"It can't be done any better," reported the commander of the Merciless—or rather, his holographic image, currently hovering above the projector plate on the flagship's bridge. "The communication antennas are destroyed. We can't issue a single order to the ships, can't contact anyone. And Maris Brood can't be located either."
Sykes didn't show his irritation, even though he considered the news terrible.
But at the same time, he suspected there was a way to fix everything and regain control of the fleet.
Everything else in the current situation was of minor importance.
"Can an external antenna be installed?"
"Boss," the Nautolan gave an unpleasant grin. "Our fighters are destroyed. Half the transport fleet is already disabled by ion cannons from those two Executors. Our Interceptors are living out their last days just to buy us some time. Of course we're trying to restore communications. But out there"he pointed to the side, meaning the space outside the ship—"there are several dozen squadrons of enemy interceptors and strike gunships. They're literally peeling the plating off our ships. Not to mention that our central computer feels like it's been put through a shredder."
Jerid cursed, but caught himself and put the mask of utter indifference back on.
He couldn't show that this news bothered him.
Otherwise, the last sparks of morale in these beings—whatever still flickered—would be lost forever.
And then panic would follow.
And he could forget about ever regaining control of the Zann Consortium fleet.
"Alright, Captain. But we need communications. As long as we're fighting each on our own, it's useless. Even with two Executors, they'll need considerable time to kill all the ships."
"Aye, Boss. I'll go kick the mechanics—tell them to get into an airlock and set up a temporary antenna."
The hologram dissolved into the air.
The Admiral clenched his fists, fully aware that this operation was useless.
Even if they restored communications, what guarantee was there that any ship in the Zann Consortium still had antennas capable of receiving signals from the flagship?
But he had to do something.
Even when your house is on fire, punch through the wall with your fist, looking like it's everyone's salvation.
For now, this would keep the captain busy and give himself time to think.
"Do we have any scanners at all?" he asked loudly enough to be heard in every corner of the bridge.
From the duty pit (the Aggressor's bridge was almost identical to those on the Imperial, Victory, and Venator classes), loud, overlapping exclamations came up.
The duty officer leaned stiffly toward his subordinates, listened to the report, straightened up, and looked back at Jerid.
He didn't look very pleased.
"One of our surviving fighters is reporting via laser beam that there's a crystal gravitic lattice mounted under the Guardian's belly."
Sykes caught himself shivering from a sudden draft and pretended he was just shrugging.
"Now it's clear how they detected our cloaked ships."
It was an extremely unpleasant thing to realize that your defeat had been scripted from beginning to end, like sheet music.
"It's not confirmed yet, Boss; we haven't received verification because the fighter was destroyed as soon as it decelerated. It could be something else similar, but…"
"What imbeciles!" Sykes roared. "Of course it's a CGT! You can't mistake it for anything else! Do whatever you have to, but the ship must not just fire turbolasers at the nearest target—it needs to know whether it's hitting anything at all! If necessary, send people out on the hull to connect external scanners! I want to know what the hell we're shooting at!"
As subordinates scrambled around the bridge, Sykes cast a malevolent look at the nineteen-kilometer giant, under whose belly the Chimaera was practically lost like a small child in its father's arms.
From this distance, it was impossible to tell if the CGT array was indeed under the giant's hull, but at least now he knew why Thrawn hadn't destroyed the Zann Consortium's cloaked ships, but instead had stripped them of their advantage and mobility.
The Guardian had undoubtedly seen every cloaked starship in his vast fleet.
It had seen them and relayed their coordinates to the Chimaera and the other Dominion destroyer.
And they had guided their bombers in.
The Executors could have attacked even without first disabling the weapons, cloaks, and engines of the Aggressors.
But then there would have been an immediate risk: damage to the CGT would have deprived Thrawn of the ability to see cloaked ships.
If Thrawn had committed his Super Star Destroyers from the very start of the confrontation, Sykes would undoubtedly have sent every Star Viper and every nearby ship to destroy the CGT.
And he would certainly have made both giants the primary targets for his self-destruct-capable ships.
If necessary, he would have ordered the entire fleet blown up if it meant killing those death machines.
But now…
Without their cloaks and engines, the Aggressors and Vengeances couldn't adjust their inertial course.
They couldn't hide or sneak up on the enemy.
They couldn't self-destruct and inflict significant damage.
