Incoming transmission…
Hello again, ladies, gentle beings, and droids and welcome back to Voice of Liberty with your host Jevia Cross. Got a lot of good news for ya today and some not so good news as well.
Let's get the good stuff out of the way first, shall we? The Galactic Empire lost a major flight training base to Rebel forces a few days ago, led by Kanan Jarrus. While a good portion of the personnel were able to evacuate, the Empire has confirmed that most did not survive the assault. And given who was leading it, I personally consider those who managed to escape extremely fortunate.
Onto the depressing news. The Empire has destroyed the Rebel frigate Stormbringer. The Empire has also begun harassing Rebel supply lines and even halted a Rebel attack on the capital city of the planet Degravane.
Our favorite private prison company is having problems as well. ACG lost four facilities in one week to a number of resistance groups including our favorite Beskar wearing ball-busters. A leaked memo from ACG's headquarters has shown that over the past three months they've lost 83 million credits worth of prisoners to resistance groups all across the galaxy as well as 2.2 billion credits in loss facilities and products. Not to mention the fact that they've had to start offering premiums for pay in order to hire new guards so they can replace the ones they lost.
We've got more for you in a minute or so, folks. For now, please enjoy 'Walk in the Phelopean Forest" by Graelik Durr.
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The other Mandalorian tossed five credits into the pot. "Call," she said. "Ten-high straight.", Kruvina laid down her cards.
"Oh, for Force sake!" The other Mandalorian couldn't have sounded more disgusted if he tried for a week. Kruvina understood when she threw down her own hand: she held an eight-high straight.
"Got him by a cunt hair, Kruvina," Fremont Dalby said as Kruvina scooped up the cash. It was a nice chunk of change; they'd gone back and forth several times before the call. Losing would have hurt. It wouldn't have left Kruvina broke or anything—she had better sense than to gamble that hard— but it would have hurt. Dalby scooped up the cards and started to shuffle. "My deal, I think."
"Yeah." Kruvina wiped sweat from her forehead with her sleeve. The compartment where they played was hot and without air conditioning. A bare bulb in an iron cage overhead gave the only light. The door said STORES on the outside, but the chamber was empty. The Mandalorians sat on the gray-painted deck and redistributed the wealth.
Fremont Dalby passed Kruvina the cards. "Here. Cut."
Kruvina took some cards from the middle of the deck and stuck them on the bottom. Dalby laughed. "Whorehouse cut, eh? All right, you bitch. I had my royal flush all stacked and ready to deal, and now you went and fucked me. Some pal you are."
"Sorry," Kruvina said in tones suggesting she was anything but. As the CPO dealt, Kruvina asked, "Ever see a real royal flush in an honest game?"
"Nope, and I've been playing poker for a hell of a long time," Dalby answered. "I saw a jack-high straight flush once. That was a humdinger of a hand, too, on account of it beat four queens. But I knew the people, and they weren't dealing off the bottom of the deck or anything."
Nobody else in the game admitted to seeing a royal flush, either. Kruvina looked at her cards. None of them appeared to have been introduced to any of the others. This wasn't a jack-high straight flush; it was jack-high garbage.
She almost threw it away, but she'd won the last hand, so she stayed in and asked for four cards.
That left her with a pair of jacks. When Dalby called for jacks or better to open, she put in a dollar. The hand got raised twice before it came back to her. She tossed it in with no regret except for the vanished credit. Fremont Dalby ended up taking it with three kings.
Kruvina had just started to shuffle when the klaxons called everyone to battle stations. Everyone paused just long enough to scoop up the money in front of him. "To be continued," somebody said as the poker game broke up. And so, no doubt, it would be; it seemed as unending as any holofilm serial.
Her feet clanged on the deck as she ran for the nearest stairway. Dalby was older, but stayed with her all the way. They got to their turbolasers at the same time. Along with the Townsend, three other Mandalorian battle cruisers surrounded the Rebel Alliance cruiser, Trenton. The cruiser-carrier's fighters buzzed high overhead.
Kauai lay somewhere to the southeast. They were out tweaking the Imps again.
"Is this real or a drill, Enos?" Dalby said. "I got five creds says it's a drill."
The odds favored him. They had many more drills than real alerts. Still, in this space . . .
"You're on," Kruvina said. They shook to seal the bet.
"Now hear this! Now hear this!" the intercom blared. "Fighters from the Trenton are attacking a Star Destoyer. The Imps are sure to try to return the favor if they can. Be ready. It is expected that the Trenton will be their main target, but we want to remind them that we love them, too."
"There's a fin you owe me," Kruvina said happily. "That'll buy one of the boys some Beskar for their armor."
"My ass," Fremont Dalby said, his voice sour. "It'll buy you a couple of shots and an eating out from a Twilek gigolo on Hotel Street when we get back to Pearl."
Since he was probably right, Kruvina didn't argue with him. She just said, "Well, that's a damn sight better than nothing, too." The gun crew laughed. Even the CPO's lips twitched under his helmet.
They waited. Before too long, the executive officer said, "Y-ranging gear reports inbound fighters. They aren't rebels. We're going to have company in about fifteen minutes. Roll out the welcome mat for our guests, everyone." Five minutes later, he came back on the loudspeakers:
"Trenton's fighters report that that Star Destoyer is on fire and dead in space. Score one for the good guys."
