Chapter 34
Shili System – near Tinmore III
The commissary was packed. Mika ran into the room seconds before the second blast hit them and sent her stumbling into the doorframe. Talos and Friita, the only other members of her squad assigned to this mission, had managed to secure some of the senatorial aides into their emergency seating. Silently, she cursed Taggart for not sending escort craft with the ship. A couple of Gladbrons or even a few smaller fighters would make a huge difference right now. Even with the lieutenant's men shooting back at the Mining Guild, they were getting hit hard. The floor rocked beneath them, and Mika grabbed Trav-iss as he went flying past her. Dragging him across the heaving and twisting deck, she slammed him into his restraints, ignoring the older man's complaints and protests. Once he was secured, she grabbed her rifle and gestured for another of the aides to sit.
"We cannot keep this up.", Talos' voice crackled in her ear. Thankfully, he seemed to have muted his audio feed, so only she could hear him through their ear-commlinks. "We need to get everyone seated now, but several are unaccounted for."
"I'll find them.", Mika replied, fiddling with another aide's straps, "You keep on getting these people settled in."
"I'm coming.", Friita told her.
For a moment, Mika was tempted. It would be so simple to bring the woman with her, to ensure that she was safe by her side. But she had duties. "No. Stay here and help Talos. See if you can get those guards to help you."
She finished settling the aide into her chair, pulling the straps around her shoulders. Then she turned, grabbed a cable launcher, and headed to the hallway.
Caloc pulled back on the stick, spinning his fighter left and right as his instincts directed him to. Green lasers exploded and crashed around him as they glanced off the thin shields that ballooned around the Delta-7. The fighter twisted like a maniacal tooka, dodging a majority of the blaster fire, when a sudden explosion filled the space before him. He spun to the left, watching the flames as they roared over the hull of his ship. The heat they generated could be felt even through the cockpit canopy.
"Deesix, what was that?"
The droid beeped in reply, anxious thrills accenting his words. Clearly, the astromech didn't like the sudden explosions. Truthfully, neither did Caloc.
"What do you mean, explosive mines?", he twisted to the left as another explosion rocked the ship. "Who puts live mines in a planet's orbit?"
The droid's dome turned and gave him what equalled with a droid's baleful look. Of course, when they were under attack by the Mining Guild, it was pretty likely that they were the ones who had mined the space around them.
The starhopper's were still on his tail, their linked blasters firing rapidly, the green lasers zipping closer with each shot. He slipped the stick to the left, then jammed it back to the right. The starfighter dragged to the left, then slowed and drifted in a dragging horizontal spin, coming around to face the starhoppers. He jammed down the trigger and watched as his blasters sent one of the fighters veering off course. It must have gotten close to one of the mines. A huge fireball erupted around it. He suppressed a laugh and engaged the engine's throttle to full once more. Before them sat Tinmore III, it's huge ring of ice and rock a beautiful shade of blue against the black of space. An idea formed in his head, but a loud burst of static through his comms distracted him.
"What is it?", he pushed the acceleration lever forward as far as it would go. He could only keep half the attention on the call, focussing on both his pursuers and the mines before him.
Stass answered quickly, hearing the urgency in his voice. "We are heading for the Tori Belt, hoping that we can hide in the rocks."
"Got it.", he answered briskly, "I've got the pilots distracted for now. I'm heading for Tinmore III, hopefully lose them in the rings."
He didn't bother telling her that he had already got one of the pilots. It wouldn't change the situation much for them. He needed them to focus on surviving, while he did the same.
"Understood.", she answered, "Be careful and meet us in the belt when you can."
"You betcha.", he ripped the comms off his head and looked forward to Deesix' dome. They both needed to concentrate for this to work. "You ready to get crazy, pal? What are our odds?"
Deesix beeped quietly.
Caloc grinned in reply, "Oh, seventy/thirty, huh? Which way?"
No matter where she looked, Mika couldn't seem to find anyone hiding in the ship's corridors. She had been through every nook and cranny the ship had to offer. There had been no one. The crew was strapped into their chairs in the engine room. The droids were locked magnetically to their berths in the cargo hold. Even Drussels and Prune were belted into the gunnery seats.
Yet she continued forward, her armour heavy on her shoulders. She was nearly at the bridge, and could take a seat there, maybe even ride out the battle helping at a control station until they made it to Shili. She saw the shallow stairwell to the bridge ahead… and then saw the door beside it. Where did that go? Wasn't it… the observation deck? She had not checked there yet.
