Chapter 80

Firestorm

The Red Drexl left a roaring trail of ion exhaust in its wake as it accelerated towards the Thalassian slave ship. Jyssa yelled over the intercom, "We're coming in hot. Get ready to take them down."

"Copy," Arc said. He closed his hands around the dual ion turret's control yoke. Running through a mental checklist, he activated the display panels and turned off the safeties. The turret pivoted under his hands to face forward. A large rectangle on the display panel showed where the slaver ship was. Jyssa was bringing the Drexl straight towards them.

In the other turret, Nat went through the same motions. Not nearly as tall as Arc, he had to adjust the display to show the trajectory of his shots from a lower angle. Unfortunately, the freighter didn't have a full heads-up display on the transparisteel dome that protected them, like so many of the Republic ships that both the Padawan and the clone had served on.

On the display screen, he could see that the enemy ship was charging its weapons. "Um... Jyssa..." he said over the com, "We're within blaster range."

"I know," she said back. "We're almost within ion cannon range. Fire as soon as we're within range."

"Okay," he said. He wasn't sure exactly why Jyssa was holding her fire. He stretched out his senses through the Force. He could feel Miriam and their Sullustan passenger in the living room. Through the Force the Sullustan felt nervous and afraid. Nat could feel Miriam's nervousness and stress, although she was clearly trying to use Jedi meditative techniques to keep it under control.

In the cockpit, all he could sense was razor sharp focus. Nothing else mattered to Jyssa right now beyond her piloting. There was a hint of fear, but it wasn't a fear of death. It was a fear of failure. Fear of letting the slavers have their way with the surviving Caamasi.

Nat had always known that the hardened, cocky pilot that Jyssa showed to the world was just a part of her, and that there was more than met the eye. This was the first time he realized just how deeply she was capable of caring about a group of people who she'd never even met.

In the other ion turret, Arc's aura gave a sense of a glacial calm underlying a rapid-fire series of calculations and thoughts. In Arc's short lifespan, he'd had more combat training and experience than everyone else on the Red Drexl combined. And he trusted Jyssa's combat strategy, whatever it was.

"Good enough for me, I guess," he said. The numbers counted down rapidly on the targeting display. They were within ion turret range. He depressed the trigger. Nearly in unison on the other side of the ship, the other turret fired.

Four bright blue bolts of polarized energy burst out from the Drexl, converging on the slaver ship. They splashed against the shields, leaving flashes of blue light. Four more bolts of red-hot plasma left the nose of the Red Drexl almost immediately after the ion bolts, striking the engine of the slaver ship.

Nat realized what Jyssa's plan had been. She was hoping that the ion bolts would disrupt the shields long enough for some of the blaster energy to get through and damage the ship's engines. Against a ship with weaker shields, the tactic would have worked perfectly. Against a heavily armed slaver ship, it didn't do quite as well. Six engine nozzles protruded from the back of the slaver ship, and it looked like only one had been damaged.

The slaver ship started to turn, and blaster fire poured out of a turret on the top and bottom of the ship. The Drexl corkscrewed downwards, leaving the field of fire of the slaver ship's top turret. The spinning motion helped keep the enemy fire from hitting, but Nat heard a few of the thumps and sizzles of high energy striking the shields.

When the ship came around into his firing arc again, he tried to relax and trust in the Force. His finger squeezed the trigger, nearly too late, and only one of his two ion blots splashed against the enemy shields. As the ship spun, he heard Arc fire from his turret.

The Red Drexl was maneuverable for a freighter, but it was still a freighter. There was no way that Jyssa was going to be able to dodge incoming fire the way a small, nimble snub fighter could. She leveled out and pulled up towards the slaver ship. It was larger than the Drexl, and even less maneuverable. But it had heavier shields and blasters.

Jyssa lined the ship up so that it was within the field of fire for both ion turrets. She was still adding random twists and turns to the Drexl's flight path to throw off oncoming enemy fire, which made it difficult for Nat to hit with the ion turret.

Whenever the nose of the freighter lined up with the enemy ship, she fired a burst of quad blaster bolts at it. One shot managed to hit right after one of Arc's well-placed ion blasts, and a piece of the slaver's communications array was blown off.

"Stang," Jyssa said over the com, "I was aiming for the sensor array."

Nat tried to focus his fire a little better to match up with Arc's shots. Arc was firing in an odd patter, two quick shots, a pause, then three shots.

"What would Ahsoka do if she was here?" he asked himself. "Well, besides taking down the slaver ship."

He tried to relax, to let the Force guide his actions. Every time a blaster bolt flashed by him, it disturbed his concentration. But for those quiet moments when he was able to focus, he got several solid shots into the enemy ship.