And the main batteries on the Aggressors were now worthless—the bombers or strike gunships had simply struck preemptively and deprived the Zann Consortium of any chance to leverage its advantages in space combat!
Instead of a massive fleet-on-fleet clash between two destroyer forces, Thrawn had turned the attack into an outright massacre, using his ships, bombers, strike gunships, and even, damn it, TIE Interceptors to methodically shoot down the helpless Zann Consortium starships!
And his CGT was in absolutely no danger!
As much as Sykes had hoped for victory, it was all decided here.
He needed to think about something else.
Something he'd never thought about before.
He had to find a way to escape from the starship, slip out of the system, and go to ground.
Returning to Tyber after a rout like this was suicide.
Even if Tyber understood and appreciated the data Jerid provided on Dominion combat capability and tactics, even if he informed him that Thrawn had survived…
None of that would actually offset the loss of the entire Zann Consortium combat fleet.
Now, besides just over five hundred Victorys, Tyber had nothing left in reserve.
With forces like that, he couldn't hold the Corporate Sector and its satellites if the Dominion or the Eastern Faction planned to attack and finish off the weakened opponent.
And certainly couldn't attack.
The Zann Consortium hadn't just lost a few battles.
They stood on the verge of the defeat of all of Tyber's plans, which he had been nurturing for so many years.
And toward anyone who let Tyber down, the latter would never show mercy, under any circumstances.
Death would not be easy.
Zann had always had a decent imagination, but after he found Palpatine's archives of executions in the Palace, the options for frightening and painful punishment had multiplied hundreds of times.
He needed to figure out how to escape the ship before the commander of the Merciless realized how bad things were and blew up the starship.
Those Hutt-spawned programmed bastards…
* * *
Major Kreb, along with his entire Avenger squadron, had launched from the Guardian's hangar a few minutes earlier.
By the current time stamp, he and his eleven clones had rounded the Super Star Destroyer and come to a halt in the space between the old carrier—the Chimaera—and the new one—the Guardian.
He and Kreb-611 waited just long enough for the rest of the squadron pilots to catch up, receive target assignments from the squadron commander, and form up in pairs.
"Our mission is free hunting," the major explained to his subordinates. "Enemy fighters, transports, communication gear, engines—you know the list. Not a single one of them should get a shot off at our ships. If you can't handle it yourself, call in strike gunships or Scimitars for large, heavily armored targets. Understood?"
Eleven clicks of acknowledgment.
"We're working."
"Avenger-Leader,"never in the past three months had his own call sign and squadron name carried such hidden, internal pain. Apparently, the grand admiral's latest news hadn't passed by his psyche without effect. "This is Chimaera OCC. There's a secondary mission for you and your squadron. Priority."
"Receiving, OCC," Kreb answered.
"Transmitting target data," the controller said. "It's the enemy flagship Star Destroyer. Our agent is aboard, preparing for extraction. You need to provide cover for his starship."
"Identification method?"
"Beacon frequency has been sent to you."
"Roger, Chimaera OCC," the major confirmed receipt of the data packet and its decryption by the onboard computer. "Relaying to subordinates."
Now his starfighter, and the fighters of the entire squadron, could recognize the coded signal.
"Happy hunting, Avenger-Leader," the controller replied matter-of-factly. "And one more thing, Major."
"Listening, OCC."
"Glad to be giving you target data again."
It really was…
Judging by the voice, this was one of the six controllers who had worked with the "Black Claw" squadron.
"Likewise, OCC," Kreb answered. "Beginning operations."
* * *
Grand Admiral Thrawn watched as the starscape beyond the viewport changed its pattern: the enemy fleet was steadily shrinking.
As was the distance between the flagship Star Destroyer and the Super Star Destroyer "escorting" it on one side, and the enemy warships they were engaging on the other.
No mercy, no negotiations—just the pragmatic destruction of one nearly immobile enemy warship after another.
For some time now, the Supreme Commander had felt Captain Tschel's intent gaze burning into his back.
Without looking around, Thrawn shook his head.
"No, Captain," he said in an offhand tone. "Save your strength. Right now we're competing in marksmanship at long and medium range. We have no intention of approaching the enemy closer than fifty units."
"Yes, sir," Tschel grumbled.
"You sound very disappointed."
