Outlaw's End

[Sanis Prent]

Thread takes place immediately after the conclusion of Rescue from Coruscant. If you're involved in that thread, feel free to chime in if you like, but I'm not waiting up.

"Cirr, we're aboard! Get us out of here!"

The magnetic clamps securing the Black Cat snapped to with a thud, slightly jostling the passengers in the shuttle. I was already out of my seat and sprinting down the falling egress hatch, through the opening airlock door, and down the corridor to lead me to the ladder up to the cockpit. Mid-stride, I braced, feeling the weight of the ship beneath my feet move as my first mate peeled a few hundred tons of Corellian durasteel across the Coruscant skyline. Sharper jostling followed; the strafing of blaster fire from TIE fighters. We were still far from out of this.

I hustled to the top of the cockpit, strapping in opposite Cirr, who relieved his seat the moment I took the reins, heading belowdeck to man the engines. The kid Jedi Abarai Loki took up where Cirr left off, manning the quad lasers with lethal precision as we began our desperate escape. I felt that fluttery, nearly-queasy feeling in my gut, and my restless leg bounced on the deck plating as I threaded a pair of skyscrapers, losing one TIE in a blinding flash of an impact fireball.

"Didn't exactly get a chance for a headcount, kid. Hope everyone made it."

I didn't know from his silence if that meant I was right or wrong. I was just talking to blow off steam. As I inverted the freighter, picking up steam while plowing across skylanes, I throttled for the upper atmo. Already, I could see the comm scanner lighting up with all sorts of Imperial dispatches with our name on them. Making a getaway in atmo on Coruscant was relatively easy. We hadn't gotten to the star destroyers yet.

[Cirrsseeto Quez]

Cirr barely had time to skid to a halt in the engine room before nearly pitching over a railing onto the piping hot superstructure. Grabbing a crash harness, he hooked in, knowing damn-well that this ride was going to be a bumpy one. He gave a quick once-over of his readouts, and slapped the comm to speak with the cockpit.

"Shjields arre at 70%. Whateverr we can do to keep them up would be a good thjing!"

Another Jedi had joined him in the engine room to man the ventral quad cannon, giving Layla an uncharacteristically strong murder nest of defensive fire. Without slaving the second gun to the computer, she was able to cover her flanks much better than usual, and having two Jedi on the guns certainly wasn't hurting things.

Still, Cirr was on edge. With a huge slice of the Imperial Navy soulbound to the Imperial sector, even having enough breathing room to calculate the jump to light speed was going to be tough.

[Abarai Loki]

Streaks of searing laser fire jostled Layla on its ascent, sending tremors throughout its clanking innards, and inside the cockpit, Loki once again wrestled for control of the levers before him, clamping them in his sweaty palms. He resumed fire, swatting a fighter from the sky in the first salvo, and with every sudden movement, his blistered fingers ached.

The fire back at the compound had been sudden and ferocious; the detonated explosives ruptured a major fuel pipe and in an instant the lower half of the facility was incinerated, flames flooded corridors and stairways, smoke clouds spilled from turbolift shafts, and the only means of escape remaining had been through a small army of angry troopers. And yet, they made it. Now their lives were in the hands of Sanis Prent and his famous piloting skills. The ship gave another violent lurch and twisted, the sun spiralled in the viewscreen, spearing the murky cockpit with daylight. After being almost launched out of his seat, Loki clung desperately to the control sticks and loosed another murderous volley from the primary ventral canon.

"Captain Prent, we may stand a better chance of surviving this debacle if you can keep your ship in one piece!"

[Sanis Prent]

I didn't need the kid's pessimism telling me what I already knew. The margin for error here was nil. Even as the atmosphere thinned, relinquishing it's color into growing shades of blue and purple, I knew we had only gotten a taste of the trouble we were in for.

"We'd cut tighter maneuvering if I jettisoned all the smart-asses on this boat, so watch your mouth!"

