Chapter Five
As the Wing Commander of General Bel Iblis' fighter group, Wedge normally rated a suite aboard the flagship. Space was always a luxury aboard a warship, but the General's tabs he had finally allowed Admiral Ackbar to pin to his chest came with some recompense (even with the added flimsiwork). His quarters on Orthavan boasted a full-sized refresher with a real shower, a living room with space for several guests to fit comfortably around a table, and a real, full-sized bed in a separate chamber. After so many years stuffed into bunkrooms with other pilots, his quarters on Orthavan sometimes felt spacious and quiet to the point of absurdity. When it got too quiet on nightwatch Wedge almost missed being able to hear Hobbie snoring. Almost.
Unfortunately, Wedge's quarters on the Ession Strike were more cramped than what he had aboard Orthavan. Originally Warlord Zsinj's Night Caller, while the Strike had received a new coat of paint and furnishings and thankfully felt much homier than the last time Wedge had served aboard her, the corvette was still much smaller than a Star Cruiser. Captain Tabanne had offered Wedge the ship's captain's quarters when Rogue Squadron had been moved from Orthavan to Ession Strike for the Hishyim operation, but Wedge wasn't about to put Atril out of her stateroom and refuge for the sake of temporary comfort. So he crammed back into pilots' quarters with a rack best described as a cot and a desk that folded into the wall. The refreshers, of course, were communal at the end of the hall. It felt like home, but his back was starting to complain and he swore the quarters had shrunk since he was last aboard with the Wraiths.
It would only be a few more days, he thought to himself, reviewing the datapad that Tycho had sent over for his evaluation with a sigh. Then the Rogues would transfer back to Orthavan and he and General Bel Iblis and the fleet's other strategists would get together with their intelligence operatives and decide how best to move on Ukio. With the Imperial frontier base on Hishyim in Republic hands, Bel Iblis now had the perfect staging point for an attack on the agri-world. And he'd have more restful sleep.
Wedge reviewed the briefing documents a second time and frowned. Rogriss had picked up six of Thrawn's best Star Destroyers, adding his own Agonizer to the mix. That gave Ukio a strong defensive presence that would cost Fleet heavily if they went in directly. Those ships and their crews, especially Thrawn's former flagship Chimaera, had proved their mettle time and again. And they were probably the least difficult problem the New Republic had to face; Thrawn had managed to capture Ukio with its planetary defenses intact, including its extremely formidable planetary shield. It wasn't enough to just recapture Ukio, Wedge knew, they needed to take the world with a minimum of collateral damage.
Will the Imperials burn the world to keep its farms out of New Republic hands? Can we knock them off balance and guarantee a peaceful withdrawal, come at them sideways somehow?
Wedge rubbed his lip. Thorny strategic problems grated, but he'd had enough years of command to know when to muddle through and when to come back to a problem later with a fresh mind. He put the briefing notes down and paged his desk holo-display over through happy landings and parties to something more recent. It was a moment captured candidly by Mirax, of him dancing with Iella after they'd taken down Isard for the last time. The image coruscated as they whirled, painting her golden hair and deep brown eyes in shades of blue, a satisfied smile on her face contrasting with the barely-restrained idiot's grin on his, phasing into fuzz as the sequence repeated itself ad infinitum.
Iella had been incommunicado for two weeks. When they started seeing each other a few months ago, they both knew contact would be spotty at times. After all, he was the squadron commander of the New Republic's premiere starfighter squadron, and she one of Airen Cracken's proteges. Still, the uncertainty gnawed at him as he ruefully observed that his concern for her was no less than he'd inflicted on his own friends over the years. Certainly, whatever it was Iella was up to, it wasn't as dangerous as flying against a Death Star!
His comm chimed, and Wedge flicked it on, welcoming the distraction. "Antilles."
"General," said the voice of the Ession Strike's Bothan communications officer. "There's a HoloNet message for you, but we're unable to trace it back to its source." The Bothan's voice was dark with suspicion. "It's NRI sealed and encrypted for your retinal scan only, sir."