"I hate dallying," the flagship's commander admitted.
"Only because right now we're in the winner's position," said Thrawn. "I'd wager that if our roles were reversed with the enemy in the current situation, your impatience would abate somewhat."
"Not at all, sir!" Tschel protested. "I would…"
The chair, and Thrawn seated in it, turned so that the Supreme Commander was face to face with his flagship's captain.
"What would you do, Tschel?" the grand admiral inquired in an almost fatherly tone. "Enlighten me: how would you achieve victory when each of your ships has had its engines shot off, preventing them from either evading combat or closing with the enemy for self-destruction; when hull integrity is compromised, making stealth systems unusable; and when the main battery cannons—the design focus of the Aggressor-class Star Destroyer's technical documentation—are destroyed?"
Tschel, looking away in embarrassment, bit his lower lip in a rather childish manner.
"My fault, sir," he admitted. "I spoke without thinking."
"I advise changing your order of operations in the future," said Thrawn, turning his chair back to face the viewport. "Impulsiveness and desire for glory are the scourge of young officers. The desire for fame and recognition as a conqueror of enemies is understandable. But it's harmful. Look at the big picture—what matters is the end result and achieving it with maximum efficiency. It wouldn't be better for anyone if today ends with the Chimaera spending not a week in the docking cradle but a month in dry dock."
"I understand, sir," Tschel nodded. "For the further campaign against the Zann Consortium, we'll need every combat-ready starship, and no one needs extra damage that the Chimaera could take by closing with an enemy that keeps blowing itself up."
"Correct," said Thrawn without looking back. "And fundamentally wrong. We are not going to get involved in an open war with the Zann Consortium in the foreseeable future."
Tschel thought he heard the sound of breaking glass.
Bewildered, he looked around but found no shards or any hint that someone could have done such a thing physically.
"I think that was just my expectations shattering," the young officer thought.
"Yes, sir," he said automatically.
A tense silence hung over the central platform of the Chimaera's bridge.
"Grand Admiral," Tschel finally broke after several minutes of unbearable quiet. "If we don't intend to fight the Zann Consortium, then what's the purpose of all this?"
Thrawn had his back to him, but the Star Destroyer's commander saw the fingers of his right hand, clad in snow-white gloves, drumming on the armrest.
"Misinterpreting information leads to misstating the question, Captain," said Thrawn. "We will fight the Zann Consortium," he assured him, "but not in the immediate future. Right now we are doing what we should be doing — destroying their offensive potential, which will inevitably reduce the aggressiveness of Zann's rhetoric. Our next step is to blockade the Corporate Sector. They still have a large number of starships at their disposal for a direct confrontation — over half a thousand Victory-class Star Destroyers alone. We have far more modest available and combat-ready forces at our disposal. In such a reality, it would be criminal negligence to charge into the beast's lair for a general battle, where every corner of the sector, every hyperspace route is familiar to him, and where dozens, if not hundreds of problems may await us in every star system, not to mention a fairly large segment of the population that supports our enemy in one way or another. No, Captain. We have broken their advancing forces — that is a statement of fact. But we are not yet ready to fight such a 'heavyweight' as the Corporate Sector openly. First, we will bleed them dry, wear them out, deprive them of their satellites, receive additional reinforcements, strengthen our positions in the galaxy, and eliminate the problems identified during the current operation. And only after all of that — will we strike, a blow after which the Zann Consortium, Black Sun, and the other fronts behind which Tyber Zann hides will remain mere footnotes in the memory of sentient beings."
Captain Tschel felt uneasy.
Thrawn spoke in generalities, but that didn't make it any more reassuring.
His preferred tactic — a multitude of strikes that don't look like a single, organized whole, part of something larger — remains incomprehensible to most of his subordinates, even after all this time of joint campaigns.
But now, in his speech, it seemed for the first time Thrawn had made it clear what he intended to do with his enemy, Tyber Zann.
Use small forces, dozens of strikes — not only military, but also certain other types of operations — to strangle the monster in its lair.
Then, deliver a precise and filigree strike against a weakened enemy, fighting whom openly would be suicide.
Captain Tschel blinked.
Then he looked at the battlefield with a different eye.
At how the numerically superior enemy fleet, turned into helpless spectators, was being literally annihilated by the forces of only four major Dominion ships.
