The Vanguards: Retribution - 9.121

[Cirrsseeto Quez]

(OOC: Continued from The Vanguards: Rapture and The Vanguards: Ragnarok)


Somewhere in hyperspace

The adrenaline had worn off, and exhaustion crept its way back into the vacuum. Once the shock and revulsion of a million dead bodies had burned through his sense of horror and despair, the only thing left for Cirrsseeto to feel was tired.

They'd plotted the quickest course away from Karallon and were headed to clearer space to broadcast to Alliance Command the grim news they'd discovered. It gave the Captain at least a couple of hours to crash on his bunk.

An hour passed, if that, and his precious sleep was interrupted by the comm.

"Captain to the bridge."

Bleary eyes cracked open, faintly glowing blue in the darkness of his cabin. Cirr thought about protesting the summons. Thought of questioning whether it was needed. When he'd had a second to think, he realized that in light of what they'd all seen, there could be nothing good to come of it. Slowly, Cirrsseeto got to his feet, threw his jacket on, and was out the door again.

* * *

"Rreporrt."

The Captain was too tired to yawn. When he moved to sit in his chair, his knees protested with the kind of ache you got all over when you'd gone over a day without any real shut-eye. Bitterly, he thought of how glib humans were about that sort of thing. Pulling an all-nighter seemed to be the kind of event they were hard-wired for. The temperament of a Cizerack was certainly...fussier.

Lieutenant Mallin at least looked as exhausted as he did. The crew was due a shift rotation. That they had remained at post meant there was something serious.

"Captain, we're getting some major energy discharges within five light years of our location."

"Weapon fjirre?"

Mallin's eyes fixed on his terminal, adjusting his sensor sweeps.

"Has to be. From the readings, looks like a capital ship engagement."

There were no Alliance ships in the region. He'd already made sure of that with Captain Terius and was told very simply they were a long way from reinforcements. That left the Empire as a likely culprit, and...

...whoever was responsible for Karallon.

"Rred alerrt! Sejine, adjust courrse forr jinterrcept!"

Straightening in his seat as the klaxon howled, Cirrsseeto waited for Novgorod's course to shift. As close as the engagement was, they'd be upon it nearly instantly...

...and just like that, the starstreaks shrank into pinpricks, just as the massive wedge hull of an Imperial Star Destroyer trundled overhead.

[Crichton Stark]

At times like this, Captain Stark was forced to concede that despite the remarkable feat of design and engineering that the mighty Imperial Star Destroyer represented, the lack of adequate seating for it's command officers.

Knuckles whitening at their vice grip on the situation table, Stark had to spare a moment of brief admiration at Moff Rübezahl. The actor-turned-politician might have been lacking in many areas, but balance was not one of them. Nor, it seemed, was chiming in with unnecessary commentary. Unlike most regional governors the Captain had encountered, the Moff was doing a wonderful job of keeping his mouth shut and actually letting the trained professionals get on with their job.

"Tactical!" he barked, a scowl deepening on his brow as he gazed at the strange holographic vision that floated before him. Whatever was attacking them, it was unlike any starship he had ever seen. Though dwarfed by the Thunderchild's mile-long dagger hull, the three enemy frigates and their smaller picket cousins seemed unperturbed by the pinnacle of Imperial engineering, looming in space like the strange and oblivious deep sea creatures Stark had witnessed years ago during an otherwise unremarkable visit to Naboo.

Their assault had been unprovoked, unannounced, and completely without restraint. The Thunderchild was soaking up the hits - for now - but that wasn't even the worst of it. Each of the three frigates had belched forth countless dozens of what the Captain could only imagine were droid fighters: no sentient species he knew of could possibly be small enough to fit inside those tiny two-meter pyramids along with all the other requisite systems.

They didn't move like drones, though: their speed and agility was causing hell for the Imperial gunners, their shields seemed impossibly robust, and despite all of the zooming and tumbling, the craft's weapons never seemed to lose their lock.

Intelligence would want us to snag a few of these in one piece, he mused. But let's worry about keeping us in one piece first.

"Fire everything," he commanded, as the Tactical Officer reacted to his shout. "And get our birds in the air."

He shot a grim glance towards the Moff.

"Maybe they'll have more luck than us once they get in close."

[Cirrsseeto Quez]

Saine compensated seemlessly, allowing Novgorod to dip nimbly from the path of the trundling destroyer. Still, this was a situation one normally didn't find themselves in.

