Star Wars: Return of the Sith
12: The Power of Justice
By Nanaki
Above Kuat
"Arfive, target the closest ten fighters with Burstliners." Jerin calmly instructed his astromech as he raced the Justice straight for the Star Destroyer's bridge. Ten green circles instantly appeared on the cockpit's tactical displays, quickly turning red as Arfive achieved target lock. While this was happening, Jerin poured fire from his quad laser batteries at the bridge, watching it disappear with no apparent effect. As he had suspected, the Star Destroyer was sporting some powerful deflector shields. Even so, a broad grin appeared on Jerin's face as ten wide, but fairly squat missiles streaked forward in rapid-fire succession. The enemy fighters instantly began to take evasive action. However, once the missiles had cleared about two thirds of the distance to their targets, the nose popped off and five smaller missiles emerged from the body of each one.
The enemy fighter pilots were juking desperately now, but all over the place, wings, engines, and cockpits vanished into spherical explosions. On top of that, several pilots managed to dodge the missiles, only to crash into the fighters nearest to them. Jerin couldn't help but let out a laugh of triumph as they shot past the bridge of the Star Destroyer and he began to bring the ship around. "Arfive, prepare to target the body of the ship with two Supernovas."
Arfive whistled a short question: 'Not the bridge?'
"Not the bridge." Jerin agreed. Much as he would have liked to at the moment, he couldn't afford to kill Korgo. Jerin planned on having a huge bounty put on his head by a member of Clan Desilijic pretty soon, so he couldn't afford to have Clan Besadii gunning for him too. Two Supernova missiles should destroy the mass shadow generator and then some, allowing him to get away while leaving the bridge largely intact. Jerin put his ship into a wide semi-circle around the Star Destroyer, coming out of it to face the capital ship again. The fact that its turbolaser batteries hadn't opened up was a pretty clear sign that Korgo didn't have enough men on board to operate them. "Arfive, fire the Supernovas." Jerin nodded.
Two very large missiles streaked out of the two launchers closest to the main body of the Justice, noticeably sleeker than the Burstliners had been. Their thrusters were clearly visible until they closed to within a few hundred meters of the Star Destroyer, where they simply disappeared. "Spast!" Jerin cursed, instantly banking off to the side.
"What happened?" Tenn wondered.
"He's got dovin basals on board." Jerin explained. Dovin basals were Yuuzhan Vong-bred creatures that had an innate control over gravity. So much so that they could even create singularities that swallowed matter and energy alike.
"But... I thought their use by non-Yuuzhan Vong was strictly forbidden." Tenn frowned.
"It is." Jerin nodded. "However, Hutts aren't overly concerned about following the same rules that the rest of the galaxy does." Now he sent the ship into an elaborate spin as the remaining starfighers all opened up on him at once. "But that's fine. Neither am I. Arfive, launch another round of Burstliners, then prepare to deploy sonic charges."
"Sonic charges?" Tenn gasped. "Aren't they just as likely to blow us up as anything else?"
"Statistically speaking... yes." Jerin admitted. "It'll be all right!" He assured her. "I've used them before, it'll get the fighters to keep their distance, and I've got the Force!" Risking a quick glance to the right, he saw that she still didn't look convinced. Then again, what did he care what Tenn thought? "I know what I'm doing." He declared, watching the second wave of Burstliners disable or destroy at least a dozen fighters.
"Danar, do you have any idea what you're doing?" Lucia's voice filled the cockpit once more.
"I'm a little busy!" Jerin snapped back, his eyes fixed on Arfive's projected blast radius for the first sonic charge.
"You're supposed to be running away now!" Lucia sounded like she was talking to a three year old. "In case you haven't noticed, you're a single frigate against an entire task force, PLUS you're carrying civilians!"
"Um... Lucia, he's about to deploy several sonic charges." Tenn informed her calmly. "And I don't think he's in the mood to give you a heads up."
