Difference between revisions of "2294/Rebel Crossfire"

Latest revision as of 20:19, 26 May 2015

Juno Eclipse (428) has posed:
Somewhere out in the middle of nowhere, drilled into an asteroid, a pocket of Rebel Alliance soldiers and engineers have carved themselves a base just off a major hyperspace route. Its opposition, the Galactic Empire, has a reputation for draconic, pro-human policies and a tendency to stamp out rebellion wherever it's found.

To that end it's not surprising that they've not only dispatched the Imperial Inquisition, but also called upon Confederate allies. The joint task force's orders are simple: Wipe this base off the map. The local Confederate Imperial presence has already arrived. Inquisitor Starkiller has already been snuck onto the ground facility, while his pilot, Juno Eclipse, waits with the ship beyond rebel scanner range.

Ever the perfectionist, she's using the ship's computer to research the installation as she waits for Confederate allies to arrive and Imperial orders to filter in. As Starkiller wears down the defenses and Confederate allies arrive to lend a hand in space or on the ground, they would notice something odd. Defenses here seem unusually light; while there are a few X-wing starfighters patrolling the asteroid, and a combination of droids, soldiers, and turrets on the ground, it's not the kind of thing that should be guarding a facility this size.

The information Juno finds in her investigation, though, gives her pause. Something isn't right with this data. She finds herself checking and double-checking it compulsively, but nothing turns out differently. Whatever it is, it's causing her composure to dwindle; she doesn't notice when her jaw muscles work so hard her teeth creak in protest.

Decisively, she thumbs the activation on her comm headset.

[Eclipse to Starkiller. Life signs seem too numerous to account for just a garrison. Stand by; I'm going to see if I can't slice into the security cameras and see what's going on.]

Juno frowns as she keys in the requisite commands, bending the Rogue Shadow's considerable computer toward the task of quietly overpowering the rebel defenses. It doesn't take very long.

[I've got a security camera, and I have visual confirmation on your location. Give me a moment, and I can look ahead.]

In the meantime, there will no doubt be Confederates arriving. To that end, Juno checks her ship's sensors every so often, and will greet them as they arrive:

[Eclipse to Confederate allies; you are cleared to engage rebel targets. I'd appreciate it if one of you distracted those X-wing starfighters, if you'd be so kind? They haven't discovered the Rogue Shadow yet, but they will eventually...]

Galen Marek (731) has posed:
While Eclipse maintains the airspace and the Confederates close in, Starkiller is down on the asteroid's surface, doing what it is he does best. His lightsaber swings through the air as his lightning splits it, making easy work of the soldiers and turrets guarding this area. It's not hard work in the life of Galen Marek, Imperial Inquisitor and Bad Day Maker. It's pretty much how he makes his living, after all. You don't call a man Starkiller because he's cuddly.

You call him that because the very heavens shake at his presence.

He manages to drag down even the occasional X-Wing fighter, further wreaking havoc on this rebel base. As he finds a brief pocket of downtime, he tucks himself behind a wall, listening to Juno over his radio. It takes him a moment to process her words, but when he does his response is swift.

[>Starkiller to Eclipse. Affirmative, Eclipse. Keep me up to date on what you find in that slice. Something... it's not right. I don't think I'm sensing another Jedi here. If there is one, they're strong.]

He pops out from behind his wall, deflecting any sort of blaster fire that might be coming his way. He's hoping Juno can give him some insight, but until then the orders are clear: Wipe Out the Rebels.

T-elos (785) has posed:
T-elos is one of those Confederates who just 'happened' to volunteer for this operation, and for the very best reason of all: she was bored. She might make a show of being independent - and she is, honestly, quite independent in some ways - but that doesn't mean she likes to sit around uselessly and file her nails. She is, quite literally, built to serve.

Plus, she thought, it would be fun.

T-elos is driving a vehicle in space. Not because she can't survive in it, and in fact the vehicle is open to the void, but because it's easier than using her rather small internal thrusters to get around. T-elos can jump and run with the best of them, but in space she's slow and sluggish; best to hitch a ride with something.

The vehicle is, by local standards, completely outlandish. It doesn't have real sides, for one; it has a forcefield covering to keep debris off and wind out when used in an atmosphere, but it's completely transparent and the unit isn't really big enough for proper life support. It's a place to sit for just one person, a narrow-nosed front with a hoverplatform about halfway back, and a wheel behind (the wheel is currently pulled up and stowed because there is nothing to drive on in space). It is painted black and gold, with small violet highlights.

She is not coming from quite the same direction as the Rogue Shadow and is pretending she doesn't know where it is, to aid in its theoretical secrecy. T-elos is, in fact, driving more or less straight at the base. Her 'ship' is tiny, and its dark colour makes it visually harder to pick up, but she's not being shy about making herself known.

T-elos isn't firing any weapons, though. In fact, the little all-environment vehicle doesn't look like it even has any, or if it does they're quite well concealed. She's just... flying. Toward the base.

Revan (414) has posed:
Before the arrival of the assault team, what activity seemed to be happening was relatively mundane: X-wing fighters outside the base making patrol rounds, while inside similar patrols of droids and soldiers made theirs. The small security contingent of Rebel forces was clearly not expecting a strategic assault. And they especially had no idea that an Imperial Inquisitor, a ship of the Rogue Shadow's calibre, and various Confederate forces had been laying in wait and now descended upon the base, wreaking all sorts of havoc.

The distress call going out was clearly panicked, scattershot, almost not caring who managed to pick it up. If it was some would-be Union unofficial ally or even a third-party do-gooder, they were going to take what help they could get.

One of those who happened to catch the distress call was quite fortunately on their side, if from a rather far distant point in their past. The Ebon Hawk soared through the nearest warpgate, turrets primed and ready.

Starbound Flotilla has posed:
The Starbound Flotilla's Core Fleet seems to have had Pavo dominating today's voting; the job offer from the Retribution has too much tempting potential for technology and materials. The six crafts are less like fighters and more like heavily loaded gunboats, but god damn are they a zippy kind of maneuverable. Their appearance comes with a shockwave of more obvious energy; an Erchius Jump isn't a subtle thing in any way.

Albert's craft is an ultramodern white sort of thing, loaded brutally with numerous energy cannons and missile launchers designed for fighters, plus heavy shielding. Biteblade's is about five different ships salvaged and welded together, with a tremendous fixed-forward railgun mounted on the top. George's and Moonfin's, respectively a modern gray chunky gunboat and a sleek blue shark-like craft, are made for maneuverability, sporting their own energy weapons. Pavo's yellowed stone-like pirate-temple-ship may be designed for boarding action, but it also works wonderfully as a zippy little runner too, scouting and darting about. Seft's large sensor array and heavier bombardment cannons mounted on what appears to be a mixture of a spaceship and a castle provide copious tactical data on movements and formations.

This formation of six jump into range, and without even a moment of hesitation or a hail to demand the facilities of the asteroid surrender, they begin opening fire. Albert, in the SFS Vehemence, is going to go after the patrols of X-Wings with a volley of long-range missile weapons, while Biteblade in the SFS Kaleidoscope wordlessly attempts to use any data the SFS Abdication, captained by Seft, to target fighter bays, space defenses, and similar large structures, or perhaps hit any shielding heavily, using their absurdly titanic single railgun weapon mounted along the length of their craft. Pavo, George, and Moonfin, in the SFS Rapacity, the SFS Mendacity, and the SFS Connoisseur, immediately move in to start harassing and intercepting formations that come after the main damage-dealers.

Sort of a brutal opening volley. If there's much defense for this base, this should draw its attention very quickly, as was requested. Leaving the Flotilla's Core Fleet unharassed will be intensely punishing.

Lou (64) has posed:
The warp gate issues forth another alien, this time of both time and space. One of the advantages that the Lou network has, besides forming one of the larger effective passive monitoring antennae the Multiverse has, is that there can be a field unit closeby to various hot spots. Accordingly, it was a short hyper jump to reach a sudden, and apparently Union-leaning, distress signal. One particular Lou unit is at the helm of a G-Flyer, a craft that is relatively simple and practical: Not seemingly much more than an aero shell and engine, painted various shades of blue with sparse, bronze hull parts.

In the Gurhal system, these kinds of craft typically followed pre-determined lanes in space. In the multiverse at large, this was no longer practical - it has been extensively modified to work in space, as well as defend itself and its allies, as necessary, even with no obvious weaponry jutting out of its chassis. While Lou has her own sensors for this kind of work, she traces her hand along the holographic panels in the cockpit, gathering more information, and comes to one of her standardly grim summaries, "The base is completely overwhelmed. Chances of survival less than eight percent." NEVER TELL ME THE NUMBERS.

She turns to the ride-along she had brought that's in another forward-facing seat, and that she had originally intended for another mission, but obviously is going to be involved in this whether she cares to be or not. That is, the concentric rings of her irises adjust to the focal length to Cas. "You are not obligated by contract to participate, but it would increase their odds, if only a few percentile." If not, there are various ways to get out of a G-Flyer, some more comfortable than others. Pending that, the G-Flyer hangs back from the engagement, though Lou does broadcast their presence to assumed allies.

Kyle Katarn (778) has posed:
The Ebon Hawk will find itself with some passengers better familiarized with the Rebellion and the Empire. Kyle's been on both sides before, and now he's once again fighting this war. "This is Katarn, upper turrets are spun up and ready to go." He says over radio comms to the bridge, already comfortable in his seat.

Jan is on the underside of the ship, mounted on turrets as well as she rings in, "Ors here, guns are ready. Let's find us some targets, shall we?" She flexes her fingers, gripping the controls of the guns with that sort of deftness of a seasoned spacer while she checks the sights.

Starship engagements are a lot trickier than the holos make it look, especially when you're the one shooting at targets thousands of miles away counting on instruments to make sure you hit anything. To be eyeballing your target out here in the black is a bad, bad sign if you're not an ace pilot.

WHich is why having a Jedi helps, as Kyle focuses in the force, and Jan keeps her eyes focused on the targeting readouts respectively.

As the Flotilla make their way into the battle, Kyle sights the ship that's been making itself busy with engaging the X-Wings, taking a few shots in the Vehemence's direction.

Maya has posed:
Septerra had become quite a hostile to the Confederat ever since the invasion from The Emperor and later Serori. It had driven at least one nation into joining the Union formally but what isn't well known is? The planet's powers have been quietly coverting airships for void use or even falt out making spaceships out right. The Marduk was the first of such. The ship would be relatively unknown to the multivese and it might be considered small by the local standards being only about 500 meters long but it was packing a large amount of firepower for it's size. Also Maya was sitting in the cpatian's chair. Lobo once Union Ally had had other business to tend to in this. The ship had just dropped out of FTL at this distress call.

She also picks up the Foltilla ships. Looks tlike they were moving to make a buck. The crew was good some were human of various stripes but here and there were cyborg that more looked like skeleton undead of various colours from red to green one of the ones on the bridge calls out.

"Addtional elites, more than just the Flotilla."

