Sublight Drive (Star Wars)

Chapter 6

Orbit of Teth-I, Teth System

Baxel Sector

Even though we’ve been waiting for several hours in anticipation now, the Republic fleet’s arrival somehow still came as a surprise. A good fraction of the bridge crew had gone to sleep in order to save power–I wasn’t willing to risk rotating in a fresh batch–and I myself was taking a power nap when suddenly:

“Cronau spike!” Stelle raised the alarm.

The two words struck like a fist in our collective guts. The hurricane whirr of servos and beeping of reactivating drives filled the room as over a dozen droids rose from their hibernation folds, then the clanking of recalibrating limps. Consoles hummed as their displays burst back to life, my cradle of holographic repeaters springing up around the command chair. I checked them one by one; helm and engine readouts on my left, weapons on my right. The open space directly in front of me was now filled with a holographic tactical display–a large red flashing bubble indicating the estimated enemy position from Cronau radiation data.

“System checks!” I called.

Green lights cascaded down my readouts like waterfalls in a complete sensory overload as every station onboard, regardless manned or automated, confirmed everything was in working order.

Tuff rested a hand on the backrest of my chair, “Double-check plotted vectors. Sweep all scanners from oh-five-oh to oh-six-five. If we cannot see them, they cannot see us.”

I flicked the comlink, “Resistance, Renown, call in!”

“All systems green, sir!” droid commander Three-One reported, “We’re eager for more kills!”

“Calm your gyros, Three-One,” Zenith–Renown’s OOM–said calmly, “Check your plots again. You’re closest to Teth-two, so don’t crash. Captain, we’re all ready.”

“We’re closest to the moon because we got the most points in the last post-defrag exercise, remember?” Three-One shot back, “My crew’s the best of all of us! You’re just jealous, Zenith.”

“Are your cooling cables stuffed, Three-One?” Zenith snarked, “You do know our positions are reversed after the first swing-by? Or is that too much for your logic modules to handle?”

“You–”

“Both of you cut it out!” I snapped, “Zenith’s right. Double-check your navigation data, then triple-check them! There is far too little margin of error to play fast and loose!”

“Roger roger,” Thirty-One swiftly sobered.

“Roger roger,” Zenith echoed, “Sir, I’ve launched a single vulture to relay live reports of the enemy composition and vectors.”

The pulsating red bubble suddenly shrunk down as more data was fed into the system, before splitting up into a handful of tiny arrows. A dotted line was then projected towards the planet in a beeline, a small number appearing next to the enemy taskforce. Acceleration. A thousand standard Gs and rapidly climbing.

“Two cruisers– accessing registry; Tranquility and Guarlara,” Stelle watched the datafeed, “And two Acclamator assault ships. It’s the entire Forty-first.”

“Very well, keep that bird hidden Zenith,” I huffed, “All ships, sync feeds. I want shared data across the board. When we sling, we do it together. Stelle, project enemy blindspot.”

A shaded conoidal zone sprung out of Teth-I, completely enveloping Repulse Squadron’s markers. It was the volume of space unreachable to the Republic’s scanners. As the enemy markers surged towards the planet, the cone’s angle adjusted to match.

“Remain in portside echelon formation,” I said, “Resistance, you have the point. We and Renown will be following your lead. We follow and stay in the cone until the enemy reaches the planetary exobase, and then we gun it.”

“Roger roger.”

“Roger roger.”

Three more dotted lines were overlaid on the display–one for each of my ships–extending forward and winding around Teth-II and Teth-I. There were pins and tags designating relevant details such velocity milestones and burn times necessary to carry out the manoeuvre. It was our projected flight plan, if all went according to plan.

I eyed the shifting cone, until our pins were right about to exit its trailing edge. Right ahead of us and to our right hand, Resistance’s thrusters sputtered, and then blossomed into brilliant pearls of blue-white, as if seven miniature neutron stars were borne from the abyss.

A single solid line shot out of Resistance’s marker, curving around Teth-II but not quite aligned with the projected plan. The ship’s current vector.

