Location: Bridge, MIN
Collateral Star
Objective: I — Kessel Run
Allies:
John Mahporeem
|
Captain Charles
|
Felix Yorwell
Enemies:
Zoro Igala
|
Binn Toskros
The bridge of the
Collateral Star had a rhythm to it. Jyote Veyr was still learning that rhythm. It was different from a cockpit. There was no vibration through the control yoke, no pressure against her shoulders as inertial compensators struggled to keep pace with a violent turn. No targeting reticle dancing across a canopy while instinct measured distance, velocity, and angle faster than conscious thought ever could.
Instead, there were voices. Hundreds of them. Reports rolled across the bridge in overlapping bursts as the massive carrier's fighter complement spread through the battlespace. Sensor officers called contacts. Flight controllers updated positions. Squadron leaders checked in. Droids transmitted compressed packets of telemetry that scrolled across Jyote's station faster than any organic pilot could reasonably read. And somewhere beyond all of it were Rebel warships that didn't want to be found.
Jyote leaned toward the tactical display, one hand resting against the edge of her console as formations shifted across the projection. The search pattern looked loose. It wasn't.
"Vulture groups Aurek-Seven through Aurek-Twelve, continue your sweep. Increase lateral separation by four kilometers."
Her voice carried through the communications net with considerably more calm than she felt.
"Strider squadrons, maintain present heading. Don't chase sensor ghosts. If you don't have a confirmed contact, you don't have a contact." Acknowledgments flickered across her display.
The orders were deliberately mundane. Search. Screen. Maintain formation. Nothing that would suggest that the
Collateral Star had already caught the scent of something hiding in the dark. Her eyes drifted toward one particular point on the tactical projection.
The Bloodhound system had found something there. Not enough for the ordinary sensors to paint a convenient silhouette onto the display. Not enough for a pilot to look down and see a neat red bracket announcing
REBEL WARSHIP HERE. But enough. Jyote knew what she would have done with it. Her fingers tightened against the console.
Come in high. The thought arrived without permission.
Kill thrust before their passive sensors get a clean read. Let momentum carry you across the bow. If they're watching the obvious approach, come underneath their plane and— She could see it. Stars streaking past the canopy. A targeting solution appearing for half a heartbeat. Her thumb squeezing the trigger.
Then the familiar phantom ache crept through her body. Jyote shifted almost imperceptibly. The injury had healed. That was what the doctors said. Healed. Such a wonderfully broad word. She could walk. Run, mostly. Pass every mundane physical required of an Imperial officer. She could even fly. Give her a shuttle and she could put it down on a landing pad with barely a tremor.
But the tiny delays remained. The fraction of a second between thought and movement. The stiffness that became noticeable only when her body was pushed toward the limits it once considered normal. Fractions of seconds didn't matter on the bridge. In a fighter, they killed you. Or worse, killed the pilot flying beside you.
Jyote swallowed and forced her attention back toward the tactical projection. Someone else was flying now. Her responsibility was making sure they came home.
"Tri-Wing Three, you're drifting outside your assigned corridor."
"Control, Three. We've got intermittent sensor activity bearing zero-seven-two."
Jyote checked the feed. Nothing firm. Exactly the sort of bait she might have chased once.
"Negative, Three. Return to your corridor."
"Control—"
"That's an order, Three."
A pause.
"Understood. Correcting."
Jyote watched the marker slide back into formation.
"Annihilator squadrons, reduce speed five percent. Let the Vultures move ahead of you." Another series of acknowledgments. The formations continued their apparently aimless migration. Except they weren't aimless.
Little by little, the Imperial fighters were tightening around the position the magnetic sensors had identified. Not enough to look like an attack formation. Not enough, Jyote hoped, to convince whoever was hiding there that their cloak had failed.
Her display chimed. A new transmission was routed onto the command network—the request from Captain Charles aboard the
Stryker II. Sensor information. Whatever the
Collateral Star's magnetic systems had managed to uncover. Jyote glanced toward the appropriate bridge station before returning to her own board. That exchange belonged further up the chain than her. The consequences didn't.
More ships meant more fighters. More fighters meant a more complicated battlespace. And more opportunities for somebody to do something stupid.
"All flight leaders, Control. Friendly fleet elements are entering the operational area. Update identification packages as they're transmitted. Weapons remain tight unless explicitly authorized. I don't want someone turning an overeager sensor lock into an Imperial casualty." A chorus of confirmations followed.
Jyote leaned back slightly. For the briefest instant, she caught her reflection in the dark surface beside the tactical display. Black uniform. Officer's cap. No flight suit. She hated how much that still bothered her.
Once, she'd measured herself by impossible turns and narrow escapes. By how close she could push a fighter to its tolerances without crossing the line. She had been good enough that flying had ceased to feel like controlling a machine. The fighter had simply become part of her. Now she moved starfighters as symbols across a tactical display.
Her jaw tightened.
You could be out there. She knew it. That was the cruelest part. She could climb into one of those fighters right now. She could probably outperform half the pilots she was commanding. Probably. Elite pilots didn't survive on
probably.
Jyote exhaled slowly through her nose.
"Vulture Aurek-Nine, adjust heading three degrees starboard."
"Three degrees starboard, Control."
"Tri-Wing Five, drop another two kilometers below the search plane."
"Copy."
"Strider Two, hold where you are."
The net quieted for several seconds. Jyote watched. Aurek-Nine shifted. Tri-Wing Five descended. Strider Two remained stationary relative to the developing formation. The geometry changed. The hidden Rebel contact was gradually becoming surrounded by starfighters that, to anyone watching, appeared to be doing nothing more threatening than conducting an expansive reconnaissance sweep.
A faint smile tugged at one corner of Jyote's mouth. Flying the attack herself would have been more satisfying. This would have to do.
"All squadrons, maintain search protocols. Do not converge without command authorization. Repeat, do not converge." She muted the channel.
Her eyes remained fixed upon the suspected Rebel position. The order sounded cautious. Conventional. Almost boring. Exactly what she wanted whoever was hiding out there to hear.
Jyote opened the command channel again.
"Flight groups, continue the sweep." She paused, watching another set of Imperial markers quietly move into position.
"And keep your eyes open. We're not alone out there."
Marlon Sularen
and the Final Dawn, a major supply base for the Wild Space Rebellion has finally been identified as being located on Kessel, and the Mahporeem Imperial Remnant has begun to immediately muster an invasion fleet to destroy the pesky rebels once and for all! Will the rebels be able to escape in time or beat back the Mahporeenian attack on their planet, or will the Imperial Remnant finally secure the victory it has been so desperately looking for for these least several months?