MAya opens an com signal to the Rebel forces and other union here.

"This is the Septerran Battleship Marduk we'ere here to assist."

Maya then barks out an order.

"Gunnery crews fire at will, Primary batteries wait for my mark."

Juno Eclipse (428) has posed:
Aboard the stealth transport, Juno reaches up and flicks a bank of switches overhead, hand dropping smoothly to key in a series of commands to the sensor arrays. Her eyes scan the data even as she minds the activity in the immediate area, keeping a wary eye on the patrol routes of the X-wings.

Her head turns slightly as Galen's familiar voice crackles over her comm. What he has to say, though, brings her to frown.

[You don't sense anything? Perhaps they're simply good at concealing themselves.]

It's a dubious hope and they both know it. Galen is specifically trained to hunt people like that. Few Jedi have the means or the motivation to hide their presence from others with Force-sensitivity, at least to her limited knowledge; and if that actually is the case, it's worrying. They might get the drop on Galen before he has the opportunity to respond while he's busy cutting down rebels.

Better to turn her immediate attention to solving the problem of why these mission details are bothering her so badly. Her instincts are rarely wrong, and listening to them has rarely led her astray.

Her eyes flick to the sensor console again, noting the arrival of something really small. That must be T-elos.

Her attention then turns back to the sensors as the Starbound Flotilla arrives.

Juno Eclipse stares for a moment at the familiar blip of the Flotilla craft, and she feels her mouth run dry.

[Eclipse to Starkiller. Stand... stand by. I'm still attempting to slice ahead.]

She sounds audibly shaken; voice wavering slightly as she tries to reconcile what to do to keep the Flotilla from discovering her. Paranoia still gibbers in the back of her mind at the wrongness of these mission details, too; an insistent writhing of something cold in the pit of her stomach.

Fingers veritably fly over the controls as she tries to worm her way into the rebel base's defenses, and then another shock gives her more reason to jump in her seat – the arrival of the Ebon Hawk.

[Eclipse to Starkiller. We have company out here. I may be forced to move the ship to remain concealed. I have reason to believe the new arrival may be a Jedi.]

She does sound shaken, this time.

In the copilot's chair, the lanky form of PROXY pokes at his own controls, glancing over to Juno with yellow photoreceptors bright. "Captain Eclipse, is something the matter? I am not familiar with the sound you just made."

"I–I'm fine, PROXY." She reaches up to quickly rake her hair out of her face, straightening her uniform cap. "Keep working on those cameras for me."

"Yes, Captain Eclipse."

She, meanwhile, bends her will to the sensor array, trying to get a better look at the base.

[Eclipse to Starkiller. You're going to have company headed your way, in a moment. I'm picking up multiple life signs heading directly for your location. I'm fairly certain they're rebel soldiers; I'm reading blaster carbines, and they're primed.]

Frowning, she turns the sensors toward the farthest point of the base, narrowing her eyes at it, as though her sense of urgency alone could will it to slice into the systems faster. "Damned stubborn..."

There is, abruptly, another ship arriving to the space brouhaha. The II-class Star Destroyer, the I.N.S. Retribution, arrives with a flicker of distortion as it drops out of hyperspace. The gleaming wedge is a harbinger of rebel doom, and no sooner has it arrived than the ship abruptly begins releasing waves of TIE fighters.

[This is Captain Riaul of the Retribution, in support of Confederate and Imperial forces. Rebels, and Rebel allies, it is strongly recommended that you surrender. You are outnumbered.]

It's a man, and he sounds incredibly pleased with himself, as though this is a foregone victory.

TIEs immediately break off to swarm for the targets; particularly the Ebon Hawk and the base itself, and bright explosions bloom as they strafe the facility attached to the asteroid. They also streak for the Septerran battleship, strafing and streaking past it in staccato attack runs, lasers bright green against the black void.

Galen Marek (731) has posed:
Oh shi—

[Starkiller to Eclipse, Jedi presence confirmed! I repeat, I have Jedi on site, but not in visual range. You're right.]

Starkiller tenses, then resumes the fight aggressively, his body primed and ready to burn through the Rebels as fast as possible. Anyone making their way to the ground fight would find a force of the Force fighting back against them. Most mooks wouldn't even stand a chance against Starkiller, even in numbers. His movement is too fluid, his powers too strong, and he's not hiding. He is a god of death and destruction, bringing forth the fury of the Empire in human form. Outside of Lord Vader or Lord Palpatine, Starkiller is probably the largest single cause of destruction when fielded.

He's been trained well, and he carries out his orders to the letter. No spark of light within his soul can stop that.

[Starkiller to Eclipse. Really need info on that slice. If I end up having to fight Jedi down here it's going to be way too late!]

He knows Juno is working as hard and fast as she can, but the Jedi in his senses are strong. Perhaps stronger than any of the others he's fought to this point. If it comes down to a Force battle, nothing in the vicinity is safe. He nods, sending a wave of lightning toward a band of armed Rebels coming toward him. Anyone not stopped by that is soon silenced by his red saber.

Cas (277) has posed:
If Cas is silent for most of a trip, it is not due to any particular distance or dislike of others– she just has nothing to say. That is perhaps one of the reasons she can operate well with someone like Lou; efficent, calm, and always a little withdrawn though the emphasis on logic with no emotion has always left the silver-haired Cast a little more worried about her Guardians contractor.

Just working for Guardians is also something of a worry to her.

As the light of a foreign star cuts into the cockpit cabin and the situation unfolds before them, Cas frowns– then Lou adds her grim estimates to the hypothesis. Pale fingers capped in polymer materials sweep across the display at her station, bringing the holograms to life.

"We will have to do what we can," the Cast says with a certain resolve, mouth pulling into a flat line and nodding. "However, I must advise: Starship combat was not. ... the focus of my training."

Bright blue eyes flick toward Lou.

"I will also bill you for overtime."

Juno Eclipse (428) has posed:
Juno swallows through a dry throat as Galen confirms the worst. While the fact that there are Jedi here is no threat to her, personally, knowing that he's in danger is always cause for her to sweat in her seat until he's returned to the ship. Every Jedi is dangerous, no matter how confident he is in his own abilities.

[Eclipse to Starkiller. Acknowledged. I'll be certain to move the ship accordingly. I'll keep you informed. PROXY is working on those cameras for you, and he should have the feed for the corridors immediately around you.]

Meanwhile, she returns her attention to the information at hand, fingers flying over the controls as she tries to brute force her way into the Rebel systems. They're old, and that should theoretically make them much easier to break into, but for some reason they're proving problematic. It's rare for her to take so long to slip into a system.

[Eclipse to Starkiller. I'm sorry. This system is annoyingly resilient. It's older; I don't understand why I can't—]

Lou (64) has posed:
"Understood," comes Lou's no-nonsense response, as well as acceptance. Somewhere, in another galaxy entirely, the Host Lou has already made the necessary balance arrangements, whether in meseta or credits as Cas prefers. "I will fly us in. You take control of the weapon systems." An uncharacteristic pause of consideration, and she says in a tone that might otherwise sound cheeky, if it weren't coming from Lou, "It is logical to assume you are familiar with standard AMF weapons systems and controls." Considering some of her internals, and the reaction she had to Magashi, that is.

Regardless, the panel that Cas is stationed at would reveal the full extent. Even if it's not obvious to look at, the exterior is bristling with the AMF's trademark siege weapon: Vectored laser mounts. They were designed for a different purpose, but no doubt they'll prove just as effective here. Lou isn't exactly subtle, either. Her own gloved hands make decisive gestures at her controls, bringing the Flyer to full impulse speed, and right into the thick of things. The TIE Fighters make an obviously EVIL target, and so the Flyer heads straight into their formations, trying to disrupt them with carefully calculated flight paths, even absent the weapons fire.

"I admire their design efficiency," Lou admits, already mentally picking apart their structures through her sensors. "Inexpensive but not sacrificing effectiveness." She is a CAST, after all, first and foremost.

Juno Eclipse (428) has posed:
The TIE squadron breaks to cut around Lou's G-Flyer, and apparently in a decisive move, they begin to open fire on the Flyer as they streak past. Green laser fire chatters as it lances past, though they seem almost hesitant to fire too boldly; unfamiliar, perhaps, with a foreign craft, and uncertain on how much firepower is necessary for this kind of a target.

The Retribution, meanwhile, hovers in silence, durasteel hull gleaming in the light of a distant star. Aboard its bridge, Captain Rihaul leans sideways in his captain's chair, watching readouts of the display and listening to narratives from his bridge crew.

[Riaul to TIE Squad Ten. Fire on that damned ship! Are you giving them a wake-up call, or are you trying to take out a target?]

They obey, then, swooping to come at Cas and Lou for another round, the efficient little starfighters spitting green lasers as they do.

Maya has posed:
Maya does give the imperial a reply he is giving a surrender option. Maya is wearing gear you more might expect someone from a prespace-flight world to have, leather and metal but her expression is one who seems pretty experienced to fighting.

"I offer you a chance to withdraw and spare the personnel under your command Captain Riaul. However we both know out paths are set. I will however show mercy to any of your personnel who survive. Still if you accept my comrades offer I will honour it."

With that the Gunners on the Marduk open up on eh fighters, while fighter craft are very rare on Septerra, the local wildlife combined with almost a decade in the multiverse has left them adapting to such and the anti fighter batteries open up as the Ties Come in, what would be noticeable is the large ship has no shields or deflector screens it is however very heavily armoured, and one might even get life readings from some portions of the ship that can't be it's crew.

To sell the Imperial Tie pilots short would be foolish even as the fire from the ship is attempting to gun them down they are scouting hits across the hull in kind.

"Flag the Flotilla vessels as threats if we're lucky we can make this job cost them more than they make. That's all they care about is their next score, it's like Hawk. There comes a point when the money isn't worth it."

She may have misjudged some of the Flotilla however. She's only got reports to go off after all.

"Understood Lady Maya."

Revan (414) has posed:
Galen's initial arrival started the laying of waste to the defences of the hidden base, and by the time the SFS Vehemence began taking out X-wings and the SFS Kaleidoscope decimating outlying defence structures, the Rebels were waking out of their routine and belatedly activating high alert. The soldiers making valiant attempts to stop Starkiller were utterly outmatched, with nary a Jedi in sight. No, the Jedi in question were not on the ground.

The Rebel forces above them were faring little better before the arrival of their Union allies.

On the Ebon Hawk, Lowri Revan-Shan cursed softly. "Elites....well, things just got a lot more interesting," she commented dryly over her radio to her two passengers already at the turrets. Nearby, T3 made a series of noises that sounded almost sardonic. "Wouldn't be the first time, little guy," she replied, heading for the Flotilla's battleships, bringing the freighter within firing range. "See what you can do about disrupting their communications." A chirp of affirmation, and the utility droid set to work slicing what he could intercept from the enemy cruisers.

And then things definitely become more interesting with the Star Destroyer. Fortunately, there were others answering that distress call. "Whew...looks like the cavalry's arrived," she radioed back to Kyle and Jan. "But am I just imagining things, or are they throwing a lot more forces than necessary at this?"

