Open Orbit

[Jago]

~ Jago only had to close his eyes for a brief moment, to share with Second Flight what they would do. A charge right into the lines of the Mandalorian fighters: if they wanted to come head on, then they would take them head on. That armor was thick as it was, but this was not meant to wipe them out. No, he wanted the Mandalorian pilots off balance. Off balance meant they would make mistakes, and mistakes left them vulnerable.

A flicker of a thought touched out to Dav Man'sell and First Flight, even as Jago opened up his throttle to propel his sleek fighter into the battle. If his team took them from the front, passed, and then looped around, could not First Flight strike the entire formation from the side in the time it took Jago's Flying Aces to get a bead on them again? The White Haired Wonder certainly thought this possible, and so he let that image settle into Dragon Leader's mind, sinking to the sediment whilst he willed all distractions away.

Lock Ess-Foils in Attack Position.

The number of times he had heard and said that phrase ... as familiar as a mother's goodnight to her child. For the Mandalorians, it might as well have been a goodbye. He did not speak for the transmission would take too long. Instead, he again let the image of his own X-Wing splitting her cannons apart ease into the thoughts of his pilots, even as his warbird physically accomplished the action in the silence of space.

He could see them now, with his eyes. Feel the life inside those thick shells. Sense the thrum of their engines and reactors. Jago's mind was filled with sensation. Emotions. Energy, from both machine and life, the way they intertwined and worked together to make a weapon. The Ace felt a pang of sorrow for his opponents today: he was sure it would have been wonderful to fly along Mandalorian fighter jockeys in peacetime, to test one another's prowess and steeds. Instead, they were flying right into the Dragon's nest, and these mythical beasts did not take kindly to intruders.

The stealth systems stayed on with a large amount of power running into them, leaving his shields nearly drained. As much as he would have preferred an honorable dogfight rather than resorting to tricks, they needed to get this freighter down to the ground, and that meant drawing as little attention as possible.

Here we go.

Jago's mind acted as a targeting computer for his wingmates, feeling out for them which to go for, giving them the sensation that maximum firepower was both approved and necessary. He settled his own fighter on the one right in the center of the formation: more than likely, this was the Captain. Cut off the head, an old proverb said, and the body will soon fall.

Second Flight. Engage.

They were nearly on top of their opponents by the time the sharp order flitted through synapses and neurons: no time for the enemy to dodge, react, nothing. Barely any time for them to do so as well, but more than enough to pull a trigger. Jago did so.

His X-Wing suddenly rolled on its horizontal axis, even as the firing stud on his flight stick was pulled and held. Eight barbs of shadowy azure left the curls at the tips of his cannons, intent on lancing that first Bessie right through the cockpit and putting an end to this quickly. Either he was more tired than he thought or the other pilot was extremely lucky, as the shots pounded into the sides (and therefore the armor), but the pilot stayed fine.

He looked up as he passed, the world slowing for a brief moment. Two pilots, alike in dignity, watched their counterpart drift by, the dagger-like shape of the Bes'uliik nearly fully under the elongated snout of the Incom X-Wing. She was young, Jago remarked: far younger than he would picture a Flight Lead would be. Even through her helm, it was easy to tell: the cockpit seemed a smidge too big for her. Then again, was he not also barely a child when he was dogfighting throughout the Mid Rim?

That's when it hit him: he had seen her. He had seen his enemy. This was no machine, this was not just metal and power. It was a person. A living, breathing, wonderful living being.

Who had come here to destroy everything he loved. In turn, he now had to do his best to end her life as quickly as possible.

The thought rattled him for a second, a brief, solitary second, before the fighters sped past one another at impossible-seeming speeds. Just like that, Jago's mind was back on the fight as he called forth to Lita, dear Lita, asking her to watch his wing even as he put his fighter into a sharp turn to get above the enemy formation and double back. Meanwhile, he asked his Second Element if they would ever so mind to do the opposite, all whilst knowing that Dav and his team were now in position to assist them as well.

The Crusader-class could wait, the Ace noted upon turning around. For now, these fighters needed to be mopped up. In about ten more seconds, they would be.

Even through the high strain on his body and craft through the maneuver, he found a moment to cast a quick glance over his shoulder, sighing softly.

Stay with me, Trykk ... I'll keep you safe. ~

[Dav Man'Sell]

<<Lock ess-foils in attack position.>>

As often was the case in combat, especially in the cockpit of a starfighter, Jago's thoughts mirrored his own. Dav reached out into the Force meld, planting the instructions into the minds of Ren, Tebana, and Eryad, feeling their understanding come sweeping back to them in the meld. He dipped the throttle, his foot depressed the right rudder, slowing his speed and slewing his X-Wing's tail out to the left, and he pulled his stick over to the right and back, rolling his X-Wing onto its starboard S-foils and sweeping its nose up. Then he gunned the throttle again, and dropped his stick to the left, which levelled him out on a course roughly the reverse of the direction he'd been pointed in before, the nose of his X-Wing now pointing straight into the heart of the incoming Mandalorian formation.