The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

Unless that enemy is comfortable with wanton genocide, Cirr thought darkly. The ships that faced the Imperial warship seemed to match the description of whatever attacked Karallon. The tactical reports started to flood in. Three of the same light cruisers they'd seen, and double the number of pickets against an Imperial class star destroyer. The swarm of smaller objects appeared to be some kind of drone fighters. And there were a lot of them. Even with the star destroyer's impressive complement of fighters, the aliens had them on numeric advantage easily.

Seconds passed, and fusilades of fire from the destroyer pelted the lead cruiser, as the other two charged ahead for each flank. Cirr watched it all with a grim expression.

"Send message to the jImperrjial destrroyerr."

A TIE fighter split apart in front of them in a gout of fire. Cirrsseeto continued.

"Alljiance Frrjigate Novgorrod stands rready to assjist."

The tension on the bridge was thick with that statement. They were about to lend aid to their sworn enemy.

Captain Raurrssatta fixed his eyes on Lieutenant Mallin, and spoke with force this time.

"Do jit."

"At once, Captain. Sending."

The message went out, and all they had to do now was wait for a response. Cirr didn't look, but he could feel Glayde's eyes fixed on him. He didn't have time to dwell on what his second thought about all of this.

"Alerrt the hangarr. Prreparre to scrramble fjighterrs."

[Crichton Stark]

"Rebel contacts!" someone's voice rang from the crew pits beneath the Star Destroyer bridge's central catwalk. "They're moving to intercept!"

Stark's jaw clenched. "Assign new targets to our starboard batteries, and inform the squadrons -"

"No, sir," the officer interjected, a mix of insistence and confusion thick in his voice. "They're moving to intercept them." The officer's grey-sleeved arm pointed to wards the main viewport for emphasis.

Another chimed in. "They're also hailing." The comms officer didn't wait for an instruction before feeding the transmission to the overhead speakers.

"Alljiance Frrjigate Novgorrod stands rready to assjist."

Stark's eyebrows climbed as he exchanged a glance with the equally surprised Moff. Something unspoken passed between them: Help from the Rebels? How can we accept that?

The Moff's response was a wordless shrug. Stark got the message loud and clear. How can we not?

Stark threw a curt nod to communications, and did his best to instil some stability in his impact-rattled voice. "Novgorod, this is the Star Destroyer Thunderchild. We acknowledge your offer of assistance, and gratefully accept."

Pacing back to the situation table, he typed in the commands that would sync his terminal with the active comm feed. "I'm transmitting the frequency our fighters are using; please switch to this and have your pilots coordinate with ours. Be advised: the enemy ships appear to have an unbroken three-sixty field of fire, and we suspect they are droid-controlled."

He hesitated, long enough to glance at the tactical data on the Alliance vessel that his Executive Officer had pulled up on the situation display. A Marauder Corvette. Fast. Agile. Squishy. Her shields wouldn't last long under even a fraction of the barrage that the Thunderchild was soaking up. Then again, the whole point of a ship like that was to avoid getting hit in the first place.

"Our sensors are unable to pierce their interference field and get a solid target lock. If you are able to get close enough to transmit telemetry on any of those ships, we are equipped to launch a sizeable missile strike."

[Cirrsseeto Quez]

"Acknowledged, Thunderrchjild."

The Novgorod bridge crew waited with collective held breath. They were danger close to a Star Destroyer - a distinction not many Alliance spacers lived to talk about. When one third of the red blips on the holographic IFF flashed to green, nearly everyone let that breath out at once. Still, these were strange days.

"Malljin, do we have those comms?"

Cirr's comms officer pressed an earbud flush with a finger as he hunched over his console. He looked up to Cirr and nodded.

"Get ourr bjirrds out. Defense scrren Crresh."

The word was given to the hangar, and the A-Wings began to scramble, lining up in the chutes to drop through the atmo field. One by one, they peeled away from the mother ship, establishing a loose, open diamond to pick off any advancing droid fighters.

"Gold Three to Actual, multiple targets on vector. They're too small to register as fighter craft."

That hubris was nearly fatal as he banked hard when one of those small targets snapped a deadly spray of laser fire at him. A wingman put counter-fire in a stitch that nearly missed, but managed to kill the droid on the last burst.

Captain Raurrssatta took his seat, preferring to get an overview of the battlespace instead of getting lost in the weeds of the fighter swarm.