Finally, the piece de resistance came when Revan could feel a very Dark Side presence down on the base below. "Cripes...there's a Sith down there," she muttered. But her voice to the Retribution's captain was cool, calm. Someone who had clearly seen more than one battle like this, and was used to command. [This is Lowri Shan of the Ebon Hawk. Let's make a deal, shall we? If you retreat now, and we won't fire on you. Does that sound reasonable?]

That was a name 'Blackout' would likely not want to hear.

T-elos (785) has posed:
It's easy (easier, anyway) for T-elos to maneuver when nobody is shooting at her. The fact that she isn't shooting at anyone makes that a lot more likely for a few moments at least, which is all she needs.

T-elos' lips curl up. Finally, finally, she gets to fight. Not something staged, in an arena, for prospective purchasers, but something real. She can barely contain herself. Those ships aren't going to blow themselves up.

Her bike is small enough that it looks non-dangerous. That proves to be a mistake. As she gets closer to the asteroid and they might consider shooting at her anyway, she begins to engage in what are clearly combat maneuvers; the vehicle accelerates and swerves, activating basic jamming to make it a difficult target to lock onto. But it still doesn't have any visible weapons.

Until T-elos turns off the left forcefield. She loses air immediately, which doesn't seem to be harming her; the sensation is uncomfortable but not painful, and she stops breathing.

Lifting herself out of her seat, T-elos literally leans out the 'window'. She didn't have one before, but she is holding an absolutely ridiculous (for her size) weapon in one hand. Nine barrels, arranged in three sets of three in a triangular formation; it's designed to damage people, giant aliens and vehicles in about equal measure. The whole arrangement is bigger than her torso, coloured in black and gold with violet accents.

She doesn't brace it. She fires it with nothing but her arm strength to hold it steady, firing at the closest X-Wing until the long case of ammunition is empty. Ejecting it, she slams another one in and repeats the process, strafing onto a second; ammunition is apparently not a concern, and T-elos is both willing and able to engage in a one-woman war against any that come her way. She starts to pull in toward the base itself, able to maneuver close to asteroids because of the tiny size of her craft.

Juno Eclipse (428) has posed:
Although it doesn't approach, perhaps the more technologically savvy might recognise that the Retribution's weaponry is primed, and a good deal of its large cannon are pointed towards the rebel base and the dogfights unfolding.

In the captain's chair, Rihaul sneers.

[Riaul to the Ebon Hawk. The Empire doesn't make deals with rebel scum. Do your worst; you don't have the power to scratch the paint of a Star Destroyer.]

To Maya's terms, he actually laughs outright.

[Do your worst, little ship. We'll be sure to salvage some of the wreckage from your remains. Maybe we'll send some back to wherever it is you came from. You are aiding and abetting criminals of the Galactic Empire, and you will be dealt with accordingly. Rihaul out.]

The Star Destroyer captain cuts the communications off with far more force than is necessary.

Kyle Katarn (778) has posed:
Once Revan feels the presence of a dark-sider, Kyle feels the hairs on his neck stand on end. He narrows his eyes for a moment once he begins to trail fire over towards the TIEs as well. He sighs. During his days as a Stormtrooper he'd heard stories about the Inquisitors of the Emperor, men under Palpatine and Vader's command who sniffed out FOrce users and traitors to the Empire, either to kill, turn, or worse yet.

"I was worried about this. I don't think this mission is as cut and dry as we expected, Lowri." Kyle muses, before he goes back to dropping TIE fighters here and there.

"Joy, here I was hoping we'd get one of these operations without running into some maniac with dark powers. No offense to present company anyway." Jan interjects, focusing fire upon one of the other FLotilla vessels. THe Rapacity and Connoisseur will find themselves in Jan's sights soon, and the pilot takes aim as the cannons bark with laser fire.

Zwei (596) has posed:
The Empire's reputation here is hardly an impediment to a certain Armiger's sense of interest. There are more than a dozen good reasons for Zwei to be here at the moment, and giving its full attention, but it should be pretty obvious as to why it's on the same side as the Flotilla in this engagement, Confederacy aligned or not.

The SGB Convergence of Arms files out of erchius powered superluminal travel behind the rest, but unlike the ships of the main Flotilla, it hangs back well away from the killzone, serving mostly as a booster platform for the pair of units it launches. Asche accelerates to full combat velocity in seconds, settling on a triple digit mach cruise to bring himself around the Star Destroyer's far side, jettisoning a trail of high speed recon drones in his wake to msp the battlefield. Weiss simply dives right into the furball using nothing other than her exo-frame's vernier thrusters, ignoring the X-wings completely in a straight shot to the ground, waving at T-elos as she pulls even.

Galen Marek (731) has posed:
Juno can't hack the systems any faster? These were Rebels, right? Surely they couldn't have systems that a trained Imperial slicer couldn't penetrate, and with Starkiller on the ground wrecking everthing, how could they have someone actively fighting Juno's hack?

Nothing is adding up, and Galen doesn't like it when things don't add up.

[Starkiller to Eclipse. Keep up the work. If you can give me a direction to try and help, do so. This... it feels like overkill.]

He doesn't stop, of course, keeping up his one man assault on the base. Rebels will fall in droves to him, even on high alert. He gives a quick warning to the Starbound Flotilla's core fleet about Jedi presence, then resumes his gruesome work. The attitude of the I.N.S Retribution's commanding officer unsettled him in many ways, but he has nothing he can risk saying. He can't defy the Empire's orders.

[Starkiller to Retribution. Stormtroopers will likely not be necessary. Rebels are not much of a threat on the ground.]

After that... [Starkiller to Eclipse. Airspace is looking hot. Confirm status?]

Cas (277) has posed:
Fingers lifting, dipping into the holographic panels and sweeping markers and notifications to the side, Cas moves with the trademark efficency of a Cast; activating weapon systems, making sure the power flow will grant them enough juice to pack a punch without drawing too much away from the rest of the ship, and then bringing up a targeting display while her hands lower closer to the console for more direct contact. She notes each step of the process aloud, leading to Lou's piloting prowess leading the G-Flyer toward their selected TIE formation.

"Weapons ready!" she calls through the first pass of the fighters. Lining herself up, "Firing!"

The laser mounts integrated into the G-Flyer flare brightly, then let loose with weaponized beams of photonic energy; some fly straight ahead while the brunt of the barrage seems to sweep both up and down from the hull of the ship... then bends to fly straight at the fighters!

Starbound Flotilla has posed:
The Ebon Hawk's turrets catch the attention of the Flotilla. Shields flare on the Vehemence, and inside, power conduits overload with strain, sending small sparking explosions through the ship, but the light spray isn't enough to bring the shield itself down. Meanwhile, the sleep Connoiseur and the temple-like Rapacity zoom in, trying to dart around the

Seft calls out. "ALERT. Incoming fire. Origin located. warning, high-risk presence reported aboard." She's on the phone with Garen, it seems, and he's reported force shenanigans.
Albert grunts. "The shields will hold. Pavo, Moonfin, George, intercept now."

The three ships immediately swarm in on the Ebon Hawk. Pavo has a high-power teleporter aboard hers; Seft teleport's to George's ship, taking over intercept duty on his and letting sensor duty get handled by her SAIL AI, while the trio arm up and immediately try to link to Pavo's high-power boarding-action teleporter. They're going to IMMEDIATELY focus on teleporting right into the main hold, trying to brute-force burrow through any energy defense fields and appear in the main hold in a flash of red light! It's got ZERO stealth, though, every sensor aboard will detect what they just did.

The Rapacity and the Connoisseur take damage from close range as they close in, cracking their shields brutally and ablating armor away in shreds. They're still functional, but losing protection. But aboard, if this works...

Moonfin, the fishman, is in elaborate full-body durasteel armor that looks like a powered cross between a diving suit and a samurai's armor. Pavo the bird-girl wears a pirate-aesthetic set of mesoamerican-style armor, with bands of energized fabric linking the pieces and powering them. George (just plain human) wears a set of futuristic EVA-combat and exploration armor in a suit that glows a gentle blue at the faceplate. They're bearing a two-handed power katana, a one-handed power cutlass, and an armful of potent, rigged-up bombs respectively, which they clearly intend to use.

The ships are disrupted by an attempt to SLICE their systems from Revan's droid! It looks like the communications themselves can't be directly affected, as the enemy ships have a network of SAIL AI units that adaptively combat the attack, but it DOES draw a copious amount of processing cycles away from the SAIL units, meaning that their maneuvering and communications of the AI-operated ships suffers dramatically. This causes the Rapacity and the Connoisseur to suffer increased damage, as well as vastly reducing the tactical advantage that the Abdication can provide for the Vehemence and the Kaleidoscope.

Juno Eclipse (428) has posed:
Aboard the Rogue Shadow, the pilot bites her lip, even as her fingers fly over the ship's controls. If she really needed to, there's a chance that the ship could dogfight against the X-wings, but it's better for her to hang back and provide support to the ground.

It's troubling that she can't break through the systems any faster than this. Juno is a professional; she should have been past the Rebels' electronic countermeasures in the blink of an eye. That something is actively holding her back is worrying, and it makes her skin crawl.

[Eclipse to Starkiller. Take a right at the next junction. I'm still trying to break through the Rebel countermeasures. PROXY has the cameras sliced, though, so I can guide you to the nearest point of resistance.]

She thins her lips, focusing on her slicing, but does take a moment to respond again.

[Eclipse to Starkiller, status confirmed. There are a lot of players in the airspace, but the Rogue Shadow hasn't been discovered yet. The Retribution's TIE squadrons are keeping them busy, for the most part. I'm sorry, I—]

Suddenly, she's in.

Juno stops, forgetting to finish what she'd been telling Galen. She stares at the data on her screens, jaw falling open in her shock; the blood drains from her face. PROXY is asking her something, possibly if she's alright, but she doesn't even hear him.

"Oh..." she breathes, staring, reading again. Her voice trembles.

[Eclipse to Starkiller. I'm in the Rebel systems. Stand—stand by, I—I need to confirm this, I... this can't be right.]

Lou (64) has posed:
Of course she didn't expect the TIE Fighters to just stay confused by a reasonably sized ship barrelling into their formations. Rather than simply continue flying straight forward, and bringing them into full view of the ominous capital vessel's likely firing arc, Lou gestures again over the photonic control panel, bringing the G-Flyer into a steep bank. Then, yes - it performs a barrel roll, once Cas has had a chance to temporarily expend the photon capacitor's energy. The lime green blasts of return fire primarily miss, though a few impact the Flyer. Just like the Rebels' annoying ships, it seems this one is shielded - each strike so far bringing briefly into view an electric blue area of conjoined hexagonal light.