And a small horde of small craft — interceptors, fast bombers, gunships...
He tensed at the thought that he seemed to understand.
His furrowed brow smoothed, and the wrinkles — habitual inhabitants of his forehead whenever it came to comprehending the Grand Admiral's plans — scattered across his enlightened face.
"I think I understand, sir," he said quietly. "I understand what's happening here, understand what we're doing to the enemy fleet..."
Thrawn's chair turned again, and his piercing gaze shot through Tschel like the superlaser of a Death Star.
"This is a rehearsal, isn't it?" he asked just as quietly, looking without fear into the eyes of the Supreme Commander. "A dress rehearsal for the end of the Zann Consortium? Minimal expenditure of force in exchange for maximum damage inflicted on the enemy..."
Grand Admiral Thrawn graced him with a slight smile and an almost imperceptible nod of agreement.
Then he returned to contemplating the battlefield.
No, this wasn't even a battle.
It was a staged production in which hundreds of thousands of aggressively minded sentients were being destroyed so they wouldn't become a problem for the Grand Admiral's more ambitious projects in the future.
"Unlike the samurai, Captain, we don't only have a way," Thrawn said in a soft but firm tone. "We also have a final goal. And that is what we wish to achieve, without being distracted by extraneous problems."
Tschel felt his mouth involuntarily drop open.
An interstellar crime syndicate that had subjugated the most economically developed territory in the galaxy — that was an extraneous problem?!
He was about to ask Thrawn himself, but changed his mind.
He remembered the Alliance, the New Republic, the Pentastar Alignment, Imperial Space and the Remnants, Palpatine lurking in the shadows, the Yuuzhan Vong that Thrawn had warned about, finally...
Yes, after all, in such a reality, a couple of criminal organizations controlling small patches of the galaxy truly weren't the biggest problems there were or would be.
* * *
Maris was counting off on her fingers the approach of four opponents moving down the corridor.
Mara, thoughtfully watching those four of the five slender young men adorned with simple manicures, sighed covertly.
"The fifth is three meters behind them," she whispered.
"How do you know?" Brood hissed, stopping her peeking through the crack in the maintenance locker.
Mara wanted to slap her palm against her face, but her hand hit the visor of her flight helmet.
"Listen to the Force, Maris," said the red-haired beauty, parodying Jedi instructions.
"I'm trying," admitted the Zabrak female, whose helmet visor was starting to fog from the effort. "It's not always possible to detect ordinary sentients... Force-sensitives are easier."
Of course they were easier.
It was like comparing a lone beacon in the night to a lit backlight on thousands of docks under the same conditions.
Whoever taught this woman was either a complete amateur, or knew no more about the Force than Brood herself did now.
Jade didn't believe that a Jedi Master couldn't possibly have failed to teach their student such a simple trick.
Palpatine, in the distant past, when instructing her, teaching her the basics of using the Force not even as a proper adept, but as a half-trained mercenary, a 'courier with enhanced capabilities,' hadn't put much effort into it either.
And he wasn't exactly a teacher of the Force, to be honest.
Frankly, comparing Maris's skills to what she'd already seen from Obscuro, Bre'ano Umakk, Darth Maul and his student Stryn, Mara couldn't help but notice that even the level of the Jensaarai — who had been cut off from knowledge and trained masters for decades — was far higher than that of her new acquaintance.
Either she was an extremely negligent Padawan, or her Master was a negligent teacher.
The latter was unlikely.
From what Umakk had managed to tell her about the actual past of the last generation of the Jedi Order, Mara knew that the members of the Jedi Council were not mediocre.
Therefore, to think that one of the most influential sentients in the Order had an uneducated Padawan was somehow sacrilegious.
So, most likely, Brood herself was responsible for her own regression or lack of progress.
Maul will be happy to become her teacher, she giggled inwardly, imagining the Zabrak's relative suffering a long-overdue heart attack from how difficult a 'specimen' he'd gotten for training.
But that would be for later.
Right now, something had to be done about that squad of five enemy soldiers who had decided to guard the airlock through which Mara and Maris planned to get to the ship's surface.
Yes, it was a very bad idea — sticking your head out from under thick armor in the middle of a battle.
But it so happened that the only ship on which they could escape the Merciless was the shuttle that Jade had flown to the flagship on.
And she had docked it to the outer airlock, as this type of ship had a small problem with landing pads.