Cheers rang out up and down the Townsend's main deck, and probably everywhere else on the ship, too. The crew had faced savage attacks more than once. Getting their own back felt wonderful.
"Those Imp pilots are liable to know they can't go home again," Dalby warned. "That means they'll give it everything they've got when they hit us. Knock 'em down as quick as you can so they don't crash into the ship or something."
Blowing up fighters was hard enough without any extra pressure to do it fast. Kruvina just shrugged. Unless somebody got hurt, all she had to do was make sure the gun had enough ammo to keep shooting. What happened after that was Dalby's responsibility, not hers.
The Y-range antenna swung round and round. Kruvina and everybody else up on deck peered northwest, the direction from which trouble had so often come before. The Townsend picked up speed. She would want to do as much dodging as she could. Kruvina glanced over toward the Trenton. The carrier couldn't pick up a lot of speed. Her engines wouldn't let her.
"There they are!" somebody yelled.
Kruvina swore softly. Those were TIE fighters, all right. The half dozen fighters in combat space patrol over the little Rebel/Mandalorian fleet streaked toward the enemy. Imperial escort fighters were bound to outnumber them. Their pilots would want to take out as many enemy strike spacecraft as they could before the enemy shot them down. A pilot's life wasn't always glamorous. Kruvina wouldn't have traded places with anybody out there.
A fighter blew up, leaving fire and debris floating in space. "That's an Imp!" someone shouted. Kruvina hoped he knew what he was talking about.
This wasn't like the last few times the Townsend had ventured out in the direction of Yawdim. The main attack wasn't aimed at the battle cruiser. The Imps wanted the Trenton. A carrier was really dangerous to them, as fighters from the converted freighter had just proved. Cruisers? Cruisers were nuisances, annoyances, worth noticing now only because they tried to keep enemy fighters away from the Trenton.
That made the turbolasers crews' jobs easier. They were less rattled, less hurried, than they had been when enemy TIE bombers singled the Townsend out for attention. Kruvina fed her gun shells. Fritz Gustafson loaded them into the breeches. At Fremont Dalby's command, two other rebels shifted the turbolaser in altitude and azimuth.
Empty shell casings clattered down onto the deck by the gun crews' feet. Every so often, Kruvina or Gustafson would kick them out of the way so nobody tripped over them.
The Townsend's five-inch guns blasted away at the Imps. Their shells could reach a lot farther and packed much more punch, but they couldn't fire nearly so fast. Their roar, on top of the thunder from all the smaller weapons, hammered the ears. Kruvina wondered whether she'd be able to hear at all by the time the war ended.
"Hit!" The whole gun crew shouted at the same time when an Imperial TIE bomber they'd been shooting at suddenly wavered in space and started trailing smoke. "We got the son of a bitch!" Kruvina added exultantly.
That pilot must have known he had nowhere to go. With his Star Destoyer in flames, he wouldn't have had anywhere to go even if his engine were running perfectly. Taking a hit must have rubbed his nose in it. He dove for the Trenton. Instead of releasing his bomb and trying to pull up, he seemed intent on using his spacecraft as an extra weapon.
A hail of blaster fire from the escort carrier said its gunners realized the same thing.
They scored more hits on the TIE bomber, but didn't deflect it from its course. The ship swung to starboard—slowly, so slowly.
A carrier built from the keel up as a warship would have had a much better chance of getting away.
But that turn, small as it was, saved the Trenton.
Maybe the enemy pilot was dead in the cockpit, or maybe the heavy fire severed the cables to his rudder and ailerons so he couldn't swerve no matter how much he wanted to. His bomber missed, then shortly after, exploded. A near miss like that would damage the Trenton with fragments, and might make her leak from sprung seams. But it wouldn't turn her into a torch and send her into planetary orbit.
"Fucker had balls," Fritz Gustafson said with grudging respect. Grudgingly, Kruvina nodded. Trying to get in a last lick at your foe when you knew you were a goner took nerve.
Not so many Imperial fighters were left in space now. X-Wing fighters had knocked down a lot of them. Then Kruvina watched something that chilled her to the bone. An Imp fighter pilot heeled his undamaged spacecraft into a dive and swooped on the Trenton like a hunting falcon.
He didn't try to save himself—all he wanted to do was damage that carrier the only way he had left. That he would die if he succeeded couldn't have mattered to him. He wasn't going home anyway.
The Trenton shot him down. His fighter exploded into space. But he'd given the other Imps an idea—or maybe he'd told them over the wireless what he aimed to do. One after another, they all dove on the Rebel/Mandalorian ships. Dead men themselves, they didn't want to die alone.
Kruvina's gun put as many rounds as it could into a fighter. The Imperials didn't make their fighters as sturdy as Rebels did—not that an X-Wing would have survived a pasting like that. But the Imp wasn't trying to survive, only to take Rebels with him. He didn't quite make it. His TIE exploded before it touched the Trenton.
One fighter did crash into the Trenton's hanger—and then skidded off into the ship's wall and exploded. It scraped eight or ten rebels to their deaths with it. Fires lingered in the flight hanger. Damage-control parties beat them down with high-pressure water. By the time the escort carrier's strike spacecraft got back, she was ready to land them.
"Force, we did it," Kruvina said. In the space off the Outer Rim, Rebels and Mandalorians hadn't said anything like that for a while, but they'd earned the right today.