It's not that it's completely unfelt inside, however. The hits thunder through the chassis of a ship that originally wasn't designed for combat, even with a newly reinforced frame. It doesn't appear to rattle Lou, outside of setting her hat briefly ajar; something that she quickly reaches up to fix, even though Cas would be the only one that could see it. "Good work so far, Miss Cas," she commends. "I calculate a high probability that we will gather more fire, the longer we serve as a nuisance. Please be prepared." The photon capacitors quickly rebuild their energy for another volley, meanwhile, drawing on the willing life force of a distant galaxy.

Lou silently wonders why the Star Destroyer hasn't joined in with supporting fire. Certainly the odds are greatly in their favor, especially at this point, but to add that would bring the odds of a Rebel victory to statistical zero. Sometimes humans are hard to understand.

Revan (414) has posed:
The Guardian at the Ebon Hawk's heal shook her head. "It's an otherwise complete waste of forces," she commented to Kyle even as the TIE fighters started pouring in. "Okay, now that's just overkill. And what a perfectly good waste of a monologue opportunity," she quipped, though the Retribution's captain wouldn't be able to hear the chastisement.

"None taken," she replied back at Jan with a grin, deftly guiding the Hawk around the enemy vessels. Whoever taught her how to fly was good. The Force certainly helped, but not when someone didn't know what he was doing. The Jedi clearly did. "I haven't been Dark Side in, what, six years?"

T3 chirped back at her. "Okay, seven. Who's counting? Besides you, I mean."

But even with the best piloting, ships take damage in battle, and the shields and hull plating were proving their worth. T3 complained at the jostling, not to mention that if they took too many more hits, they were in trouble. "Working on it, T3," Revan started....

And then let the comment die. That couldn't be right. "We've got company?" It was almost a question as much as a statement of alarm over the radio. Leaping out of the pilot's seat, Revan was already going for her paired lightsabers. "T3, you have the stick! Kyle, Jan, we've got a whole new problem!"

Kyle Katarn (778) has posed:
The upper turret stops firing, and the operator begins to stiff up. "Great..."

He disengages from the turret before he slides down the ladder, calling down to Jan, "We got guests, Jan."

"They gonna be a problem?" Jan asks, not even looking up as she takes on a flying wing of TIEs. She's focused as she can, while not quite having the luxury of Kyle's almost abnormal grace as a Jedi when it comes to multi-tasking between gunnery duties and conversation. "Just as well, I wanted some time to myself anyways. You kept stealing my kills after all~." She teases, before giving her partner a wink. "Good luck, buddy."

Nodding, Kyle makes his way to the access hatch with his bryar pistol drawn, grabbing a bottle of some sort in his other hand while he goes to track down the three stowaways.

The main hold doors open to reveal Kyle, seemingly a mercenary with a blaster in hand and a bottle of liqor in the other. "HEY!" He calls out, affecting a little slurr as he hops down to greet the armed trio. "We weren't told we was 'sposed ta be havin' comp'ny...we's busy... dun 'spose you wanna talk this out, yeah?" That's right, just a bit closer...

The so-called drunk's stupid, lazy grin disappears once Kyle gets close enough, and then he drops the affection once he pitches the bottle towards one of the Starbounders like a softball.

In the span of seconds, the FWIASH of a lightsaber igniting is heard, and Kyle's gone from drunk spacer to crazy badass space warrior in about a second as he lunges towards Moonfin, his blue-blade slashing at the fish samurai. His pistol meanwhile barks off a couple shots towards Pavo, while Kyle tries to figure out what to do about George given his payload of bombs. That's gonna be a bit trickier...

Juno Eclipse (428) has posed:
Despite their status as general goons and mooks, the TIE pilots attacking Lou and Cas are at least trained professionals. The invasion of another ship in their midst is enough to shock them out of their trepidation, and the squadron breaks like a flurry of frightened birds or fish.

Except they're not frightened. They're getting a bead on the G-Flyer, and suddenly, there are twelve TIE fighters firing on the G-Flyer as they make a second pass.

Laser chatters as it pings off the shielding, and they seem to take heart when their firing has some notable effect. Except they don't have much time to enjoy it – as Cas lets loose with photonic energy to fire on them, no less than two of the TIE fighters are struck by it, exploding in brilliant fireballs as their craft suffer disastrous hull breaches that unleash the power of their ion engines.

Did we mention that TIE fighters explode spectacularly? Because they totally do.

Starbound Flotilla has posed:
With Seft in the Mendacity and Biteblade handling the Kaleidoscope, they're well-equipped to deal with Maya's flagging them as targets. As soon as they detect the threat – which is late, given that Revan's droid is jamming them! – Maya will soon detect that the Kaleidoscope has turned its massive railgun on the enemy battleship, and begun attempting to pelt it with tremendous slugs accelerated to absurd speeds. This is a BIG anti-capship gun. Why the hell did they bring it?! While Biteblade tries to get them to leave off and focus on the TIEs, Seft is swooping in with the Mendacity's ship-to-ship turret blasters, spraying and trying to generally be an intercepting, disruptive nuisance that keeps the battleship from having a lock on the Kaleidoscope be worth it. Albert, of course, continues his assault on the X-Wings with sprays of cannon and missile fire.

Galen Marek (731) has posed:
The deeper that Starkiller gets into the Rebel base, and the more he listens to the radio, the more his unshakable and deadly air begins to fade. Something is off, and the Retribution knows what it is. This much he knows, but not why it's off. Nothing about this makes sense, but he can't pinpoint why. He takes the turn Juno advises him to take, lightning blasting from one hand as he tosses his lightsaber with the other. Another wave of mooks fall to his power, and his lightsaber returns in a boomerang style.

When Juno finally slices the Rebel systems, she stops talking. She seems shocked, and the feeling of wrongness washes over him again. Whatever she found was going to be bad. It was starting to come together, though.

Why was a Star Destroyer here? He never had this sort of backup for a mission like this before. Of course, maybe having Elite Forces would warrant it, but they seemed to be coming out ahead across the board. And why was Lord Vader conveying his orders to everyone BUT Starkiller?

[Starkiller to Eclipse. What did you find? I need the information yesterday.]

His tone is normal, but he knows... He knows it's gonna be bad news. His pace slows, his stance becoming more defensive as he waits for word from his pilot.

Juno Eclipse (428) has posed:
Juno commands her trembling fingers to steady, attempting to check over the data as closely and carefully as her rattled mind will let her. Blue eyes flick over the blue-white light of the data readouts, reading over the information as quickly as she can without actually missing anything.

She reads it twice. Three times.

Nothing's different. She'd read it correctly the first time.

Sucking in a breath, she lets it go through her teeth. When she finally speaks, her words come out in a rush. Her voice breaks; it sounds strangled even to her own ears.

[Eclipse to Starkiller. There—there are civilians in that base. Civilians. And we're to wipe it off the map.</span>

Her signal transmits silence for a moment. When she does speak again, her voice sounds tormented.

[What... what do we do? I can't... that...]

T-elos (785) has posed:
Once T-elos has dumped a second box of ammo, she pulls herself back in the space vehicle and turns the 'window' forcefield back on. She still doesn't bother to repressurize the ship - she's just going to open it again soon - so she's limited to internal radio communication.

Which is fine, it's not like she really needs her voice for anything.

The X-Wings are starting to notice her now. It's hard not to, when she's tearing into the defense squad's patrollers the way she is. T-elos has to take evasive maneuvers in her vehicle to avoid getting shot down; while it wouldn't stop her, given the only thing the vehicle is doing is making it a little easier for her to get around, it would be annoying and inconvenient.

So after a couple quick dodges, T-elos accelerates dangerously quickly. She slams back in her seat as she rockets forward and 'down', 'under' the group of X-Wings she's been keeping an eye on the most.

Then she ejects. T-elos leaps out of the still-moving bike, which keeps going, becoming even more erratic in its flight because it no longer has a passenger who wants a stable platform to shoot from. T-elos lances upward, her hair spreading out behind her dramatically as she rockets toward the underside of an X-Wing.

That X-Wing gets a nasty surprise a moment later, when something that weighs a couple hundred pounds and is going awfully fast hits its underside. The pilot gets an extra nasty surprise a couple seconds after that when he can realize that T-elos is hanging on.

T-elos stretches out her left arm. A violet energy blade extends, vaguely triangular and with an oddly dark core, leaving trails of purple energy as she moves it. She attempts to shear through the wings, one at a time, leaving this particular X-Wing a completely unmaneuverable dart. It's not a fast way to kill a ship, but she figures it's not like the others are going to want to shoot at her while she's hanging onto one of their own.

Starbound Flotilla has posed:
George has already dropped one bomb on a timer before Revan's gotten to her lightsabers. He's going for any vulnerable system he can see! Meanwhile, Moonfin and Pavo have readied themselves. Pavo, of course, is the one who finds the drunk. "Haha, aye! Ye gotta lotta company, matey, but ye lookin' shipshape to be receivin' 'em—" She says, indulging a bit of laughter as she keeps her blade ready to stab, before squawking in surprise as the bottle smashes into their head, stunning and slashing!

Moonfin is quick on his feet, and on his words. "Fourth Sea Hylotl Style: Waves Break Against Heaven." The flashy motion slams the lunge away with his power katana, but it doesn't leave him unharmed; the impact of the weightless lightblade against the energy field of his own sword results in heavy, exhausting traumatic jarring at his arms. He immediately attempts to follow up with a series of swipes to the arm, though, flashy and quick.

He then launches into his own bearing-down assault, trying to swipe and swipe and swipe repeatedly in a way that will keep Kyle on his toes enough for George to do the completely unexpected. Have you ever tried to throw a bomb at someone? As it turns out, pretty much no human being ever expects you to do that, and they also don't expect the bruising, heavy weight of the subsequent impact. Either they catch it, which is a bad idea, or it hits them, which is worse. Either way, the bomb's on a timer of a couple minutes and George just slung it at Kyle.

Pavo is recovering; Moonfin seems to have everything covered, so she'll be moving to intercept anyone else who comes here, namely most likely Revan.

Maya has posed:
Maya listens to the Captain as he makes his reply to her.

"I'm well versed in how formidable Star Destroyers are. Very well then Captain we shall settle this."

The channel is cut Maya barks out more orders. For a moment Maya debates boarding actions but thinks better of it due to the massive crew compliment on board the Imperial Cap ship.

The Guns continue to engage the TIE fighters while it's larger barriers start to try to draw range.

"Prep missile batteries, for my mark have primary canon gunnery crew ready to start charge on my orders.

Also the Flotilla is now opening up with rail gun.

"Hits on deck four, engaging sealing systems."

There a burst of flame from here the Railgun has impacted on the hell. Weapon ports open and beams fire out they seem to be aiming at nothing then they bend into another direction trying to seek out both the Mendacity these are not huge hitting weapons for lone beams but they track well and there's numbers. Seft is also making quite a bit of a mess as rounds impact on the hull. The AA guns however are still shooting at the TIE fighters.