Repulse jumped, and a second vector appeared.

“Commencing initial burn,” Tuff buzzed.

⁂

“Our mission is simple,” Master Luminara briefed, “Exfiltrate the Huttlet, return him to his father, and rendezvous with General Kenobi’s fleet for the liberation of Christophsis.”

“All in a day’s work, sir,” Clone Commander Gree almost joked, “We’ll be in and out of here in no time.”

The gunship shook, streaking low over the dense jungle, so close Barriss could almost feel the highest branches sweeping across the undercarriage beneath her. Behind the LAAT, a dozen more gunships ripped open the emerald canopy in their wake, flying in perfect line astern to reduce their profile. The gunship suddenly veered, pressing her back into the bulkhead as the line tracked diagonally to throw off any potential enemy targeting systems.

What kind of kidnap rescue required an entire battalion of elite troopers? Barriss couldn’t help but wonder. Not just a battalion–three battalions–as there were two more gunship flights coming in from different directions. It made her uneasy, but who was she to question the wisdom of her Master?

Barriss glanced at Master Luminara through the rocking bodies of trooper armour, at her purple-black lips and series of interlocking diamonds that tattooed her chin. More tattoos decorated the joints of her fingers. In Mirialan culture, each tattoo signified a major achievement. In the darkness of the hold, the Jedi Master’s deep blue eyes seemed to glow. One day, Barriss thought, I will have as many tattoos as her.

“Something interesting on your mind, Barriss?” Master Luminara shot her a knowing smile.

“Just wondering if this much force is warranted for a simple hostage extraction, Master,” Barriss shoved her surprise deep down.

“Simple?” Master Luminara’s lips quirked, “I’m sure we would all like that, wouldn’t we? Pilot, notice anything?”

“Long range identified heavy defensive emplacements on the plateau, sir,” the intercom fizzled to life, “We are flying in low to avoid radar, but they’ll be expecting us. If they’re static cannons, they won’t be able to depress far enough to target us. But if they have spiders…”

Barriss looked out the hatch again, marvelling to the endless verdant sea. She pressed her cheek against the doors to stare out the gaps, sighting the dark silhouette of the plateau reveal itself from the thick fog.

“Sealing blast hatches now,” the pilot said.

“Understood,” Master Luminara nodded sharply to the squad.

“Buckets on,” Commander Gree said, snapping his helmet into place.

The crew bay dimmed as sunlight was replaced with red lights, and the squad followed suit. The usual pre-deployment ritual of checking their gear commenced; charge levels in their rifles, ordinances and ascension kits on their belts, jetpack calibration, and cycling comm circuits. Barriss sometimes wondered what it was like in the data-laced world of their complex helmets. Gree tilted his head down, likely transmitting last minute orders to the other platoons.

Barriss reflexively patted the lightsaber on her belt, even though she could feel its familiar weight.

Distant explosions sounded out, the gunship suddenly swerving to take evasive action. She hastily snapped her hands onto the handles above to avoid tipping over, but a sudden violent shudder sent her over anyway. A trooper caught her–it was hard not to in the cramped bay–and gently pushed her back up.

“Alright, sir?”

“Yes,” she caught her breath, “Thank you.”

The trooper looked up at the ceiling, “Must have taken a hit. Hatches doing their job.”

“Ascending,” the intercom buzzed, “Prepare to jump in ten…”

Barriss’ knees struggled to hold her up as the LAAT jolted into a near-vertical climb, sticking as close to the cliff face as possible to avoid fire. Another explosion pounded the armour plating, this time not so distant. Then– the crunching of metal, and the screaming of men who were smashed into the rockface. If the troopers were moved by the sounds of their comrades dying terrible deaths, they did not show it. They were programmed not to.

The squad lined up by the hatches. Barriss peeled off her lightsaber and felt its weight in her hand.

“...three, two, one– go, go, go!”