"Brrjing us to zerro-zerro-njine marrk two-njine-njine, and go full burrn."

Novgorod banked and dove, putting distance between herself and the destroyer to force the aliens to divide their attention. Cirr toggled the live comm back to Thunderchild.

"Novgorrod to Thunderrchjild, pull yourr fjighterrs back frrom thjis vectorr, we'll open a lane forr them."

A fresh swarm of droid fighters regrouped to press the frigate, and as they massed to overwhelm the screen of A-Wings, Novgorod's missile tubes lit up the sky, sending a scythe pattern of diamond boron warheads into the maelstrom. High-radius detonations clapped through the ether in unison, taking advantage of the alien's reliance of the swarm and turning it against them. Dozens of droid fighters shattered in the explosion, leaving a weakened flank exposed.

[Morgan Evanar]

"Gold, put your sensor package to AMTT." Morgan instructed quickly. Unlike the other starfighters, the A-Wing’s sensor package had an aggressive missile/torpedo tracking mode. It was features like that that made the small Alliance Starfighter such a maintenance headache. The ANs-7e sensor suite in the A-Wing was superior to the X-Wing’s, with a multi-layered approach not seen on every X-Wing. In Anti-Missile/Torpedo Tracking mode, it would give the agile starfighters a chance against the smaller vessels.

Morgan refocused on the jamming possibilities, but his heart sunk when he saw the conclusion.

Analysis complete:

NO DISCERNABLE EXTERNAL DATA LINK DETECTED.

The words sat in unblinking terminal green. There was something small enough with enough brain power to run those ships, and it seemed to be organic based on movement.

“We can’t jam them.” Morgan announced. But maybe they could fool them.

[Bette Davis]

"They're all over my tail, Shooter!"

"Stay calm, Wrench," Bette bit out over the comm, looping down and back up, putting her Defender behind Shadow Seven and targeting the bogeys trailing it. One of the tiny starfighters immediately fired on her, their laser cannon placement allowing them to fire a full 360 degrees which of course included behind them. Bette cursed and jinked to port as her shields were lit up, but she managed to hit one of the fighters behind Wrench as her wingman went into a barrel roll on her y-axis, up and away from their current direction.

The remaining enemy fighter followed the fleeing Defender, it's small size making a standard evasion nearly impossible. Bette tried to compensate to follow but was a few seconds behind and trying to play catch up as the battle raged around them.

"Rebels joining the battle," she heard dimly over the comm as she raced through their engagement area, Shadows and enemy fighters zipping past as Wrench barely escaped a targeting lock and nearly flew right into another pair of the pyramid shaped ships.

"Keep your head on," Bette shouted. "Go starboard and neg Y, full throttle."

Wrench threw her ship down and away as instructed, bringing her tail into Bette's line of fire. The enemy disintegrated under Bette's Defender's laser cannons and Wrench blurted out her thanks as she formed up on Bette's four again.

"We have A-Wings entering the battle near you, Shadows. They are allies. Switch to comm channel gamma-alpha-two."

Bette looked at her sensors briefly to verify the entry of another group to the fray, and switched her comm over.

"Slims in the arena," Ox called out. "They better stay out of my way."

"Cut the chatter, Five," V'larr's calm voice sounded like he was ordering breakfast from room service.

Bette took out another bogey and Wrench fell back a little to clear one off her tail. "These things adjust too fast to be droids and are too small to be piloted."

"Just vape them, Shooter, let command worry about what they are."

"Understood, Shadow Leader." She spiraled pos Y and the Rebels' capital ship came into view. "You came in that thing? You Rebels are braver than I thought."

[MARCUS]

"Please refrain from inefficient communication."

MARCUS, in the guise of his ship-mounted persona of Novgorod's E-WAR suite put out a general message as he began to add new parameters to the irrationality matrix that controlled the frigate's electromagnetic bag of dirty tricks.

"Alert. A gap has formed in the enemy fighter screen."

True to form, Novgorod's bombardment, combined with a squadron of TIE Defenders pouncing on the remaining droid ships in disarray had caused a noticeable weakening in the alien line. MARCUS exploited that chaos, drawing upon Morgan's observations and began throwing sensor shadows into the gap, creating duplicate readings for the TIE Defenders and A-Wings that were approaching. The alien ships took the bait and a dozen began chasing the ghosts on their scopes.

