Chapter 15: A Two-Sided Success
Ahsoka led Gold Group another charge toward the retreating Supremacy as the remainder of the common Star Destroyers made the jump into hyperspace. Tor Solaris and Lung-Seek followed close beside her, blasting TIE fighters away as they flew headlong into the hail of laser fire. By now, the First Order's fleet had taken heavy losses, but the Supremacy still had enough TIE fighters in its hangars to cause serious damage to the New Republic fleet.
"Containment is failing fast! Repeat, containment of the First Order's fleet is failing!" Ahsoka cried into her comlink, nearly desperate for aid to respond.
A familiar voice came over the comms. "Relax, General Tano. Blue, Gray, and Green Group are coming in now."
"Lando," breathed Ahsoka with a smile.
Aboard the Liberation, Lando ordered all fighters from his fleet to render assistance. In a few moments, the thirty New Republic vessels were releasing a fleet of starfighters to match the number at the Battle of Endor. Aboard the leading X-wing fighter for Blue Squad was Ezra Bridger, who was heading for Ahsoka's position with several X-wings, Y-wings, and a number of Neimoidian H-wing fighters.
"Lock onto them, R5," Ezra said to his fighter's astromech, R5-D3. He then contacted Lando and said, "Admiral, that Super Star Destroyer is nearing the position for the jump to lightspeed. I'm not certain that we can stop the First Order's Supreme Leader from escaping."
"If we can't get anyone aboard to capture him, we should at least try and disable the Star Destroyer before it moves into hyperspace," replied Lando.
"Understood. We'll do what we can to slow that thing down. Bridger out."
Ezra and his fighter squad: Green Group, joined with Ahsoka and the others just as the enormous Star Destroyer began to reroute power to its hyperdrive motivators. Ahsoka was the first to notice and she shouted through her comlink, "Red Group, Gold Group! Target the engines and fire! It's about to make the jump to lightspeed!"
"Copy, General Tano," came the voice of Rebel Alliance veteran Gina Moonsong. She led a handful of X-wing and A-wing fighters toward the Supremacy and led them under the city-sized underbellies of the Star Destroyers that remained. One, she noticed, was crippled by laser fire from the Legacy while two of them were starting to buckle from the attacks of the incoming Liberation as it attempted to throw open a wedge that would allow the capture of the First Order's vile leader. In a few minutes, Gina and a squad of fighters were closing in on the Supremacy while Wedge Antilles had regrouped with the Red Group and was now leading them to draw the TIE fighter squads away from the Super Star Destroyer.
Several Neimoidians in H-wings moved in to divert the TIE fighters and in seconds, they began cutting through the lines of incoming attackers. Leading the squad was Rute Dofine, a rookie pilot who had been recruited from Koru Neimoidia following the declaration of the Purse Worlds signing a treaty of alliance with the budding New Republic.
"I'm going in," he reported. "Cover me, Tulak."
"I'm behind you, Lieutenant," the other Neimoidian replied.
Together, they opened fire on the racing TIE fighters, who attempted to shoot down their fighters. In their haste, the First Order pilots on the front line did not stray from their path and were hit by the H-wings' blaster bolts, whereon they were blasted into a shower of phosphorescent debris. A squad of A-wings and C-wings piloted by Gran and Mon Calamari pilots moved in to weaken the Star Destroyer, and they targeted the underbelly and engines of the ship and began blasting at the monstrous vessel until small fires were running across the metal surface. Suddenly, the squad came under fire from another squad of TIE Interceptors, and the C-wings moved to attack them from the rear and flanks.
At the head of Red Group, Wedge couldn't see each of the thousands of dogfights erupting around him, but he heard the sounds of it over his comlink. A Gran pilot had enough time to patch a warning through to Wedge before his fighter was hit and blown into cosmic dust. Horton Salm, a veteran pilot, ordered his squad of fighters to draw the First Order off so Wedge and his crew could cripple the Supremacy before it could make the jump to lightspeed. In the midst of leading a half-crippled squad, Rute Dofine requested a reiteration of orders, to which Wedge replied, "Attack the engines, not the hull! Go for it!"
The following response was the most relieving Wedge had heard in a while. "Starboard engines neutralized, sir, and thanks. Sorry I panicked."
"No trouble, Rute. It happens to all of us," encouraged Wedge. He led the squad to catch up with Gina Moonsong and the rest of Red Group, then ordered Gina's squad to split up- one half of the squad would keep the Supreme Leader's attention while the other half would knock out the Supremacy's remaining engines.
"Accelerate to attack speed! All X-wings, prepare for missile attack run!" ordered Wedge.
"Copy, Red Leader," came the reply from Wedge's wingman.
