Some fighters made it out, but not many and his tractor beam crews were already joining the fray as anti-fighter batteries, catching the small craft to hold them where his ion guns could disable them while the main batteries were already pouring as much grief and damage as they could through the hole in the ISD's shields.
Turbolaser fire began to fall around them from the rear and Han Organa crisply gave the order. "Scimitar, form up with me. We've got to delay this new arrival while our friends finish with our first guest."
It had become a battle of equal odds on this side of the fight.
===========
"Why are we slowing?" Mancuso demanded.
"Sir, we're caught in a tractor field! It's got us immobilized!" The Nav officer shouted. The Skipper of Star Destroyer A was a cagey opponent, he'd pulled a quick reverse and curve, bringing the Bonbori into his weapon arcs as it dodged out of the way of collision.
"Repulsors on!" Bart Mancuso commanded.
"What good will that do?" A disbelieving Amidala asked.
Commodore Mancuso answered even while his crewmen were executing his commands. "A repulsor system repels gravity waves, and that, directed into a beam, is exactly what a tractor beam is. We're gunna slip through this because our ship engineer made this bird fly in for planetary landings. Virtually no ship this size has that design feature, and we'll need the combination of our drives and those repulsors to pull free of this. Practically no one gets to slip the leash when a Star Destroyer grabs 'em, but we will. An Imperial has a huge amount of weight and energy to throw behind those tractors, but we'll still slip free."
And pull free they did. It was slow at first, but then inertia was on their side and they came free more easily, quickly resuming speed.
But that was when he spotted an accompanying threat.
"Assault shuttle! We've got Spacetroopers coming in, deploying off our flank and we're not fast enough yet to outrace 'em." The Commodore pointed out a small blip heading toward them from the ISD's mangled hangar. Instantly he was hovering over the intercom. "Activate the battle droids and stand by to receive boarders!"
"Battle droids can't stand against Spacetroopers." Amidala warned in a low voice.
"I'm not expecting them to stop them, lady." Bart was switching between different stations giving precise and detailed instructions in hurried whispers to his officers. "I'm expecting to bog them down. They've got limited ammo and weapons charges in those suits. They're not equipped to go wading in to an enemy that can absorb those kind of losses and still go on fighting. The powersuits will run dry before they've eaten our first rank, and most of those droids we can have functional again in under an hour."
"Won't they fall back and resupply?" She questioned.
Mancuso was checking a scope. "Of course. So we won't let 'em." He switched to in ship comm again. "Prepare boarding shuttles, four regiments of troops to attack Imperial A at their hangar." He hung up the comm, pivoting to an officer. "Guns, focus our attack on their bridge. We won't get through but they'll refocus to keep our weapons out, that ought to let our shuttles slip in a weak spot pretty easy."
To Padme's disbelieving look, he explained (while going about his other business), "The shuttle those troopers were on is using full power to shields as we're trying to swat it down. There's no way they're gunna recharge those power-hungry suits when they get back, the generators won't take it, and if they drop those shields they're space dust. So they'll fall back to the Imperial. But if her hangar is on fire with a couple hundred of our droids doing battle in it, they may find that option a little tricky. All we got to do is drive them off the once. They won't be back again in this fight. Maybe if we even get lucky their commander will make a rash decision and we can retire that spacetrooper platoon permanently."
"But..."
"Lady," he interrupted. "I appreciate that you're good at your job. Can ya lighten up and let me do mine?"
"Of course, Captain." A somewhat humbled Padme replied.
"Commodore, lady, I just ain't had time to get the braid sewn on yet." Mancuso replied, distracted, as his full attention was on the developing battle and the shuttles peeling off to attack the somewhat fire-blinded Imperial. Their sensor towers, located on the bridge, were being pounded with static as those heavily increased shields fought to shrug off the rebel cruiser's bombardment.
The ISD returned fire, but not concentrated to any great effect. It splashed across the length of the Bonbori's shields, the weight of fire held up for now by the full weight of fields. The deflectors were weakened here or there, but so far there'd been no shorts or burn-throughs.
"Prepare a second flight of boarding shuttles. We may need 'em." The commodore ordered as he watched the first flight of tiny specs nearly reach their target.
"Imperial Spacetroopers have entered the hull!" a distant damage control station shouted over the emergency comm.
"Conn Aye." Mancuso reported calmly. "How many have ya got?"
"Forty, maybe fifty!" The distant officer shouted over the increasing din of battle noise coming over the comm with him.
"All live personnel in that compartment fall back behind the battle droids. Security, we've got their main attack at a single point, direct additional droids, maybe a thousand, to that location. Pin them down for me." Bart took a cup of hot beverage from a tray and began sipping it down, still watching the battle progress outside.
The Imperial, still somewhat blinded by their fire, made a mistake when the shuttles carrying droids made an attack on their hangar, shifting shield power to try and repel the little ships. One of the attackers flared and died, the newly thickened shields meeting it like a brick wall. But it was on the tail end of the assault flight, and though one other veered course sharply and crashed limply onto the outer hull, two others got through and commenced their attack.
But that shield energy had to come from somewhere, and their bridge reinforcement failed under a combination of the Bonbori's focused bombardment and someone on shield control making a fatal error in power distribution.
The ISD's bridge flared up and exploded, taking the command crew and primary sensors with it.
"Second flight of boarding shuttles away. Take that ship down. Helm, take us around. Bring us up alongside the Naginata, on the same side as her enemy." Mancuso ordered, putting down his drink cup. "We may even live through this." The commodore whispered. "It's about time something started evening up our way."