Lou (64) has posed:
The sudden burst transmission is enough to give even Lou pause, albeit for different reasons than for some of the others engaged. Something that is quickly punished by way another rattle of TIE turbolaser impacts. The shield once again cushions things, but the remaining Imperial pilots would be able to discern actual scorch marks appearing on the, previously, immaculate blue exterior. She's quickly back to the data, a few formerly blue status indicators flicker an orange of warning, though they aren't quite at the point where alarm klaxons are going off. "Structural integrity is at eighty-seven percent."

More importantly, though, simultaneously keying in more evasive maneuvers, she turns to glance at Cas, the mask-like expression on her face somehow growing even more grim, "The unidentified burst transmission said there are civilians on the base. I am certain you are aware of my duties as a Guardian. Even if it is a deception to keep us engaged, I cannot back down, now." That's basically it, her final warning. Things have just been kicked up a notch from their prior purely military standpoint, where withdrawal was an option. The loss of a field unit will not enormously hamper the Lou network, but Cas has significantly more on the line.

Regardless of Cas' decision, the G-Flyer breaks off from its offensive harassment, making a quick turn to head back towards the proximity of the base itself, the clear intent to aid in its imminent defense.

Revan (414) has posed:
The sharp electronic yelp from T3 was a good indication that at least a few of the bombs successfully went off. "Shards," Lowri muttered as the explosions rocked the freighter. It was built to last, but damned if they weren't going to be spending weeks on the repairs.

By the time Lowri arrived, Kyle was already in motion with a quite frankly clever tactic. Not something her old teachers would have necessarily approved of, but she tended to favour results...as long as they weren't a quick trip down the Dark Side path again. But light deception and distraction? Free and clear!

Moonfin would suddenly find a lightsaber from seemingly out of nowhere as Revan threw the one from her right hand, guiding it carefully in the confines of the ship and back to her hand after that initial attack.

"Rude," she quipped. "Haven't you ever heard of knocking?"

But that slight grin wavered when she heard a very distinct, very familiar voice over the radio. "That's..."

But what she was saying was even more disturbing. "We were more right than we realised," she commented to Kyle and Jan via radio. "It's an even bigger mess than we imagined."

Kyle Katarn (778) has posed:
Lightsaber on lightsword it is. Kyle quick to to holster his Bryar blaster as he notes Moonfin getting serious, just in time to properly mount a defense with his lightsaber. His training included a large primer on Forum III, Soresu to be exact; the defensive art once mastered by one Obi-Wan Kenobi of the Old Jedi Order up until the Jedi Purge. Luke had taken to a lot of Old Ben's teachings, and he made sure to pass them on to the next generation. To make it succinct, Obi-Wan was really good at blocking, something Kyle is glad for as his lightsaber parries strike after strike from Moonfin.

He remains patient and restrained to avoid cutting open the hull and causing more problems, but this just leaves him open to get clocked in the sternum by a bomb as he staggers back.

"Oof, spast that hurt..." He growls, before he notices that the heavy weight he just got clocked with is indeed explosive. "...and that's not good." Using the Force, he flings the bomb aside in a panic before he lunges towards Moonfin while the fish is tired still. His style changes from defense to offense, going for Form V with a few furious strikes. George will also get a close-range gout of electricity in the form of Force Lightning, non-fatal but still able to disable someone with as much voltage as a powerful taser gun.

Galen Marek (731) has posed:
Starkiller... stops. His lightsaber, instead of deflecting blasts back to the Rebels now, instead letting them fall to the sides of him. He ducks around a corner, listening to Juno and then to the Retribution. And everything starts to click together. He wasn't here to stop Rebels. If he completed this mission, he would no doubt be tried for murdering civilians. It... It was a trap. Thank goodness Juno is such an expert. If he had proceeded...

The threats from the Retribution only serve to fuel the growing light in his heart. They had been betrayed by the Empire. For some reason, his service had been called into question, and now he and Juno were going to have to pay a hefty price. He had said before that he would fight the Empire for Juno, if it came to it. And now... it had come to it. They were stuck. Either complete the mission and be murderers, or...

[Starkiller to Eclipse. I told you what I would do if this happened. Be ready to... be ready to move!]

Galen turns his back on the Rebels, turning and making his way back out of the base.

[Starkiller to Retribution. You better not be in the airspace when I get off this rock.]

He makes his way through the base, if he could even call it that now, mind racing. 'He knows,' Galen thinks as he runs, 'Vader knows about us. And now... The Empire is not our home.'

Juno Eclipse (428) has posed:
The Star Destroyer remains silent and inert, although its weapons are still trained on the Rebel asteroid base. The TIE fighters continue wreaking havoc where they can, either on the Elites defending the Rebels, or the Rebels themselves, and a squadron of bombers are still trying to chew up the base structure itself.

On the bridge, Riaul watches his screens much like a jackal might watch a choice cut of meat, only half-listening to the reports of the battle from the bridge stations.

[Retribution to Starkiller. Is that so? Is that what you're telling me, in response to the Emperor's own orders? Very well, then.]

Riaul smiles a nasty little smile to himself.

[Confederate forces. You are authorised to find and destroy the Inquisitorial vessel under the designation Rogue Shadow. You are also authorised to find and destroy Inquisitor Starkiller, by authority of Lord Vader and Emperor Palpatine. Proof of the destruction of either will be rewarded handsomely.]

He smiles a thin, nasty smile. He looks like he's actually enjoying this as he responds to Maya.

[We'll settle this, alright.]

Yet the Retribution does not fire on the rebel base.

Slowly, it becomes clear – that was never fully their target in the first place.

It's a setup.

Quite suddenly, the Rogue Shadow is in motion.

No sooner has it dropped its cloaking device than a full squadron of twelve TIE fighters swoop down after it, firing on the engines at the ship's rear. It streaks straight and true for the Rebel base, ignoring its pursuers.

In the cockpit, Juno tightens her hands around the controls so hard that her knuckles whiten, and her jaw muscles remain locked. She doesn't speak. She can't trust herself to speak. Her heart hammers against her ribs as she prepares herself to go against every piece of training she's ever had; to go against the very establishment that terrifies her.

Vader's own orders. Civilians. How could they?

[Eclipse to Starkiller. Stand by. I'm bringing the ship down to your location.]

There's nothing for it, then.

They'll have to run. She reaches up while trying to avoid the TIE fighters, flicking her comm headset to an open channel. Some of these people don't know her name, but she knows them, and she knows they wouldn't willingly follow these orders.

[This is Blackout of the Rogue Shadow! I refuse to comply with the slaughter of innocent civilians, and we're leaving this system—]

Her communication is abruptly cut off as several TIEs manage a direct hit on the starboard engines. The explosion shakes the Rogue Shadow, but even trailing thick and acrid smoke, it whines down to the base, settling itself in a place where Galen can make it in quickly, hatch opening. She doesn't bother to switch from the open line.

[Hurry up, Galen! That heartless son of a bitch already has a full complement of TIEs on the Rogue Shadow and the starboard sublight's hit! We've got one chance to get out of here!]

Cas (277) has posed:
Cas seems to derive no pleasure in the explosion of each TIE fighter caught up in the web of bending beams of photonic laser; her face is withdrawn and grim– but she knew something like this could end up happening, in working with Guardians again, in working with the Union in general.

Gripping the console to keep herself steady as the G-Flyer takes weapons fire, Cas tilts her head and starts to make adjustments to the weapons, readying the second volley. Then, the transmission... and Lou's grim visage.

"I understand," Cas says, tapping in commands to release another battery of weapons fire in an attempt to keep them relatively free and clear along the way. "I'm ready to fight."

Galen Marek (731) has posed:
The Retribution. It was burned into his memory. Vader. Palpatine. The Empire. They would all pay for double-crossing Star... Galen. His name isn't hidden anymore. Juno saw to that. Granted, 'Starkiller' would die this day.

[Juno! Damnit, why'd you come down here for me?!]

He doesn't question anything more, though, hurling himself onto the damaged Rogue Shadow. They had no time to argue. "Get us out of here, Juno!" he cries, lightsaber fading as he rushes to strap himself into a seat. "They'll pay for this, Juno. I swear on my life, on everything, they'll pay! I told you, right?" He offers a curt nod. "We're Rebels, now. Let's get moving!"

[Galen Marek to Confederate and Imperial Forces. Go to hell. Special note to Captain Riaul, I will not forget to come back for you. You better watch your back. I'll be in your shadow before I make you PAY.]

He straps himself in, letting Juno and PROXY handle flight while he tries to bolster the defenses with the Force.

T-elos (785) has posed:
T-elos manages to shear all four wings off an X-Wing; it takes less time than you'd think when you have a laser sword to work with. X-Wing armour isn't rated for lightsabers and they're not really rated for L-BLADE either, even if it's not quite the same thing as a lightsaber.

T-elos pauses for a moment while riding the crippled ship. She's not sure if the pilot bailed because she got so distracted by needlessly carving it up, but now she's getting reports. Interesting ones. It takes her only a few moments to make up her mind. It helps that the Retribution gives clear, direct orders. "Well, well," she says to herself (silently, due to the lack of atmosphere). "Isn't this a surprise?"

When the Empire turns on the Rogue Shadow, T-elos leaps off the dead or dying X-Wing. Her space vehicle swings itself around to catch her; T-elos pulls herself into it, dodging shots from the remainder of the Rebel patrol as she accelerates, pushing the thrusters as hard as she dares.

She's coming back. Fast. And she's already rearming herself; while flying at her top speed, T-elos leaves the side forcefield open. Her left hand is either covered by or morphed into a large-barreled cannon, with a caliber as big as her upper arm; T-elos fires it on the approach. It's not likely to be a crippling hit at this distance, but if it does impact the explosion is impressive.

Lou (64) has posed:
"Cas, I am going to land the G-Flyer at the base. Be ready to usher as many civilians in as you can." If not for her robotic voice, there might be a tinge of regret as she gives the exact calculation for standing room capacity, "Please limit passenger count to twelve." With that, she throttles the ship forward, continuing to dodge incoming fire from what has become absolutely a quagmire in the vicinity of the base, which is now taking even heavier punishment. The G-Flyer heads towards whatever opening is afforded, presumably a by now obvious landing bay, as she calls ahead, "Asteroid Base, this is G-Flyer. Please have civilian passengers—"

She's interrupted by the racket of a slightly more powerful strike to the hind flank of the ship, which also makes the landing itself a bit ungraceful, G-Flyer all but sliding in half-sideways, but thankfully the wing only clipping and taking out some stacked up cargo crates and equipment, instead of any the civilians they're supposedly here to help evacuate. The back hatch opens for Cas, as well as any passengers they could round up in time. She gives them exactly sixty seconds.

Meanwhile she's sending a radio to her universe's AMF, which has much larger ships they could use for this purpose. "Alliance Military Federation, this is Lou of the Guardians. Request assistance for civilian transport from a battle theater." A few moments of no response, then a form-like reply comes over the G-Flyer's communications systems, "Negative, Guardians. Use only official channels for these requests in the future." "Affirmative." Chances of success were always in single digits, but she had to try.