Dav watched the last of the blue laser blasts leaping from the stealthed X-Wings of Jago's flight, completing a head-to-head run with, as far as he could tell, both Mandalorian and Jedi fighter groups intact. The Bes'uliiks hadn't opened fire in return, however, obviously surprised by the sudden shots out of the black. They were starting to break up, most of them to double back and pounce on the rear of the StealthX flight that just slipped through their ranks, if they could locate them. Dav was not going to give them much chance to do so.

He drove in to the heart of their formation, side on, thumbing over to his torpedoes and preparing a shadow bomb for launch.

<<Straight through the middle, first flight, split them up as much as you can.>>

He depressed his trigger, launching the engine-less warhead, which he gripped in a fist of the Force and plunged directly into the side of a fighter in the heart of the squadron, a ship carrying markings that might have signified it as being the squadron's number four fighter. The weapon exploded in an astounding incandescence, a blossoming ball of fire that engulfed the Beskar clad fighter. As solid as the metal was, there wasn't a fighter in the Galaxy that could have taken so direct a hit from a shadow bomb and not been at the very least wounded for it. Dav didn't stop to check his kill; before the fireball had even begun to fade, he depressed his left rudder, slipped over to the port, and opened up with his quad-laser cannons, set to off-set pairs. The bursts of blue energy alternated high to low on either side of him, and he pounded four bursts of fire into another wing-pair of Bes'uliiks, one slipping out of his line of fire after the first hit, just in time to reveal his partner behind. Dav kept straight, let the remaining three shots pound the second ship, and was rewarded with a small, blossoming flame somewhere towards the rear of the fighter as he lasers slipped past armour plating and found something a little softer to burn.

Then he was through the group, after having to snap his S-foils up to his left to avoid a collision, and staring out into open space on the far side. A brush in the Force showed Ren not far off his starboard rear quarter, and Tebana and Eryad still out there and intact, too. He snapped his stick over all the way to the right, inverting his fighter, then hauled back to point the nose down relative to their attack vector. As he did so, he craned his neck back to look out over his head, making a quick assessment of the Mandalorian ships.

Formation is in disarray. Can't tell how many were lost, but there's at least one, maybe two less.

His eye was drawn towards the 'leading' edge of the original flight vector.

That's some dogged determination you've got there...

He dropped his eyes away from the trio of fighters he'd just seen, focusing back ahead, and pulled back on the stick again to complete his long, staggered loop. He made a quick assessment of the situation, then planted more thoughts in the Force Meld, finding the mind of Zuli Madoon.

<<Nine, you've got incoming.>>

The other remaining fighters looked to be splitting into pairs and attempting to engage the hidden Dragons led by Jago, though Dav found one pair that had split and were skulking off in the general direction that he and his flight had formerly been jetting for, now in a quadrant well above their heads and nowhere near their tails. A small smile pulled at the corner of his mouth.

<<Three, take four after the pair that's split high. Two, on me.>>

=Ren Rieb, Dragon Two=
<<As ordered, lead.>>

[Zuli Madoon]

::Third Flight, we have incoming. Ten, break off escort and loop around to your right onto target. Eleven, Twelve maintain defensive position escorting the Freighter and the X-Wing. Be prepared to break off escort and engage any more incoming. Let's move out::



1..

2..

3..

BOOOOOOOOOOOM..

[Corr Vhett]

"Four is destroyed, three more ships damaged!"

:: Nothing on scopes lead .... Incoming fire! .... Contact! Contact! .... Can't see a thing ... Guss is gone. Repeat, Vaar four is down! ::



"What the...."



"Instruct the Concordian commander of the situation. Tell him we have Jedi in orbit in their stealthed fighters."



"Adjust course. Plot an intercept assuming the freighters final destination is the moon. Parallel its trajectory if need be.... Fighters are to do the best they can against the Jedi for now. Reinforcements will be incoming."



------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Dav Man'Sell]

The Nebula-class Star Deatroyer bucked hard under the blows of the Mass Drivers. Though the tech may well have been loosely based on crude, projectile designs, the cannons sported by the cruiser were none the less quite effective. The energy the slugs imparted on the Argentine's shields, through the age old understood relationship between mass and velocity, was impressive to say the least, and the slugs came with the potential to ignore ray shields and overwhelm lesser projectile shields, to punch straight through.

