Three updates, final chapter 23 will be up soon! Be sure to read the note at the end of chapter 22. Thanks.
Chapter 20: Endgame, Part 2
Ravan arrived on the bridge of the Executor as the carnage out in space heightened. Fighters flew after each other, exploding here and there into little flashes of light. The big capitol ships were firing upon one another, Ravan could see small mushroom cloud explosions being born on the hull of many star destroyers, and then leaving the universe forever. The enemy super star destroyer was directly facing the Executor and both ships were firing upon one another. It was only a matter of time before one's shields ceased to work.
"What is the situation admiral?" Ravan asked Piett who was standing over a tactical display of the battle on the bridge's holoprojector. Ravan walked straight through it to stand next to Piett, disrupting the particles of light that created the image, and then letting them reform. There were many, many ships, the Executor and other super star destroyer were the most noticeable though.
"We've lost a few ships milord, but aside from TIE fighters the enemy has lost none." Piett stated. "The other superstar destroyer is the major problem. The Executor is evenly matched with it, but its steadily depleting other ships shields with its turbo lasers."
"Are we not doing the same?"
"We do not have a clear shot to any other ship; the communication jam is preventing me from coordinating the attack. They've blocked every frequency except their own which is encrypted and requires a password. We are in trouble.
"I'll go out there, in the new experimental X1 fighter." Ravan said. "Maybe I can even the odds a little with the fighter situation."
"Good luck milord."
XxX
It certainly hadn't taken long, with communications and the HoloNet down most people put two and two together and came up with the idea Coruscant was under attack, and if there were still those unconvinced then the potshot from one of the capitol ships that entered Coruscant's atmosphere and disintegrated the top half of a building in the Imperial district certainly made them think twice. The sun was setting, and chaos was arising. Storm troopers were everywhere, holding every building, TIE fighters patrolled and clashed with enemy TIE's that dared to enter the atmosphere of the shining metropolis.
Vader stood at his huge, laser proof window, gazing up at the darkening sky. One could barely make out tiny dots, that were star destroyers, and two smudges in the twilight sky, small smudges, about as big as a thumbnail, that were the two super star destroyers. Green and red lighting flashed between them, blasts of raw laser energy capable of disintegrating twenty men and leaving nothing but the smell of charred flesh and black ash.
Vader sensed Leia's presence, she glided next to him, like her feet didn't even touch the ground. She wore flowing velvet black robes and her hair down over her shoulders, with a braid going down one side of her head. Her eye lids were painted with dark purple eye shadow, and her fingernails were red.
"Is the battle going well?" Leia asked. Her voice was calm and smooth, but her presence radiated with raw power in the Force.
"I don't know." Vader answered. "If my technicians would hurry up and filter out the static we could look at it from a technical readout. And as soon as Vader finished that sentence a technical image of the battle sprang up on his desk before the throne. Its diameter was as big as that of the throne's circular base. It displayed dozens of star destroyers and hundreds, maybe thousands of gnat sized TIE fighters. Two colossal super star destroyers were in the middle of it, guns blazing and fighting head on.
Vader and Leia both came closer to get a better look, Leia, being a political young woman once was not as familiar with battle as Vader was. As soon as the dark lord took a sweeping gaze of the battle the throne room's temperature dropped five degrees and his presence in the Force exploded with fire and laser.
"What's wrong?" Leia asked.
"We're in a position to lose." Vader replied icily. "Look,"
He ran a gloved finger over the inverted triangular line of star destroyers, with the other super at the helm. The triangle enclosed their guard and outnumbered them by ten, displayed in a small box to one side of the circular readout.
"They've surrounded us. They can simply pick the star destroyers off one by one."
"What do you mean, we can return fire, cant we?"
"Not in all places." Vader swept a gloved hand over the group of their ships. They were in a triangular formation as well, with ships on the outside and inside, the ones on the outside blocking the inside's fire path, and two star destroyers on either side of the Executor were blocking its guns from firing. Their own formation was a death trap.
"What can we do?" Leia asked.
"There is nothing we can do. We simply must wait until all our defenses are depleted and die. The attackers will almost certainly wipe out our space force and when they do nothing will stop them from bombarding the planet."