Jerin let a smile creep onto his face at the straightforward way Tenn had delivered that news to Lucia. He blasted straight at the pointed nose of the Star Destroyer, knowing that the few fighters able to get a shot at him in time wouldn't be able to stop him. "Arfive, deploy three sonic charges." Jerin nodded. The first released just as the Justice started skimming over the dorsal surface of the Star Destroyer. It wasn't a terribly quick explosion, but by the time the second charge had deployed, the first had completely severed the first fifty feet of the ship behind the nose. The destructive line of the second charge impacted perpendicular to the dorsal line, creating an ugly dent with a diameter nearly a third of the ship. An unhealthy amount of the capital ship's atmosphere bled into space as the third charge went off, right at the base of the command tower. As Jerin had suspected, the deflector shields there were powerful enough to keep the bridge from sustaining any physical damage, but the shields themselves had to be low on power after that.
"I'm a single, deadly frigate against a poorly organized, Hutt task force." Jerin informed Lucia as the Justice sped into open space behind the Star Destroyer. "Let's keep that in mind, shall we?" Jerin noticed a few more laser cannon blasts heading his way, and glanced up at the displays for his own deflector shields. They were holding steady at seventy percent. With a smile on his face, he whipped the ship around, sending it right back at the bridge, pouring blasts from his quad lasers at it. He needed to exhaust the dovin basals before he launched more Supernovas, or they'd just be wasted.
Now the enemy fighters were lining up behind Jerin for an unobstructed shot, and Jerin spun into a downward spiral that took him below the belly of the Star Destroyer. Jerin frowned as the capital ship's hangar bay doors began to open up as he shot past them. The Justice had barely cleared the now-blunt nose of the ship when fresh wings of starfighters began to swarm out of the bay. "So, he was holding something back, was he?" Jerin raised an eyebrow. "Oh well, it doesn't matter. Arfive, prepare to launch another ten Burstliners at the newly deployed fighters."
Arfive's response quickly appeared on Jerin's displays: 'There are only four Burstliners remaining.'
"What?" Jerin was genuinely confused. "How is that possible? I bought enough when we were at Anaxes to take our stock up to one hundred!" Even as Jerin was protesting, coordinated fire from the new starfighters began to rock the ship, which Jerin quickly threw into a dizzying array of evasive actions.
Arfive quickly tweedled what sounded like a scolding response, and the displays revealed that indeed it was: 'You were PLANNING to buy more at Anaxes, but instead you went out drinking, only to stumble back at 0343 local time and pass out halfway up the boarding ramp.'
"Oh." Jerin uttered quietly as he tried to access those very fuzzy memories. "Oh hell."
'Should I deploy the S-thread boosters?' Arfive asked again.
"Prep them for launch," Jerin nodded, "But don't deploy them yet. NOW it's getting interesting." He observed as he brought the ship around yet again, heading for the Star Destroyer's bridge once more. "Arfive, would physically severing the bridge from the rest of the ship disable the mass shadow generator?"
Arfive let out a quiet, uncertain whistle: 'Possibly.'
"Then let's give it a shot. Prep the demolition chain." Jerin's grip on his controls tightened. He was going to have to slow down a lot to do this accurately, which would give the enemy fighters an easy target. As the Justice raced toward the base of the bridge tower, Jerin fired the reverse thrusters, hard. "Fire the chain!" An interlocked series of powerful explosives shot from the rear of the Justice, one end attaching to the Star Destroyer, while the other was still in Jerin's ship. Jerin wound his way around the base of the bridge tower, slowly but precisely. Enemy fire slammed into his shields continuously, and the enemy fighters were closing in very quickly. Finally, the other end of the demolition chain detached from the Justice, and Jerin shoved the throttles to their stops, sending his ship rocketing away from the Star Destroyer.
Finally, several dovin basal-generated singularities appeared at various points along the demolition chain. However, this only succeeded in detonating the chain prematurely, since any segment of the chain that was severed from either of the detonators on the ends went off instantly. Next, the bridge and much of the body of the Star Destroyer disappeared in an enormous, blinding flash. Since the Justice hadn't had as much time to get away as Jerin had expected, it was sent tumbling end over end several times before Jerin could right it. Thankfully, the deflector shields and inertial dampers held, so only those in the cockpit were aware of the close call. Also thankfully, the explosion had temporarily distracted the enemy fighters, all of which appeared to have lost their target lock on the Justice during the blast.
Even so, Jerin cringed at Arfive's next series of whistles: 'Deflector shields are now at twelve percent.'
"Never mind that!" Jerin snapped. "Did we disable the mass shadow generator?"
Arfive let out a mournful tweet: 'Negative. The generator is still functional.'
