"Damn it!" yelled Mancuso as he watched the curious Gug-noughts getting disabled by the Masticulator.
"Engineering, RED LINE those damn engines," yelled Mancuso at the engineering section of the bridge.
"We're giving it everything we have Commodore, the engines just canna take it," shouted back the chief of the engineering section.
"What!" shouted one of the tacticians as he noticed something on his display.
"What is it, Lieutenant?" intently asked a curious Mancuso.
"Sir, the sensors detect faint life signs on the Gug-noughts that are venting atmosphere. The same number as it started with when it arrived, sir!" replied the lieutenant in a calm manner.
"What does that mean?" asked Amidala to Mancuso as he watched the situation holograph, his eyes boring holes in the gug-noughts as he rapidly divined their purpose.
"I dunno. But it could be a couple a things. And I don't like not knowing. Keep an eye on that gug-nought for me, will ya?" He paced back to a console, barely acknowledging the 'aye, sir' that followed.
"Corruption capture operation underway sir," yelled someone from the crew pit.
"That is one worry done away with," said Amidala.
"Now we have to worry about Imperial D and the Masticulator. It's a good thing that Impstar D is getting hammered," Mancuso said. "Security, what is the status of our boarders?"
"Completely cut off in a forward section, sir. Battle droids are closing in on their positions and receiving no fire. It looks like they've shot their wad, sir."
"Take 'em fast, we don't want those suits self-destructing. Expect some kind of last minute trap. Just shove on through it anyway. We're not worried about droid losses."
"What is Jar-Jar doing?" asked Amidala as she noticed the fact that Jar-Jar's ship was turning to create a triangle with the two disabled Gug-noughts.
"We have incoming fighters," yelled one of the sensor technicians.
"Sithspawn," yelled a technician that was looking over the Gug-noughts.
"What is it?" replied Mancuso.
"All the Gug-noughts power signatures just spiked big time," replied the lieutenant.
"Put it on the display," ordered Mancuso.
As the holographic display focused on the Gug-noughts, Jar-Jar was still screaming from the holovid at the front of the bridge.
"WEEZA GONNA DIE!! WEEZA GONNA DIE!! YOUZE GONNA FRY!!" yells Jar-Jar as with the last three words, the Jar-Jar on the holovid all of the sudden stopped running around the bridge and made a sudden turn that caused his senatorial robes to snap as his head flippers spun. Amidala could only gasp as she saw the small smile on the Gungan with his eyes beginning to crystallize into hardened balls of fury and righteousness. As he did so the previously disabled looking ships all of the sudden had power going back to normal and multiple missiles launched from the numerous launch tubes.
At this time the TIE fighters seemed to be quite surprised as an easy enemy all of the sudden fired a large quantity of missiles at short range. TIE squadrons were hampered because they were all caught out of alignment to deal with heavy assault from multiple directions, so as often as not they dodged one missile right into another. The quirk of the new volley of Gungans boomer missiles was that when they were hit by an energy attack, they sent out an energy bolt that struck the nearest target at 100 meters, devastating the TIEs, whose training had focused on evading lasers, where a hair's breadth was as good as a mile.
Mancuso noticed gug-noughts that were disabled start to spin at their axis and firing missiles in volleys of 10 per side. The surprise for the Bonbori crew was that all of the missiles were being fired at the same time in a very professional manner. The TIE fighters and the TIE/gt's are caught flat-footed as multiple missiles are heading at them from different directions. The sheer shock of the formerly disabled craft coming to life caused a few Imperial pilots to lose situational awareness and to crash into each other.
"Looks like the Gungan Force has pulled a fast one of the Imperials." A relieved Mancuso sounded almost sarcastic in understatement.
Amidst the chaos one scene stood out of a Gungan missile passing through the wing of a TIE, leaving a hole in the outline of the projectile as it went on to smash against the cockpit, dissolving the fighter, consuming it before it even had a chance to explode. The assault shuttles were both pocked with holes and overcome electronics as the TIE squadrons nice orderly array of battle disintegrated, along with most of the TIEs who could no longer afford to cover for each other.
Two gungan missiles, out of a tally of five aimed toward it, struck the fire control TIE at once in spite of its frantic efforts to dodge. Small elements of wing struts were the only remains.
As the missiles struck out across space, small bulbs that were the Gungan's shields reappeared on the surface of the Gug-noughts. Where before they had poka-dotted the hulls with small gaps in between, now they covered the entire surface of each vessel and forged a seemingly impenetrable defense sphere.
One of the strategies seldom used through the galaxy was to power down, reducing your own energy to shields, life support and weapons ahead of the rate damage would take it out. The enemy can falsely believe you to be destroyed, or disabled. Then, when he turns his attention away to other targets, you have him out of position and by surprise.
The two gug-noughts previously disabled had performed this strategy. They'd employed shields at a reduced rate, leaving less covered areas of particularly heavy armor, along with canisters of compressed air which the Gungans released as strikes mounted up.
The Imperials realized that all this time they'd been thinking they had the Gug-noughts beaten, the missile cruisers had been steadily closing to devastatingly close range.
"Intensify forward firepower!" Captain Hudson shouted. "I don't want anything to get through! Order our Dreadnought to leave the transports and attack our enemy from behind!"
===========
Bart Mancuso had been looking curiously at the strange ship that added so odd a tactic to this battlefield. According to the compiled data from his scan crews, all of the turbolasers on those former Dreadnoughts had been replaced with missile tubes and a few fast load missile turrets. The engine compartment had been changed due to the Gungans adding a stolen LF9 Ion Engine off of a VSD. This was surrounded in a circular pattern by six of the standard Dreadnought engines. The engine arrangement helped gain the Dreadnought some much needed maneuverability while the LF9 engine pushed the Dreadnought to a speed that was almost a quarter faster that a VSD, although still a bit slower than the Imps. Add a couple of modified Gungan energy shields (now with new Ion and particle shielding he saw coming up) for all around protection, and they were a whole new class.
With the turbolasers on their Dreadnoughts pulled off, the Gungans had been able to afford to put in many missile launch systems to replace the firepower of the turbolasers. Toward the rise of the engines, 5 fast loading missile turrets were added so that the rear could also be covered. This meant that each of the Gungans ships could fire about 35 missiles from tubes and about 10 from the turrets in one general direction.
Now how could this play into his current strategy? wondered Bart.
"Jar-Jar, move your ships against the Masticulator. You've got him dead to rights. We'll send one of ours for additional support," stated Mancuso as he went back toward looking at the tactical situation.
"Aya Commodore, missa do it right away."
"Rapier and Sai, make sure to change your profile so that some of your fresher shields are faced against the Corruption. I don't trust that guy not to turn on us. Focus on the armor that seems weakest, just in case you have to hit him," ordered Mancuso as he watched multiple missiles being launched from the Gungan vessels.
"Let's see what they can do," Mancuso said aside to Amidala, who was watching over his shoulder.
Mancuso and Amidala could only watch as over a hundred missiles were launched from various parts of the Gungan ships. Some of the missiles had to go into a very wide arc to go in the direction of the Star Destroyer, but it just made the projectiles reach the Star Destroyer at different times (like they do in Outlaw Star). As the first of the missiles headed toward the Masticulator, they hit and destroyed about six of the TIE fighters heading to the safety of the Star Destroyers in their distress. As the missiles struck they by-passed the energy shield and impacted the particle shield, causing a bolt of energy equivalent to a turbolaser blast burst into the durasteel armor.
"Well, I guess that answers that question," stated Amidala with a smirk.
"That it does," agreed Mancuso.
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(Posted Sat, 24 Apr 2004 00:03)
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らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
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