Juno Eclipse (428) has posed:
Juno hunkers against the Rogue Shadow's controls, even as the strafing TIE fighters take another shot at the ship. The explosions and force of impact against its shields are enough to make the ship shudder, violently, and she can already hear the cockpit warnings blaring damage reports. The outlook is grim.

She's not so distracted that she can't snap at her radio, though.

[I'm not leaving you behind! Get in the bloody ship! I don't do rash and illogical things very often; don't make me regret this!]

The ship's ramp is closing even before Galen reaches the entry bay. That's good, because the TIEs are back, taking another potshot at the Rogue Shadow's engines.

In response to Galen's order and assertion, she only laughs, and she can't help the hysterical edge to it.

"Rebels. We're Rebels now. You know, I was never sure my mother wasn't shot because she said the wrong thing, somewhere. And now I'm going to have the same thing happen to me. It's so ironic, you know; I was the perfect Imperial officer, and I even captained Vader's personal squadron—"

Even as she can't help her words, the ship is lifting off, engines whining in protest against the damage.

[Our engines are compromised. Albert, keep them off of us before they cripple the Rogue Shadow!]

And then, very suddenly, the shields are down by sixty percent over the port sublight engine. Juno's eyes snap to the display, and she makes a sound closer to a terrified squeak than anything else. "The Confederates," she gasps, after a half-second slamming a fist down on the console. "It's T-elos. She's firing on us!"

Starbound Flotilla has posed:
The Mendacity suffers; the shields are immediately cracked by arcing beams, and further strikes tear off nearly all the armor, and almost tear the engines away, but its pilot suddenly disengages without another word or another bullet, pealing away. The Kaleidoscope similarly ceases firing entirely, as does the Vehemence, as all three craft still engaging in space combat immediately turn on the Empire. Albert's heavier shielding immediately tries to interpose itself between T-elos and her target as his weakened ship immediately opens fire on her, while the Kaleidoscope opens fire on the weapons of the larger Star Destroyer that might harm the Rogue Shadow. The Mendacity has to retreat, but tries to screen T-elos further. By ramming her on the way out.

Meanwhile, the Connoisseur and the Rapacity come in to retrieve George, Moonfin, and Pavo, who are...

Cas (277) has posed:
Unclipping the seating harness, Cas nods grimly to Lou before rising up and hurrying to the rear of the craft. The ship's landing is far from graceful, but they make it through it– and for her part, the small Cast is forced to reach out and grab a handle adjacent to the hatch as the violent sweep and the ship yanks her legs out from under her.

Landing on one foot and one knee, she pulls herself back up to her feet as the hatch drops and she moves down onto the ramp. Hand slipping behind her back, a flare of light leads to the formation of a full-guard handgrip appearing in her grasp, a photonic blade in the form of a cutlass springing to life.

"Come!" she calls, as soon as she sees civilians and refugees. "Hurry up! Get on board!"

She's keeping her eyes ahead, however– looking for any signs of trouble that may attempt to stop their evacuation of the innocent ones. Still... twelve. Maybe they could sneak on a thirteenth, or fourteenth and still get away easily. Urgh...

Galen Marek (731) has posed:
Galen straps in, glaring out the viewport toward T-elos. He would remember her too. As the Retribution backs out of communications, Galen snarls. It would be the first on his hit parade. T-elos is rapidly taking second. He closes his eyes, willing all of his energy into bolstering the shields. He needed to try and ensure their survival, and this is the best thing he can think to do. "They're dead, Juno," he says, voice straining. "They're all dead. I promise you!" He didn't have to hide anything anymore. He was Galen Marek, and the Empire was no longer his backer.

They were an enemy. And Galen always sees to his enemies. The darkness in his heart is still there, but that spark of goodness, that thing that Juno kept alive, it was roaring back to life. Slowly, it would take hold. He was certain.

"I don't know how they found us out, Juno, but they did," he adds, his muscles visibly tensed under his robes.

Starbound Flotilla has posed:
Meanwhile, Pavo, George, and Moonfin were having trouble. Moonfin's power katana is jarred by the lunge again, traumatizing his arms once more, and George is tossed away by the electricity, writhing, yelling, and oddly laughing. Pavo is wounded by the blaster shot from before – it was tough to see due to her armor's unique design – but despite the wounds, she managed to interpose herself between Revan and Moonfin, blocking it with her power cutlass, but winding up thrown against the cramped interior wall by the Force force of the strike.

Then Moonfin backdashes. "Wait!" He calls out. There's dramatics on the radio. He keeps his sword in a defensive posture against Kyle, though his arms look unsteady with all that battle fatigue that the jedi has inflicted on the samurai. Then, after a short delay, he closes his eyes and sheathes his sword into his Matter Manipulator, trembling movements showing the actual exhaustion of the encounter. "We have other business that needs our attention. We will not be a threat to the base. I ask that you accept my promise on my honor that the Flotilla now means no harm to it." The three wounded and slightly exhausted Flotilla members are going to begin glowing a soft red, indicating that they're going to teleport out if they're not interrupted.

T-elos (785) has posed:
"I never thought you'd be the one to give everything up in a moment of weakness!"

T-elos manages to avoid the first blasts from Albert's weakened ship, pulling her vehicle into a turn and acceleration so tight that if she was human she would have either knocked herself out with G-forces or thrown herself out the open side forcefield. Being comparatively tiny has advantages.

But, unfortunately, there are some inevitabilities in space. Inertia, for one. T-elos has been pushing the acceleration systems on the vehicle as hard as she can. She can turn sharply, but she can't stop on a dime and she can't teleport.

She hits the Mendacity. The vehicle isn't splattered by the ram so much as skids across its underside, and in a collision like that the smaller vehicle loses. Parts go flying every time she hits a different segment of armour or a raised portion. It might have scuffed up the bottom of the Mendacity some, but that vehicle isn't going to be flying for a while, if ever.

T-elos, however, ejected. She is thrown through space, tucking into a somersault before she straightens out, not losing any particular speed by doing so. She still has the L-CANNON on, and she fires it at the rear of the Rogue Shadow again, hoping that the interposing ships don't have forcefields; her right hand is holding the gigantic gatling, and that she fires at the underside of the Mendacity, multitasking her offense.

The recoil from both weapons is sufficient to push her and adjust her course. T-elos uses this to advantage, firing a salvo of three L-CANNON shots, which send her backwards and in a spin that vaguely resembles a pirouette. She has to fire the gatling backwards at the Mendacity to straighten out.

Maya has posed:
Maya gets another message from the Imperial Captain and that does get her attention Okay things just went pear shaped for the other side. What's going on a she notices ship moment. She gets call from some of the Imperial's mercs and this does shock her. The Flotilla is known for finishing a job whatever it is they might have been hired for so this sounds pretty darn serious at this point.

While there's been damaged from the exchange with the Flotilla ships? They would find the Marduke is no longer locking on to them and they seem to have another matter. Given the slaughter of vivilians at this point the Marduk is now going to attempt to take in all the Refugees she can as well their docking bays will attempt to open and they put out a signal while keeping thier weapons active to fend off the imperials as needed.

"Medical teams to the hangers, we have refugees inbound."

Kyle Katarn (778) has posed:
There could almost be a comical screech of tires as Kyle is about to strike Moonfin down, but he pauses mid-strike. The radio discussion he overhears is enough to give him reason to hold back. "...well, this got awkward." He mutters, shooting George an apologetic look before he extinguishes is lightsaber. "They're right, stand down, Lowri." He tells Revan, before he clips the lightsaber to his belt.

"Sorry about the mess, fellas." He says before feeling a rocking motion on the ship.

Jan meanwhile has been cold as ice as she picks up the assault on the Imperial fighters, and then she picks up the Elite presence attacking the Rogue Shadow. "You sure we wanna bail 'em out?"

Kyle's voice echoes on her earbud. "Positive."

"Good enough for me." T-elos will find herself hammered ruthlessly with turbolaser fire as Jan sights the android down, trying to drive her out of the fight.

Juno Eclipse (428) has posed:
The I.N.S. Retribution swivels its turrets around to target the Rogue Shadow, but it's taking enough fire from the Kaleidoscope to make targetting difficult; a bright blossom of orange suggests that the Kaleidoscope managed to hit something important, causing a fire or explosion on one of those turrets. For now, the Star Destroyer's weapons remain silent.

Riaul is probably dancing in rage on his bridge right now, thwarted from the prize that would have given him an instant promotion.

Meanwhile, on the Rogue Shadow, Juno grits her teeth so hard that they creak in protest. She tries to dodge the incoming fire as best she can, but there are simply too many entities trying to take a piece out of her ship. Where the TIE fighters miss her, T-elos doesn't, and the rounds spat by her heavy weapons punch through the shields as though they were wet tissue paper. The rounds rake through the engine, tearing pieces of it, and causing another bright explosion. Even more smoke trails behind, and the ship has an obvious list and yaw to one side, now.

"Maybe the Flotilla can guard us long enough to reach a warpgate. I can't activate the hyperdrive here; it'll damage the base, and they're still evacuating. Maybe they can keep the Confederates off us." Juno half-laughs, half-weeps at her own insane optimism. "I lived serving the Empire and now I'm going to die running from it. How's that for irony? How did they find out? What gave us away?!"

Meanwhile, the refugees are making steady progress with Maya's evacuation efforts, and a great many of them are going to live to see another day thanks to her quick thinking and quick action.

Galen Marek (731) has posed:
Galen grits his teeth as he attempts large-scale shot deflection from the ship, his face paling and sweating under the strain. As Juno speaks, Galen snarls again. "We're not going to die! We're going to live, and then we're going to make the Empire pay for what it did! We burned two alliances today, Juno. The Confederacy is gone, too!" He feels the shots slam into the ship, grunting as they do. He shakes in his seat, energy stretching as he continues to bolster the shields.

Galen shakes his head. "I don't know, Juno, but they did, and now we're refugees. But, at the very least there's no reason to hide it anymore. If they know, then it's going to come out sooner or later." He had thought about this, just the night before, but he hadn't imagined it quite like this. "You can get us out of here, Juno Eclipse. You're the best Rebel pilot around."

Starbound Flotilla has posed:
That's all the Mendacity can take. The underside is a vulnerable point, and with the shields pre-cracked and the ship itself damaged, it pops open like a can. Still mostly functional, but definitely not something that anyone could survive in! This is where T-elos can congratulate herself on a job well done as the gutted ship limps away on AI controls, retreating entirely from the battle and spewing heavy metallic shrapnel at T-elos.

One piece of metal shrapnel is glowing, energized, and is actually the pilot. A robot in the shape of a woman, wearing some kind of semi-powered futuristic suit of medieval plate armor. She tries to use the surprise and the shredded hull as cover to get in REALLY close on T-elos and swipe at her with her POWER AXE, with enough force to hopefully drive her away from the Rogue Shadow and spin her enough to make it difficult to target the ship! Unfortunately, it might not be enough to damage her a lot... And Seft now desperately needs to teleport, uninterrupted, into Albert's ship, still screening damage from the Rogue Shadow.