The hatches swung open, and sunlight flooded into the bay. Screaming lasers filled the sky. She counted just under three dozen LAATs circling around the clifftop fortress, and hundreds more clonetroopers leaping out and activating their jetpacks to swarm the plateau. Mass driver missiles punched through the flak smoke and incinerated legions of droids, all the while ball turrets raked bright green lasers through the earthworks, tearing walls down to brick dust and cannons into slag.

Droids. Barriss knew anybody with enough credits and not enough sense could buy battle droids, but she had a feeling this was the work of Count Dooku and his Alliance.

An emptied gunship strafed castle’s left wing, lasers ripping up ancient flagstones from the ground. A spider droid tracked the ship with its bulbous red eyes–and at that moment Barriss wanted nothing more than a trooper helmet so she could warn them. A flash of red, and the gunship’s left repulsorlift wing disintegrated, sending it spiralling into the mist below.

Yet, despite the chaos, there was discipline and system to the fire. The gunships were thoroughly saturating the courtyard and defences with sheer firepower, but the main compound remained wholly unscathed. Commander Gree shouted something she couldn’t hear, then jumped–his jetpack bursting to life and shooting him towards the landing. Two by two, the squad followed behind him. Below, the first troopers were already massing around the balconies, windows–any entrance they could find–and forcing their way in.

The droids were being completely overwhelmed, facing what looked like three-to-one odds and complete enemy air superiority. Master Luminara was right–as she usually was–this would have been a lot harder if they didn’t bring an entire regiment to battle.

Master Luminara ignited her lightsaber, deflected a stray bolt, and leapt. Barriss sucked in a breath, and went after her.

⁂

“Terminating burn,” Stelle tapped his console, “Prepare for orbital swing-by.”

Teth-II grew larger and larger before them, almost filling up the entire viewport. The moon was very large–comparable to a planetoid–and possessed its own atmosphere. I could see the dense, swirling clouds obscuring the surface, punctuated by bright flashes of lightning. The vast emptiness of space doesn’t convey the sense of speed at all, and only the brief glances I had of the vector readouts told me just how stupid this manoeuvre was.

My neck felt oddly stiff, as if I could only look dead ahead.

A blinking light told me the ship’s attitude control gyros were ramping up.

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“Starboard yaw oh-three-three degrees,” Stelle continued narrating, “Raise inertial compensation by three percent.”

Repulse turned on its axis, giving the pilothouse a good view of Resistance and Teth-II before both left the viewport’s lefthand edge. The next time we see the moon–so in about thirty seconds–it will be the only thing we see.

The bridge felt so quiet. I mean, it was always quiet–I prefer it that way–but this time the atmosphere was different. It was almost as if the droids were nervous, more nervous than they’d be flying head-on into an enemy battleline.

“How many points of error are there, Tuff?” I asked quietly.

The droid looked down at me, “Too many. Our velocity is great enough that the moon’s gravity well is too weak to augment it in any significant capacity. Instead, we will exploit the well to assist in manipulating our vector, before accelerating again on the stretch. The problem is that we don’t know the exact density of Teth-two.”

What?

“What?” I blurted out, “Then how are we doing this?”

I tried to scrounge the gravitic formulae out from the recesses of my memory, digging back to my college days. I was absolutely certain you needed the mass of the body to calculate any of them, which equates to density multiplied by volume.

“Guesswork,” Tuff admitted, “And a very large margin of error. We will fail safely, sir. The issue is that none of our frigates possess planetary scanners, and our existing scanners are too weak to penetrate the moon’s crust and observe its composition.”

“What about Teth-one?”

“A smaller margin of error,” he said, “Not only were we closer to Teth-one, the moon also had a negligible atmosphere and was much smaller in volume. Our scanners were able to penetrate further, and create an acceptable projection of its composition.”

So the first step will be the most uncertain one. Perfect. Don’t know what else I expected.

