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« Reply #35 on: February 08, 2018, 10:53:18 PM » |
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Chapter 8: Bread on the Water
Blackstar Base
5 ABY
Balnard watched the explosions march across Scardia Station and pushed down the rising despair he felt. Alarms rang on the station, the unexpected attack overshadowing even the damage control activity from the collision they had perpetrated. The sounds of panic echoed through the station and Balnard watched as fighters and assault shuttles launched, streaking toward the Imperial fleet only to be swatted away by the fire of escorting corvettes, frigates and TIE fighters.
It was a slaughter...
Balnard looked down at the wreck of the freighter. They were back in the upper docking ring, not far from where the Dragon had been docked, and the wreck was clearly visible. The hull stuck out of the side of the habitat ring's pressure hull like a cross-bow bolt, stubby and lethal. The fires had died down for lack of fuel as the small amounts of atmosphere on the automated ship vented and the engines had long since died. The push they'd given the station would have required correction - if it didn't seem a certainty that the station itself only had a few hours at most to exist anyway. He shook his head, mind racing. The escape pods were gone - panic evacuations when the freighter had hit - and anything that could fly was either headed into battle or running away. There was nowhere to go...
"Bal ... cargo bay ... pods ... medical ... three cee two ..." Talia croaked out, a suddenly intense look on her face.
Julwynn shushed her, cradling her head back to her shoulder as a mother would a child.
The lass is daft... Balnard frowned sadly, the pathos of his wife and her friend tugging at his heart in an odd way for the old warrior. ...still, what do we have to lose? Balnard shut down the tactical displays and called up the manifest from cargo bay 3-C2. The list of cargo container pods was long and varied, but it was row after row of hardware and spare parts. Bal tabbed through the list quickly, his eyes starting to glaze and drift slightly... "Wait..." He stopped and back-tracked. There... "Well I'll be dipped..."
Julwynn's eyes sharpened their focus. "You found something?"
Bal nodded. "Maybe..." He pulled up the manifest on the unit, a Modular Emergency Medical Pod, designed to be deployed independently or in combination with other units. "Medical supplies... Water supply... Water recycling plant... Emergency rations... Full life support..." Bal tapped some additional keys. "Seven modules with universal docking clamps for hexagonal arrangement with core..." Bal nodded to himself, still mumbling as his eyes dropped back down through the list of the bay's contents. The tugs and lighters were all gone, of course, as were the escape pods, but... Yes! That will do nicely... "Jules, can y' carry th' lass?" Julwynn responded by rising, using the force to lift Talia with ease. Bal smiled. "Excellent. Follow me, lass, and stay close. There be trouble afoot, and I've lost enough friends for one day."
**********
"Joker One to all Jokers: Stand by for jump to hyperspace." Armsman Captain B'Lain checked the coordinates he'd entered into the navicomputer and suppressed a sigh. His flight, call-sign "Joker", consisted of a dozen ARC-170-MXZ fighters, two tankers, two heavy cargo shuttles and a CR-90 corvette. They'd been on deep patrol when the Alpha-priority message had come in giving a set of coordinates in Mid-Rim null space and an order to proceed at best speed and render assistance as needed to four Mak'Tor operatives there. No other explanation, no clue what they were jumping into...
And no sense worrying about it. If a Knight was in trouble, the Men-At-Arms would bail them out - and make sure they never forgot about it! Still, caution was required, so Captain B'Lain had staged his team a short hop out from the final coordinates, where they'd refueled and reformed for the final jump in. He would leave four fighters behind with his tankers as escorts, and the four ships would jump to a nearby rally point. Meanwhile the rest of his fighters, the heavy shuttles and the CR-90 corvette would proceed to the coordinates, and with the Maker's help they'd deal with whatever situation they found there.
Or die trying...
"Joker Nine, stay sharp. We're a half-hour out, but I have no idea what we'll find there. Wait eight hours, and if there's no contact proceed home without us."
"But sir..." Joker nine, Flight Officer Jan'a'naith, began to protest.
B'Lain cut her off. "Orders, Jan. Follow them. If we don't come back, you need to go back and get help before returning. Anything that can chew up eight fighters and a corvette won't have to much trouble with four fighters. Understood?"
"Yes sir. Maker preserve you, sir."
"And you." B'Lain grinned and toggled his stick. "Ok, Jokers, let's go. Jump to hyperspace on my mark."
"Three..."
"Two..."
"One..."
"Mark!"
B'Lain hit his jump control and this fighter leapt forward with psuedo-motion into the tunnel of hyperspace, followed by the remainder of the flight, the shuttles and corvette.
It was a leap into the dark. Thirty minutes... The crews settled down for the tense wait as the nothingness of hyperspace swirled by outside their cockpits.
*************
They reached the cargo bay without incident. Talia had lapsed back into unconsciousness along the way, despite the healing song Julwynn was singing over her. They had one close call when they'd literally come around a corner and come face-to-face with a squad of Storm Troopers. Bal's blaster had come to life and started cutting them down but it would have been the end of the line if Julwynn hadn't pitched in as well, picking up and tossing several of the troopers down side corridors and crunching them into wall and ceiling panels.
But now they were here, and Bal needed to get to work. "Lass, set the wee girl down and cover me. This is giong to take a bit..."
Julwynn carefully laid Talia down on the deck, curled near Balnard, and stepped out where she could cover the corridor intersection. She ignited her saber blades and extended her senses, shifting to a battle song as she covered her husband.
Bal cracked his knuckled theatrically and began reconfiguring the modules in the bay. First, he keyed in a series of commands that would release the docking clamps on the nearly 1000 cargo containers currently in the bay ten seconds before dropping the bay's atmospheric shield. This would allow the bay to explosively decompress, sending the contents of the bay hurtling violently into space in what he hoped would resemble just another system failure on a base that was already starting to come apart under the hammering of the Star Destroyer's guns.