XxX
The cockpit of the new prototype X1 fighter was quite large and comfortable in Mara's opinion. It had been her experience that standard TIE fighter cockpits were narrow and cramped, another good thing about this X1 was that it had life support. The standard TIE fighter did not, which is why Mara always saw the pilots running around in their suits. The history on that goes back a couple years. The Empire had wanted a space superiority fighter when rumors of the Rebel Alliance began to spread; they wanted a cheap fighter to mass produce as well as one that allowed maximum maneuverability. So the standard TIE fighter was born.
The TIE fighter sacrificed a hyperdrive, cargo bay, and life support systems for maximum maneuverability; however this did make them dependants on bases and star destroyers nearby. Mara started the X1's systems. She heard the engines rumble to life and roll in smoothly to a dull hum. Kallisto and Alecto were in an X1 on either side of her, they did the same.
Mara eased the throttle and yoke and the fighter glided gently out of the hanger and down. She swooped up and above the superstar destroyer.
"Kallisto, Alecto, do you copy?" Mara asked in her comm.
"Sort of." Alecto replied. "The line… full… static."
"Copy that," Mara said. "Keep off comms then."
"Copy…." Kallisto answered. "Now let's kick some…."
Mara twisted the controls one way, and her fighter followed. Familiarizing herself with the controls she managed to shoot down an enemy TIE fighter. Green laser blasts lanced out from the bottom of her cockpit bubble and clipped the TIE's wing, spinning extremely fast it crashed into the black hull of the Knight Hammer. The new targeting system needed work, constantly having to readjust it while dodging incoming fire for her life was more than a bit of a drag.
"Mara!" Alecto's voice yelled through her comm.
"I told you there's no point in talking—"
"Seven… incoming… way."
"What?" Mara asked. She didn't get a reply. Seven what? And she figured it out about five seconds after this thought passed through her head. There was seven enemy TIE's right on her tail. She swung to the left just as they shot, the green blasts missing her bended wings by fractions of an inch. One hit directly into the heavy armor of the ships tail, it shorted out a few circuits, melted wires, though that was no where near as bad of a problem as she was having now. She couldn't keep dodging forever; one of the pilots was bound to be smart enough to hit her.
Back when she had been training as a pilot for the Emperor her wonderful instructor (who had died a day after her training was complete due to drunk flying) had taught her one of his best tricks. It was not simple, and if not executed precisely deadly. Basically she had to pull up sharply, get her ship upside down, fly over the enemies, and come back down behind them. The problem was with pulling up that sharply she could get anything from mild whiplash to a broken neck. She didn't particularly care for either one or anything in between.
Another shot hit the back of the ship. Now, she had to do it now! She pulled the yoke back and her ship did what would be a U turn, but in the air. In the clear cockpit canopy above her, or maybe it was below her now, she could see the enemy ships pass under. She quickly shot the yoke down and her ship followed, when her viewport came in sight of the TIE's tails she stopped and immediately fired. A dozen shots escaped her ship before she let go of the fire button, one hit a TIE directly in the engine exhaust port, the rest lanced passed. Luckily that TIE was close enough to two others that when it exploded it literally melted their wings, sending them down in a fiery crash to smash into the super star destroyer's hull. The remaining four broke off, two went right, and the other two left. The ones that went right exploded. Alecto's X1 flew through their debris. Mara smiled and turned her ship left, shooting down the remaining two.
This was going to be fun.
Alecto stayed side by side with her, Kallisto was nowhere to be seen. Even on radar. Alecto and Mara zoomed through the dogfights, shooting down enemies as they went. The Executor loomed ahead of them, its turbo lasers blazing, firing at Daala's flagship.
"Should we… back?" Alecto asked, interrupted by static. Mara assumed the only reason they could talk at all was because they were right next to one another, close enough they might both need another paint job.
"No!" Mara shouted back.
"Going up against a… star destroyer… suicide!"
"We're not going up against it. I just want a little more action, enemies to shoot and stuff."
XxX
"Lord Ravan! Damn it Lord… come in!" Piett's voice yelled through the wire mesh speaker in Ravan's X1 fighter.
"I read you Piett, and never say damn it Lord Ravan or I'll cut you open like a… bantha waiting to be… cut open for meat and stuff."