Pressing the activation switch, she hurried inside. Standing before the observation window was one of the handmaidens. She seemed young, barely fifteen, possibly a little older. She stared out the viewports, watching the starfighters in the distance. She hadn't even noticed Mika enter.
"Hey, kid!", Mika heard the urgency strain her helmet's voice and swallowed, trying to calm herself. "You need to strap in. Get back to the commissary!"
The handmaiden turned around and stared at the armoured figure, shaking her head in confusion. "Why? Aren't I safe here?"
"None of us are safe, miss.", Mika replied, holding out her hand towards the girl, "You need to get back to the commissary, and I need to get to the bridge. Can you get there by yourself, or do I need to escort you?"
For a minute, she thought the girl would request to be escorted. However, the handmaiden's eyes hardened. She clenched her hands and released them. Then she bent and plucked two carved hologame board pieces from the ground and stuffed them in her belt. "I can make it, ma'am."
She turned around and began to run down the corridor, back towards the commissary. Hopefully she would make it in time before the real hits began. Those could break someone's spine if they weren't careful. Either way, Mika couldn't spare the girl another thought. She turned to hurry up to the bridge, but the butt of a blaster bit into her neck.
"You aren't going anywhere, captain.", a sinister voice growled in her ear. It was female, young. But there was a harshness to the words that could only come from a painful experience. Mika knew that from her own traumas. She went to speak, to say anything into her helmet mic. But it was then that she heard a sizzling zap and a shock coursed down her spine. She collapsed to the floor, feeling the familiar shudder of a stun blast flicker through her.
Pushing the stick down, Caloc twisted his lithe starfighter into the rings of Tillmore III. Chunks of tiny ice pellets, water vapour and rock rattled against the cockpit, bouncing away. Most were tiny, but he knew that some would be larger, still breaking down inside the ring where the gravity currents would be worse. He pulled back on the right pedal and cut his speed a little. The Starhoppers were still on his tail, but he knew that speeding through the rings was suicidal. The lithe fighter dipped and spun back and forth through the ice ring. His fighter was well armed, but the Starhoppers had more firepower. Deesix's scan had shown heavy laser cannons and torpedo launchers attached to the underside of their wings.
He saw one of the fighters behind him get hit by some of the surrounding ice and take a spinning dive somewhere below the rings. It exploded in the space below them, the fireballs disappearing behind the speeding fighters. The other pilot was still hot on his tail, and he watched as it darted back and forth like a humming beetle in his rear scopes. Red bolts of plasma zipped past, slamming into the debris around him, shattering the chunks of ice.
"Deesix.", he called ahead. "On my mark, cut the engines."
The droid spun his dome and beeped in acknowledgement. The starhopper clipped his portside wing and flames momentarily shot out of the hole before Deesix got control of the systems and rerouted power. Caloc waited for moment until the fire was out completely before her yelled, "Now!"
Deesix's scomp link was already inserted into the shipboard systems, and after a series of clacks, he had sent the order to the engines. The twin J-44 engines died instantly, their blue glow flickering as the fighter was pulled by the planet's gravity. Caloc felt the ship shudder slightly as they fell into the ring's icy flow.
The remaining enemy fighter sped past, and he yelled for Deesix to turn the engines back on. They flickered back to life, the blue flames pushing him out of the rings. Jamming his finger down on the trigger, he watched as heavy bolts of laserfire streamed outwards. They slammed into the fighter ahead of him, severing the portside stabilizer from the hull. The Starhopper spun once… twice… and BLAM! It exploded into a thousand tiny pieces.
He let out a relieved sigh and clicked on the and pulled out of the rings, before calling ahead to the astromech in the wing, "Good work, buddy. Remind me to thank Master Plo for that little trick. Now plot a course for that asteroid belt. We need to try and disable that freighter before it kills our wonderful Senator and his entourage."
Deesix chirped a rather cheeky remark that made Caloc glare at his dome. Honestly, for an astromech, Deesix had far too much sarcasm.
"You don't know what you are talking about, kid. Politics is really complicated, okay."
Author's notes
Hi there.
So i was rereading some of my previous work and realised that the breaks between storylines were a bit blurry. Am going to be adding in the '-' before each scene change to make it a little easier.
Phil.