The next part was a bit more tricky as he isolated the seven MEM Pods and maneuvered them into position. He wanted them in their full hexagonal formation. Fortunately the pods were designed for deployment under less-than-ideal conditions by inexperienced personnel and the on-board computers took over, using the small thrusters built into the outer hulls to maneuver each pod into position and docking them quickly and efficiently. That done, he maneuvered a small robo-tug into place and affixed it to one end of the "core" MEM-P. He then put a second unit on the other end, giving him a low-endurance thrust package on either end of the impromptu spacecraft / life raft.
The final move was to program the core pod's computer with the standard Mak'Tor distress beacon codes Telow'na had given them when they departed. There was no way to stealth the output but he was operating as much on hope at this point. Besides, even the Imperials would hesitate to just blow up a medical pod. Even capture at this point would be better than the alternative of being blown to bits by the Star Destroyer's bombardment.
Bal completed his commands and extended a docking tube to the outer layer of his impromptu life raft. "OK, Lass, that's the best I can do. Let's go." He called, scooping up Talia and handing her to his wife as she tucked her saber away and headed down the tube. Bal looked around one last time, checked to verify that control of his programs had indeed passed to the MEM-P's onboard computer, and then fired three shots into the bay's control terminal. He then sealed the hatch and boarded the MEM-P, leaving a small thermal detonator behind in the tube. It went off with a muted <<crump>> as they transferred to the core MEM-P, sealing them off from any outside intervention.
Bal sat down and strapped in at the main terminal. The pods were designed with transport of medical personnel in mind as well as on-site treatment and triage, and there were several seats with 5-point harness systems. "Strap in, lass. This is going to be a bumpy ride..."
Julwynn braced Talia in a cushioned seat and strapped her in, then herself. Balnard did his final checks, checked the passengers, and then pressed a flashing key. "Hold on."
Julwynn braced them with the force, waiting...
There was a loud "THUNK" and the collection of containers across the bay floated free. For a few seconds they floated, free, calm, peaceful...
Then the force field dropped and with a roar 1000 containers blew out into space. Behind them the station, now under fire from the Star Destroyers directly, came apart with fire and fury, adding to the spreading debris ... and cover.
**************
Captain B'Lain flexed her fingers on the controls as the time to emergence wound down. She checked the status of the ARC-170-MXZ fighter. The design dated back to the clone wars, but the current model flown by the Men-At-Arms of M'Tzigon was quite different from the original. the biggest change was the reduction from three crewmen to one, plus the ever-present astromech droid. The additional space had been used for more powerful weaponry, eight concussion missiles instead of six, and a faster hyperdrive. B'Lain understood the logic and in combat the heavier weapons, shields, and overall faster drives and better maneuvering were a plus. But on these long hops...
She missed having someone to talk to.
"Joker One to Joker flight: Stand by..." She called, watching the counter dial down to zero. With a flash the hyperspace tunnel dissolved and dropped the eight fighters and accompanying ships into real space ... and right on top of one of the most bizaar sights any of them had ever seen.
Immediately to her front, Captain B'Lain saw what looked like a cylinder or perhaps a brick accellerating sluggishly away from a surrounding cloud of additional bricks. Whatever was driving the ... ship ... it wasn't particularly powerful, but it was steadily putting distance between itself and the debris field it was leaving. Her targeting sensors told her that there were small craft coming out from a gaggle of Imperial Star Destroyers parked nearby to check out the field, but it looked like a shuttle with a pair of escorting fighters - a standard search-and-rescue formation, in no hurry to close the distance. Dozens of other such formations were poking through a truely immense debris field in the near distance, but it all looked like an exercise. There was zero urgency to anyone's movements.
Except for the make-shift ship in front of them, which appeared to be moving with as much urgency as it could muster..
"Joker Prime to Joker One." Captain Ne'man'Jo of the CR-90 corvette, the Virtuoso called her on the tactical link. "We're being challenged by the Star Destroyer. Suggest we expedite."
"Affirmative." B'Lain watched her sensor suite stabalize following the jump. "I'm getting a transponder from ... whatever that is ... headed toward us. Wait one..." She hit a switch on her stick, toggling to a general hailing frequency. "This is Captain B'Lain'Throwd of the M'Tzigon Men-At-Arms. I am picking up your transponder. Please state your designation and need."
There was a crackle of static, then a very relieved sounding gravel voice responded. "Captain, this is Shadow. Condition Xenophon. Request immediate extraction."
B'Lain blinked, then watched as Lexi spit out a translation of the codes. "Shadow" was an under-cover mission sanctioned by the Mak'Tor Intelligence group, reporting directly back to Maenowan Jackson. "Condition Xenophon" meant that they were blown, in retreat, and had taken casualties requiring immediate medical attention. And immediate extraction...
Well. It meant "get us the hades out of here...."
"Shadow, we read. Can you cut your accelleration?"
"Affirmative, Captain."
"Very good. Cut accelleration and prepare for docking. Once you're aboard the shuttle we can get you out of here."
B'Lain saw the shuttle was already maneuvering to match velocity with the unorhodox craft even as her Joker flight spread out to cover them. The Virtuoso hovered nearby, matching the fighter's general course changes without getting to close, the second shuttle tucked in close under the cover of it's guns.
It took less than two minutes for the transfer to complete, and they were on their way. The last thing B'Lain saw was the core section of the craft explode, tossing the outer ring sections away to rejoin their fellows in the debris field. By the time the SAR craft were in range for detailed scans, the Mak'Tor craft were long gone.
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