As if on cue, I pivoted on my ascent axis, banking away at a contra-ascending angle as a TIE screamed past in a blindingly fast power dive, only to clip into one of two pursuers, spilling sparks and flame down below. By now, we were in space, and the kaleidoscope of space traffic changed tones. Gone was the glare of sunlight against atmosphere and against hull alike. Now the sun glinted off hull alone, and a thousand pinpricks of ion engines cast false starlight among us.

"This shit's too thick to bolt for hyperspace, I've got to clear all orbitals. MARCUS, go ahead and feed the fastest exit vector out of here, and keep those coordinates hot."

I didn't wait for the droid's affirmative as I threw everyting I could into the sublights. Out of the corner of my eye, I could already see one of the dread grey wedges slowly trundling in my direction.

[Cirrsseeto Quez]

Cirr saw it too, out of the corner of his eye one one of six monitors at his station. The pattern of ships around them glistened like a life day tree, and made his job Hell if he was to angle deflectors to anticipate attack from a particular angle. Already, he was spilling power from non-essentials like the long range sensor suite into the shield power banks.

The gunner adjacent to him was completely immersed in their work, seemingly out of the moment. Cirr hated them for that ability. He felt weighed down by his fears and doubts. Seeing how many ships out there were now gunning for them, maybe he had a better case than an optimist did though.

Still, there wasn't much quality of life for fatalists, so the Cizerack first mate swallowed it down and worked his diagnostic terminal. The engine temperature was rising nearly to it's operational limit. He'd need to vent coolant reserve soon. Even that would probably not do it. They'd probably have to burn hot and risk damaging the whole sublight drive to keep the kind of evasion they needed.

[Morgan Evanar]

Morgan was engrossed in micromanaging the ships power systems. He didn't need to do the big things, like Cirr had just done. His hands danced across the engineering console while Cirr watched and listened to his baby start to cry at the coolant temps. They'd need to dump in a reserve of helium in soon. Morgan wasn't about to tell the Cizerack how to do his job: the mechanic had ably kept this herded sheet metal, bolts and a hyperdrive together years before Morgan had set foot on the Layla.

He cut into non-essential power systems like lighting, leaving them on their own emergency power sources. Several areas of the ship now were only illuminated by dim red fixtures. He ran a quick mental calculation, and cut the power to life support into a sliver, and coaxed power out of the emergency batteries for the rest. It would only last five hours with a passenger compliment of this size, but five hours was an eternity. Cirr would be mad later, but he cut power to the other luxury items like the refrigerator and icebox, doing an outlet by outlet tally and adjustment of Layla's power relays. The power availability ticked upward, until Morgan had wrung another eight percent toward the weapons, shields and engines. It would have to be enough, unless the Jedi could deal with an extra low oxygen environment for the foreseeable future.

"How much Tiabanna reserves do we have?" He asked the mechanic over the loud thrum of Layla's strained power-plant.

[Cirrsseeto Quez]

Cirr liked that Morgan was doing the same line of thinking he was on. It helped keep him honest. He already knew, just by volume of fire, that the main feeder tank would be creeping toward neutral pressure.

"Forr once, we have enough!"

Taking two steps to his left, Cirr reached up to an overhead hold, grunting as he pulled free a big fifty kilo tank from a secured fastener. The tibanna feeder had two intake nozzles, so that one tank could be relieved by a replacement without any detriment in gas pressure.

No sooner did he turn to pass the tank down the line than the ship was rocked by a hard impact, throwing Cirr and the tibanna tank into the nearest bulkhead. Cirr was saved the brunt by his crash webbing, but the tank carommed off the wall and struck him across the head, causing the engineer to go limp in his impact harness as the tank clanked to the deck. Blood splattered on the controls from a free-flowing gash in his forehead.

[Mara Tallen]

It was hard not to be pleased with her explosion - everything had functioned perfectly, and had the added bonus of rupturing a fuel line beneath the structure. And that...well...that just made the boom bigger and the fire prettier.

Mara loved her work.

One thing she did not love, however, was remaining in human form when the ship's continued existence in one piece was in doubt. She'd have been far more comfortable in feline form, however, she'd dislocated her shoulder on their getaway back to the Layla and popping it back into place hadn't helped much.