Jerin swung the ship around to see that the bridge tower had been separated from the rest of the blackened Star Destroyer, but that the main wedge of the capital ship was still largely intact. Then, Korgo's voice could be heard over the fuzzy comm. "Ah, it was a good try my boy. It might have even worked if I had been stupid enough to be on the bridge. But, now it's time for you to surrender."
"Raagh!" Jerin roared as he sent the Justice hurtling at the Star Destroyer once more, opening up with every energy weapon he had on board as he did. Unfortunately, more dovin basal singularities swallowed the vast majority of the bolts. Even more unfortunate was the rain of starfighter bolts that slammed into his own ship while he was charging forward.
Arfive let out a very alarmed whistle: 'Deflector shields are at three percent!'
"Kark it all!" Jerin slammed his fist down on his console, accidentally turning on the air conditioning and dimming the lighting throughout the ship. As he raced above the Star Destroyer yet again, he could do nothing but throw the ship into new evasive patterns. He slowly became aware that Lucia's Stealth-X had jumped into the fray, trying to keep the attention of the enemy fighers on her and away from him. Jerin's first thought was to use this opportunity for another attack run, but then the small part of his brain that was actually responsible finally stepped in. 'Hey, you're thinking with your pride, not your wits!' He yelled at himself. 'If you want to get yourself killed, do it when you don't have innocent people on board!'
Jerin let out a long sigh, then, "Arfive, can a stable hyperlane be created with just one S-thread booster?" Jerin hadn't been aware that the other three in the cockpit had been holding their breath, until they all exhaled at once.
Arfive's tweedled response somehow sounded relieved as well: 'Yes, but it won't be very long. It probably won't even get us past the system's heliopause.'
"That'll be enough." Jerin shrugged. "Just do the calculations for our first real hyperspace jump as fast as you can when we revert."
"Wait a minute..." Tenn frowned at Jerin. "You have S-thread boosters on board? Why didn't you use them right at the start?"
"Deploy it now." Jerin told Arfive. Then he answered Tenn as he began flipping several switches on his console. "Because I was confident that I could get away without them, and because each one is more expensive than the entire ship."
"But, if it's a matter of life and death..." Tenn shook her head slowly. "It seems like a foolish risk to take."
Jerin simply shrugged. "I never claimed that I wasn't a fool." At that, the cockpit windows were surrounded by the swirling colors of hyperspace, but just for a fraction of a second. Even Jerin would have wondered if he'd imagined it, except that the light of Kuat's sun behind them had dimmed quite a bit, so that now it was barely brighter than several other nearby stars. "All right Arfive, get us out of here for real." Jerin ordered.
'Where to?' Arfive whistled quietly.
"Rimward." Jerin answered simply. "But keep us off the Kuat Trade Spine proper for the first ten light years, at least. Just point us in the same general direction."
'Even by your standards, those were some vague instructions.' Arfive observed.
"I'll leave the details to your impeccable judgment." Jerin shrugged.
"Why rimward?" Tenn wondered.
"If Korgo has reinforcements in the area, they're much more likely to be deployed to prevent us from heading back to the Core, than to prevent us from heading out to the rim." Jerin explained. "Besides, I don't think it'd be safe to drop the girls off on Coruscant for the immediate future. Not now that I know Korgo wants to get his hands on them." Jerin glanced out of the corner of his eye to find that Tenn was staring at him again. "What?"
"How can someone be so smart and yet so stupid at the same time?" She asked bluntly.
"I'm Mandalorian." Jerin answered as if that was supposed to explain everything. "Ready Arfive?" The astromech chirped an affirmative. "Light speed now!" The stars ahead stretched into long lines of light, indicating that the upcoming jump was more than a short hop, then the Justice disappeared into the otherwordly colors of hyperspace.
"Whew!" Denan stretched out in his cramped seat. "Now that we've gotten away, I think it's safe to say, that was awesome!"
"It was NOT!" Tenn instantly declared. "That was a perfect example of why Dathomir and the Hapan Cluster are ruled by women."
"I hate to break it to you, but any self-respecting Mando woman would have done the same thing I did." Jerin smiled, apparently not offended in the least.
"And Mandalorians are just crazy no matter how you look at it." Tenn folded her arms.