[Cirrsseeto Quez]

Cirrsseeto watched the battle play out in front of him. It was an impossible number of fighters, and a battlespace that teemed with organic energy. Nevertheless, he could sense the weakness when it happened.

"Actual to Gold Leaderr, engage the enemy fjighterrs and punch thrrough."

The dozen A-Wings running support near Novgorod parted from their mother ship. Without her fighter escort, the frigate, drew closer to the protective gun range of Thunderchild and the screen of standard TIEs that provided her mainstay fighter complement. A sharp bank, and the marauder cut loose with another diamond boron barrage on a group of alien fighters not clearly being engaged, thinning their ranks as she sped away.

Towards the weakened fighter line, the A-Wings began to accelerate to attack speed.

"Shadow Leader, this is Gold Leader. We've got you covered for an attack run on the cruiser, do you copy?"

On cue, an A-Wing cut across on a scissoring intercept and swatted a droid fighter as it lined up for a bead on a defender. Two more droids diverted from their chase to go after the Alliance fighter, giving the Shadows even more of a seam to work out of.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

De'Ville pressed herself into her bunk, her team jammed into a barracks that was already full of fighter jocks so that a few had to sleep in shifts. Right now all the stick jockeys were out riding their starfighters into battle, so there was plenty of room to stretch out.

Lellan was trying to play cards, but the air was thick with tension and he kept shuffling the deck and redealing. The SpecOps team was theoretically getting a ride with the Novgorod to the next Alliance friendly port, but Lilaena didn't know when they were going to reach it. Things in this sector were fracked up, and the enemy that had emptied Karallon was here, here in space.

Attacking the Imperials. Attacking the Rebels. De'Ville rubbed her temples, turning on her side toward the bulkhead. She could feel the enemy fighters as they swarmed around the Novgorod, feel them as they winked out. It wasn't like the Imperial and Rebel pilots. She could feel them also as they moved through the Force, when she tried, and it was entirely different. Accounting for this being an alien sentient species they had not yet encountered - yet it was alien, so very alien. It made her sick to her stomach, the life forces in the ships.

Yet she felt as though she had to learn all she could, so she lay still on the bunk while her team had nothing to do but wait and hope the ship didn't disintegrate underneath them, and she reached out with the Force. Reached...reached... to one of the strange beings on the attacking starfighters. Not one - two. Two life forces.

De'Ville could not touch their minds, but she did what she could, trying to learn about them. How she could use any of this information she didn't know. It was a tight rope she was walking, and there was a Jedi Knight on board. She hoped that he was busy enough with the battle that her activities would go mostly unnoticed. She wanted nothing to do with him.

What she had felt at the table, the technology they had found on Karallon, she could feel it in the starfighter. And... the pilot and the gunner were both humans.

Her eyes snapped open and she sat up abruptly, banging her head on the bunk compartment above hers.

"You all right, boss?" Grenn looked up from where he was watching Lellan lay out his solitaire game. De'Ville winced, swinging her legs out of the bunk and nodded.

"Yeah, I keep forgetting how little space there are in these things." She hopped down to the deck. "I'm going to stretch my legs. Being cooped up here is -" she looked over at Kyle Mano who was chewing his fingernails down to nubs - "driving me crazy."

"I'll come with you," Fi'lik said, her green lekku swept around her shoulders. De'Ville nodded, and the two women walked out into the passage.

[Bette Davis]

"The fuck are those -!" There were a few moments of verbal chaos as the Imperials found multiple sensor readings for their fighters popping up on their readouts. A confused pair of TIES flew evasion on friendlies that weren't there, only to crash into one that was. Bette winced, shooting down an enemy that turned to chase a sensor duplicate and left itself open.

"Frackin' Rebels and their tricks," swore someone, while command figured out what was going on.

"Sensor package recalibration coming through," came a terse voice over the comm, and there was a tense moment while her HUD blinked and then the sensor ghosts appeared as just that - faint outlines that were easy to differentiate from the real thing. Neat trick, Bette thought.

"Shadow Leader, this is Gold Leader. We've got you covered for an attack run on the cruiser, do you copy?"

"Copy that Gold Leader," came Lt. Commander V'larr's calm and rational reply, quickly assessing the changing situation with his green brain and ordering the Shadows on an attack run.