Well, now all that was left was to 'thank' that overly zealous Dominion pilot who had shot through the extending gangway of the docking port, depressurizing it, causing a pressure drop and, as a result, tearing the connecting sleeve.
And to thank (this time without sarcasm) the engineers of the Zann Consortium, who had equipped their small transport ships with automatic emergency response systems.
Specifically, in the case of the ship Mara had used, the decompression pushed the ship sideways, and ideally, according to the laws of stellar mechanics, due to the lack of friction in a vacuum, the ship should have continued its flight by inertia, having received an impulse.
But the onboard computer, realizing that depressurization from an open airlock hatch and tumbling through space was not good, stabilized the ship's course, its position in space, and sealed the open bulkhead.
Incidentally, the fact that the entry hatch doesn't close automatically when the ship is vacated after docking was a huge 'con.'
Because the manufacturers of most ships in the galaxy understand that if their clients die due to problems with their products, they are unlikely to return for new models.
Since the air mixture on starships is an extremely valuable resource, a hatch left unsealed by automation after crew members leave becomes the primary friend of any potential decompression needing to kill someone who decides to use such a starship for a long journey.
The RZ-52 Decard transport.
So now they would have to get out through another airlock and jump from it to reach the quietly drifting Decard, moving parallel to the Merciless, and use it.
Mara checked if her transponder was working.
It was working.
Signal transmitting.
So, one way or another, the Dominion forces knew about her.
All that remained was to hope that none of the pilots would feel like flying close to take a firsthand look at the signal source through the cockpit windows.
It would be a bit difficult to give a report to the Grand Admiral afterwards, if she got smeared across the 'eye' of a TIE Interceptor.
"Technicians are coming towards them," Maris whispered. "Carrying some portable equipment kits."
"Explosives?" Mara clarified, wondering if the guards could detect their conversations on the comm link channel assigned to their suits.
"I don't see any hazard markings..." Brood said thoughtfully. "No, it looks more like antennas. Scanners or communicators..."
"Move over, horned one," Mara unceremoniously pushed her partner aside and pressed her eye to the crack to see for herself.
Just as the Zabrak female had said.
Five guards.
Three techs.
Two equipment cases with antennas sticking out of them — remote scanners and communicators.
"Looks like we've been damaging your 'eyes' and 'ears,'" the red-haired beast assumed.
"I thought we were all 'we' now."
"Oh, right, yeah..."
"Since they have equipment, the guards here clearly aren't here for just a couple of minutes," Brood stated. "And they definitely won't leave until they're done. No way to slip past them like nothing's happening."
Should anything be done, and if so, what?
The later she revealed herself, the better and safer it would be for her.
And for the entire operation as a whole.
"I agree with that," Jade concurred. "I have an idea. But you won't like it."
"What do you mean?" Maris was surprised.
And the next moment, she was already thrown out of their hiding place at the speed of a laser shot.
The girl flew across the distance separating her from the enemies, crashed into the crowd of guards, knocked over the equipment case, and finally landed on the deck.
"Hey, what's going on?" one of the guards squealed, aiming a blaster at the Zabrak female. "Who the hell are you?! Get up! Get up, I said! Hands up!"
Maris was lying on her stomach and began to slowly rise.
Mara managed to notice that her partner's suit was undamaged.
"Lady Brood!" the talkative criminal gasped. "Forgive my insolence, I didn't know it was you!"
"What are you gawking at?!" the Zabrak female roared in a voice as if her horns were being sawed off one by one with a dull saw. "Shoot her! She's an enemy saboteur! Kill her! Now! All of you!"
Mara activated her lightsaber, slowly approaching the confused criminals.
But they oriented themselves fairly quickly and opened fire on her.
Even the techs — they too found blasters in their arsenal.
They were the first to die.
Maris's light weapon — Mara still couldn't figure out what to call the device: a sword, a shoto, or a stick for dispersing protesters with a cross-guard instead of a hilt — came to life, and with one swing of its short crimson blade, she severed the necks of all three, sending their severed heads flying towards the guards.
Maris Brood and her light pickaxes
(Yes, she's scary-looking, but hot. One of the heroes will get lucky.)
Mara, meanwhile, was parrying shots, finishing off two of the five soldiers, grabbing a third with the Force and holding him up as a shield, letting his body absorb the blaster bolts from the fourth guard.