Lou (64) has posed:
As Cas quickly ferries passengers in, she will find that Lou's calculation is actually spot on. To get more in would make the craft absolutely unwieldly. However, having apparently predicted this eventuality, Lou makes a decision. One that will cost her on the job, but considering the circumstances, and that she is a Guardian before anything else, she will deal with the complications. "—correction, room for two more passengers. Work quickly."

It would soon become apparent where the Cast had found the sudden overhead. Out of the auxiliary cargo hatch, a curious-looking beast is released onto the asteroid base's space dock's floor. It has the general quadraped posture that a large rodent might, but it is completely covered in scaley, horn-like projections and armored plates. It makes a low, squealing sound in obvious confusion, but at least now there is a bit more room. "GRM will not be pleased without their tissue sample," Lou says, to noone in particular, though perhaps a few of the civilians suddenly aboard would overhear.

Once the G-Flyer is loaded to capacity, Lou will send the signal to Cas, and the doors will shut. Sorry, other civilians, but there's little they can do. Even at this point, the G-Flyer visibly wobbles to gain lift, its photon repulsors ungainly as it limps off of the space dock and back out into space. It is not quite as nimble, as it's still very sensitive to shifts in mass, but it moves to the rest of the forces trying to cover the base, as well as - asidedly - the escape of Juno and Galen. "All weapons batteries have recharged. Chances of base survival are now statistically zero. Please buy as much time as you can, Miss Cas."

Juno Eclipse (428) has posed:
Although the terror threatens to overwhelm her, Juno is nothing if not a professional pilot. Never does the ship so much as twitch out of line, aside from the explosions and impacts causing it to slew out of course. Yet Galen and probably any other Force-sensitive for kilometers around might still sense the gibbering, hysterical terror she hides under the surface.

She's a fugitive, from both the Empire and the Confederacy. Two alliance burned, two; and all she did for it was the right and correct thing, in refusing to slaughter unarmed civilians.

Juno Eclipse shudders and tightens her grip over the controls. She doesn't answer Galen – she simply bends her entire will towards piloting the ship. She has no Force to guide her; no tricks up her sleeve beyond a lifetime of experience, training, and mere mortal intuition.

She only hopes it's enough.

On the sensors, she can see Seft's sacrifice as the Glitch attempts to dog T-elos and get the horrifyingly effective killbot off the Rogue Shadow's trail, and she murmurs her thanks. They won't hear it, and she doesn't think to transmit, but it's there.

All she can do is pray, and gun the Rogue Shadow's engines for all they're worth. They're nearly there – so close, so very close.

Perhaps they can all survive this after all.

T-elos (785) has posed:
T-elos seems to be readying the L-CANNON for another shot at the Shadow - and this one with a special load. She drops her gatling gun as soon as the Mendacity is obviously crippled, and it vanishes into nothingness with a twinkling.

She doesn't get to fire it. Turbolasers blast around her; she's a small target to hit directly but it works absolutely perfectly as suppression fire. One of them actually does hit her - and, in blatant defiance of what Kyle might be expecting, she survives, though the armour on that side looks scorched up. Others get dangerously close, and she activates antiheat systems, energy misting around her for a split second.

But it's the power axe that does the best. T-elos catches the haft of the power axe with her right hand, freed from firing the gatling gun. This stops it from penetrating deeply enough to cripple her, but does absolutely nothing to absorb the applied energy of the impact itself; T-elos somersaults backwards with a visibly deep slash across her upper chest.

T-elos snarls. She changes her focus from the Rogue Shadow to Seft, because if she does not she's likely to end up short a head or a hand after a while; T-elos' ability to absorb punishment is literally inhuman, but she can certainly be damaged. The smaller ports scattered around T-elos begin to fire brilliant white energy, which stream into a globe in front of her, curving around to make a ball; the sphere of energy detonates after moving forward, blasting at Seft.

Judging by the energy readings, T-elos is preparing for another one, and bigger - maybe something else entirely. She starts to radiate like her generator just went into overdrive; it's not visible, but it gets picked up by a wide variety of sensors. Probably flying further away, in the few moments that she's not shooting at the Rogue Shadow, is a real good idea.

Revan (414) has posed:
All parties seemed to come to a screeching halt at the commotion over the radio, in fact. Revan, catching her returning lightsaber had already dropped into the en garde stance of a Niman practitioner before her face displayed naked surprise at the sudden reversal for fortune. Or, the winds of destiny making up the Force, it seemed.

"Well, what are you still wasting time on my ship for? Get going!" she barked at them and over the unaffiliated radio channel at the rest of the Flotilla. Once they had left, she nodded back at Kyle before running back down the corridor to the cockpit, vaulting back into the seat. "We'll cover for you," she radioed the Flotilla. "But I'm sending you a bill later."

She might be joking. Or she might not be. It was hard to tell with the former Dark Lord, she seemed to relish being something of a gadfly.

And then suddenly, the Ebon Hawk was back in action, blasting after the Rogue Shadow's pursuers.

Cas (277) has posed:
With the hiss and release of the infected Koltova into the cargo bay– confused as it ever may be– Cas takes a step out and gives the beast a boot on the ass with the intent to send it running. With the base being overrun, the creature may end up being a sufficent, if not charmingly hilarious, distraction that will buy them precious time needed to get the last couple of people they can crammed into the G-Flyer.

Pressing her way through the cluster of people toward the front as the hatch slips closed, she settles into the seat at her station and triggers the displays, lifting up the holograms and getting the targeting system ready anew. "We can catch another," Cas replies in a very matter-of-fact manner, bringing the vector beams up to full power.

As they take off, the G-Flyer releases a veritable rainbow of photonic light, the beams streaming from the craft as it attempts to make it's escape; the lasers seemingly hesitate before bending at sharp angles and arcing off to targets and points along the path as Cas attempts to make the way just a little more safe for their escape!

Galen Marek (731) has posed:
Galen grunts, holding the shields out as much as he can. "Do it! Now!" he cries, his face and body obviously stressed. "We have to live, Juno. Or all of this was for nothing! We have people covering our escape. These are our allies now. And if you don't get us out of here, all the damage they're taking is pointless! Do it."

He closes his eyes, expanding his senses to distract him from the strain of maintaining the shields. His mind reaches out to Revan and Kyle, the only other Force users around, trying to inspire a wordless thanks to them. And an apology. He had bloodied his hands on Imperial order, and now he was begging for their help. He understands the dichotomy, and appreciates their aid. And then his senses retract again, and he pants.

Maya has posed:
Maya is over seeing the rescue of as many people as she can at this point. She's doing her darnest to get these people out.

"Helm have a jump plotted out. We are going to need to be ready to flee."

"Yes Lady Maya."

Maya twitches at the title but she's givne up trying to diswade people from her world using that title. There's ones that would bother her far more.

Juno Eclipse (428) has posed:
The Rogue Shadow seems to be in terrible condition. TIE fighters have blown it halfway to hell, and the Confederates that still puruse it seem to be intent on pushing it the rest of the way there. The starboard ion drive is a wreck of burning, half-melted engine housing, mangled engine, sparking electricity, and a thick trail of acrid smoke from the crumpled hole. The sounds it makes as it strains to operate are ghastly, both from outside and inside the ship; producing a tortured whine so high and sharp it makes teeth hurt. For those that have teeth, anyway.

Juno keeps her hands on the controls and her eyes forward. She can feel the sweat beading on her forehead; blinks hard as a bead threatens to roll into one eye. Her hands tremble over the controls, but she doesn't dare let go.

The ship isn't going to take much more. Whether it reaches the warpgate or it goes up in a blossom of fire, it's hard to say.

The former, if Juno has anything to say about it.

"Just a little more," she pleads of the ship, even over the sound of warning alerts.

"Captain Eclipse, the ship is falling apart," PROXY interjects from the jumpseat, chassis whirring as he tries to hold himself into his seat. "I recommend we depart the area as soon as possible."

"I'm working on it, PROXY. T-elos is up to something. I don't think we can survive a hit like that." Juno's eyes flick to the sensors, then back to the piloting controls. "Pipe down," she snaps, to Galen, though there's no real fire in the command. "I'm fine. I'll get us out of here. I just need more time, and those TIEs off my back."

Starbound Flotilla has posed:
The energy sphere's detonation slams into Seft, interrupting Albert's attempts to retrieve her. There's a brilliant blue flash as reactive armor tries to deal with the kinetic force and fails; while most of the impact to the chest can be redirected, Seft loses literally an entire arm in the process, torn off just below the shoulder and revealing a purely mechanical form below. Her body emits constant glitchy noises of alerts as she tries to stabilize, then activate her ENERGY DASH technologies to allow for movement in space.

Unfortunately, she can't get into cover yet! Nor can she close the distance in time to interrupt that charging! They also can't afford to divert cover from Juno! She's completely out of options! Or, well... Almost. But not entirely. She slips her Battleaxe away into the Matter Manipulator at her side. Her eye-visor goes from displaying its usual two blue dots to displaying a strained "> <" of frustration. What she draws OUT of the Matter Manipulator is much more unusual. She has a... Staff. A gnarled staff of some kind, twisted at the top in a whirl, And then Force sensitives and assorted sensors would be able to detect the robot casting what for all intents and purposes appears to be a magical spell. The staff lights up brightly, and causes the formation of a strange eye shape in front of Seft, seemingly wrought out of glitchy digital artifacts and static, suffused in reality-warping damage.

It will fire a stream of strange, distorted swords at T-elos right when T-elos attempts to fire back. It will very, very likely not overpower her charged attack, but will, one hopes, at least distribute the damage and prevent it from being turned on the Rogue Shadow by making Seft lose that aggro. This is, thankfully, the point at which the damaged but functional ships, the Rapacity and the Connoisseur, come in. Whatever happens after this, they'll be spraying bolts of light in T-elos' direction, not attempting to sustain combat, but attempting to make an opening to pull their vulnerable fellow captain back.

Galen Marek (731) has posed:
"Shut up, PROXY!" Galen bellows. "I can only hold them off or try and blast them away Juno. Pick one and let's go. Even I have my limits!" He knows she's trying, but his mind is sensing many things and he can only focus on what's the most important. And that means pushing Juno. Because only she could save herself. His lips go a bit blue, but he keeps strong. His senses pick up Seft's spell, and he smiles. "That... I hope they can get to her."

He breathes heavily. "I... I'm running out of steam, Juno..." The shield's fortification wavers a bit, before restrengthening once again. He leans back in his seat, gripping the arms of it tightly.

[Galen Marek to allied forces. We are making our way out... No more sacrifice for our sake. We will make it. Pull back! Jedi, if you can, please... help me bolster the Shadow's shields... I'm... losing... steam...!]

With that, he trembles, slumping against the back of the seat.

T-elos (785) has posed:
On ground, T-elos would give herself decent odds for doing what she's trying to do. She might take injury doing it, but she'd likely survive, and she'd probably be able to get off a decent shot at the Rogue Shadow.