I gazed intently into the tactical display, as if mentally willing the vector lines to curve onto the projected path. Right now, the vector curved towards the periapsis before heading off into the void on a tangent. I could almost hear its howling winds as Teth-II gradually crawled back across the transparisteel viewport, parading its storm-ridden body before us. I found Resistance at the edge of my vision, coasting so close to the moon its prow might as well be scooping up the atmosphere.

“ETA to periapsis zone: three minutes. Power to retros.” Stelle said, “Prepare for impulse burn.”

Despite the vessel’s inertia dampeners best efforts, I was still being pressed back into my seat. Since the droids didn’t have that luxury, they instead opted to hold onto their consoles–or my backrest, in Tuff’s case–with death grips.

A thought struck me, “How many standard Gs are we going to experience? Am I going to die?”

“You are going to feel very uncomfortable,” Tuff replied.

“Very uncomfortable… before I die?”

“...There is a low but not insignificant probability you may suffer temporary cognitive damage,” Tuff conceded.

“And you didn’t tell me this because…?”

“As I am not a medical droid, I am not qualified to do so.”

“Fuck off,” I muttered, “Set compensation to ninety-nine.”

The pressure on my chest let up a little, until Stelle suddenly announced– “Commence impulse burn for two minutes and fifteen seconds.”

Even though I was already resting against it, I was still slammed into my chair regardless–any air inside my lungs squeezed right out of me. I couldn’t breathe– it was as if there was an anvil resting on my chest. With the standard inertial compensation, I would be fucking dead. That went through my mind quite clearly, despite the blurriness creeping over my vision. The only thing I could feel was the white-knuckled grip I had on my armrests.

I tried to tell Tuff to raise the compensation again, but I could barely open my mouth, much less get a single intelligible noise out. I am going to rip out this fucker’s behavioural matrix after this.

Two minutes, I reminded my increasingly incoherent self, I only have to hang on for two minutes.

The metal backrest started to dig into my skull, so I struggled to lift up my head– I blacked out.

⁂

Asajj Ventress didn’t like heroism. It wasn’t that she disliked heroes themselves–or even disrespected them–she simply despised the idea of heroes. Sacrifice is seldom awarded, and always exploited. Ky Narec’s sacrifice for the people of Rattatak meant nothing to the Jedi Order, who abandoned him there to die. He was her mentor, then, and her only friend. Even now, he was still her only friend.

Ky was but another expendable piece, in the end. The scum on the Jedi Council could spare an entire battlegroup to serve the greatest slavemaster of the galaxy, when there was something in it for them. But what about the slaves themselves? The innocents? Her homeworld, Rattatak, was innocent, but the planet could drown in blood for all they cared. It had.

Which was why it left a twisted, yet warm, feeling in her gut to see that the Jedi–Luminara Unduli–was under no delusions of heroism. An entire Acclamator hung over their heads, and forty LAAT gunships were already on the ground–and dozens more continuously pouring out of the troopship’s ventral hangar. The Jedi Master was treating this not as the rescue operation it was, but like a planetary invasion.

Thousands of clonetroopers were falling from the sky, completely swamping the paltry droid battalion she had at her disposal. It appears Unduli is going to solve her problem with brute force and overwhelming firepower. Ventress could respect that, in a way.

“What do you think of this, Ky?” she asked aloud, watching the monastery fall around her.

What do you think about the Jedi who abandoned you to die, but dropped everything for a Hutt?

There was no answer but the mountain winds and the rage of plasma bolts. Ky was long dead, and maybe that was all the better. He wouldn’t want to see what has become of the Jedi Order…

“Or of me,” she mused, “But you’d understand, wouldn’t you? I know you would.”

“Ma’am?” the spy droid, 4A-7, asked, “Who’s Ky?”

“You don’t need to know,” Ventress fingered her lightsabers, “Just do your job. Find something positively incriminating.”

“Hard to do that now, ma'am…”

The droid slipped away nonetheless. All she needed was one incriminating holocam recording of the Jedi with the Huttlet, anything that could convince Jabba that they were at fault. Anything would work–handling Rotta roughly, making him cry… the slug liked to cry a lot, so it shouldn’t be too hard. And if all else fails, she could always have the Jedi framed with the dead Huttlet. Now that would be airtight.