It was clear that their shields were weakening, but other than the one damaged engine from their initial salvo and the damaged communications array, the enemy didn't seem to be taking any real damage. The Drexl, on the other hand, had several scorch marks on the hull where little bits of turbolaser energy had bled through its shields.

Nat found himself falling deeper into a Jedi meditation as he fired. His shots were becoming more accurate. Then the ship pulled away, doing another corkscrew maneuver away from the slaver ship in a new direction.

There was a flash of danger in the Force, and Nat swung his turret around in a new direction. There was nothing there, nothing visible at least. But there was danger.

"Nat, you've stopped firing," Arc said over the com. "What's wrong?"

"I don't know..." he said, "Danger. I can feel it. Brace for impact."

The belly of the Thalassian ship opened up and something tumbled out. It ignited engines and roar in a long, curving arc away from the slaver ship, towards the Red Drexl.

"How in the cold of space did they get their hands on a capital ship sized torpedo?" Arc yelped on the com. It was the first time Nat had ever heard the clone afraid.

If it scared Arc, it had to be dangerous. Nat tried to focus, to sink deeper into meditation. He fired three times, only hitting twice. Ion energy crackled around the device, and it tumbled out of control.

Then the head exploded in a shower of dozens of trails of rocket exhaust.

"Son of a gundark," Arc yelled over the com, "it's got a cluster missile payload. Jyssa, get us out of here!"

Nat fired again and again. A few of the missiles went dead as they intersected his ion blasts. Arc's fire joined in with his, but at least a dozen continued on towards the Red Drexl.

Another missile streaked into view, and exploded in a bubble of concussive force in front of the cluster of missiles. Three of them exploded prematurely as they hit the expanding bubble of force, setting off a chain reaction.

Only one tiny missile missed the concussion wave and continued on towards the Drexl. A dozen blaster bolts rained down on it from above. One of them must have hit, because it went off harmlessly, far from the freighter.

A pair of Z-95 Headhunters zipped into view, curving around the freighter, then opening fire on the Thalassian ship. Their combined fire chewed through the shields and took out the slaver's top blaster turret.

A wide-spectrum broadcast came over the com. "Slaver ship, this is CC-9287. Power down your shields and weapons and prepare to be boarded."

The voice sounded a lot like Arc's, but with a Concord Dawn accent, and the enunciation was much clearer.

The slaver ship responded. "We don't negotiate with fodder," was their response. The slaver ship began to roll over to aim their belly guns at the two snub fighters.

The wingtip blasters on the Headhunters opened fire, as did four more sets of blasters from the other side. Nat watched as the blaster fire of a half squadron of clone pilots focused on the slaver ship.

The other five engine nozzles went dark, and several pieces of the enemy ship were forcibly separated from the main structure. Most of the lights on the ship went dark.

"Did you see that?" Nat said on the Drexl's com, "They completely disabled it without blowing anything important up. I didn't know that kind of precision was possible!"

"The wonders of Kaminoan tech and Mandalorian training," Arc replied.

The clone commander came on the broadcast com again. "Freighter Red Drexl, have you sustained any serious damage?"

"Nothing that will prevent us from landing safely and delivering our cargo," Jyssa replied. "Thanks for the assist. If it were up to me, you'd get a commendation right now. And a sloppy kiss on the top of your helmet."

"Just doing my duty, ma'am," the trooper replied. "You're lucky CT-8448 noticed the ion discharges on his sensors. He noticed the distress signal code."

"Distress signal?" Jyssa asked.

On the Drexl's com, Arc said, "That was me. An old simple distress code. Two, three, two, three. Simple pattern. Easy to work into your firing sequence."

"Right," Jyssa said, then switched back to the broadcast channel. "Yeah, I did a bit of shipping in war zones during the Clone War. My crew and I picked up a few habits from you boys in white."

Nat powered down the display on the ion turret and unstrapped himself from it. Once he took his headset off, he could only faintly hear echoes of the com chatter from the cockpit. The important thing was that they were safe, and from what he could hear from the cockpit, it sounded like two of the Z-95s would be escorting them safely down to the landing zone on the surface.

Author's note: My day job is a retail one, so things have been a little nutty lately. And everybody looks at me funny when I wish them a festive Life-day. :P (I kid, of course. My job is right next to the tech school full of nerds like me that I just graduated from, so I wouldn't be surprised if most of my younger customers would get the reference, though.)

Since the next couple weeks will have holidays falling in the middle of the week, I think I'm just gonna switch my posting schedule to Fridays for the next few weeks at least. So if I do fall behind more than that, I blame Christmas shopping. And in case I don't post on time next week, a Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Joyous Kwanza, Yippy Yule, Slammin' Solstice, Festive Festivus, and generally good will and peace on Earth (and the rest of the galaxy) towards men, women, non-binary-gendered people, and May the Force be With you. :)