The other thing Mara did not like was feeling useless. There just wasn't anything she could do to help that wasn't already being done up here. But there was always the engine level. Even if it mean fetching and carrying whatever someone needed, it would fulfill her need to do something and keep everyone else at their tasks with fewer concerns.

Unbuckling her crash webbing, she got out of her seat and made her way down, just in time to duck under a flying tank. Cirr wasn't so lucky however, the gash across his forehead bleeding freely and making a gruesome mess. She caught the tank before it smashed a critical control panel, and handed it off to one of the techs ready to put it in place. Trusting that they had it under control, Mara turned her attention back to Cirr.

Ignoring the vicious protest of her shoulder, she grabbed hold of his safety harness and pulled him to a seat while one of the other crew dove for the terminal he'd been working and bleeding on. One hand caught a rag tossed her way and pressed it to his head to stop the bleeding, while the other pulled open the medkit hanging on the bulkhead.

"Come on, Cirr...wake up, furball..." Mara said, removing the rag after a few strained moments, pleased to find the bleeding had slowed enough to work with. "...gonna need stitches when we get back."

[Abarai Loki]

Something stirred in Loki, deep down, when his canons fired. All it took was a squeeze of the trigger and he was treated to the bellow of lasers ripping starfighters apart in the sky. It was something primal, that much he knew, something dirty. Over and over, his peers spoke of the Jedi way; speeches supported by melodramatic hypotheticals and sanctimonious hyperbole, warnings of the Dark Side and its deceitful allure. It was fear-mongering, poisoning younglings and diluting their minds to the reality of battle. A Jedi was a warrior, first and foremost, and war was painted in shades of grey, and red. The remnants of another TIE fighter streaked past the cockpit like a lurid crimson comet. It was not a sin to enjoy battle, but to lose sight of your cause, to surrender your principles to fear and doubt, that was criminal.

"The enemy appears to have terminated its pursuit planetside," he noted, staring up at the empty computer screen.

The cockpit fell eerily silent. For a moment, Loki remained seated, taking a breath to gather his wits. Then he rose, and joined Sanis to take a look at the expanse of starships stretched out before them. The Layla thrummed softly beneath his feet. In the distance, a second destroyer turned, converging on their position.

"It appears our reprieve is but temporary."

[Sanis Prent]

It wasn't often that I got clipped by a turbolaser blast, but when it happened, you would definitely feel it. The ship lurched, and I redoubled my evasive, peeling away from a tracking arc of deadly capital ship bombardment that was moving along my vector. A second, third, four, and soon there were more turbolasers peeling the ether around us that it was almost a minefield.

"Well, at least if they do that, it'll keep those TIE fighters off our six."

As if on cue, the guns on the trailing warships stopped, allowing a fresh wave of TIE's to dive from up high.

"So much for that!"

Layla banked hard, down and away from the approaching fighters.

"More fresh targets then, eh?"

I slapped the voxcomm for the engine room.

"Cirr, how bad are we cooked?"

A second or two passed with no response. I didn't like the silence one bit.

"Cirr?"

[Morgan Evanar]

Morgan scooped up the tibanna tank from Mara before it could careen through the ship any further. He shoved it into the intake line, pulled down the tank mount, and slapped the second intake valve open.

"He's shaken up," Morgan barked into the comm. "one second." He flipped to the generator status, which sniffed thermal redline. He mashed the coolant circulate button. It would vent old coolant helium out and pull fresh in. Under normal circumstances, it was advisable to do below 90% of recommended thermal limits, due to the slight lag of the old coolant leaving the system and the new populating it. There was typically a 5% temperature spike. These Corellian units were typically overbuilt. The generator would just have to live up to it's reputation.

"I gave you another minute. Get us out of here."

[Mara Tallen]

A frown marred her features as she carefully wiped the blood away from the wound, working quickly given the circumstances surrounding them. It wasn't too unlike the myriad of times she'd patched up her partners or her squad-mates while out on the battlefield. When there wasn't a medic around, you learned incredibly quickly how to do the basics.

And there was almost never a medic around when you needed one in a SpecForce unit.