The Star Destroyer's forward shields blossomed in a hemispherical display of white light, as the explosions rolled across them, but the Argentine's powerful defences held. Through the brilliance, Ptrelli saw the enemy destroyer start to roll, to present stronger ventral shielding. All the while, it continued to pull away, trying to draw them in.

=Commodore Ptrelli Stargazer=
"Report?"

=Argentine Tactical Officer=
"Forward shields are at sixty nine percent, holding steady."

Valentin Morgan, the ship's captain, turned to the Commodore from his position by the starboard crew pit.

=Captain Valentin Morgan=
"That'll change as we get closer. We should bring Peregrine and Hellfire up to support us."

The Commodore nodded, eyes still fixed firmly on the Mandalorian battleship.

=Commodore Ptrelli Stargazer=
"Agreed. Comms, signal Peregrine and Hellfire to run alongside that ship, and focus their fire on her weapons batteries. Helm, alter course. Bring us straight along her axis. Stand by for a full roll. Weapons, concentrate fire down her centre-line. She wants to show us her belly, then fine. We'll rip it open."

Confirmations sounded from the crew pits as he gave his orders. As the view through the viewport shifted with the small change of course, he turned to his right, directing his attentions to the display outlining the position of their fighter squadrons. The enemy’s fighters were running out wide, out to the flanks. He nodded, thoughtfully.

=Commodore Ptrelli Stargazer=
“Have the A- and E-Wings head out to engage those fighters. Bring the Legacy in in our wake, tell her to run a parallel course to ours at a height of two hundred meters, and stay aft of us by four hundred meters, but stand-by to close in to one-hundred and fifty. Have her roll ninety degrees port and stand by to launch X-Wings and bomber squadrons on my command.”

The ship rocked again, a barrage of blasts impacting from the Mandalorian ship. Ptrelli gave a glance at one of his info-screens on his left.

Forward shields are at fifty-seven percent. Should be enough, as we are gaining, but that ship’s reverse course is going to lose us some time.…

He looked out again at the enemy ship, his brow furrowing in a frown.

=Commodore Ptrelli Stargazer=
“Engineering, we need more speed. Take power from the rear shields, run it through the main engines until we are within two hundred and fifty meters of the enemy vessel. Comms, signal Manifer and Fastbreak, have them move forward, and pull into the space between us and the Legacy. Tell them to concentrate on anti-starfighter fire. They’re plugging the gap in our defences. Once we are within one hundred and fifty meters of that Keldabe, they’re to pull up and behind the Legacy.”

More confirmations were shouted out to him. A glance at his fleet screens showed the Peregrine and Hellfire moving to flank his own ship, and eventually, they would pass it and run along the Keldabe’s flank. The Manifer and Fastbreak slipped up and in behind his ship. The screen on his other side showed the rear shields draining much of their power away, and the speed with which Keldabe-class cruiser grew larger in the forward viewports increased considerably. He took a deep breath, leaning back into his seat, and ran a mental countdown in his head. He figured they had about ninety seconds until they were within the first, two-fifty meter range, and twenty seconds after that, they ought to be in place for his maneuvers.


What happened in those almost-two-minutes would be deciding factors. Three minutes after that, the first of the other Mandalorian ships were due to enter weapons range, and if he didn’t finish the Keldabe off in that time, he’d have more than just one target to take on, and the chances of losing people increased exponentially.

I shall have to make this quick, then….

[Corr Vhett]

=Finn Lesko=
"Brace..."



=Finn Lesko=
"Report!"



=Pirus Vex=
"Ventral shields are gone. Forward shields fluctuating between zero and five percent, readings indicate unstable generators. Dorsal shields climbed back up to forty two percent before we were hit and are holding at that. Not enough power to maintain flank shields..."



=Pirus Vex=
"We've lost turbolasers seven, eight, ten, fifteen and twenty. Three ion canons destroyed. Main hangar bay if damaged and venting to space. We have hull breaches on decks two, three, four-"



=Finn Lesko=
"Okay, kid. I get the picture."



=Finn Lesko=
"Roll us again, all guns that can fire are to put everything into that Nebula's forward shields. Divert power from all shields but the rear to engines and reverse course. Lock tractor beams on to the target, use energy from redundant cannons if need be..."



=Finn Lesko=
"Disable collision avoidance and prep all ordnance. Anything that can launch is to launch now. Prepare for ramming speed..."

[Dav Man'Sell]

The Argentine closed, Ptrelli watching closely as the enemy Keldabe's shields faltered further. He knew, now, that the withering barrage they turned on their enemy was going to get the job done.

Not just that, but the Captain of that Keldabe must know it, too.

As if on cue, a call came out from the port side crew pit.