Wedge stood. "I'll be right there." He made the trip to the ship's secure communications station in record time, sealing the door behind him. Then he offered the computer his retina and waited.
A more complex holocomm would have permitted the caller to appear as a full hologram, but Ession Strike's holocomm was rudimentary and projected a two-dimensional face on a screen. Wedge's heart sank as the image resolved as he schooled his expression into something more professional. The face who appeared was indeed from Intelligence, but it wasn't the face Wedge had been hoping for.
"General Antilles," said General Airen Cracken, head of New Republic Intelligence, Iella's boss, and somewhat mercurial ally over the years. "I understand you're aboard Ession Strike."
Wedge's fear subsided a bit when Cracken's expression registered. For a heartbeat Wedge had thought that Cracken was calling to tell him that Iella had been captured or lost or was missing, but the General was not wearing the iron-faced sympathy that such a call demanded. But if Cracken wasn't calling about Iella, then he was calling about something else. Wedge's heart sank all over again.
"We're patrolling Hishyim." Wedge's voice was flat. "What is it you want, General?"
Cracken took a breath. "An NRI facility in Albrion sector has just gone dark. We received what might have been the beginning of a distress call, but the message was cut off almost instantly. All subsequent attempts to communicate with the facility have failed. I want you to go check it out."
Wedge stiffened. "General, I'm attached to General Bel Iblis's task force as part of the—"
"Yes, I know that. But this is of vital importance. The facility serves as a prison for dangerous people, people with skills that are useful to NRI but who cannot be allowed to operate freely. You are close enough to get there in a matter of hours; anyone else I might send would take days." Cracken offered a weak nod. "I will contact General Bel Iblis and make him aware of your redeployment. I've sent the necessary information for the hyperspace calculations to Ession Strike, as well as the procedures required for keeping the planet's location strictly confidential."
Wedge crossed his arms, his expression hardening. "You want me to take my people into a potential combat situation without knowing anything about that situation? Allied strength, enemy strength, system geography, planetary geography? I know better than most how dangerous it is to accept a mission without proper reconnaissance. We just kicked the crap out of two Star Destroyers because we knew things they didn't think we knew."
Cracken watched him, the image of his face blurring with static from the poor holocomm connection. "All right," he relented. "I'll forward you everything I have, but you tell your people that this information is classified and that classification is to be respected, understood? Tell Horn twice."
"We still won't know what attacked the facility," Wedge pointed out. "We might end up coming out of hyperspace in the teeth of an Imperial task force."
"I'm not expecting you to take any unnecessary risks. Get in, find out what's going on, do what you can, and get out. Clear?" Cracken took a breath. "We need this facility. I know I'm asking a lot, but you always deliver. If you do this for me, Wedge, I'll owe you one."
Wedge's eyebrows rose, a bit of the gunrunner he used to be coming to the fore. "You'll owe me one?"
"That's right," Cracken confirmed. "One favor."
Wedge didn't like it. He didn't like it at all. But he knew Cracken. "Tell me one thing," he said. "If Pash were still flying with the Rogues, would you still be sending us?"
Cracken's green eyes flashed with anger. "You know better than to ask me that, Wedge," he growled.
Airen Cracken had never been shy about sending his son Pash into danger. Wedge and Pash had been partners during the New Republic operations to capture Coruscant. They'd flown together against a Super Star Destroyer. Wedge had once sent Pash into a raging thunderstorm flying an antique Z-95. It wasn't a fair question to ask the General, but it was the only way Wedge had to be sure that Airen wasn't sending him and his pilots and the crew of Ession Strike into a death trap. The righteous indignation in Cracken's eyes bore no sign of a guilty conscience. That was good.
"One favor," Wedge confirmed. "To be reclaimed at a time and place of my choosing. We're en route as of now." He cut the holocomm connection before Cracken could add any new requests, took a last fond look at Iella's image, and turned to recover his flight suit before preparing to kick tired, shocky pilots and crew into gear.