Deft fingers held the wound closed as she reached for the bacta patches, when Sanis' voice came over the voxcomm. Muttering to herself in mando'a as she applied the bacta patches to the wound, she was saved from needing to reply as Morgan beat her to it. Another moment saw the patches in place and a bandage on to hold them secure.

[Cirrsseeto Quez]

Cirr's eyes blinked open, pupils wide open and unfocused, showing the signs of the concussion he'd suffered. He winced, at first feeling nausea rather than the sting of the laceration he'd taken.

"Get me up, get me up."

Hands unconsciously felt at his crash webbing, which was still on him. Still a little delirious, he unconsciously reached up to Mara's hand, pulling it away from his face.

"Tjibanna..."

He looked quickly to his left, saw the second tank on the rack, and gave a nod to Morgan.

He could hear the generator protesting at the beginning of its operating limit, but like Morg, he had an idea how much wiggle room he could play with on that. His eyes tracked back to the screen showing deflector integrity. Due to having to spread coverage fully to protect all fronts, each screen was riding at about 15%.

"How long tjill ljight speed?"

MARCUS's voice came over the line, answering the question.

"Light speed calculation will be complete in ten seconds. You may start main hyperdrive startup."

[Abarai Loki]

Ten seconds, Loki thought as he fell into his seat. Snatching the control sticks and yanking them into action, he released a wide spread of laser fire into the field of starfighters as they swooped overhead. A couple of the fighters were clipped by the salvo and twisted out of control while the rest wisely broke formation. They were little more than pin pricks on the targeting screen now, and Loki was forced to wait, and watch as they regrouped for another attacking run.

"Missile lock!" he suddenly blurted, and the cockpit flashed a dangerous shade of red.

Three of the squadron leaders bunched up and loosed a trio of concussion missiles straight for the Layla. There wasn't much the targetting computers could do at this point, so Loki exhaled his doubts, closed his eyes, and fired.

[Sanis Prent]

Hyperdrive was already spooling, so I couldn't maneuver. I had to trust in my shields, and trust in the guns. Time seemed to slow as I watched the angry red orbs that signalled incoming missiles approach on the HUD.

Loki was lost in battle trance, or whatever it was. He was in the zone. One orb blinked out...then another.

But a full three seconds before I knew we'd accelerate to FTL, the third orb reached the center of the HUD, and struck. It punched the shields, blew the main lights out, and doused my console in sparks and electrical fire.

[Morgan Evanar]

The Layla's hyperdrive went from an excited hum to a dull din.

Morgan took a deep breath when the impact warning siren went off. The ship had taken a beating, and then she trembled with the concussion missile. The minute background hiss in his headset went dead. The comm was offline. The engines had been knocked offline, and the ship's thrusters were all that was keeping them pointed to the exit, but with the hyperdrive loosing power, it would be impossible to jump.

Morgan could sense the TIEs making a turn for another pass.

"Cirr!" Morgan yelled.

"Mjy console jis blown!" He yelled back. The big fellinoid smacked the computer interface. Nothing happened. Morgan took a quick glance at the systems status, and noticed that they were bleeding coolant.

"Coolant rupture, power is down!" Morgan called back. It wasn't inherently dangerous, but the power core was going to slag itself in short order. Cirr knew exactly what that meant. His ears drooped, and he started on the crash webbing. The ship rocked violently. That TIE squadron was probably having a field day. Morgan took a deep breath, and appeared behind Sanis.

"We're dead in the water." He explained over the alarms that still worked.

[Mara Tallen]

I really hate flying, some days.

Mara ducked out of the way as Morgan and Cirr lept back to their work, only to be thrown to the decking below her feet a moment later. She was all too familiar with the feel of explosions and out of pure reflex shifted into feline form for more stability.

Panic, smoke, sparks, and a touch of fear altered the scent of the air. She'd never seen Cirr move so blessedly quick as he did everything he could to staunch the coolant system's bleeding. Morgan raced up to the cockpit and Mara followed, her mind beginning to form an idea.

"We're dead in the water."

Still in her predatory form, she looked up at Sanis and Morgan, and then down at the floor of the cockpit. Pawing at it, her thought came to full fruition and prompted her to shift back to human form. "Sanis...concussion tubes?" she asked, tapping the floor with her foot.