Joona's still rapidly beating heart was inclined to agree with Tenn, but she couldn't help admiring the way Jerin didn't take any crap from anyone. The way he wouldn't let anyone tell him what to do, even when it probably would have been smarter if he did. It also hadn't escaped her notice that Jerin's grudge was against Gadran, and so he had no personal reason not to turn the girls over to Korgo. Yet he hadn't, and had been infuriated by the very prospect. Joona suspected that Jerin Danar was a more complicated person than Tenn was giving him credit for...
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"Korgo, if you want any of your fighter pilots to still be alive more than two minutes from now, you'd better order them to stand down!" Lucia shouted. Her astromech, a state of the art R24 unit nicknamed "Sparkster" for no reason anyone was aware of, whistled an imperious agreement. She had once again felt Tenn's presence in the Force disappear from the area, and once again found that it did nothing to improve her mood.
"Stand down, all of you!" Korgo ordered sharply, and the motley collection of fighters began to circle back toward the battered Star Destroyer. "Please forgive them, Master Jedi." Korgo switched to a smoother, albeit insultingly insincere, tone of voice. "Their loyalty to me is absolute. They were merely insuring my safety, not trying to take revenge for their comrades that you shot down."
"I'm sure." Lucia rolled her eyes. "Now Korgo, give me one good reason why I shouldn't arrest the lot of you."
"I was under the impression that a prerequisite for an arrest was that a crime had been committed." Korgo stated reasonably. "I'm sure this is true even in the Jedi Order."
"It is." Lucia was starting to see where he was going with this, and already starting to get mad.
"May I inquire as to what crime my forces have committed?" Korgo sounded even more reasonable than before. Downright friendly, in fact.
"Well, in addition to possessing a capital ship that's classified as for military use only, you were doing your best to destroy a ship full of innocent civilians. How's that for starters?" Lucia drummed her fingers on her console.
"I'm afraid you're mistaken on both counts, Master Jedi." Korgo responded calmly. "The Victory Class Star Destroyer is only prohibited from civilian use if it has operational offensive weapons, which mine does not." Lucia was sure that his turbolasers were only non-operational in a very technical way, but he probably had her on that one. "Second, I was not attempting to destroy the ship in question, but to capture it. I'm familiar with the capabilities of Jerin Danar's ship, as well as Danar himself, and I needed him to exhaust his ammunition before I could safely lock onto his ship with a tractor beam."
Lucia struggled to supress a laugh. 'Right. He would have killed you if you didn't have dovin basals on board.' Lucia thought, but didn't say anything out loud right away. "And what would be your motivation for capturing him, I wonder?"
"I'm afraid contractual obligations keep me from answering you fully. However, it's partly due to my concern as a citizen of the Republic." Korgo tried to sound concerned, and didn't succeed. "As you're probably aware, I AM a legalized citizen of the Republic, unlike most of my fellow Hutts. Danar's rogue actions at Brentaal and now here cannot be tolerated."
Lucia let out a world-weary sigh. "If that's the way you want to spin it, there's not much I can do to stop you. We both know that you can afford a way better lawyer than the Jedi if I try. However, I advise you to leave such matters to the proper authorities in the future."
"Of course. I never meant to cause any inconvenience to the Jedi." Korgo stated.
"Of course. That was just a side benefit." Lucia smirked. "Korgo, I have to tell you in all honesty, I find your severe stretching of the truth to be quite irritating. Irritation can lead to anger. And it's not wise to anger a Jedi, because if you anger us TOO much, then we won't be Jedi anymore."
"I take your meaning." Korgo said quickly.
"Do you? Then see you take it to heart." Lucia said icily, knowing he wouldn't. "But I don't have any more time to argue with you." With that, she blasted her Stealth-X back toward Kuat, reaching out in the Force to try to sense exactly what was happening on the orbital platforms. 'Dirk, you should have been back a long time ago! What's going on?'
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"I think I used up all my good luck and all my bad luck in the same fall." - Gerrard Capashen, Magic: the Gathering - Tempest
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(Nanaki's note: The demolition chain is a piece of technology I borrowed from Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory. However, any technology that exists in the Gundam universe would easily be doable in the Star Wars universe, even without Minovsky particles. Come to think of it, why DON'T Sith Lords fly around wreaking havoc in fifty foot tall robots? Hmm... Ideas are occuring here. On another note, "Mournful Tweet" would be a great name for a band.)