Chapter 38
Slake steps into the hangar for the first time in days, and her eyes immediately lock onto her Interceptor. The starfighter is black and gleaming, the dark crimson of the Baroness livery draws a sharp contrast with the muted gray tones of this former Rebel hangar. It's incongruous, sleek, and cool—a thing of beauty that does not belong.
It's also likely her coffin. But she can't think of anywhere else she'd rather die.
Slake's brief moment of awe is snuffed out when she realizes that there is only one other fighter in the racks: Kell's Interceptor.
She looks around the hangar fruitlessly, "Oh no…"
Exel moved the whole squadron back to the Ex-Factor, Credenzo leaving these two fighters behind likely just to rub it into Slake and Kell's face. See what you're missing? Slake can hear her cruel, sing-song derision now.
If Slake launches now, she's going up against all of Obsidian, save for Tav, Kell, and Pyre.
Certain death. She knows she's good, great even, but there's no beating 8 on 1. Especially if Price is out there. They'll swarm and overwhelm her. All Slake can do is buy time for Profundity to make its leap home.
She checks a vacated tech desk and logs in with her old credentials to see who's on patrol now. It's Price and one of Credenzo's pups. Slake's heart jumps at the luck. If she can bring down Price and her wingman, then it's suddenly 6-1. And that's a far different proposition than 8-1. Especially if Price has already been splashed.
Clinging to the shred of optimism she's found, Slake climbs her rack, doffing the stormtrooper helmet and chucking it off the top of her fighter. In the cockpit she flips the switches that fire up her system. Fully operational.
Credenzo could have locked the hatch, yanked the engine, disarmed the lasers. But she's never been particularly detail oriented.
The wealthy never have to be.
Before every mission, Slake always considers the idea that she'll never land again. She's seen it happen to both good and bad pilots, even great ones who've caught a singular instant of horrendous luck. Not one of those jockeys was ever as outmatched as she's about to be.
She takes a long look at the space outside. Black and empty, overwhelmed by the pulsating void in the middle of it all, starlight bent and warped around the curve of Nixus' maw.
She fires her repulsors anyway. Lifts her fighter off of the rack. She hovers there in the hangar.
Slake has always known that she was going to die this way. Now the only question remaining is how many people she can save with this last run. And, she supposes, who on Obsidian she's going to take with her. She promises herself one at the very least.
If she gets the opportunity, Credenzo will precede her into hell. That's a guarantee.
Slake checks her lasers: fully charged. Concussion missile racks: chockful of eight tactical nuclear deaths. Engines burning blue-hot like twin suns. Systems nominal and primed. Satisfied, and without permission, the best fighter pilot the Galactic Empire has ever known throws her throttle forward and guns it out of the Profundity.
As Slake crosses the threshold of the hangar's containment field, she sees a black glob, about the size of a landspeeder, drip and swing itself into the hangar. She decides she's just seeing things. Perhaps it's one last attempt from Nixus to distract and derail her.
And that won't happen today.
On her radar, two green friendlies alight. Price and the new Obsidian-11, the pilot who took Kell's old designation. Slake banks hard on the supporting TIE Fighter, putting it in the dead center of her targeting reticle.
The all-Obsidian radio channel opens. "Lieutenant Price! Obsidian 2 is out of the hangar! Looks like she's atta—!"
Slake fires her quad lasers, hitting on all four shots. Obsidian-11's engines explode. The pilot screams as the air in his cockpit catches fire, burning him alive, inside and out.
"GAAAAAHHHH!" He either dies or the radio melts. No matter which as the detritus of his TIE Fighter is pulled into the forever black of Nixus.
Now it's 1:1 with Price. A continuation of their late night kaf chat. "Price," Slake greets over the shared channel. She hopes Credenzo is listening. And Exel.
"Baroness," Price returns in a tone of professional acknowledgement. "It is good to see you flying again. Despite the circumstances."
On the HUD, Slake sees heat buildup in Price's Interceptor. She's charging her boost.
"You could join me," Slake offers. "We can help people for once. People who really need it." Slake watches Price's schematics as alarms sound all over her network. The crew of Profundity knows about the mutiny. Project command is scrambling fighters and organizing an armed response with the troops.
Radio silence, as Price begins a long, loping curve, two-klicks out. She's staying out of range of Slake's lasers. Slake could attempt a missile lock, but decides against it, instead giving Price a chance to respond.