Unfortunately, T-elos is in space. She is not really suited for space combat without some equipment that isn't actually completed yet (extra armour builds aren't cheap), or her crashed and wrecked vehicle; her maneuverability is very low as she only has small thrusters on the heels of her boots and the recoil from her guns to push her around.

"Don't interfere!" T-elos can't speak to Seft (no atmosphere), but she can transmit radio. "This is no business of yours - and am I supposed to be impressed by your power? It takes all of you just to fight me to a standstill!"

This is an exaggeration on T-elos' part. She's tough, but she can't take a constant barrage from all the ships shooting at her, and she's having trouble evading because of her lack of thrusters. She allows herself to be thrown backwards, curling up to absorb Seft's assault rather than get into a projectile war with her. This has the additional advantage of making it easier for her to twist or slip away from the incoming ship fire, and even then she can't get all of it. Shots impact T-elos, buffeting her around as much as anything else; the damage is starting to add up even if it isn't all visible. (And some of it is; her minimalist armour plates are looking downright blackened, though whatever her flesh is imbued with is made of tough stuff).

T-elos took too much damage to deploy the Phase Transfer Cannon; the defenders succeeded in that. Instead she channels her built-up power through the ports she used before. Instead of making a beam, though, she makes a sustained hail of bolts; some of them may catch what eldritch swords haven't already stuck in her, but most of them arc through space, bursting with bright flashes of light and superheated shockwaves on impact with anything solid. They are mostly aimed toward the Rogue Shadow, but some shots return to the other ships attacking her, more for distraction and dazzling than actual impact power.

"You weaklings! You really do need an army to stand up to this!" T-elos kicks off a drifting piece of metal debris that weighs several times what she does; it goes forward, she goes backwards much faster. Despite her words, she has no interest in getting completely scrapped for the Empire - she'd fight any of these people in terrain she finds comfortable, but here she's outmatched and outnumbered even if her bravado has not gone anywhere.

Lou (64) has posed:
Lou's sensors make note of the Koltova receiving light, physical damage, right before their way back out. It is no longer their responsibility. After the G-Flyer has already left the bay, the koltova, overcome by panic and rage, spontaneously begins changing shape, black and purple vapor seeming to cling to its flesh as it transforms into the more aggressive distova. By pure coincidence, or perhaps the will of the Force, it completely leaves the Rebel forces and the civilians they're trying to usher out alone, instead charging around the base's emptying corridors. It finds some black clad Imperial task force engineers setting charges, and annoyed at the circumstances, lowers its head, a scuffed, clawed foot drawing back across the metallic floor and issuing sparks. It then bull rushes right into the middle of their number, armored head and body resilient to blaster fire. Cas unleashed the beast, it turns out.

This bit of payback escapes Lou, the G-Flyer's sensors not quite that sensitive, and her own completely trained on tracking threats. Like the Eclipse, it is also heading towards the warp gate out of here. The lasers that emerge from it, directed by Cas, arcing in strange directions from where they seemingly emerge on its body frame, in some cases making ninety-degree bends or even more. The AMF wanted to make sure they could cram as many of these onto a ship as possible, and it shows, the G-Flyer leveraging more firepower than a ship of its size should. It comes at a price, though – the capacitor drains quickly with each outburst. Nonetheless, it seems to be adequate for keeping the harassment going.

While the Rogue Eclipse and its immediate defenders, understandably, is getting most of the brunt of the attacks, Lou's ship packed full of evacuees is a target of opportunity, if nothing else. The shields are still there, but where they had been a solid blue panel to each strike before, there's a flickering to them, and the superficial damage is beginning to become more serious; blue panels flying off of the latest, errant strike that shakes through, startling the passengers. "Fifty-two percent. Thirty-five seconds to warp gate." She will address the loss of the koltova when they aren't about to vaporize in another solid blast or three. The G-Flyer limps closer...

Revan (414) has posed:
There was an awful lot of debris to dodge, and, Revan grimly thought, a good deal of that had been from destroyed Rebel X-wings. She was thankful that there were Union allies taking care of the evacuation; the Ebon Hawk was much too small for an effort of that magnitude. But what she could do was cover for the escape of 'Blackout' and her mysterious Sith ally. Kyle wasn't the only one who found the turn of events downright strange.

T3 warned her that the engines were straining with the previous damage, and they would need to retreat soon of they wanted to remain in one piece. "Just a little bit longer, T3," she reassured him. "They're almost to the warpgate..."

Not to mention T-elos was powering up some kind of attack which promised Very Bad Things if they didn't outrun it. "Just hang in there a little longer..." she found herself begging the ship itself, to say nothing of the Force. We're here for a reason. We have to make this count.

And then, she felt the touch through the Force, the silent gratitude and the repentance. True, the Sith had blood on his hands...but so did she. Practically an entire planet's worth. If she could be redeemed as Darth Revan, then surely this was where the Force led them now.

As if to answer that line of thought, T-elos was knocked out of the fight...though that still left the Imperial pursuers. In time, she heard the Sith – Galen Marek – over the radio telling them to pull back...and to bolster their shields. Well, that she could do.

"T3, controls," she barked, letting go of the helm and reaching out through the Force. Galen would certainly be able to feel the significant boost in the Rogue Shadow's defences for just long enough to make it to the warpgate.

And through the Force was an unspoken command.

GO, NOW.

Juno Eclipse (428) has posed:
"Yes, Master." PROXY's response is somewhat muffled over the alarms squawking over the Rogue Shadow; suitably chastised, he falls silent.

The ship itself is in wretched shape. The right engine is almost entirely useless, flickering as it fights to stay powered, and it makes a dreadful whine as the Rogue Shadow guns for the warpgate. It's in visual range, now, close enough to lend its crew hope.

It shudders, though, and pieces of the hull are sloughing off around its savaged starboard engine; sparkling shards of durasteel and plastoid, and whatever materials make up part of an ion sublight engine.

"Come on, come on, come on." Juno's muttering to herself as she jams the throttle forward for all it's worth. "Come on. Just a little further," she pleads of the ship. "Just a little further. I swear I'll fix you up and repair every last carbon score on your hull..."

"Just a little longer," she pleads of Galen, voice tight. "I'm sorry. I've almost got us out of here; I just need you to keep them from destroying that engine..."

Fortunately, T-elos breaks off her pursuit, which makes Juno breathe a silent sigh of stifled relief. The TIE fighters are still pursuing and taking potshots, but they can't keep up with even a damaged Rogue Shadow. It's the fastest ship in the Imperial Navy, even with compromised engines.

They've finally gotten away. Engines flare and electricty arcs from the ruined engine as the Rogue Shadow makes its last sprint for the warpgate.

Soon, then, it's gone; shimmering through it.

Juno doesn't stop to rest. She immediately keys in a series of coordinates, hyperspace jumps meant to confuse and confound any pursuers they might have, taking an extremely roundabout route back to the Starbound Flotilla's base.

As the ship shimmers into the serene blue of hyperspace, Juno sags forward in her seat, elbows on her knees, head cradled in the heels of her hands, letting out a strangled sound that might be a sob.

She can't even comprehend what they've been forced to do today; what they've done.

And she laughs. A muffled, exhausted laugh that's too hysterical to be entirely rational.

No matter what bridges they've burnt, though – they survived.

They survived.

Starbound Flotilla has posed:
The spray of bolts against the freshly self-repaired ships that try to screen the damage from the Rogue Shadow tears their armor open too, stripping the ships down to the hull as they sustain the highly charged fire. But as T-elos disengages, the Starbounders don't go after her, letting well enough alone as Seft gets teleported into the Abdication now. Albert can't help but yell back though. "It is our business! She is a member of our Flotilla, and we will be loyal to our own, above all else! And I will butcher anyone or anything that chooses to destroy what I have built!"

They came here with six ships and six captains. They're leaving with the Mendacity gutted, the Rapacity and the Connoisseur having lost most of their armor integrity, the Vehemence having overloaded its shield systems entirely, the Mendacity's captain electrocuted, the Rapacity's captain bruised and bloodied, the Connoisseur's captain sore and wounded, and the Abdication's captain dismembered and nearly killed. She also had to cast her 'magic' again, which has left her full of shame and embarrassment.

The Starbounders clearly bit off a little more than they could chew, but they've survived, albeit in an incredibly risky way. The Core Fleet limps back to their base with a few Erchius jumps as soon as they can, now that there's less pursuit.

Maya has posed:
It's time to go she's got everyone they can get aboard and she's not going to slug it out with Imperials not with so many people aboard, she's lucky she has no fighters to worry about recovering. This will allow the Marduk the time it needs to leave as other ships start to flee.

"Lady Maya, we have the last of them and the hanger is sealed."

"Then Jump us out of here!"

There's a pause for a moment as the Marduk's jump systems kick in and the ship vanishes as it bends the laws of physics over it's knee for a moment. They could have done more Maya thought but still this was nothing, right? Maya sinks into the command chair and thinks for a momenbt, before she gets up.

"I'm going to aid the Medical Team. Corbin you have the Bridge."

With That Maya heads for hte lift to do just as she said.

Galen Marek (731) has posed:
As the confirmation comes down from Juno, Galen slumps in his chair, releasing all his strain. He pants a bit, his body trembling. "I'm... going to lie down..." he says quietly as the ship slips into hyperspace. The blue glow defuses through the ship and he pulls himself up. Before he can do anything else, he moves toward Juno's seat, draping his arms over the back of it to hug her softly. "You did it, Juno," he says quietly, smiling a bit. "We're free of the Empire. But now the... hard part starts. We need to rest, then repair the Rogue Shadow. In that order."

He chuckles, then lets her go. "Join me when... you can, okay? I'll be asleep, most likely, but hey." He turns, then slogs off toward the sleeping quarter. "PROXY, remove all ties to the Confederacy and Empire from your systems."

Juno Eclipse (428) has posed:
Juno doesn't move from her slump in the pilot's chair. She's not sure she can, exhausted beyond every reasonable level she can describe. Recent days and weeks have had her stretched thin, and this betrayal, this wild escape, has been the last she could accept.

She only puffs out a sigh as she feels his unsteady embrace, hanging her head when he praises her work. Her answer is a shudder she can't quite stifle.

"The ship's on autopilot. I've make the last corrections to the course, and it will take us back to the Flotilla. We can hide there and make what repairs we can. I'll lie down, too. I... I'm exhausted. I don't..." Straightening, she holds out her hands, lips thinning at how hard they tremble. "I can't fly the ship like this."

With a shake of her head, she pushes herself to her feet, stumbles when her nerves promt her to shake so hard she loses her balance, and then trudges after Galen.

"Yes, master." In his jumpseat, PROXY's internals whirr with effort as he begins the process of purging Confederate and Galactic information from his systems. "Although I will point out that this is in conflict with my primary programming—"

Yellow photoreceptors turn, only to see that the cockpit is empty. PROXY doesn't sigh, being a droid, but he shakes his head in a manner that suggests he would if he could.

"I will ask later, I suppose, master..."