The hyperspace voyage was brief, and Wedge made sure his pilots got some stims from medical before they all strapped back into their snubfighters. Ession Strike's caf wasn't the best in the fleet, but it wasn't anywhere near as bad as what they'd had to work with on Hoth. "I don't like this," Atril's voice said in Wedge's ear over the command-level comm channel. "I pulled all the ready munitions we have from our torpedo lockers to re-equip your fighters, but the close quarters is making it difficult to rearm on short notice. Did General Cracken say anything else?"
Wedge checked his X-wing's systems. Shields, weapons, engines all in the green, but Wedge only had four proton torpedoes. It would have to do. "Gate, do another full system check on us, then pull systems reports from the squadron's other astromechs. Highlight any issues that might hinder combat performance." His astromech whistled an acknowledgement, then Wedge keyed in his own com. "The General and I had only a short conversation. You've looked at the intel he sent us, what kind of force would be required to take out the base defenses?"
There was silence on the other end of the comm as Atril considered the question. Gate whistled, a sound that Wedge knew from experience meant task complete, and the summary of information on the other Rogues appeared on Wedge's HUD. He flicked through it. "Rogue Four, report the specifics of your weapons malfunction," he ordered over the squadron frequency.
"If something can go wrong, something does go wrong," Hobbie's voice came back typically dour. "My number three laser cannon is operating at fifty percent after our last engagement. I think it's an issue with the flashback suppressor, but my astromech thinks it's a problem with the tibanna gas injector." There was a confirming warble from Hobbie's astromech. "If I'm right it would be worse."
"If it's the flashback suppressor, the cannon might blow up when you try to fire it," Wedge pointed out.
"I know. I'm having the techs disable it. I'll run with three cannons instead of four." Hobbie sighed. "It's certainly not the first time I've had to make do with a less-than-optimal loadout." The was a muttering about proton torpedoes, and then Hobbie cut the com.
"I wish we knew more about where we were headed," Corran's voice came over the squadron comm, echoing Atril's earlier question. "I don't like flying blind into NRI messes."
"I don't like flying blind into anything," added Rogue Twelve, her voice equally aggrieved.
Atril's voice cut into the conversation over her private link to Wedge. "So, the prison defense schematic that Cracken sent suggests it is both formidably defended and vulnerable." Her voice was calm and distant, focused on the information in front of her. "It relies heavily on droids to man both the starfighter defenses—it looks like they've got old Clone Wars vintage droid fighters deployed here, which can be unreliable—and the planetary guns. They probably could all be disabled with a bombardment, but that depends on how powerful the prison's shields are, and this isn't detailed enough to give me a firm spec on those. But a bombardment only makes sense if you're there to kill the prisoners; it would be hard to knock out the generator without also flattening the rest of the facility."
"So, any attack would benefit from precision rather than brute force?" Wedge asked. In the background, the Rogues were still chattering about their opinions on the mission; he tuned them out for the moment.
"That's how I would do it," Atril responded. "We could probably do it with Strike and the Rogues, but you really want a ground element to knock out the shield generators from the inside. I think you can get a shuttle in under the shield umbrella with some deft flying."
"Makes sense," Wedge replied. "Well, let's come out of hyperspace far enough out to take a look, then we can move in slowly once we know what we're dealing with."
"Confirmed," Atril replied confidently. "Five minutes until I bring us out of hyperspace. Are you going to launch as soon as we arrive?"
"No. We're better off hidden in the corvette until we know what we're doing. Best to keep at least one surprise in reserve." He flicked his comm back to the squadron channel. "Quiet," he ordered, and the debate subsided. "We'll be arriving in five minutes. We're coming out of hyperspace far enough out that we should see any threats before they hit us, then we can move in to deal with whatever it is we find. If we're badly outgunned we'll hop back out and tell Cracken we're sorry but Rogue Squadron is no longer in the business of suicide missions."
There was an echo of acknowledgements from his pilots. Wedge watched the timer count down slowly, feeling the familiar tension that always arrived before a battle. He just wished he knew what they were about to face.
