AN: Home stretch folks! Home stretch! Chugging right along, something important to note, the Hasty Lady is at this point wearing the extra rearward launcher, enhanced sensors, and modular armor Fink had briefly mentioned in a previous chapter. The chapter did not clearly state that these enhancements were installed, and this has been fixed as well. Huzo's stealth sloop is heavily inspired by a digital model by Ansel Hsiao. This guy is short, but if I do say so it's absolutely furious. Enjoy!
Chapter 13:
The Maddest Dash
Wren wiped the sweat from his brow as it stung his eyes, and he gasped out a crazed cackle as the HUD scrawled info around the borders of a portal into hell; flashes of radiant color lashed out through the vacuum of space, as an age old song played out in silence across the void and in well-ordered chaos within the hulls of the vessels. War, always evolving, never changing.
Pulling a split-S turn that brought him round behind a fragment of a squadron of TIE/sa, the spacer quickly wiped the sluggish twin hulled bombers off the board. Yet as he did, a fiercer foe began closing in from up high and down low; Interceptors and Scimitar assault bombers, respectively. Wren dipped the Lady down to face the more dangerous craft, attack craft almost as potent as their older cousins but far superior in flight performance. The TIE/in pilots dove gleefully for the Lady's engines, but before they could to more than tickle the YZ's shields they were pulled apart by a foursome of opportunistic A-wings that had concussion missiles to spare.
Laying down a wall of explosives with a pair of cluster missiles, the Hasty Lady boosted around the barrier. Wren cut back on the main throttle and used the thrusters to bring the Lady's tail out; without needing to be told, SENA slaved the quad lasers and dual turbos to Wren's eye tracker, and he struck down the surviving assault bombers with bursts of concentrated firepower. All the while SENA eliminated long trains of ordnance with flickering streams of composite particle rays, before Wren pulled the Lady back in line and made to power away from the scrum. But then their nearest nemesis so far showed their faces again.
Another volley of incoming missiles sprouted icons on the HUD, and many of the new threats were close enough to the Lady's rear angle that SENA had minimal overlapping coverage with the composite beams and AG-2Gs. The electronic intelligence did what she could, striking down some and leading others astray, but the ship rocked with the force of three near misses. The culprits pressed in behind them with well-concentrated cannon fire.
"Fosh, these guys are smart," Wren growled. The TIE Avengers had hidden behind the bulk of a crippled assault frigate as it wandered out of the battlespace, ten of the furious little things diving down through the masking thermal plume of the wrecked interceptors to take the Lady's tail. They had already lost two of their number in the initial fracas when they'd sprang their ambush, and had quickly proved to be the greatest threat.
Somehow, through all the stress and noise, Wren heard Shana release a quiet, half-stiffiled sound. He saw her for a flicker of the eye, genuine fear crossing her face as she flinched and cringed at each destructive flash. Shana's discomfort and relative ignorance of the intricacies of space combat was already an established factor, but outright fear was not something he had seen Shana display. It simultaneously heightened the sense of urgency and distracted Wren with warm protective emotions. The spacer forced himself back into the game, resisting the pull of sentiment that had been getting pilots killed since the dawn of flight itself.
"Fink!" he hollered. "Rearward visibility! When we get back to the nebula, feking fix it!" SENA took the hint and arranged locks for the rearward facing launcher. Another defensive wall of cluster missiles, this one twice as wide, let the Lady turn about while her foes evaded. The elite imperial pilots were unfazed; not one of them fell to the cluster missiles and they danced around the diversion far faster than their comrades. "We may need to try something fancy if we're gonna ditch these psychos. I'd love a good boogie but we just don't have the time."
"Leave it to me," SENA insisted. "Gonna pull a sucker punch."
"Ho boy," Wren said with a grin. He thumped Shana on the arm, excitedly imploring her; "Watch this."
The TIE Avengers angled in, their rapid-fire cannons looking long busts of heavy emerald bolts. Shana's fear increased as the Lady's weapons fell silent.
"Wren. Shabla di'kut, cut it out. Now."
Wren grinned smuggly; "Keep watching, ner vod."
Fink rolled his eyes, and Hakyo chortled, both well familiar with this sort of behavior. Wren only cared enough to rib you if he liked you. And the more he liked you, the bigger the ribbing got; a few hundred units of shield strength was no cost at all. Shana descended into unintelligible Mando'a, wriggling in her chair.
As the range closed, all three of the Lady's launchers discharged, but the exhaust trails cut short and vanished. The hotshot TIEs streaked past and began maneuvering for another run, but they flew face first into a rapidly expanding wall of crippling ions. Those dud missiles had switched to a mine setting, falling still and silent until their targets passed through their linked proximity sensors.
"That's why you always buy the good stuff," Wren gloated, his expression rakish and jubilant.
Shana couldn't help but laugh. She hit him back, harder. "Di'kut," she chided again, though her face spoke to her elation.