Bette banked hard to port, her Defender screaming underneath her in a way that she could only feel as a vibration through her pressure suit, her teeth clenched as she fought the stick through the turn. Her wingman, Wrench, executed a wider turn and had to accelerate to catch up. The enemy cruiser had her starboard flank wide open as the slims punched through the swarming droid fighters, and the Shadows took full advantage, using the heavier guns of the Defenders to tear into the hull as they flew past.

[Zachariah Jak'el]

That moment, as his TIE Defender launched from the hangar, as an enemy combatant came screaming to intercept. There was no time to think. Only react. A sharp tug on his control yoke sent his fighter turning and spinning downward immediately, clearing the hull and disengaging immediately. The rest of his wing was close behind him; their voices confused and flabbergasted over the comm. Without looking Zach reached across the small cockpit and rested his hands on the interior wall where religious scripture had been written in flowing text throughout the cockpit.

He believed in something beyond technology and firepower. The battlefield was daunting; a world of crisscrossing laser beams and too many objects to acknowledge at once. Shiraya give me strength. "There is no darkness. Except that found in the hearts of men." He whispered before he lost himself in the battle, juking between wreckage and battery volleys as his wing exploded into the scene in a hail of laser fire. It was a fight to bring the pain as quickly as they could. The enemy combatants were tough, with strong shields and a size that was difficult to track. With a calm precision that had always set him apart from the rest of the Shadow Squadron, Zach drew close beads on the enemy fighters and by combining firepower from the rest of the wing they were capable of focus down the shields and disintegrate the bogey.

The call came in, Rebel forces assisting them. It seemed so strange a thing. Shouts of opposition and arguments broke out all through the comm but Jackal switched to the new designated channel, and was overwhelmed with the slew of new voices added. No faces to place on these voices as he flew into combat with the enemy. The enemy force was thickening to the point that it was suffocating and he almost wished he had the faster Interceptor to bob and weave through the debris, but that would be suicide. Already his shields were the only thing keeping him alive. Even then, one barrage and it was lights out.

The call came out. Shadows cleared for a bombing run on the enemy cruiser. Good. In unison his flight peeled off their present course and lined up for the hole in the enemy fighters; moving in behind V'larr's flight. With a thumb he armed all his missile batteries and prepared for the run. Taking up position behind Vl'arr's "shoulder" they offered cover fire for the spearhead.

"Shadow Nine in position."

[Cirrsseeto Quez]

"Their evasives are erratic...what the frack is this?"

Gold Nine, frustrated at what should have been a kill shot sailing past an enemy that banked hard starboard, moved to try and anticipate his target.

Onboard Novgorod, Cirrsseeto kept transfixed to that little section of space: the tip of the spear where Gold and the Shadow contingent had pushed their assault. Even accounting for tactical incongruities, droid fighters usually playede the game like a school of fish, the broad strokes of their movements obviously being controlled by programming of a single source or at least a single logic. An organic mind still couldn't predict it, but it was like pornography - you knew it when you saw it.

Trouble was, it wasn't there. At all. The swarm before them moved differently.

"Actual to Gold Nine, break pursuit and relay at one seven two."

Lieutenant Myktel was the deck officer, and he called the ball tactically for gold squadron on the bridge, serving as their sense of perspective. The perspiration on his brow was a tell-tale of his own awareness of their situation. Cirr had spent enough time on Layla to know small unit combat. The line was overextending.

"Stay on the escorrt, Gold. Stay on jit..."

"Actual to Gold Nine, I repeat, disengage and divert, there are no friendly guns..."

Nine's comms came in clipped through comm static.

"I'm coming about to over-under with Eight. Get ready. Arm concuss-..."

From their vantage, the blip that was Gold Nine's fireball appeared miniscule.

"Gold Eight, disengage and divert! This is Actual, over!"

Another voice on the line.

"Shields depleted...starboard engine...diverting power..."

A second burst in the dark, followed by a few echoed in retaliation as Gold reunited with Shadow in a counter-strafe to buffett the enemy aside.

Novgorod herself was back on sortie, skirting wide to take a shot at the flanking screen, and hopefully to thin the fighter line. Switching to concussion missiles, the Marauder stalked like a bird of prey, peppering the sky with anti-fighter salvos.

The fighters had done more than their share. They'd somehow punched through the mass of alien fighters and bloodied the cruiser's nose. If it was a street fight, now was the time for the haymaker. Cirr looked at the far side of the tactical screen at the advancing Star Destroyer, the notion that it's intimidating profile brought a degree of comfort a bit unsettling.