"Thirty seconds to realspace," Ession Strike's communications officer said over the squadron comm.
"Here we go," Rogue Five's voice murmured, then abruptly brightened. "Hey Boss, think it'll be a platoon of rampaging pirate Ewoks?"
Wedge laughed, shaking his head. "Gate, remind me to give Wes kitchen duty when we get back to Orthavan." But he could feel the tension lift, and not for the first time was glad that years of war had burnished away Janson's sense of humor to something only mildly insufferable most of the time.
Ession Strike came out of hyperspace well outside of the planetary gravity well, and on schedule—which meant at the very least no Interdictor cruiser lying in wait. That first concern relieved, Captain Tabanne turned towards the display as it started to update. The planet didn't have a name in the data provided by Cracken, but it was a mountainous rock, dry and cold and generally unpleasant. Three rocky moons circled it, and the ruined debris of a fourth moon scattered around them all, kicking up more rocks as it impacted the moons.
"[What a mess]," her sensor officer muttered.
"Yeah," Atril murmured. Any second now the ship's sensors would update the display again…
Her heart fell. There it was. She keyed in the comm and started to speak, but paused as the display updated yet again… maybe it wasn't quite as bad as it had first seemed. "General Antilles, we've got scanners on the base. One Imperial-II and what looks like two or three squadrons of TIEs. CIC isn't sure but best guess is a mix of Interceptors and Defenders. They're engaged with the automated base defenses."
Wedge's voice came back tense. "How are the defenses doing?"
"They're losing, but the Imperials aren't completely unscathed." She tapped, zooming. "The Star Destroyer is named Invidious."
"Never heard of it," Wedge replied. "It's not part of Rogriss' fleet, and as far as I know there are no other Imperial capital ships in Albrion sector. A warlord maybe?"
"Could be. The Destroyer is showing signs of battle damage," Atril said. "In fact, its starboard shields look a little wobbly." One of the red dots signifying a TIE vanished from the display. "And the droid fighters just got another kill." She watched the display, considering the options. "What do we do, General?"
Wedge was trying to answer that question himself. He was the General, and this was his operation. That made their next move his call. Damn Cracken anyway, who was so important that NRI had needed a secret prison on this rock just to hold them?
"Boss, Four," Hobbie's voice was as excited as Wedge could remember hearing it. "I have an idea."
Fliry Vorru, formerly Moff of Corellia, found being on the bridge of a Star Destroyer again to be a disorienting experience. Wearing the uniform of an Imperial Moff—equal in rank to the uniform worn by 'Admiral' Tavira—was familiar, but odd, like he'd stepped into the past. But he could afford to show no weakness—not to Tavira, and not to her crew. These men and women (and aliens) were not the loyal servants of the Empire of old; they were wolves, their teeth hidden behind Imperial uniforms worn just short of regulation crispness. They would, he knew, happily devour him and suck the marrow from his bones if they thought it the right time… and they would just as happily let him fatten up, regain some of the wealth and power he had lost, and then devour him, like a Suloni variform cattle farmer.
It was important to have teeth of his own, complete with fangs to flash at anyone who got too eager for the meal.
"We've lost five more TIEs, Admiral," said one of the officers standing on the Invidious' command walkway. "Blade, Saber, and Pike Squadrons report the enemy droid fighters are competent combatants, and they outnumber our TIEs." He scowled at his display. "All the metallic content in orbit is making sensors extremely unreliable."
Tavira's hands were folded behind her back as she watched the display. The number of starfighters engaged with Invidious' squadrons of uglies. Tavira insisted on calling them TIE Advanced, Vorru had learned, but they were not from the Sienar line of snubfighters. Essentially an attempt to cobble together a more powerful snubfighter in the mode of the TIE Defender out of TIE Interceptor parts, the "clutch" starfighter was an impressive craft, if somewhat finicky. "The pilots can consider this exercise an opportunity for advancement," Tavira said, watching the engagement out of her forward bridge window. "Those who survive will receive promotions. Those who do not will be replaced. Captain Nive has plenty of candidates for promotion to our starfighter squadrons garrisoning Kessel."