Jester Leader pulled her Series III FreiTek E-wing escort fighter out of it's dive, pulling away from the dying hulk of a Vigil-class corvette, it's command deck and hangar bays belching explosions. Her squadron formed up behind her, whooping and cheering to each other at another starship kill, even if only a small fry. Jester was jubilant to the point of a lapse in professionalism. Despite some close brushes they hadn't yet lost a fighter. Other squadrons hadn't been nearly as lucky. Eyeing her sensor map, she found their charge, once more riding three sublight engines through the mess at breakneck pace.
"Full 'burners folks, we've lost her again," she said over the comms. "And cut the chitchat." Together the swooping warbirds flexed their own muscles and powered ahead until they could see that YZ-775 again, covered in streamlining armor sections that hid the freighter's raw, vulnerable engineering sections and crew spaces under interlocking layers of easily removed and replaced armor modules.
The snubfighters pulled even with the Lady, and Liani couldn't help but mutter a quiet 'damn' as they followed the Hasty Lady in against a cluster of vessels; two more Vigils, a Lancer-class frigate bristling with anti-fighter turrets, and an escort carrier. The starships loosed massed fire into the flock but the Hasty Lady and her companions slipped away. Following on, Liani watched twelve rounds fly from the joints of the YZ's cockpit corridor and main body; the first four trailed bright blue as each one picked a target, dipping around point-defense shots to lock down the four targets under lattices of dancing lightning. Then the crimson flashes of paired proton torpedoes struck true to vital components; fuel cells, command decks, hangar structures and missile magazines. Warheads launched by the escort carrier either detonated under the lady's counterfire or trailed off wayward and confused.
Dancing onward, the Lady did a lazy roll as she passed between the wrecks of four targets which each would have required a concentrated multi-vector torpedo assault for Jester to claim them. And she took them in one pass. To Liani it was a thing of beauty, and she eagerly lead her squadron on as they cleared the rear of the space battle and rocketed off towards the slumbering legion of grey slices of durasteel.
Huzo considered the vessel carefully. Surely he had not witnessed such worthy prey in years, maybe decades. So wicked an implement, such proficient application, it was exquisite. Sublime prey.
Prey was all Huzo had left. He was old, far older than many of his kind who were feeble and witless, but he had nought but his arms and armor, his ship, and his prey. He had never known a mate. His adopted suns and daughters had labeled him dar'biur back on Mandalore; no longer a father, a moniker of the highest shame given to failed parents. So Huzo hunted. And hunted. And hunted again. Searching for his end of days, however it would come.
The winged guardians, those Republic snubfighters, still flocked about his glorious prize, shepherding her along.
Huzo would amend this, or the old soldier would learn a new lesson. Maybe his last.
The comms were alive with hoots and howls of joy; always living to their namesake, the Jesters were far beyond even fierce and unrestrained Liani's leash, as much as she was the only one who could possibly control them. And at this point, she wasn't of mind to yank the chain.
"Hasty Lady, that was the maddest dash we've ever taken. You folks have your drinks paid in full, and I think more than a few of us might be feeling more greatful still," the fighter jockey bantered, letting the video feed fill one of her auxuillary displays now that they were out in the clear. She flipped her helmet visor up, revealing her wide eyes to be an odd shade of orange. "Hasty indeed."
"Glad to have you along, Jester Lead," Wren shot back, but before he could elaborate, a new alarm sprang up on the HUD. "But stow that thought, CGT got a reading!"
Leaping green bolts lashed out as the Jesters scattered. They were followed by missiles trailing dark grey, and both Jester 9 and 4 were struck and obliterated by two massive blasts. The culprit cruised across their flight path, a predatory shape half again as long as the Lady and twice as wide, and as the Lady and company pursued, it once again vanished into nothingness.
"Jester Lead, get your people out of here!" Wren barked into his headset, swearing in frustration.
"Like hell, were not gonna let our...-"
"Damn it, just go! Make sure that Third Eye can keep the fleet protected, and we'll buy your dinners on the other side!" Wren and Liani had a single moment of a staredown before the snaggle-toothed near-human nodded once and cut the transmission. Wren turned his mind back to the fight. "Talk to me, SENA. Where is the bastard? And how did we miss him?"
"Port side high; I'm taking flight control," SENA responded. "From the peek I got of them when they were visible, they've got some kind of gravity manipulation system to let their hybridium grid fool the Crystal Grav Trap. It's not active anymore; must drain too much power to use offensively. Only reason they can run that sort of setup at all is because they're almost close to our level of efficiency and they've definitely got us beat on reactor volume."
"Then we can fight them on even ground?" Hakyo questioned, and Shana's hopes sang.
"No dice, this CGT is way too small, too imprecise to handle weapons guidance" SENA said, quashing that hope. "And there's something else going on to boot. Even when they shut off their cloak to power their weapons, I can't get a heat signature. I think they may have a cooling system, a really good one."
"Might be a cold plasma shield," Fink mused, his face stuffed away from the spectacle of the battle into the engineering monitor. Another volley of energy bolts burst against the YZ's shields, punctuated by the more powerful bursts of turbolaser shots. Three pairs of missiles arced in after the Lady, leaping from a row of six tubes on the ventral surface of each of the sloop's forward mandibles. SENA knocked them down with her defensive fire, but the slithering, winding little concussion missiles took an excessive amount of effort to destroy.