The fifth was killed by Broud single-handedly, and by the time Mara got rid of her opponent, the corridor held only dead bodies and scattered equipment, which the Zabrak female, with a stroke of... whatever that thing was, was turning into scrap metal.
"Suit intact?" Mara asked Brood.
"Punctured in two places," she replied, clearly displeased at being used as a projectile. "System compensated for the leaks and sealed the breaches."
She turned sideways, showing two small holes from which traces of foam sealant were visible.
"Even better," Jade patted her on the shoulder. "You did great, my young Padawan."
"One day I'll tear your hair out," Maris promised with a sigh, securing her weapon on her hip.
"If you have problems with your own, don't covet others'," advised the Emperor's Hand. "Speaking of problems... Do you always handle these... these..."
The Zabrak female followed her gaze.
"Tonfa?" She slapped the hilt of her lightsaber. "Yes, they are unmatched among other Jedi weapons."
"Strange, the hilt cuts like butter," Jade said thoughtfully, pretending to be deep in thought.
"Because this is the second copy," Maris declared. "The first ones were made from phrik and couldn't be cut by a lightsaber."
"And what happened to them?" Mara asked curiously.
The Zabrak female averted her eyes.
"I don't want to talk about it," she replied.
"Your choice," Jade stepped into the small 'room' and looked out the inner airlock porthole. "Outside seems quiet... I think we can try a free drift."
She cut open the control panel and noted with satisfaction the standard placement of the wiring.
Then she cut several wires, short-circuiting them differently.
"Using the airlock as a pneumatic cannon," she explained. "One goes in, door closes, outer door opens. No oxygen purge, we get ejected one by one into the vacuum. To avoid colliding or flying off in different directions, we'll go one at a time. You first."
"Only after you, teacher," the Zabrak female did her best to feign composure on her face, contrasting with her words.
"Women, children, students, and owners of exclusive lightsabers go first," Jade declared, gesturing towards the passage to space. "We both fit the first three categories, but with your... tonfa... nothing in the entire galaxy compares."
"Fine," Brood sighed resignedly, stepping first into the cramped space. "Arguing with you is just a waste of time."
The doors closed behind her.
At that moment, she turned around and started pounding on the porthole.
"Hey!" she yelled into the comm link. "You have an exclusive lightsaber too! There's no other one like it in the galaxy, and the tonfa..."
"Bon voyage," Mara said solemnly, opening the outer bulkhead.
The protesting Zabrak female was blown out with the speed of sound.
"Well, look at that, it worked," Mara chuckled. "And I was worried — I thought the pressure would tear her apart..."
* * *
Kreb automatically calculated the speed and vector of approach.
When the machine was about five seconds from the kill zone, he cut the engines, letting inertia carry him precisely to the spot, then the anti-gravity cushion kicked in.
Avenger-01 stabilized, the targeting reticle changed from red to green, and his thumb fell habitually onto the trigger.
A pair of rockets left their launchers, and two bursts bloomed five hundred meters in front of the starfighter.
Small fragments drummed against the ship's hull, striking sparks and leaving shallow scratches.
Kreb turned the ship, switched weapons, and fired, this time using the laser cannons.
A group of sentients mounting another remote scanning station vanished in a whirlwind of white-green fire.
"Sir, I'm registering movement from a source on the special frequency," reported Kreb-611, drawing his attention to the instruments.
Indeed — if the readings were to be believed, the transmitter on the frequency the Chimaera's controller had noticed was indeed moving.
Too slow for a vehicle and too fast for an ordinary sentient.
"Decompression slingshot," Kreb realized.
This method was used by pilots to urgently abandon the cockpit of a dying ship and get as far away from the crash site as possible in one go. The pilot unstraps from the seat, explosive bolts blow the exit hatch, and the body launches into free flight, hoping nothing nearby will end its life before rescue services deign to appear on the battlefield.
Hoping for that in the very center of a battle between large ships...
Understatement — overly optimistic.
"Copy that," replied Avenger-Leader, looking at the scanners. "Two, follow. Heading to the signal source."
"Copy, Leader."
* * *
"Commander reports that all remote installation assembly groups have been destroyed by the enemy!"
Admiral Sykes stared at the officer as if the watch officer had suddenly grown Devronian horns and fangs.