Piett ignored Ravan's stupidity, mostly because he was dangerous no matter how dimwitted he could be sometimes, but he also did not have the time to start an argument that could potentially get his neck snapped. Ravan could not cut him open like a bantha because bantha's were so big and furry you needed an electric saw. But perhaps Ravan knew this and that is what he was planning to use. No! Piett had something important to say.
"I read two… X1 fighters… in on you!"
"X1 fighters? Are they friendly? We don't have anymore prototypes."
"Negative Ravan… are hostile… repeat they are hostile units!"
"Damn it! How could the enemy have made the exact same prototype ship we have?"
"They… have stolen them… us."
"Damn it, they're approaching me fast. Ravan out."
Two little blinking dots on the radar screen of Ravan's fighter showed two enemies closing in fast. Each taking one side of him. And then he sensed it.
Mara Jade.
She was in the fighter closing in on his right. He grabbed the controls of the X1 and pushed them to the right, intercepting Mara's path. They were going for a collision, neither he, nor she backed off and the other X1 decided to swoop away. At the last possible moment Ravan squeezed two shots of and pulled up, Mara did the same and pulled down. Both shots missed.
"Nice shot farm boy." Mara's voice taunted in his head.
"Nice to hear you again Mara." Ravan replied. "Don't call me farm boy. I will kill you."
"Not if I kill you first kid."
"You have no heart, you know that."
"If you're making that assessment based on the brief time he shared in my quarters in the palace then you don't know me very well. I have a heart; it just doesn't ache for you."
"Then we have nothing left to talk about."
"Nope, guess not. Now if you'll ignore your pathetic crush for a while he have business to attended to."
"Bring it on red."
Mara didn't reply, both the Emperor's son, and the Emperor's hand pulled up, and swooped back, their ships flying straight at each other upside down, they righted themselves, now only a few dozen feet away but it was Mara who pulled up and flew right over Ravan's fighter, so close that the tips of their wings made contact, producing an earsplitting screech that was left unheard in space.
Before Ravan could react Mara was on his tail, already opening fire. He dodged a few blasts and swooped down towards the Executor's blue-gray hull, the advanced TIE becoming a part of him, under his complete control, he pulled up at the last possible moment, seconds away from a horrible disaster. Skimming the surface of the giant ships he headed for the edge, Mara was hot on his tail.
"What are you going to do farm boy? Fly over the edge and expect me to crash like a stupid TIE pilot, you don't know me very well."
"That's the second time you said that."
"Is it getting to you? Do you want to know me a little better?"
"Stop flirting and just follow me."
"I'm not flirting! I am trying to antagonize you."
"A lot of good that's doing."
"I am going to kill you!"
Ravan didn't answer, he reached the edge of the ship and went down, Mara followed, and then he pulled up sharply and came back down behind Mara. He looked at his targeting computer, she was so close to the crosshairs, so close. Just an inch more… she was in! The targeting computer blinked fast, a hundred times a second telling him to shoot. He did, three times. Two of the laser bolts missed but the last grazed the bottom of her fighter, there was the smallest of explosions and a pop that went unheard, and a neon green liquid began to leak, mixing with a dark brown one. It was her fuel and radioactive sludge that created the laser blast.
"Damn it!" he heard her scream inside his head, he also thought she was probably cursing worse out loud. He looked at the targeting screen again; she was still in the crosshairs. He fired but the shots never hit their mark, Mara promptly stopped in space and Ravan zoomed past her. The oldest trick in the book! Then Mara was on his tail again and she didn't have a second's hesitation of firing. Three shots hit him, one grazed the right wing, the other hit one of the engines, and the last grazed the bottom, hitting the firing chamber of the fighter and causing it to explode. He could not fire again, thankfully Mara could not either. But the explosion in the firing chamber had hit life support. He assumed Mara had the same problem, though hers was probably not as bad.
He had to get to the hanger, he turned to the left and headed for it. Mara followed. In seconds he could see it in sight, he went for it and his ship entered the pressurized atmosphere of the bay. Mara's came seconds after him. He activated the repulsorlifts on his ship and touched down smoothly. He was not going to waste a fraction of a second and there was no way he was going to wait while his cockpit depressurized and the hatch opened. Reaching for his lightsaber he stuck it through the canopy and cut it off. As it came down at him he grabbed it with the Force and pushed, launching the hunk of metal up, and then down onto the floor. Saber still in hand he jumped out of the ship and onto the floor of the hanger. It seemed besides his and Mara's ships there was only a gamma class assault shuttle occupying the hanger.