From below, the prison's planetary guns were still firing. The first time they had spat blue fire from the surface up at Invidious Vorru had winced with concern, but the guns did not possess anywhere near the firepower of the best modern Kuati ground cannons. The only real danger was the persistent flutter in the ship's starboard shields, which was why the ship's port side was angled towards the planet. Down in the starboard crew pit, Vorru could see officers clustered around a station monitoring the faulty shield generator, trying to maintain its power at close to full efficiency.
"Is there any sign of Republic reinforcements?" he asked Tavira. She was one of the few Imperial officers he had ever surpassed in height; her petite frame was compact even compared to his own small stature. The man standing beside her, the white-masked Tevas-kaar who had so ably cowed Doole and Skynxnex on Kessel, was quite another matter, beating both of them in the height department by at least half a meter.
"Is there any sign of Republic reinforcements?" she echoed, looking at her sensor officer.
The man shook his head. "Not yet, Admiral. I believe we managed to prevent any distress signals from escaping with our jamming."
Tavira offered Vorru an alarmingly charming smile, one that under other circumstances would have absolutely demanded a smile from him in return. He reminded himself that this woman was chief among the wolves and resisted the impulse. "See, Moff Vorru, as I said, my crew is most competent. We have nullified their call for help, we are about to finish off their starfighter defenses, and once that is done we will land our ground forces and seize the prison."
The three clutch squadrons were indeed about finished with the four squadrons of antique droid starfighters. Droid starfighters had certain advantages, namely not requiring training before they could be put into the field and the small cost of a droid versus a sentient brain, but those same advantages also made them inherently inferior to piloted starfighters. The age of the droid starfighters Cracken had acquired to protect his black site prison—probably the only thing he could acquire without risking the site's secrecy—just compounded their weakness. The thirty-odd clutch starfighters had sustained numerous casualties, but they had inflicted substantially more damage than they had sustained.
"Time to send down the shuttle," Tavira said breezily. She walked to the back of the bridge and opened a wall closet, removing a blaster-resistant vest and sliding it on over her uniform. "Inform the landing force that I will be accompanying them personally," she announced. "Commander Navarian, you have the bridge. Do keep it intact for me."
The youngish man at the Communications station stiffened in surprise. "Y-yes ma'am!"
Vorru leaned towards her as she pulled the blaster vest into place, her pair of heavy blaster pistols hanging conveniently at her sides. "Do you think it's wise to go yourself?" he asked her, quiet enough not to be overheard. He knew better than to be overheard questioning her on her own bridge.
She offered him a wolfish grin. "You and I both know that to earn the loyalty of the men under your command, you must be willing to share the risks they take," she replied. "That goes double for men like these," she inclined her head towards the semi-piratical men and women crewing her bridge, and the clutch snubfighters and their pilots beyond the bridge window. "Don't worry," she said, her voice faux-reassuring. "I'm sure they'll take pity on you, even without me and the Tevas-kaar here to protect you."
Vorru's expression hardened. "I am not as defenseless as you think," he cautioned her. "I did not rise to the heights I did without being able to get my hands dirty."
"That's cute, old man," she replied dismissively. "Tevas-kaar, with me." With that she turned her back on him, leaving him gritting his teeth in annoyance at her disrespect—and at the fact that she was likely correct. The last few years on Kessel had carved away at the last reserves of his strength and patience, and his advancing age meant he might never hone his edge to what it once was.
Well. People had told him that before. He'd just have to prove them wrong, yet again. Vorru strode into the center of the bridge, his back ramrod straight, and stood next to the newly-named acting-captain Navarian.
"When the Admiral is prepared, drop our ground forces at the edge of the prison's perimeter shields," the man was ordering. "Prepare an ion bombardment of the shields to scramble their targeting sensors while the drop ship makes its approach. Tell the clutch pilots that the moment the facility's shields are down, they are to provide any necessary air support to the Admiral."
