...Guri gave the order, Sir." Blister's face deepened garnet in a rage. "Oh tangelo stink!" The rage faded. "Were the bombers really necessary for continued success on the ground?"
"Quite, Sir. She seems to be rushing the process of conquering because she knew the taks force was on it's way."
Break
"Commander, we're out of missiles. Permission to alter Broad Lance," Three asked calmly.
"Permission granted. We'll use turbo-laser and fly in with flight element waves," Traee told the squadron.
"Aye," someone chirped.
"I'll fly with Two, Three, and Four as the first flight since I still have missiles," Traee told the group. Indeed, he still had for in his missile tubes. I have to be the fearless leader once again, but that's not bothering me, is something wrong with Disparager?
Traee circled from the tan bunker's entrance to his nine o'clock in a loose horizontal loop, and counted the remaining turrets firing on him. It appeared some fired from the same positions as vanquished turrets. He also spied bi-podded heavy blasters swiveling for kill shots.
Thirty turbo-lasers and perhaps five waiting in a subterranean housing, shouldn't be a problem.
"Sled One, enemy squadron at vertical twelve," the Hawkbat Eye told Traee through a comm transmission. Traee peered at the top of his canopy. An A-wing and eleven TIEs! "Blast!" A ground turret impact reminded Traee about his previous situation. He re-evaluated the situation. The ground turrets, the swivel blasters, and the fighter squadron.
"This is the place to be unlucky," he told himself in a mock-elitist tone. This is the place.
Above the atmosphere
"Blast-boats!" Guri spotted the source of the jamming far before anyone else in the fleet could see specks. "Perhaps they need specks," Guri mumbled, clearly not entertained by the thought of being superior to everyone in the task-force in every catergory.
"They're called Mandalorian Nova Squadron, and they're in eighteen blast-boats, mainly skip-rays. It would be best to turn on them if they happen to find your six."
The interceptor slid before the eyes of the lead boat, trying to draw the right response from the boat. The clock ticked down. The TIE-interceptor would fall in range within seven seconds. Just drift my way, and I'll make a good first impression.
One second. Guri switched from quad burst to single, firing from outside the listed maximum range of her TIE. The skip-ray pilot, seasoned in combat, recognized it as the powered down laser trick, where TIE pilots spring fire in green pilots by firing rapid bursts at them, inducing them into erratic maneuvers, to put them in compromising positions.
This guy, not fooled, accepted the blasts, and even accelerated to catch the interceptor before he believed it's lasers could power back up.
Guri had hoped for that, for she used the gambit to take a free stab at what she identified as the line-of-sight jamming pod. Even powered down, she entered enough current to fry the electronics.
"Now, about that head-to-head, I opt out," she barked, pretending the boat pilot could hear. Do they all have jamming pods? The android spent time thinking it over as she flew by her enemy's starboard, and climbing to a higher plane than her contestants. She looked out into space, seeing what would soon devolve into a furball, belly-rolling all the way.
Only the lead enemy singled her out. Presumably, he'd announced "He's mine," or something befitting his intelligence like that. It was as she thought; these were pirate-mercenaries hired by High General Husk, and they weren't all professional. Some of them had to have been mavricks not that long ago, seeing how they fought much like a street gang.
Rim-worlders. They must be, since pirates have always been hunted mercilessly in the core worlds. A hidden fleet must be waiting for the right moment to jump in system. Husk has more resources than Traee had thought.
"I think I should put more of my head into this dogfight now," Guri affirmed, while the skip-ray pilot briefly got a sensor lock. She broke to port hard until the Moon's gravity helped pull her away from the boat. Then, at the right moment, she broke hard to port again, into a right angle, and then to starboard, skipping her solar-array off the upper atmosphere and into the six o'clock position of a distant boat for a quick dual laser burst, catching it's shields. Though lacking much achievement, it forced the boat to go evasive, saving the life of a friendly TIE pilot.
"Many thanks, Lead," the pilot huffed thankfully. "Same to you in advance," Guri responded, hinting that she needed that pilot to assist. Luckily, that pilot caught on. Just in time, too. The lead boat recovered his target and moved progressively for the kill. Guri compromised her safety for victory with a gentle curve toward an astroid and into the sights of the lead boat. Trust your wingman, this guy may very well be better than you in a one-on-one dual.
The sensor lock warning activated as she kicked her rudders to port and blasted her repulsers against the astroid. Finally, she banked beyond the normal limits her craft could allow. Just in time, the green turbo-lasers jolted through the space previously occupied by her TIE. The boatsman attempted to continue his assault, but a TIE-interceptor blasted multiple kilojoules of quad-laser fire into the canopy of the blast-boat.
"Two, did you dispatch him?"
"Huh? Oh, yeah, he's got a bad case of death," Two answered morbidly.
Guri laughed lightly, despite feeling a tad sick about morbidness of Rod Two's speech. Still, she felt gladness to once more become the hunter, or rather, huntress, after finishing with the enemy's fearless leader.
For the rest of the fight, she felt quite secure. Quite.