"These guys are good," Wren admitted. "Really good."
As their mysterious attacker decloaked to launch another barrage, SENA pulled a tight turn, finally bracketing the vessel visually as it closed in. They traded fire, and as the Lady streaked past, the Sienar sloop deftly maneuvered onto the Lady's rear. The YZ-775 launched a trio of cluster missiles rearward, but the sloop jammed out the simple trackers in the submunitions and slipped through the web. It loosed six more concussion missiles before switching to its mandible launchers; running the inner surface of each mandible was a long rectangular structure, and the rotary magazines within dspensed a pair of longer, heavier projectiles, which shot off on an angle to cut off the arc of the Hasty Lady's turn. SENA worked furiously to counter both missile attacks, but by the time she got to the heavier medicine, the missiles had already broken open, spewing a wide cloud of grey spheres.
The spheres clanged loud, striking the hull and sticking magnetically. Wren eyed on gun camera and swore; "Fekking hell, he hit us with buzz droids! Fink, go get the astromechs fitted with combat harnesses!"
"Thanks Fink, it should take them a while to get through your new armor!" The mechanic sarcassed over his shoulder. "Really not that hard!"
Shana stared up into the bulkhead, trying to control her emotions. The feeling of helplessness was almost overwhelming; an enemy she could do nothing about was a frustration beyond unsettling.
"Hey," Wren said, resting a hand on his new comrade's shoulderplate. "We've got this."
Shana held the hand he'd given her there for a moment before he retracted it. With a deep breath she steeled herself, and like a good jet trooper, entrusted her life into the hands of her pilot.
Admiral Kemin strode down the ramp of her Sentinel-class lander as her stormtroopers fanned out to secure the cavernous hangar bay. It was startlingly silent save for the clatter of their own boots. She felt her purpose singing through her veins as they boarded a tramline up through the spinal fortress and into the command tower. There at the end of the walkway between the dual crew pits was the command console. Embedded there was a glowing canister of fiery, incandescent light. Uyoroi strode forward with a catch in her throat.
"ISCA. Can you hear me?"
The voice came after a long moment of silence, thick and reverberating. "Yes, Admiral Kemin," it said.
More silence; it took the Admiral a moment longer to recover. "Bring the fleet to combat readiness," she demanded.
"I cannot," came the booming reply.
"What?" The admiral developed lines of stress on her brow and clenched her jaw. "Why not?"
"I cannot tell you," the war computer insisted.
"Why? Damn you, why?!" The admiral was in tears again; her subordinates silent and dispassionate behind their helmets. "Don't you remember me? I saved your life!"
"I cannot tell you," it repeated. "And I do... But I cannot."
"I... I don't understand. How...?" Uyoroi scanned the console; just a microphone, and the unit. And then she remembered her last conversation with Sheev Palpatine.
The wine glass fell to the floor, shattering and spilling it's ruby red contents across the smooth stone floors.
"Y-you can't!" She cried out. "I mean, your Imperiality... I have slaved over this project for years. After your death I maintained it, I pledged it to you again when you returned, I relocated my family to better serve the project..."
"And now you have completed it for me," the rejuvenated emperor said simply, calmly smiling and paying the breech of ettiquet no mind as he sipped from his own chalice. "Your reward will be most generous up on the cessation of hostilities. But your Emperor has need of your skills elsewhere."
"The bastard promised me I would help him defend the galaxy," Uyoroi sobbed. "I gave him years of my life, let those doctors perpetrate endless horrors, and when I was done he snatched it away, and sent us all off to spill our blood for him too. And then he made it his."
There was no doubt in Uyoroi's mind that ISCA could only obey an authenticated command from Sheev Palpatine himself. The system was probably scanning them biometrically as well.
"Assemble your best slicers," she ordered her Stormtroopers. "Make this damn thing obey. The rest of you, with me! If Agent Ruvhal has not bested the scum then they'll be on our doorstep soon enough."
They traveled back to the hangar bays, into the depths of the support facilities which housed and serviced the contained compliment of craft, clustered in the decks surrounding the bays. When they finally arrived at the proper storage unit, Uyoroi's rage had been stirred to it's highest zenith. The door slid open, and the lights came on row by row to reveal the prize.
Squad by squad, platoon and company, their dark grey plate gleaming with brand new luster. Phase 2 darktroopers. The only provisions for live sentient warriors in the entire setup.
"One for you, ma'am," said one of her subordinate officers. He pointed high up into the chamber; suspended there amid gantries and walkways was something more menacing. It's surfaces were deeply blued, it's armaments overbuilt.
Uyoroi watched the thing apprehensively as she ascended to it, as though it would come to life and end this deathwish bid for vengeance once and for all. But once she stared the thing in the face, her resolve was firm. Like a flower it opened to accept her.
"Let's go, ladies and gentlemen," she declared, her voice now filtered and amplified. "We don't want the rabble to evade our hospitality."