With that, the X-wing pilots prepared to launch the new discord missiles that had been added to their starfighters' designs to give them another advantage over TIE fighters. They closed in on the back side of the Super Star Destroyer, and then Wedge said, "Fire!"
Twenty X-wing fighters released a barrage of missiles at the Star Destroyer's engines before pulling off and preparing for another round. It was only ten seconds before a phosphorescent cloud nearly blinded the New Republic pilots, and one of them hollered over the comlink with jubilation, "We did it! It's a hit!"
Wedge's next words cut through that hope. "Negative. They didn't hit. Something shot at our missiles before they could reach the engines."
Before any pilot could ask what, a flash of emerald-green plasma bolts hit an A-wing out of nowhere and blew the snub fighter into a fiery oblivion. Every pilot scrambled to pick up what it was, but Ahsoka and her fellow Jedi could sense it. Koloth Ren was leading another squad of TIE fighters, which Ahsoka was certain had foiled the missile strike. She could sense that something else was amiss.
"Only the fighters are attacking us directly. I wonder why that Super Star Destroyer just waits," she said half to herself.
It was then that Ahsoka saw the TIE fighters splitting off, with Koloth Ren leading half of his squad to the waiting hangars of the Supremacy while the rest remained behind to finish off the New Republic's forces. Then before the eyes of the Jedi and their fellow pilots, the mobile fortress fired blasts from its hundreds of ion cannons at the Legacy. In just two seconds, the Star Defender was crippled, and the First Order seized the opportunity to strike. The Supremacy unleashed a relentless barrage of laser fire on the Legacy, and while the ship's crew worked hastily to restore power, the bridge was the first to crumble.
…
When the Legacy had begun going down from the First Order's ion blasts, Juno Eclipse was the first to sound the alarm. She took her comlink as communications were disabled and barked, "All maintenance crews, get the fusion reactors back on line! I want this tub of durasteel flying again and pounding those Imperial rejects into the next solar cycle!"
Thankfully, the crews managed to cross-circuit the fusion reactor of the Legacy to enable emergency power. It would reduce the functions of the Star Defender's trajectory, weapons, and even defenses by a considerable amount, but the shields would hold. The atmosphere of order remained on the bridge for barely a millisecond before the Supremacy launched its deadly attack, and then the officers on the bridge were attempting to keep the shields active until the Legacy was back to maximum power.
…
On the Liberation, Lando watched as the Supremacy's ion cannons reduced the Legacy to an oversized approximation of a Rokarian dirtfish that was inches from having its entrails spilled. Knowing that there were crew members whose lives provided strategic importance as well as comradery, he ordered a Dressellian ensign to patch a signal to the Star Defenders that were flanking his vessel.
"Star Defenders Vindicator and Ascension, move in! Protect the Legacy! We'll fire a missile to slow down that Super Star Destroyer! Order all fighters to get out of the field of fire!"
On Lando's orders, the Vindicator and Ascension moved to close the space between the Legacy and the Supremacy, which continued to open fire on the Star Defender as it struggled to remain space-worthy. In an instant, the two Star Defenders loosed a storm of laser fire on the retreating vessel while the rest of the New Republic vessels began to organize to form a perimeter, hoping to seal the First Order's leader in and there bring him to justice for his threat against the New Republic.
However, as Ahsoka and her fellow Jedi let the squads of pilots out of range of the firefight, Tor Solaris spotted something that the crews of the other Star Defenders could not. He watched as the TIE fighters retreated back to the Supremacy, and then saw the deadly starship launch a cylindrical object from its underside just as its hyperdrive engines were activated.
"General Calrissian, the Supremacy is preparing to escape! We need that missile launched at those hyperdrive engines!" he said with urgency in his voice, though a tone of impatience was lingering there as well.
The reply suddenly drifted out of Tor's ears when he saw the device that the Supremacy had launched drift until it was at least one hundred meters from the New Republic lines. Suddenly, the device was soundlessly engulfed in an orb of blue-white energy which grew to a circumference of eighty meters. The starfighter pilots barely had time to move before the orb rapidly contracted and then released a thin wave of concussive sound that fanned out in a full three-hundred-and-sixty degrees, and Ahsoka knew then what the object was.
"Seismic charge! Break formation!" she shouted into her comlink.
The New Republic starfighters raced toward their respective Star Defenders as the oncoming wave of sonic destruction raced behind them at such speed that even the Jedi had a hard time attempting to flee, and a great number of pilots were lost as they failed to reroute all power to the engines. But though Ahsoka and her fellow Jedi managed to escape, they realized that the seismic wave was headed for the Star Defenders, and the Legacy was falling into its path. Aboard the half-crippled Star Defender, Juno Eclipse was the first to see the approaching energy wave and knew that in its current state, the Legacy's shields would be able to withstand the blast for ten seconds before the Star Defender would be obliterated. There was no time to go after the Supreme Leader, for the Supremacy made the jump into hyperspace and vanished before even the pinprick lights of its engines vanished from sight.