[Morgan Evanar]

Morgan was engaged with a shadow sensor dance with the enemy, and had pulled a few gambits that had just paid off. They absolutely should not have paid off.

The droids/drones/whatever they were did not have an optical sensor suite. He pulled away from the console for a moment, and left MARCUS to run the show. He reached out in isolation to a group of the alien fighter craft and studied it. The design was simple, and the primary thought was ease of manufacture. Laser cannons, re-directive shielding. That was clever. Not exactly durable beyond the shielding, and the engines were sub-optimal. Sensor suite was simplistic, so was the power...

Morgan doubled over and threw up on the floor, his cheek against the console, with one hand to steady himself.

[Cirrsseeto Quez]

"Morrgan!"

Any other crewer having a spell would just be cause to get them relieved at their post. Morgan wasn't any other crewer, and while his role as Jedi was secondary on their mission, he knew that his friend didn't exactly "turn off" that gift, and when a Jedi starts to get a funny feeling, it's a good idea to pay attention.

Already, Ensign Strath had him righted. Cirr's attention turned to his Jedi companion, even as his frigate pounced on the fighter flank, engaging in concert with a renewed TIE escort to roll the enemy's line up.

It was a shot of intuition, but Captain Raurrssatta had learned long ago to trust his gut.

"jIt's the fjighterrs, jisn't jit?"

No droid fighter technology was good enough to do this. There was something else at work. If Cirrsseeto couldn't explain it with nuts and bolts, he'd accept whatever he could get.

[Morgan Evanar]

Morgan nodded while he wiped his face with a sleeve. Cirrseeto might not have been gifted by the Force, but he had a keen ability of observation.

"They bottled the essence of a being, and it's the power plant." Morgan spat. He paused, fighting down a mix of disgust and rising anger at what had been done. He took a deep breath.

"They're all screaming." Morgan shook his head, the dull echo of pure emotional terror still raw. His logical mind was in denial about what it was, but he knew it was true. He knew what another being felt like, and those had been crudely ripped from their bodies. He'd read a tale of vampire-like Sith who would supposedly consume the essence of their followers and enemies to enrich themselves, but it wasn't ever bottled, as far as he knew.

Morgan wished Serena and Rhianna were here. Their skills suited the situation much better. The only release he could think for the tortured life force was the lethal one.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

The doors to the bridge opened after she presented her ident card to the scanner. Couldn't have just anyone barging into the command center during a battle. Fi'lik entered behind her, her lithe Twi'leki body insinuating it's way into the room. She was ridiculously graceful - an attribute of her species that had caused most of them to be enslaved as dancers. The bridge was in barely controlled chaos.

Lilaena stepped aside as an ensign bustled past her, the viewscreen showing the battle in front of them. There was the pungent aroma of vomit in the air, and she quickly zeroed in on the culprit - the Jedi knight, Morgan. They hadn't interacted much, purposefully on her part, though she'd been careful not to blatantly avoid him. A small cleaning droid was already taking care of the mess he'd left beside his station, and their Cizerack commander was standing beside him.

To be quite honest, now that she could see the ships flying around her bile was rising too. How much could she get away with saying? It was in her record that she'd been a padawan before Order 66, though it was also in her records that she'd received no further training since she was a child. Best not to say anything at all, unless directly asked.

"I figured a Jedi would be made of stronger stuff," Fi'lik said quietly, her voice nearly drowned out by the sounds of the bridge.

De'Ville swallowed down a lump in her throat, willing herself not to join her companion in looking green. "Most Jedi are."

[Cirrsseeto Quez]

There was a nagging feeling in the pit of Cirr's stomach. "They bottled the essence of a being, and it's the power plant."

A pile of a million dead husks left to rot outside a city like garbage. Nothing taken, nothing destroyed, but everything taken. Everything that mattered.

Cirr watched De'Ville and one of her commandos enter the bridge. While there wasn't a mission-specific need for the ground pounders during deep space red alert, he had a feeling that he was about to need all the help he could get, and gave her a brief nod after making sure Morgan was upright. Standing by the Jedi's post, the Captain looked ahead.

"Ssajine, adjusst by zerro-two-zerro and come about full."