At his nod, she smiled grimly. "I've got a dozen reverse-polarity pulse grenades. I can rig them into two launchable packages which should buy us some time and knock the TIEs out of commission for a good while."

Spinning on her heel, she ran back to the cargo hold where her cases had been stored. Bits of packaging and wire were tossed about as she used a nearby crate as a work surface. Twelve RPP grenades, separated into two groups of six were soon wired together securely, her fingers braiding wires together in a particular pattern to amplify their area of effect. Detonation caps, shrapnel, and a little C4 came last, packed in the empty spaces to hold the grenades secure in the missile casings. Of course, the damage the shrapnel would cause was a decided bonus.

One under each arm, she raced back to the cockpit three minutes later, as quickly as she dared with the ship still shuddering beneath them. "Their sequence will start at launch, and they'll explode three seconds later. Any less and we'd be caught in the backwash. Someone shows me the access I can have them loaded and ready."

[Sanis Prent]

Mara's scattershot idea was a stop-gap at best. Without hyperdrive, we weren't going home.

My mouth dried out in the seconds I parsed the information given. This wasn't a case of damage that Cirr could pry out of the jaws of death. The hyperdrive was physically destroyed. There weren't enough fancy maneuvers and there wasn't enough of my dumb luck to get out of the system, much less the sector, with less than the entire Imperial starfleet gunning us into atoms.

Layla was buffetted again with a glancing laser blast, enough to throw sparks in the cockpit as they bypassed the practically non-existant shields. I could feel all eyes on me, as if expecting me to do something.

"Mara, the hatch is to your lower left. Orange lever to release."

It barely came out as audible among the wailing klaxons. I turned again to my controls, gripping the sticks with white knuckles as I looked to Loki.

"That's the best shooting I've ever seen, kid. No shit."

With a few taps on the console, I transferred gunnery control to my station.

"I'll take it from here, okay?"

We banked hard, picking up sublight speed against a group of TIE's I knew would be coming around again soon. I tapped the comm.

"This is the Captain. All passengers and crew to the shuttle."

Of all the things I never thought I'd do, it was this.

"Prepare to abandon ship."

[Cirrsseeto Quez]

Cirr pulled the remaining Jedi off the ventral gunning station, making sure he climbed up the ladder well ahead of him. Even though he was heavily concussed, he had a job to do, and if they didn't vacate the engine compartment, a pressure blowback would cook them a bit before any turbolaser did.

"Get above deck! Go! Go!"

Giving one last look at the flame-licked engine deck, Cirr looked away and slapped a control to seal the bulkhead. There was no going back now.

He worked furiously, following Sanis's terrible command to the letter, pushing and shoving Jedi left and right toward the ascent ladder so they could make it to deck two, and the shuttle bay. The Jedi, displaying their strange monastic discipline, managed the evacuation with assured calm that he envied and hated. He was angry, and he needed to be angry. It made him move fast and it made him do his job.

[Abarai Loki]

When the missile hit, shoving Layla violently off course, Loki thought for a moment that perhaps that was it. Sparks and flames leapt from surrounding consoles, the floor trembled, and elsewhere on the ship, a metal mass groaned from the knockout blow. It was in that moment he contemplated his end, whether he would die instantly in a powerful explosion of fire and metal, or slowly, sucked from the ship to perish in the void of space. An honourable death.

But the cockpit was still intact, Loki was neither freezing or aflame, and he felt a guilty twinge of relief at that. Sanis was talking, his voice a muted buzz against the throbbing in his ears, however the bellow of klaxons articulated his orders perfectly. The young Jedi looked up helplessly at his disabled targeting computer, amputated from his duty to protect the ship, it felt like a cold blade turning in his belly. It was the shame of failure.

His fingers peeled away from the smoking control sticks, leaving behind a thin coating of waxy skin. He stood, and found himself amongst the fumes of fried electronics, which made breathing a laborious chore.

"Captain Prent, I can still perform my duties," his voice a stern mixture of distress and indignation, "I can still fight!"