Am I overacting?
"Tell me that's not true!"
But the officer only shook his head hopelessly.
"Assume command," Jerid rasped, slamming his fist into his palm in rage. "I'll personally sort out what the hell is going on over there!"
He practically ran off the bridge.
* * *
A few of the enemy starships had still managed to get closer to the Chimaera than the rest. They might not have any main propulsion sources left, but the inertia they'd gained after the Scimitar attack and the loss of their engines remained unchanged.
The Guardian, receiving the order, opened fire on the approaching ships with its forward guns, beginning a slow turn to starboard.
The Chimaera lagged slightly in executing the maneuver, but only to synchronize its actions with its 'big brother.'
After all, we're not just practicing shooting, but also coordinated maneuvering.
The ion cannons discharged waves of bluish energy volley after volley, and the laser cannons turned the surges of this phantom sea into fireworks.
The enemy transport ships were already immobilized and were being towed one by one away from the battle site by the tractor beams of the Raider and the Crusader.
And now, essentially, there was no need to use the ion artillery — we certainly weren't planning on salvaging anything from that scrap metal. We didn't need intact ships. Counterintelligence would later search for anything remaining relatively intact in the wreckage after the battle.
The work of the ion artillery on both SDs was necessary precisely to ensure the destruction of the ship occurred without using the self-destruct system, so beloved by the enemy. After its use, only melted, shapeless pieces remain, from which not even a hint of information can be gleaned.
But if you 'neatly' break an enemy destroyer into pieces by alternating ion cannons and turbolasers, there's a good chance you'll find some terminal or database in the remaining wreckage.
But we definitely no longer intend to risk putting ships out of commission and leaving them in a state close to a 'sieve.'
The situation with the Scimitar-05 and how their mistake had to be compensated for by the sacrifice of an excellent pilot still stands before my eyes as an unpleasant picture.
I'll need to seriously think about how to avoid something like that in the future.
Perfect laws and rules don't exist.
There will always be those who can or want to bypass them.
All we can do is notice the 'pitfalls' not immediately visible and eliminate them as necessary.
It's just a pity that behind all these 'identifications' already stand the lives of sentients valuable to the Dominion.
The Super Star Destroyer was hammering three enemy destroyers simultaneously with its turbolasers.
The Chimaera took on one Vengeance-class.
Blooms of explosions blossomed on the frigate's armor.
Nearby, several gunships passed over the ship's mangled superstructure and strafed the frigate's stern, which could no longer vanish from sight and sensors.
The gunners of the Chimaera, seeing the glow where the Vengeance's engines were located, increased the intensity of their fire, and with the next volley, the enemy ship fell apart.
The larger piece — the stern — detonated, but none of our pilots were hit by the shockwave or debris.
* * *
"The destroyer's bridge is not responding to requests," reported the captain of the Merciless; his voice was dull and tired. "Sensors confirm serious damage. I think we've lost them."
Sykes listened with half an ear.
He was trying to come up with a plan to escape the ship.
He turned into one of the service corridors connected to the airlocks and froze, seeing a scene of carnage.
Five guards, three technicians, and two cases of equipment cut to pieces.
"What the hell?!" He crouched down by a decapitated body and looked at the neat, almost surgical surface of the skin, cauterized at the point of impact.
"Boss, so what do we do?!" the ship's commander inquired impatiently over the comlink.
"What about the auxiliary bridge?" Sykes asked automatically.
He was searching with his eyes for something that would give him a clue about what had happened, and so far found nothing.
And he didn't like the Nautolan's nervousness.
Finally, he realized what it was.
The angle of the head cut was such that either the enemy had been standing face-to-face with the guards and was a meter and a half taller than them, since the blow was struck from top to bottom.
One blow, killing three technicians at once.
And those weren't idiots standing around waiting to be killed.
Or — the killer was standing behind them.
And struck from bottom to top.
And he knew only one sentient who had the right height and weapon for that.
Maris!!!!
"I'm on the backup bridge right now," the commander of the dying destroyer reminded him, sniffling. "I said that when I made contact this time."
"Check what we have to defend ourselves." The order would have been correct if it made any sense.
Even without a senior commander, the Nautolan would have known there was no point in resisting anymore.
And he would have pressed the button.