The helmswoman knew where that would bring them, and needed no instruction on the speed. They were all-in, charging over the winnowed flank to hit the enemy close and provide the Star Destroyer with bombardment telemetry. Fortunately, Shadow and Gold had mostly overrun the swarm, and were now lining up for a free shot. Half the fighters doubled back to protect the motherships, while the rest did their best to harry Thunderchild's trundling approach.

"Adjust deflectorrs to..."

Cirr caught his words. There wasn't going to be a front line where they were heading.

"...just keep them up."

Novgorod righted herself, her engines strobing bright as she picked up a full head of sublight thrust, accelerating to speeds on par with an X-wing. Forward missile tubes cut loose with diamond boron warheads, cutting a gap ahead that would surely diminish quickly. The boron weapons were immediately followed with quick salvos of concussion missiles to pick up stragglers on their vector. The problem was, there were only so many missiles and so few tubes to fire them from. The dull thumping sound of laser weapons on shielding started picking up in pace, like rain in an advancing thunderstorm.

"Morrgan, jI need you to get a bombarrdment lock."

[MARCUS]

MARCUS bundled the balance of all available targeting data brought in from Novgorod and the combined forces of fighters, bringing the information up onto Morgan's terminal.

"Alien picket ships targeting data is complete and ready to disseminate to firing solutions. Directed fire at the ventral bow hull blisters is likely to cause a cascading deflector failure."

Of course, what wasn't mentioned was the incomplete data for the cruiser. They still needed to close distance for a detailed reading on it. Nonetheless, they were close enough for general bombardment against it if they chose to engage.

[Crichton Stark]

Captain Stark watched the sensor telemetry in silence, his perspective focused on just one of the Alliance fighters which had been magnified on his hologram display. The Rebel pilots referred to them as A-Wings, he was told: the RZ-1, faster than a TIE Interceptor but with the shields and hyperdrive that seemed to give Alliance pilots the edge over the Empire's quantity over quality approach to space superiority. He'd heard them called 'slims' in certain circles, a slang reference to an A-Wing pilot's slim chance of survival, relatively speaking. Idly, Captain Stark wondered if Imperial pilots would feel that nickname was as apt as the Rebel ones did.

The projection's focus changed, shifting to the enemy ship. Lines that had been approximated before snapped into sharper resolution, fresh telemetry from the A-Wings that had managed to weave their way through the curtain of point defense fire and the swarms of air cover, no doubt succeeding because of the same factors that set them above Imperial craft.

"Sensor telemetry received," his Tactical Officer confirmed unnecessarily. There was a moment of hesitation as he conferred with a Communications Officer. "The Alliance Frigate is recommending target locations on the ventral surface, but we will need to move to closer range to bring all our batteries to bear."

More contemplative silence, the Captain's intense old eyes straying from the holographic miniatures to the fireworks display beyond the bridge's main viewport. "Status on the Novgorod," he requested, his mind extracting the vessel's name from his memory of her Captain's unusual accented words.

"Not good," came the Tactical Officer's blunt response. "Her forward shields are in imminent danger of collapse."

This was the moment, then. He could feel it in his bones; feel the Moff's unrelenting gaze upon him, an opinion on the tip of his tongue held back by reluctance to provide it unsolicited. By rights, the Moff had the authority to turn his political views into orders; jurisdiction or no, he was Captain Stark's superior by a wide margin. That was not how their relationship worked, however. That was not the level of trust Captain Stark had earned, nor the level of respectful non-interference that had become the norm. Even so, Crichton felt his eyes drawn to Rübezahl as he issued his orders.

"Helm: bring us to within missile range, and position our shields between that Alliance ship and as many of their gun batteries as you can muster. Tactical: advise all Imperial and Alliance fighters to vacate our forward firing arc, and order all gun crews to defensive fire; I want a curtain of fire making whoever they are think twice about coming any closer. Stand by all missiles on my signal."

A chorus of responses sprung up, different officers at different consoles going through the motions that would steer the vast ship as instructed. The Imperial-class moved with such slow elegance to the outside observer; few realised just how much effort and complexity was involved in hurling a mile of durasteel around the stars.

"Weapons range!" the Tactical Officer announced.

Stark moved, abandoning the holodisplay to advance a few essential paces down the catwalk that bisected the bridge. Ahead, their target loomed, in all it's utterly alien glory. His hands clasped behind his back as he stared the cruiser down.

"Open fire," he instructed, his eyes narrowing. "All weapons."