There was a hum of commotion in the starboard crew pit as the ship's starboard shields once again fluttered, then stabilized. Navarian scowled, then shook his head. "When this is over, we'll need maintenance on the starboard shield generators, but for now it shouldn't matter. The base's fighters have been neutralized and we can protect our starboard shields from incoming fire."
"Perhaps," Vorru agreed. "But it is my experience that all vulnerabilities should be addressed as quickly as possible. You never know what threats may lurk in unexpected places."
Navarian scowled at him, then turned his back and stood in the center of the bridge, looking resplendent and actually being useless. Vorru watched his back, then climbed down the ladder into the starboard crew pit. "I know a little something about Star Destroyers," he said to the surprised crewers, who parted for the Moff's uniform unexpectedly in their midst. "Let's see if I can help."
The Sentinel-class landing craft loaded with Tavira's elite Invidious ground forces, wielding an eclectic mix of preferred weapons and armor. Despite their ragtag appearance the Tevas-kaar knew the men and women in this squad were more dangerous than their haphazard appearance would suggest. In the Imperial Army, the expectation would have been uniform equipment and training, but Invidious no longer carried the Imperial Army. Only a handful of them carried the standard stormtrooper E-11 blaster, and those they did carry featured extensive customization.
The Tevas-kaar didn't carry a blaster at all. "Blasters have their place," his master had told him once. "But if you depend on a blaster, you will see every fight from the perspective of a man armed with a blaster. At a far remove. The consequence of violence is never a thing you should separate yourself from, lest you forget the impact of a violent act."
His lips, covered by the d'oemir bear mask he wore, tightened at the memory. Thinking of his master only ever brought him pain, and he tried to put the memory out of his mind before the other, heavier recollections coursed through him, uncontrolled. He could see them coming; the pain of the heavy footsteps, the heavy breathing, the flash of red, the fear and pain and the horrifying hum of the lightsaber that would end his tutelage. He took a shuddering breath, acutely aware of Tavira beside him, her violet eyes focused on the prison steadily growing beneath them as the shuttle descended.
Blue-white laser fire pounded upwards, slamming uselessly into the Invidious' shields. The Star Destroyer fired back, its own darker blue ion blasts skittering over the prison's shields like a spiderweb, scattering the prison's sensors and allowing the shuttle to descend through the rain of fire without sustaining more than an occasional glancing blast. The prison was built into the craggy side of a mountain, with landing pads that stretched out into a ravine, and held aloft by buttresses and repulsorlifts. There were a half-dozen of them, each large enough to host a lander the size of their Sentinel, but none were occupied now. Support equipment for the droid fighters that Invidious' three squadrons of clutch snubfighters had destroyed revealed what the primary purpose of the platforms had been prior to their arrival.
The air was thick with the acrid stench of heavy turbolaser fire, contrasting with the chill from the elevation. The ravines below the landing pads were hundreds of meters deep, and the prison itself had been built into the side of a mountain. The shuttle circled, descending down into one of those ravines.
"This is going to be tricky!" yelled the shuttle's pilot to Tavira over the pounding thunder of the weapons and the ship's roaring engines.
Tavira pulled out both of her heavy blaster pistols and offered the pilot a broad grin, her white teeth shining. "Do it right the first time, then!" she yelled back. The shuttle dropped into the ravine, under the hemispheric dome of the prison's deflector shields, then tilted its nose up and strained upwards. The inertia drove all of them back, and the Tevas-kaar gripped both the side of the landing craft and Tavira's waist to keep them from sliding with the rest of the ground forces towards the rear of the shuttle. The pilot stared at his controls and the rockface as it flowed past, the shuttle shooting through the gap between the rockface and the shields. Tavira pumped her fist triumphantly as the shuttle popped above one of the landing pads. "Go!" she screamed as the shuttle leveled out, its landing ramp dipping, and three dozen troops charged down the ramp, blasters firing.