Within the Atmosphere
Draining all power from lasers, the ion cannon, and tractor beam, Traee place a wicked amount of power into the engines, and jumped into the no-escape range of Sharksabers Five and Six. Only naturally, they didn't escape the missiles marked for their demise.
"Where's Vain?" Traee asked his eyes, struggling to survive the fastest recorded atmospheric flight ever recorded in Imperial records.
Good, he's busy with Sled Three. Maybe I can catch him. Traee tried to maintain his speed, instead of the sensible thing, return to normal rates and avoid crushing g-forces. In fact, he popped more power into the engine, diverted from the compensator.
He then watched Vain's moves, in order to act properly. Traee dove at a sharp angle, and the targeting brackets flashed green. No escape!
The death-rail left it's tube, finally allow Traee to divert power to other systems. A little too late, regrettably. He vomited into his black Imperial helmet.
His eyelids dropped, but he knew he he'd pulled the fighter stick up at the proper attitude. Watery vision, mainly light, was Traee's fist flimpse of the world of inertia, where it took quite a lot of lift and other powers to change the course of a power-dive. By intuition, however, Traee knew just when to hit the forward repulser into maximum thrust.
Sleds Two and Three squelched and chirped on the comm in complete terror. Terror that Ex-Strategic Insertion Storm Trooper Traee Motal didn't have the slighted problem getting out of his mind.
I can see again now. What's the situation? He breathed some more, and felt the urge to ventilate violently for still more time.
"You've suffered stress on your heart, Colonel. Please report to base," a strange dull voice instructed him.
"Who are you?" Traee suspected he knew the answer.
"I am Sienar Fleet Systems TIE-Defender #9," it answer in the same odd tone.
Traee carefully avoided from provoking an override. "I've got to withdraw my squadron first. See the tactical screen?" The voice returned as Traee moved in on a TIE that was moving to cover the grounded Vain Hudson. "I can't allow you to yourself with such aggressive tactics."
Inertial forces soared negatively as the range meter on tracking Hudson's craft declined in numbers.
"What the-" he began, but he knew what. His craft, the envelope-pushing system of aces, had reverted to safe mode.
The Situations Room, Imperial Super Star Destroyer Disparager
The insurgent skip-rays vaporized off the tactical map. Blister swallowed this new information very well.
"I can see this partnership working, after all," he said cheerfully. Perhaps Guri's rapid response to a crisis felt very refreshing. Seeing it, Web ventured into new territory with Blister; good humor.
"Whoa, Sir, it looks as if you've chewed sweetbacca for the first time," he said warmly.
"Gum. Thanks for the advice, Web, you've shown me how to get off these cigarras, and now I think I have a substitute," Blister replied, as if enlightened. He shook off that thought abruptly, and jumped back into his commander's chair. "About the remaining bombers, have them flank the Disparager as we spear the enemy formation with our Star Destroyer, at full sub-light speed, and have the Helmsman roll to starboard on my command."
"It shall be done, Sir," Webber said thoughtfully, taken aback. I've always taken him for a rash old man, willing to sacrifice Star Fighter Command resources as of they come from the Emperor's personal credit well. But now, he's being responsible with other people's TIE-bombers.
Another thought came to Web, "It shall be done." "It shall be done." "It shall be done." He absently walked to the other side of the bridge to direct the Helmsman.
Sled One
Traee couldn't help but laugh. Lightly, anyway. He caught himself cursing the only category that the New Republic fighters had over the TIE-Defender- storage capacity.
"Why would I carry equipment especially designed for countering the takeover of the flight controls after an internal attack? There is nothing normal about any of this. If I didn't know better-" The comm crackled, disrupting Traee's muttering.
"Heeeellloooo!"
His eyes flashed in proud manner only known to the most elite solders, after being right about the battlespace once more.
"Guri, how did you do that?" Demanded he, always the ponderer.
"A simple long-range diagnostic command was about all I could route your way through this jamming, or rather, the powerful yet largely over-looked docking command tower, until I reached you with my line-of-sight comm," she explained in a rush, pressing to brief him.
"Listen up. A supporting New Republic task-force is out to tackle the Disparager, and they have real jamming power. We could use some reinforcements. Could you jump to the waiting fleet?"
Traee affirmed, and signed off, but Guri added, "I'll take your squadron to the flagship for rearmament. See you in twenty." The Defender rushed out solo.
The Situations Room, Imperial Super Star Destroyer Disparager
"They were sloppy, Web, revoltingly sloppy. It's a good thing we were our soul ship operating the maneuver, or else we would have had a disaster," Blister mouthed venomously, dissatisfied with choice cogs in the fleet. "Yet it's working. Now many more defensive batteries are covering the bombers whom now need not worry about snub-fighters, beings now locked out by an attack pattern we have drilled recently." He brightened, watching the TIEs cross the channel, the thin space between him and the rebel space ships.
"See that, Web, one stroke and they're crippled. Score one for the Empire," he boasted, as the Mon Calamari ships blossomed blue, and the gray TIE seeds buzzed out 270 different ways. "Now some cleanup work and the Corvettes," he smiled smugly, ever proud of his swift victory. "Now the bombers will form up, come home, and stay safe. I wouldn't want to blunt the tool just yet. Not all the rebels are here, after all."