But Dooku wants the slug back alive, so she had to try. Even with these odds. If there was no other choice, then Dooku can rage at her later. Electrocution was temporary–and she survived it many times before–all it mattered was that the Jedi is denied access to the Outer Rim.

Sometimes, she surprised herself how far she’d go–even to kill an innocent child. But that was routine back on Rattatak. Countless children have died in battles between rival warlords, innocent or on the frontlines. It didn’t matter. Life was cheap there, too cheap for the Jedi to care.

Except Ky Narec.

The holoreceiver flickered to life, and Count Dooku appeared.

“Progress, Asajj?” he demanded.

Ventress craned up to look at the Republic troopship hanging in the atmosphere.

“We are outnumbered and outgunned,” she reported, “Unduli had arrived with enough forces for a planetary assault. The plan is impossible.”

Dooku considered her words for a moment, “...It must be for their counterattack on Christophsis. This is nothing more than a detour for Unduli, one conveniently in the neighbourhood of her main focus. It is unfortunate.”

Ventress instinctively ducked as two anti-personnel fragmentation missiles streaked over her head, smashing into the courtyard and turning every droid in the radius into bolts and scrap metal. Everytime she looked back down at the battle raging on the monastery grounds, there were fewer and fewer droids, and more and more Republic troopers.

“The Jedi will not escape, Asajj,” Dooku told her, “Nor the Huttlet, if the situation demands it. You will succeed, not because you fear my disapproval, or what I might do if you fail, but because you know what we are doing this for. You know this better than even me.”

“The dictatorship of the Republic must fall,” she said, “You are right, Master.”

Dooku smiled. A genuine, sympathetic smile as far she could tell. If there was one place where they aligned, it was their shared vision of a fairer society.

Asajj Ventress waited for the holograph to vanish, then contacted Captain Bonteri. His tactical droid appeared in his place.

“This is Ventress,” she said, “I need immediate reinforcements, and air support. Every vulture I can get.”

“Please standby…” the droid replied, “ETA thirty standard minutes.”

The holoprojection shook, and then fizzled out. She attempted to reach them again, but to no avail. They were being jammed. Ventress cursed– thirty minutes was too long. Why was it the droid that she was talking to, was Bonteri incapacitated? Or did he think she was beneath him?

Her skills in the Force focused on more physical aspects, such as telekinesis–as was demanded by her upbringing–but Ventress was usually able to passively sense the intent of anyone she was working with. There were few who remained wholly unknown to her: Dooku… and now Bonteri.

If it weren’t for the fact that Bonteri was non-sensitive, she could believe that he was a Jedi Master with how much control he had over his emotions. In fact, she wasn’t even completely certain of his–her?–sex. His face was wholly ambiguous, and voice smooth enough to pass off as either man or woman depending on how you perceived it. Ventress spent the entire hyperspace flight attempting to probe his mind, only to grasp nothing.

It was as if he was a vacuum in the Force. Like he was as much a droid as the rest of his crew.

She would be a liar to say working with him did not unease her, but in the end it did not matter. The Captain clearly valued competency, as did Ventress, and his crew worked with a quiet professionalism she seldom saw anywhere else. If it weren’t that she could sense Tann’s slimy blue hands all over this, Ventress would not be amiss to work with him again. For now, she would trust that he will come to her aid. His duty demanded it.

Ventress unhooked her lightsabers, igniting the lethal red blades. So she will do her duty just as well.

⁂

I rubbed my temple, groaning. Shit, was I run over by a swoop bike?

As the fog of unconsciousness faded, I caught sight of Tuff’s unevenly proportioned chassis–and like a switch, I swiftly regained my bearings.

“How long was I out?”

“Three minutes and twenty-six seconds, sir,” Tuff didn’t miss a beat, “We have a problem.”

“Typical,” I grunted, “Right, lay it on me.”