They sped at a second ISD, the Imperial B as they'd code-named it, eager to race to the rescue of the Naginata who was under heavy attack and beginning to feel it. Commodore Mancuso was intently studying his foe even as they approached. "Gunnery, concentrate fire on their starboard seam where the clamshell comes together. Those welds look nice and sloppy."
The Emperor had ordered the construction of ISDs at a rate that forced all normal safety precautions to be discarded. It gave him alot of ships, and it gave them to him fast, but there was a cost associated with discarding all quality control and production safeguards.
The Naginata had already produced holes in her assailant's shields in their exchange of fire. Mancuso's ship found one and began pouring all she had into a section of weld that was as poorly done as any to be found in a third-rate screwball navy for a dead broke planetary system force whose commander didn't believe in quality.
The seams burst in the first few moments of receiving fire, first warmed and softened by turbolasers, then popped outright by a volley of concussion missiles, splitting wide open.
Now the ISD was a big design of ship. It also had gigantic cargo sections for all those spare fighters, ground attack gear, AT-ATs, and deployable garrison bases it carried, and the floor devoted to this cargo space stretched from just aft of midline all the way nearly to the tip of the vessel. When those seams cracked it split wide enough open to pop the few internal bulkheads and vent out all the air in that cavernous bay, wildly flinging equipment about and causing massive depressurization of the whole ship. Some isolated sections survived, and the stormtroopers in their vac-proof armor were fine, but over half the crew died in that gas explosion, power began venting as it couldn't control the atmosphere loss, and those who were left alive largely abandoned the battle to pursue tasks related to damage control.
As soon as that they were down by half their opposing ships. The original ISD Mancuso had been engaged by was now so occupied with combating battle droids through their own halls and decks they weren't capable of much external attention, either.
"Order Naginata to send boarding droids across. How are those Spacetroopers coming?" Bart asked of his security officer, now they had the external battles more under control.
"We've got them isolated in two forward sections. Battle droids have managed to cut off the enemy forward units, and the fire of both is dropping off."
"Probably those suits are running out of juice." The commodore mused. "But don't push it. They are plenty capable of faking it to lure us into a trap. Keep the pressure slow and easy and see if you can't keep those guys pinned down. Better yet, if you got the ability, try to cut off the retreat of the second unit, too. That'll keep em busy. Conn out."
===========
Capt. Hudson was in shock.
Appearing in system escorting four Treasury Ships to have their funds dispersed through the transport hub to those various projects the budgetary commission approved of was a sedate and ordinary task.
Unless you drop into an unexpected war zone.
The Imperial Commander on the ISD Aggression didn't even know what hit him when his shield control officer failed to exactly perform his duties under pressure and a bright light came through his view from the bridge. A turbolaser blast shattered the transparasteel bridge window and turned him into so much fleshy pulp that was quickly sucked out into the vacuum while follow-up blasts caused the explosion of the tower.
At the same time, the Aggression had millions of joules of power pouring into them from the strange ships numerous ion cannons. As the blue energy of the ion cannons played across the hull, one of the vessels launched three concussion missiles at each of the shield towers on the ISD. It took less than ten seconds for the formidable ISD to be disabled as crew abandoned posts, fires raged out of control and ion energy played havoc with repair. The senior command ship of the Star Destroyer squadron spun out of control and lost contact with the fight.
The strange ship to do the assault whirled away and, faster than anything that large should have been able to maneuver, was upon the Incorrigible. The huge ship, nearly three times the length and twenty times the mass of their attackers, suffered catastrophic atmosphere loss seconds after coming under their combined bombardment.
Two of the seemingly invincible Imperial-class Star Destroyers had been disabled in a surprise attack that made it so that the Captain of the Incorrigible wasn't able to transmit more than a few words detailing their situation before his scream as the enemy used an ion cannon on the bridge.
After calling for an immediate launch of TIEs, Capt. Hudson ordered his ship the Masticulator to flank speed to catch and destroy these new kinds of ships. Eying the flaming wrecks for hangars on the other Star Destroyers, and the lack of fighter support on their part of their attackers, he correctly deduced these enemy feared their TIEs and commanded his flight officer to begin their attack as he approached the nearest of these strange cruisers, those currently battering the punctured shields of the Corruption.
Capt. Hudson turned to look at the Dreadnought sitting out this fight, flying guard on their container ships bunched up behind the defenses of the station and its combat platform. He gave a quick thought of ordering it into the battle on their behalf, but grudgingly thought of the havoc that could be raised by a rogue enemy getting in among that transport fleet without the old Dreadnought to block it.
He gave swift orders to his Treasury fleet to join the defensive mass. It would be his head if any of them got shot, spraying billions of credits and jewels across space, and he couldn't order them to random lightspeed jumps where any stray pirate might take them. The station and their Dreadnought would have to suffice.
All this time a humble science pod was broadcasting a shrill and urgent message that their star was beginning a cycle that would end in an explosion.
===========
It had been acknowledged in planning that the cruiser battle may be lost. For that reason a small imperial shuttle was heading from the Dreadnought to the supply station where the small Dungeon ship had docked to safely hide away from this battle.
Shampoo and a small strike team, all in imperial uniform, were going to rescue the Jedi.
Read the comments on this episode
See other episodes by Lionheart
(Posted Thu, 15 Apr 2004 04:56)
Questions? Problems? Suggestions?
Send a mail to addventure@bast-enterprises.de
or use the contact form.
らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
All other series and their characters are © by their respective creators or owners. No claims of ownership of these characters are implied by the authors of this Addventure, or should be inferred.
The Anime Addventure is a non-profit site.