"I'm probably going to lose my rank in the Defense Force for this," Captain Eclipse moaned. She activated the comlink and said, "All hands abandon ship!"
The crew members of the Legacy immediately abandoned their posts and hurried for the escape pods just as the seismic charge wave hit. The shields were almost instantly splintered from the blow and the ship rocked dangerously as though the empty vastness of space had become an expanse of liquid water. Thankfully, Juno Eclipse was among the crew members to get off the bridge as the seismic wave hit, and she spared no risk as she herded the crew into their designated pods.
"Move it along, ladies and gents! Some time today would be nice!" she said urgently before boarding her own escape pod. Then with the press of a few buttons, Captain Eclipse launched all the escape pods from the Legacy. She had time enough to glance back at the crippled Star Defender just as the enormous ship tore itself apart in a raging burst of fusion energy. The Vindicator and Ascension were hit by the blast from the seismic charge as well, and while at least half the crew did escape upon seeing the Legacy abandoned, the Ascension's crew had attempted to flee, but were hit too suddenly the burst of destructive power and had their vessel torn neatly open with the gruesome effectiveness of a Trandoshan warrior skinning a gundark.
The escape pods were directed toward the Liberation, whose bay doors yawned open to receive them. Once the crews of the lost Star Defenders had disembarked, Lando came from the bridge to determine how many crew members had escaped the seismic charge. It was fortunate that more than twenty-thousand crew members including the enlisted personnel had escaped the Legacy and over ten-thousand had evacuated the Vindicator. Around two thousand had taken the chance to escape the Ascension, which the other New Republic personnel counted as fortunate for the sake of comradery as well as expertise against the new danger. Now, the New Republic fleet had been distracted long enough for the First Order to escape, but there was no point in pursuing them, Lando knew. With Luke and his company still handling the incursion threat on Tatooine, the logical step was to go there and repel the First Order, for Lando was aware of the bargain that Rotta the Hutt had offered the New Republic in exchange for Tatooine's liberation.
"Well, we still have enough crew from each ship to fill in aboard this ship," Lando said with a slight smile. "That should be all, ladies and gentlemen. Now we'll set course for Tatooine."
The crew members of the fallen Star Defenders began to find stations or head elsewhere aboard the Liberation, but then Juno Eclipse noticed there was one face among the crew that she did not see, and she called out, "Wait a moment! Where's Admiral Ackbar?"
The crew who had been aboard the Legacy stopped in their tracks and began looking among their ranks for the Mon Calamari officer whose courage in battle and staunch defiance of the Empire had won him numerous honors following the Battle of Endor. It was only two minutes before the entire assembly was overcome with the weight of a truth none of them wanted to admit: Admiral Gial Ackbar, one of the greatest among Rebel Alliance heroes, had been lost in the destruction of the Legacy.
Lando and Nien Nunb were the first to hang their heads in grief, and Nien made a moan like a kaadu with a bad cold. The pilots who had been attempting to slow down the Supremacy all bowed their heads for the loss of Admiral Ackbar, but Ahsoka buried her face into Ferren Barr's chest and began to sob quietly, for she had known Ackbar since he was merely a captain on his home world during the Clone Wars.
"Admiral Ackbar was one of the best commanding officers I knew in the Alliance," Lando said with sorrow. "He was willing to fight against tyranny to the end of his days and he lived up to that end today. But though we bow this day in sorrow and loss, we will ensure that his sacrifice meant something by continuing to protect the peace and sanctity of the New Republic. May Admiral Ackbar rest well in the Force."
It was with heavy hearts that the crew of the Legacy, Vindicator, and Ascension dispersed to acclimate to continuing the fight aboard the Liberation. As Lando headed back to the bridge, he beckoned to Juno Eclipse to follow him and Nien Nunb. Once they were on the bridge and Lando had order the fleet to set course for Tatooine to aid Luke and the others, Lando told her, "Captain Eclipse, you have an important task to carry out when we reach Tatooine."
"Yes, General Calrissian?"
"You will make ready for our troops to land just beyond the First Order's location and deploy the fleet so that they can launch no attacks from space against Luke's company or against any populated areas of the planet. You are in command of the fleet as of now, Admiral Eclipse."
With a feeling of trepidation and unease brewing in her chest, the newly-appointed Admiral Juno Eclipse saluted Lando and then took her position on the bridge of the Star Defender Liberation.
A/N: Sorry it took so long to get this chapter up, folks. This summer was quite busy for me and I've had work done on my original, professional novels. However, Chapter 16 shouldn't take too long to set up now that I'm back in the groove. Hope you enjoy.