In all the years Jerid served aboard the ships of the Zann Consortium, he had never learned the secret of programming ship commanders with insane loyalty to Tyber Zann.
And why they went so willingly to their deaths.
And where, by the Hutt, was the explosive compound hidden that tore a starship to pieces!
All he knew was that the commander would spare no one if he realized the ship was threatened with capture.
At best, he would prolong the agony so that as many enemies as possible would be within the blast radius.
His gaze stopped on an open maintenance hatch...
"Sir, where are you now?"
"In the maintenance compartment," Sykes muttered, looking at the two soft vac suits missing from the rack. "In the technical corridor on the starboard side — there's a supply of scanners here. I'll find one of the techs and make them install the scanners after all."
"Sir, this is pointless," said the destroyer commander. "We have nothing to get close to them or attack..."
"We have a self-destruct system," Sykes reminded him, moving to his final, very dangerous argument. "Do you think I'm such an idiot as to think we could actually shoot someone here? The scanners and antennas were needed to lure more enemies to my destroyer and to know when to blow the ship!"
"Good idea, sir," came the Nautolan's voice.
But it didn't come from the comlink.
Sykes froze, having only just shoved both legs into the vac suit.
Looking up, he saw the destroyer commander standing before him.
The Nautolan, with his extensive prison record, smiled so that his white teeth sparkled like diamonds.
"It's not what you think," Sykes began. "I... I decided on my own..."
"Cut the crap," the Nautolan snorted, showing a small remote control with a single button on the front panel. "It's all going up!"
"No, wait..."
Jerid pushed off to lunge.
But he never felt the landing.
* * *
"Beautiful," Mara said, gazing at the large fireball that had formed where the Merciless used to be.
"I've seen better," Maris remarked, putting her feet up on the shuttle's control panel.
"How coldly you take the deaths of those you once served with," Jade noted, glancing at a pair of jet-black TIE Avengers escorting their little ship to the Chimaera across the entire recent battlefield, filled only with ugly debris and bustling Lambda-class shuttles, their super-powerful searchlights sweeping every remotely large piece of wreckage.
"I don't give a damn," the Zabrak woman declared. "I've already paid back a hundred times over what they invested in me."
"And how much did they invest?"
"Depends on how you measure it," Brood shrugged. "Judging by how you fight — I clearly wasn't shown the 'master class in Jedi killing' by Urai Fen."
"It didn't come cheap for me either," Mara smirked, inwardly relaxing at the sight of the rectangular opening of the Chimaera's main hangar. "There were plenty of mistakes, self-deception, outright lies to the face, and other unpleasant bantha poodoo... But I've overcome all that now."
"And what helped?" the Zabrak woman asked.
"Well..." Mara was at a loss, not knowing what to answer.
"Oh come on?" the pale-skinned Zabrak perked up. "Seriously? You found someone who changed your destiny? Like in the legends about Jedi who redeemed those who fell to the Dark Side, and they became heroes of the galaxy?"
"Something like that," Mara tried to evade the answer.
"Can I meet him?" Brood asked. "I mean, if he's not more than just a spiritual mentor to you, and you won't be jealous if we..."
The implication even made Mara laugh.
"No, I won't mind," she said, barely holding back laughter as she parked the shuttle in a completely empty landing bay (as it always was when she visited the destroyer). "Go for it if you're confident in your skills. But he's not a Sith or a Jedi — just an ordinary sentient."
"Ha," the Zabrak declared arrogantly. "I talked my way out twice with a student of Darth Vader and walked away alive. I can handle an ordinary human even more."
"Of course," Mara smiled. "Of course you'll handle it..."
"I sense sarcasm in your words," Brood tensed at the sight of Dominion guards in black armor entering the landing bay. "What's the catch, friend?"
"Remember two simple truths, Maris," Jade looked her in the eyes. "First. The one you'll be speaking with is not an ordinary human."
"And...?"
"And second," Mara could no longer hold back her smile, seeing Grand Admiral Thrawn entering the landing bay, accompanied by Rukh and Tierce, with a ysalamir comfortably perched on his shoulder as usual. "He's not human. The most unusual non-human I've ever met."
Brood looked at her.
Then at Thrawn.
Then back at Jade.
And sighed heavily.
"You could have just said so," she muttered discontentedly. "Fine, I'll find someone else. Are there any young Jedi boys around?"