=Argentine sensors officer=
"Sir, enemy ship is showing fluctuations in their power core. Their ventral, forward, and flank shields are down and seem not to be recharging."

The Commodore directed his attentions to the bank of screens to his left, where the same sensor feeds that the sensor operators saw were fed to him. It was the department he'd begun his career in, and his climb through the ranks had, at least intially, been spurned on by his exceptional ability to analyse and understand what the sensor feeds were telling him.

As he looked on at the scans of the ship as it rolled, watching the dorsal shield crumble beneath their shots, he decided it was a talent he was glad for.

=Commodore Ptrelli Stargazer=
"That's not a shield collapse. That energy is being re-routed."

He glanced at the display for their own shields, saw the enemy's fire intensifying.

Not enough incoming damage. They're not pumping all that into their guns....

=Captain Valentin Morgan=
"What is he doing?"

=Commodore Ptrelli Stargazer=
"He knows he's dead. He knows there's no escape. If he had turned about and ran full throttle, with those engines firing in the right direction, he may have bought himself enough time, but now, he knows he's dead. So what would his priori..." The Commodore trailed off as his eyes played across the display for the enemy ship again.

They're reducing their reverse speed, and fast.

Realisation reached him, and a micro-second of worry, before he lifted his head sharply and begun giving orders.

=Commodore Ptrelli Stargazer=
"He means to ram us. Captain, hard to starboard." The dark-skinned Captain gave a nod as he immediately turned to his crew and started issuing orders to cut the starboard-side engines, and dump the power into their port-side equivalent for a hard-starboard turn. "Send to Legacy and Argonaut, have them lock their tractors on our starboard for twenty seconds to aid our turn. Turbolasers; one barrage, aimed at their bridge, then cease fire. Transfer energy to port engines."

The Commodore turned to his screens again as, through the main viewport, the view started to slew away to the right, albeit far more sluggishly than it should have given the Nebula's lateral thrust vents. He spotted why instantly, even as the shout came from the crew pits; the incoming tractor beams, locked on to hinder their turn and draw them close. The distance between them started to decrease all the more rapidly as the Mandalorian vessel achieved full forward momentum. They now had under a minute until impact.

=Commodore Ptrelli Stargazer=
"Tractor beams, lock onto the nose of that Destroyer. Try to nudge her off course. Missile batteries, fire into their tractor beams. Let their own beams pull them to source. Redirect shield power, keep all our shield energy directed into the facing arc. Signal evacuation of our port hangars, and then open them to full depressurisation as soon as they're clear."

He sat upright, and with his left thumb, he flicked the internal comms alive. Gave the order, and hoped, as his ship swung as quickly as it could to starboard, that they'd done enough that the order would prove to be unnecessary.

=Commodore Ptrelli Stargazer=
"All hands, all hands. Brace for impact."

[Joshua Kierra-Solo]

:: Sorry Starbazer... ::



<< Gotta have faith, kid >>

[Ronan Starflare]

=Captain Stanton=
"Instruct interceptors to engage the forward squadrons of the enemy formation. Tie them up. Crimson, lead the charge."

=Legacy Comms Officer=
"Captain Stanton! Argentine orders a roll, ninety degrees to port, and to launch starfighters and bombers as ordered."



=Captain Stanton=
"Do as he says. And ready Guardian Squadron and Yavin Defender Group for launch at a moment's notice."



=Captain Stanton=
"What are you up to, Buckethead...?"



=Captain Stanton=
"Scan the enemy combatant for damage."

=Legacy Sensors Officer=
"Sir, by all calculations that ship is dead or dying. Its weapons are powerless, its shields down. It can be of no threat to us."



=Captain Stanton=
"Hmph. Then why is it still coming towards us, I wonder? Perhaps because guns are not the only weapon a ship can carry. Don't you know, Lieutenant? The rules of engagement change when the attack decides he will not survive the fight. "

=Legacy Comms Officer=
"Captain, you'll want to hear this!"



=Argentine Battle Coordinator=
"...Legacy and cruiser Argonaut are to lock tractor beams on starboard flank of destroyer Argentine to aid in crash-avoidance maneuver."

=Captain Stanton=
"All tractors, target the Argentine's starboard flank, full power."





=Captain Stanton=
"Engineering, route all available power to the shields and be prepared to project to the location in space between the Argentine and enemy Kedable if necessary. We will ensure her survival at all costs. And for kriff's sake, fire on that Kedalbe if you can."



::Open fire, Carrie! Slag these bastards!::



::Wayward One, we've an unwelcome tail behind us. Stay sharp.::



<<There's a corvette in the way. It needs to disappear before I can even think about getting close to atmo.>>

[Lita Trykk]