Light blaster fire flashed towards the shuttle, deflecting off its heavy shields. Battle droids of the same vintage as the droid starfighters ambled out, blaster rifles held in mechanical hands, firing at the pirates storming the base. One of Tavira's people quickly assembled a tripod for a pre-charged E-Web heavy repeating blaster borrowed from the shuttle's stores and started pounding away, sending huge bolts of green laser fire into the crowd of droids.
Tavira herself walked down the ramp with negligent disregard for her own safety. With a single blaster pistol in each hand she started firing as she approached, trusting the Tevas-kaar to protect her from incoming fire. He used the Force to catch a blaster bolt that had been destined for her chest and dissipated it in his hand, then pulled her down next to the E-Web nest. The heavy repeater continued to roar, the weapon glowing dangerously red as its fire tore through battle droids.
The Tevas-kaar tried to keep Tavira from rising again but she was not so easily deterred. Waving him away with a quick jerk of her head, the pirate warlord stood up and commenced firing, muzzles of her heavy blaster pistols flipping up in each hand and dropping down to their targets as she discharged them in an alternating sequence. One of her shots took a battle droid in the middle of its awkwardly-shaped head, sending the droid smoking to the surface of the landing pad. Tavira took her time, lining up shot after shot, cool as if she was refining her technique on the practice range. Her accuracy was exemplary; her combat style would be suicidal if not for the Tevas-kaar's finely-honed danger sense.
The acrid stench of burning ozone would linger in his mask for days, he thought sourly, again remembering his master's disdain for blasters.
There was a tingling at the back of his neck, his danger sense kicking in, anticipation and demand swirling. His lightsaber flowed into his hand and his thumb double-tapped the weapon's activation stud. The snap-hiss of the blade could be easily heard even over the pounding laser battle, and he swept the blue blade through the air, bouncing a single blaster bolt away from Tavira's head. She didn't duck back, and didn't stop firing as he swept the blade back, deflecting a second bolt away from her shoulder. Both bolts sped away harmlessly, and Tavira laughed with a maniacal lilt as her own blaster fire slammed into droid after droid.
Tavira finally dropped back down, finding new power packs for her depleted blasters, and offered the Tevas-kaar a ferocious grin as she slapped them into place.
But the danger sense tickling his neck hadn't subsided, and her grin faded from his awareness as he stretched out into the Force. Frowning, he let the Force guide his eyes and turned, peering through the mask up at the dagger-shape of the Invidious above them. He flinched as the Star Destroyer's ion fire smeared above them, the hemispheric planetary shields covered in a bright blue web of deflected light, radiating painfully and mildly scorching his vision.
Tavira's comlink buzzed, and she flicked it on. "What is it!" she yelled over the ongoing firefight, her soprano voice cutting through the din. She waved at the man at the E-Web and its pounding fire subsided, the weapon's red glow from the burgeoning overheat subsiding for a moment.
The ship's response was static-filled, the signal only reaching them by reflecting off the canyon under the shielding dome. "-miral . . . vette approa . . . ron of X-wi . . . ordered the TIEs . . . gage . . ."
Tavira twisted around to stare upwards with the Tevas-kaar as the ion cannon fire subsided. They could see the Invidious clearly now—and see the green turbolaser fire that it had begun to send out into space from its vulnerable starboard flank. Using sensory-enhancement techniques his master had taught him, the Tevas-kaar focused his gaze—but it wasn't necessary, as even Tavira could see the flashes of laser fire as the snubfighters surrounding the Invidious engaged one another, punctured by explosions.
And then the sky was rocked as a bright explosion tore through Invidious' starboard flank, and Tavira cursed ferociously. "Invidious! Blast it, Navarian, what in blazes!" She turned and pointed at the Tevas-kaar. "You! Into the facility, now! Take a team, find our target, and get out!" She dropped back down into a more protected location as he hesitated—he really shouldn't leave her alone and vulnerable like this—but her glare let him know she wasn't in the mood for argument. "You're sworn to me, now do as I order!"
His lightsaber ignited, he ran towards the prison, deflecting away blaster fire and carving through two battle droids with ease. In the sky above the sounds of battle continued.