"That's a negative, Baroness."
A dogfight then. "Very well, Lieutenant. May the force be with you."
"Likewise, Amara." It occurs to Slake that she doesn't know Price's first name. Now she never will.
Slake needs to kill Price before the rest of Obsidian can launch. As her targeting computer struggles to achieve a lock against Price's expert evasive maneuvers, she knows those pilots are climbing their racks now in the Ex-Factor. Credenzo, her two remaining underlings, and the bomber group, sans Pyre: Drome, Gorman, Chen.
Slake notices that Price's boosted jukes are following a pattern. For a lesser pilot, Slake might dumbfire a concussion missile to exactly where Price is heading, but that's what the Lieutenant is baiting her to do. Price is trying to get Slake to spend down her resources so that the rest of the squadron can swoop in and get an easy kill against a defanged opponent.
If Slake's going to survive the coming onslaught, she's going to need all her missiles. Price has to be a laser kill. Slake punches her boost reserve to cut off Price's long curve back to her.
The starfield ahead of her is not clean. A moderately sized asteroid field has been pulled into Nixus' gravity well, and a steady stream of rock and debris grants ample cover to Price as she cuts a quick pivot to get behind Slake. Slake kills throttle and fires boost to execute a portside drift, then flips her quad cannons to individual fire, sending a clockwise burst of suppressive shots at Price to dissuade her approach.
Price's fighter doesn't even flinch as she maintains its velocity. Slake curses herself for the move, Price is no amateur and was not about to be spooked. Now, with less speed, Slake is a sitting duck for Price to zip around and behind.
Slake dives her Interceptor into the asteroid field and hears a loud electric snap in her cockpit. A laser from Price just scorched her starboard energy panels. Boost will generate more slowly now. Slake activates the auto-repair function for a makeshift patch. She checks her flight clock. Minute-and-a-half at most before she has half a dozen Obsidian fighters all over her.
Slake jukes left and right, seeing bursts of green death fly past her cockpit. She weaves through the asteroids that are being pulled in a stream into the depths of the black hole. In the distance, she sees all that inky black, darker than the rest of this dead system. Despite the adrenalin running wild through her, Slake feels herself drifting, wondering just how much space this monster has swallowed down, down, down…
Another shot grazes her cockpit and Slake shakes out of her reverie. Nixus was lulling her into a trance, and the only reason she isn't dead is that she was lucky. Price rushed her shot. She won't rush again.
An alert pops on Slake's HUD. Price is locking on with her missiles.
The repair computer alerts Slake that the patch has been made, but boost reserves will top out at 73% of max. Slake takes what she can get and fires the engines, using the velocity from the hole to burn fast toward the largest asteroid in her field of vision: a four-klick wide continent killer, packed dense with nickel and cadmium.
The g-forces pin Slake to her seat as she focuses on the feel of her fighter. She knows she will intuit the first tug of gravity from that asteroid before the sensors do. Before Price's sensors will.
Slake senses that pull, and drifts her Interceptor into a controlled burst, slinging herself around the asteroid as her targeting computer reports Price closing in. Slake's opponent is coming in too fast. Too hungry to make up for the easy shot she blew just moments ago.
Price is within point-five klicks. Point-four. Point-three.
Price won't be able to get as tight to the asteroid as Slake. Slake knows its canyons, mountains, ragged edges before they ever reveal themselves on the horizon. She weaves through the ridges at blinding speed, traversing the whole of the asteroid's equator.
Point-two klick.
The targeting computer flips from evasion to attack. Slake empties out her boost, gunning toward the glow of Price's engine on the horizon. Nixus' gravity pulls Slake the rest of the way.
Over the radio, Slake speaks. "You almost had me."
"It was an honor," Price says back.
Slake quad links her cannons and opens fire.
The burst shears the wings from Price's Interceptor, sending the cockpit into an electrified dizzying, spin. The gravity from the asteroid grabs hold, and the sizzling metal ball collides with a rock-face, exploding brilliantly.
Slake throws her throttle forward and banks out of the asteroids grasp.
Over the Obsidian channel, Slake hears Credenzo's shrill, panicked voice ordering the squadron's flight pattern. Six blips appear on her radar. Three TIEs, three bombers. The half-dozen remnants of Obsidian squadron are out of the Ex-Factor's hangar and in open space.
Now to buy Profundity time. Slake targets the mining platform and burns toward it.