Chapter 42

The mining platform is not nearly as indestructible as Exel's bragging insisted it was. Slake knows that those grav shields can be unhoused by a single concussion missile. Lose one, and you put the whole thing down the celestial drain. The platform is a spectacle of design, but it's also built cheap. Dozens of flaws pop up in just a perfunctory target analysis.

Slake fights her urge to torch it too quickly. She needs it to stay operational to pull the oncoming TIEs onto her and give Profundity a chance to make the leap to hyperspace. Also, this close to the black hole, Slake is going to be short on cover. She'll need to use the platform to stay protected if she's going to pick off her former squadron one-by-one.

She throws a salvo of laser shots at the airlock to goad Obsidian into coming closer.

An alert pops up on her HUD that the three TIE Bombers in Drome's group are attempting to lock with their proton torpedoes and concussion missiles.

Slake responds with evasive maneuvers to shake the lock, but saves her boost in case they fire. Ideally, she wants them burning up their ordinance now, so that she can whittle them down over a longer skirmish. Not one of them can fly like her. The longer the duration of the battle, the more fatigue will set in for Obsidian, and then Slake can force some errors.

Obsidian-10 from the TIE Fighters lets loose a missile, as does Chen on the bomber squad. They're two klicks out, which gives Amara time to get the missiles on her tail and buzz the mining platform. As the missiles close in, she banks her Interceptor around the portside of the platform, flipping to the underside, and feels the rumble of the explosion as it collides with Exel's pride and joy.

"No!" shrieks Credenzo over the Exel-mandated, single comms channel. "We don't need to destroy the platform ourselves, you MORONS! Take the shot when you have it! Use our numbers!"

"She can hear everything we say!" shouts Drome. "Everyone just fly smart and shut the fuck up!"

Slake banks her interceptor back to the topside of the platform, sticking close to the darkmatter storage on its aft-end. If they want to shoot her here, they're more than welcome.

"Let her hear," Credenzo taunts over the channel. "Are you listening Slake? We're going to kill you."

"You know, Aliston…" Slake begins, checking her radar for Obsidian's flight pattern. Spread out. Protecting each other well. "Price said the exact same thing to me."

Slake banks another corner, right into the firing arc of Chen and Gorman's bombers, who both used their boost to close the distance to the platform. Startled, Slake fires her own boost, drifting down and underneath them. The pair of bombers opens fire, scorching her rear and shorting out her back-end sensors.

"Shit!" Slake spurts as she fires her throttle and tries to speed her way out of the jam. Obsidian 10 and 12 are ready for it. They swoop behind her and empty their laser reserves while Slake is caught in the open. She can only juke blindly as her cams and rear sensors are cooked. It's fortunate that the two pilots are both rookies, as they only connect on glancing shots across her Interceptor's ablative panels.

Slake spots an asteroid a few klicks out from the precipice of the black hole, and cuts toward it, using the extra gravity to give her a kick of speed.

Drome achieves a target lock on Slake, but she has to let it happen. Her hands are full with the pair of TIEs on her six. Sweat beads on Slake's face. Six-on-one is too much. If Obsidian continues to coordinate this well, she knows they're going to make very short work of her. And very short work of Profundity afterward.

Another laser blasts through her armor and sizzles her right wing, its plating rattles under the intense G-forces. Slake didn't want to use her more of her nano-repair kit this soon, but she can't afford to lose a micron of maneuverability. She routes all power from engines to the repair function and drifts into a 180-degree vertical flip, firing the entirety of her boost reserves against Nixus' pull. The move throws her against her safety harness, and brings her fighter to a sudden, dead stop.

The two overeager TIEs zoom past her as an alarm blasts that Drome's proton torpedo has been fired.

Slake executes another flip and throws her throttle forward, burning toward a smaller asteroid for cover. A fighter or bomber, she doesn't know which, strafes her Interceptor with laser fire, and she rolls away slow, disrupting the pilot's leading aim.

"Getting nervous, Slake?" Credenzo laughs over the comms. "Stop again. I dare you."

Slake weaves between the asteroids to shake the torpedo, but her power system is committed to the right-wing repair. Her boost isn't recharging quickly enough to make the distance she needs to outrun the torpedo. Her targeting computer tells her that Drome's shot is 300 meters away and closing. This close? If the torpedo connects with an asteroid, the explosion still might be enough to kill her outright.

Slake throttles out of the asteroids and drops two packs of missile countermeasure. A cloud of hot metal blows out the back of her Interceptor, and she throws what little boost she has left to put some asteroids between her and the incoming blast.

The torpedo hits the cloud and blows, sending a wave of shrapnel through the gaps between asteroids. The chaff hits Slake's fighter and fries her HUD, knocking Slake off her vector. On reflex, Slake cuts back toward the mining platform for protection, and is surprised to finds Credenzo directly in her sights.

Slake fires shots from her barely powered cannons, putting twin scuffs on Credenzo's increased armor. Aliston buzzes past, unharmed.

"Looking shaky, Slake. You'll need more skill than that if you hope to kill me." Over the comms channel, Slake hears the boost firing in Credenzo's TIE. Even without radar, that tells Slake that Credenzo's attempting a long bank to get some distance on Slake and keep her contained in the open space between the asteroid field and mining platform.

Aliston can laugh all she likes, but she's still flying scared.

Slake wants to drift into Credenzo's path now and take her while she's shaken up from nearly being killed. But there's no power to spare. The nano-kit is still taking its sweet time, only 60% complete with its patch on Slake's starboard wing.

Slake wonders how many X-wing pilots have felt the same frustrated hopelessness facing her, as she feels now.

Slake kicks up her throttle and makes a break for the cover of the platform. She sees the green streak of lasers ahead of her and begins her evasive weave. The fire comes from Chen and Gorman, who are using their bombers to guard the platform. They aren't trying to kill her or give chase. They're laying down suppressive fire, blocking Slake' Interceptor from the refuge of the mining platform's cover.

Wincing, Slake breaks back into open space, where only the flow of asteroids into the black hole can protect her. A moment too late, her sensors come back online, and she sees that Drome has used the gravity of the hole to quietly drift behind her.

"Good match, Slake," he says before he dumbfires a pair of concussion missiles at her six.

Slake drops every projectile countermeasure she has left, but she is out of boost to get away from the blast. The missiles connect with her chaff cloud and explode, throwing her Interceptor into an end-over-end tailspin.

"KILL HER NOW!" screams Credenzo over the comms channel.

Engines dead, with no way to regain stability, Slake focuses on her cracked rear viewscreen and fires her tow cable at an asteroid in the middle of the field. The harpoon connects and she is lurched violently as the cable snaps taut. Her forehead slams hard into her smoking control panel. The world goes blurry, but she's able to slam the cable winch, which pulls her into the safety of the asteroids.

"Where did she go?"

"I've got no radar on her!" says Drome.

"Did we kill her?" Credenzo asks hopefully.

No one answers.

With her componentry and engines generating very little heat, Slake realizes she's invisible to the TIEs hunting her. In this cave, she can wait, hide, and lick her wounds. She commits full power to the remaining repair resources she has.

It won't take Obsidian long to find her. She can only hope that Profundity can jump out of the system soon, taking Gormaanda, the slaves, and Kell to safety.

As for herself, Slake knows she's lost. It's all but certain now.