“We have too much speed,” Tuff said bluntly, “And we overestimated the gravitics of the moon. Even with the retro burn, our escape velocity is too high for the reciprocal course we had projected.”

I looked down at the tactical display, cracking my neck. In an ideal world, our vector would be in a nearly U-shaped course in order to intercept Teth-I, but right now it was far too shallow. No… it was too shallow for Repulse and Renown, but Resistance was so deep in Teth-II’s gravity well that as long as they continue retro burning, they’ll make it. And from how their vector was steadily curving to reach that projection, that was exactly what they were trying to accomplish.

I bit my cheek. Analysing the readouts, some off the cuff maths with my tablet told me it wasn’t that we couldn’t continue burning to reach the ideal vector, but that we would burn so much speed doing so that it would defeat the whole purpose of this manoeuvre.

“Repulse to Resistance,” if droids could convey panic, Stelle would be, “Terminate your burn immediately. Say again, terminate your burn!”

“We can make it, Stelle,” Three-One’s modulated voice returned, “My crew’s done the calculations.”

“You can,” Stelle looked at me, almost pleadingly, “But we can’t!”

“What’s the problem?” I asked

“Commander B-One-Three-One is attempting to make an improvised course adjustment,” he told me, “We have anticipated the possibility that we could overshoot, and have calculated redundancies for this in advance. Resistance is disobeying orders to reach the ideal vector–but is burning for far too long. Even if they succeed, their prior calculations will be completely–”

“Useless,” I finished, “They will have to wing it for the rest of the manoeuvre.”

“...‘Wing it’ does not exist in my diction–”

“Off the cuff, improvise, play it by ear,” I snapped, “Whatever you want to call it. Patch them to my comlink.”

Stelle turned around, and a moment later my comlink was blinking.

“Three-One, do you know what you are doing?” I asked simply.

“Yes, sir.”

I eyed their vector on the display, “Are you certain you can improvise the second gravity assist?”

“We’re working on it, sir.”

“Make it happen,” I closed the connection.

Droids think rationally–if Three-One thinks he can pull this off, then that must be grounded in hard numbers. I would be doing a disservice to both Resistance’s crew and myself if I could not trust him. Besides, I can make this work as well.

“Sir?” Tuff questioned.

“Have us and Renown burn pro’ until our vectors intercept triple-zero,” I ordered, “We are forgoing the second assist. We will attack the enemy fleet from behind directly.”

“That’s half a million klicks of empty space with no cover,” Tuff reminded, “The probability of being spotted early is eighty-seven-point-five-seven percent.”

“You’ve been working with me for too long,” I smiled dryly, “Half a million klicks of empty space with no cover is standard as far as naval tactics go. This is no time for cold feet; that’s an entire Republic battlegroup. We take it out, and we eliminate a strategic enemy asset as well. Time our arrival with Resistance’s, we’ll pincer them.”

“Renown, come in,” Stelle called.

“We’re with you, Repulse,” Zenith reassured. I can always trust Zenith.

“Feeds are still synced,” I said, “Commence burn.”

As we cleared the moon, Teth was but a violet marble I could hold in one hand. Three black speckles ruined the view, however–Republic warships. I peeled my spine off the chair, feeling my soaked uniform stick to my back. Periodically reassessing Repulse’s acceleration–nearly 300 KPS squared, now–I followed Resistance’s waning form as she surged away from us, sublight thrusters blinding white.

“We mustn't overshoot,” Tuff said, “If we had the second assist, we would swing around the planet in that scenario. But now we are on a direct course to intercept.”

“It won’t happen, we have more control with this vector,” Stelle said.

“The retro burn timing won’t be so dicey,” I agreed, “We have less time to accel, but the distance is shorter as well. The plan is now to distract the enemy and allow Resistance to strike their flank. Besides, you calculated this in advance, no? Redundancy.”

“Yes, sir.”

I smiled in satisfaction, setting a timer on my chrono and counting down the minutes.

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