He looked at Mara's fighter, there was no movement from inside, but he could sense her. Then hundreds of alarms went off in his head, she was about to do something—
Her cockpit window lit up with a flash of green light, followed by the shattering of the viewport and a green laser bolt flew straight at his chest, at the last second he raised his humming saber and deflected the bolt into the floor. Mara came out of the cockpit viewport next. She tossed a sniper rifle to the ground.
"Why the hell did you bring that?" Ravan asked.
"Got to come prepared." Mara replied swinging her hair out of her face and activating her own lightsaber.
"You were expecting to assassinate someone from your cockpit with a sniper rifle."
"I'm not suicidal, I brought it in case a needed to use it. I did. Now its useless. Seems we have to duke this out with a lightsaber fight."
"I've fought you before."
"Yeah, vibro blades in the Emperor's throne room during your training. I won."
"Ten times!"
"How many did you win?"
"Three."
"Odds are against you then." Mara said nodding her head. "Well you can make the first move."
"Okay." Ravan said. If there was one thing he had learned during his time with Mara it was that he could beat her if he went at it the right way. That wasn't just slash, slash, slash, block, slash, block, because after the first block Mara would stab him. He needed to put in a combination of hurtling objects at her with the Force. He had to fight dirty. Silently he thanked Vader for making him fight with Leia with only the Force. Despite the fact she had kicked his ass and nearly killed him.
Ravan used the Force to latch onto a particularly big piece of shattered transparisteel from Mara's cockpit viewport, shaped like a triangle. He launched it at her back. It stopped a foot from it and dropped to the floor.
"Tip for you oh great Sith Lord. Keep your thoughts to yourself."
"Was that out loud?" Ravan asked, using the Force to pick up another three shards.
"No, but it might as well have been. You think louder than a cockroach, except the cockroach is smarter."
"Really?" Ravan launched the three shards at her, they stopped the exact same length away from her back as the first. All dropped to the floor.
"Now how did you know about those?"
Mara looked up at the ceiling and shook her head. Her eye line came back to his.
"I do know how to use the Force." Mara replied. "Now are you going to try that again? Because you know I can stay here all night."
"Nope. I think you've proven that useless."
"Wow, I never knew you could actually learn something."
"Care to explain why you're so bitter towards me?"
"Haven't I always been bitter towards you?"
"No, sarcastic and angry but not bitter, sarcastic, and angry."
"I guess things change."
Ravan threw one last shard of transparisteel at her, again it stopped right in front of her back and fell to the floor.
"Some things don't." Ravan sighed.
"Oh yeah, like I was not going to sense another piece of transparisteel."
Ravan glanced at a small cargo container to the left of them. He hurled it at her. It stopped inches away from her head and flew at him. Extending his hand he stopped it as she had done, and then dropped it, it hit the ground inches away from his foot. How stupid that would have been if it had crushed that.
"Yeah, sensed that one too." Mara said.
"Sense this."
Ravan launched himself straight at her, saber held out in front, spinning in the air like a drill. Mara dodged out of the way and Ravan regained footing, turning to her their sabers met crackling and sending out flashes of white light from explosions of pure, raw laser.
"I did."
Ravan broke the saber lock spun and swung for her head, he missed, she ducked. He expected her to try a sweep kick. Instead she pulled her weapon back and trusted it at his chest. He moved out of the way, giving Mara a chance to stand and throw a crippling blow. He jumped and her sword swept dangerously under him. Coming down he raised his saber in a generally deadly overhead strike, Mara's weapon met his and somehow she brought both weapons down, her nearly lost his grip when he landed.
He was greeted by Mara's boot in his face, pain shot up his nose and he fell back. Mara glanced at her boot which had one large high heel on it.
"The wonders of high heels." Mara said to herself. Ravan touched his nose, and pulled his hand away, looking at it, it was covered in crimson blood. He felt his nose, it didn't seem to be broken. He had no time to dwell on it. Mara was right above him, flipping her saber and angling it down to stab—
He raised both his feet and smashed them into her side, she grunted and fell. He was up before she it the ground and when she did has saber was at her neck, so close she could practically smell the ozone emanating from it.
"Nice one farm boy. You won. Now kill me." Mara said, and from the reaction on Ravan's face he wasn't expecting it. Good.
"Kill you?"
"Yeah. Like you did the Emperor." Mara replied. "How did you kill the Emperor?"
How did he kill the Emperor? It was in the throne room… he…. Did that….
Ravan inwardly smiled as he painfully gathered all the Force he could muster. Once the Emperor was within five feet of him he extended his sore arm, made a fist and pulled the air. The Emperor was snatched and came flying forward, flipping and flying over Ravan. His feet hit the window and smashed through, when it got to about his waist he stopped. His lower end outside and his upper end in, stuck in the window with a million points of glass jabbing into his flesh.
After a few moments Ravan stood up, hearing Vader's mechanical breathing as he ascended the steps. He walked over to the bleeding Emperor.
"Finish it." He choked, sounding as though he had chained smoked death sticks for fifty years. He breathed in and winced. Ravan glanced down, a shard of glass had cleanly cut through his abdomen and sliced his lung. It was lying on the floor a few feet away, covered in blood.
"Kill him." Vader said.
Ravan walked up to the Emperor, raised his blade… and brought it down, hard slicing cleanly through the back of the Emperor's neck. The head fell to the ground. The body went limp, stuck in the window, the air from the lungs escaped out of the open throat and the body slipped through the window entirely, falling away and into the night.
That's how it happened, wasn't it? And the next thing Ravan knew he was on the ground, Mara's saber at his neck.
"Never stop to think while you have weapon pointed at someone." She advised.
"Thanks, to bad I won't be around long enough to use that."
"Damn straight." Mara raised her lightsaber, she was going to behead him just like he had the Emperor. But this little window of time was all he needed. The cargo container he had tossed at her earlier. It came at her again and it made contact with her head. She flipped one way and fell to the ground, the container bounced next to her, slid and went away. Ravan stood up, breathing hard. That was close.
Mara grunted and began to rise, he was not taking a second chance. Ravan ran to the exit of the hanger bay, the blast doors closed behind him. Mara looked around, her head throbbing.
"That little ba—"
"Depressurization sequence begun. Sixty seconds until depressurization." A computer voice came online and said. Classic. It was always sixty seconds wasn't it? Mara glanced around for anything, a way out, something to clear her head and erase the pain. Her eyes made contact with something that would solve at least one of her problems.
"Forty seconds"
It was the gamma class assault shuttle; her fighter was in no shape to fly. She ran into the shuttle and primed the engines, they roared to life as the count hit ten. Nine, the ships repulsorlifts came online, eight it was off the ground, seven, it slowly inched forward, six it exited the magnetic field of the hanger, five, it was headed away, four, three, two, one. The hanger depressurized and the magnetic field shut down. Two wrecked fighters, boxes of cargo, and a sniper rifle were sucked into the cold dead space, and Mara was headed back to the Knight Hammer just as alive as Ravan was, though she had a much worse headache and felt a lot smarter.
XxX
The hanger blast doors pulled away, Ravan peered in eagerly, no sign of Mara of course. He looked out into space, he could pick out what was left of their fighters, and Mara's rifle, every cargo container but not Mara herself. There was also no assault shuttle to be found. Ravan kicked himself mentally. How stupid could he possibly be? Of course Mara would have taken the assault shuttle. No one was that idiotic, except him. He failed to kill Mara for the first time. He didn't want to, but if the chance ever presented itself again he swore silently to himself, making an unbreakable vow he would kill her, if he could, if he had to.
Okay I have said this before but this is my longest chapter, by two hundred words. Anyway merry Christmas to you all, yeah it's a bit early, only the fourth but hey whatever. For my present I would love to get over 45 reviews on this Unknown Son 2 tale, 45 is the number I have on the prequel along with about 10602 hits (for those of you that view the stats page) The Vision That Saved Her is second and this story is in 6th place. Only a few hundred hits away from Breaking Away which I think (man doesn't that sound bad?) is the sequel to The Vision That Saved Her. REVIEW, please. I know loads of you are reading it, it has 4200 something hits.