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Point Blank
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| Hyrum_Bask | Date: Monday, 06 Jun 2016, 1:18 AM | Message # 1 |
 Trainee
Group: Users
Messages: 3
Status: Offline
| "Sir, we've lost our bridge deflector shields."
"Intensify the forward batteries—I don't want anything to get through."
"INTENSIFY FORWARD FIREPOWER!"
"TOO LATE!"
And with one mistake, the course of history was changed. Who could have known then, that an A-wing crashing through a pane of transparisteel would result not only in the death of the pilot, or of Admiral Piett and his bridge crew, or of the other hundreds of thousands of men on the Executor, but would result in the fall of an empire? Endor was the turning point. It changed everything. Oh, the Empire fought on, and so did Bask, but there was no undoing what the Rebels had done over that accursed Forest Moon. The loss of the Emperor, Vader, the Executor, and the Death Star. The stupid, costly invasions of Naboo, where Bask himself had been badly wounded. The crushing blow at Jakku.
The murder of his family.
This inexorable chain of events started at Endor. Not that Bask blamed everything on Firmus Piett, of course. His mistake was one of many mistakes that day, made by many of the Empire's best and brightest. No fewer than four Grand Admirals had been there—Declann, Makati, Takel, and Teshik. Admirals Chiraneau, Strage, and Montferrat had been there too, with an armada of more than thirty Star Destroyers and thousands of TIE fighters. And they lost. It was a trap for the Rebels, and still the Empire lost. To a rag-tag fleet of re-purposed cruise ships, unarmed transports, a medical frigate, and a handful of Clone Wars era starfighters. And... Ewoks. The question that had tormented Bask in the thirty years since was: How?!
"Captain, the Republic outpost is hailing us."
"Targeting solutions," Bask spat, as if angry to have been interrupted from his reverie.
His Lieutenant furrowed his brow, but relayed the orders. Perhaps he felt this was an occasion deserving of more ceremony. It wasn't every day, after all, that they got to shoot at the New Republic. And shoot to kill, at that.
The Rathtar's Grasp sat in low orbit above the planet Saarn, a little-known world of no particular importance but for the New Republic listening outpost hidden there. (But hidden no longer. The Republic was bad at keeping secrets from the First Order.) The sensor array on Saarn could detect fleet movements across half of the Trans-Hydian Borderlands, on the look-out for violations of the Galactic Concordance. It had to be destroyed. The array was powerful, yes, but not enough to detect the Rathtar's Grasp sneaking up on it from the other side of the planet. Bask had jammed communications before a distress call could be sent to the Republic fleet. The outpost was helpless.
A spattering of laser fire glanced against the Rathtar's shields, causing a faint shudder in the deck beneath Bask's feet. Some of the bridge crew exchanged nervous glances, having never been in combat. So, the outpost wasn't completely helpless, then. It had a turbolaser which wasn't capable of doing any serious damage to the ship, and also a pair of T-70 X-wings that were seldom used. The kind of starfighter that the Republic is so good at 'misplacing'—directly into the hands of the Resistance, Bask mused. So far, his intelligence report was good. As it should be, coming from the Senate itself.
Endor was still fresh in Bask's mind. For months, he'd been running a holographic simulation of the battle and attempting to change its outcome. By now, he was familiar with all of the mistakes the Empire had made there.
The First Order would not repeat them.
"Targeting solutions acquired," the Lieutenant announced.
"Fire at will."
Hyrum Bask
Captain of the Gladiator II-class Star Destroyer Rathtar's Grasp
The First Order
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| Carla_LeFreyr | Date: Wednesday, 15 Jun 2016, 0:05 AM | Message # 2 |
 Trainee
Group: Users
Messages: 2
Status: Offline
| It was the last time Carla would ever see her, and she could barely see her at all. The hangar at the Republic base was bathed in red light, as a high-pitched siren could be heard over the roar of starship engines. But Carla heard none of it—she was listening to Em only. Her roguish features were obscured in the dim light, but Carla could still see that glowing and unjustifiably confident smile of hers. "We both know you're the better pilot," Em said, squeezing Carla's forearm reassuringly. "I need you in the air to cover us now. We'll be right behind you."
Carla couldn't find any words. She knew that Em was right. The First Order was actually going to destroy the base. She and Em could shoot out of there in their X-wings, but someone had to get that shuttle off the ground if any of the others stood any chance to escape. The hangar shuddered violently under a punishing round of fire from the First Order ship, and a cloud of dust rose outside the hangar bay. The deflector shields held—for now. But the base's lone turbolaser had fallen silent. The gunner had either vacated his post, or died.
Carla shook her head softly, her eyes watering. She looked over Em's shoulder at the shuttle. It was being hastily-fueled as the small crew of the base hurried aboard one after another, carrying what they could. They would never make it out of here. Carla knew it, and Em had to know it too. The shuttle's engines weren't even warm yet. She wanted to reach out to Em, to hold her as whatever happened, happened to both of them together. But Em didn't let her. "Go, now!" she shouted, punching Carla in the shoulder. "That's an order, Carls!"
Em turned away, pulling her helmet over her wild, red hair. And Carla did the same. She put one boot before another on the rungs of the ladder as she climbed into her X-wing, wiping the tears from her eyes with the back of her flight glove. Her BB-unit warbled something to her—Carla didn't hear it. She didn't even hear her own breathing as the X-wing's canopy sealed shut and the chaotic noise of the hangar disappeared altogether. She forced herself to go through the well-practiced motions of starting up the X-wing, resisting the urge to stop, to get back out, to go back for Em—the only person she'd ever loved, or who had ever loved her.
They'd both joined the New Republic for adventure, and hadn't found any of it on Saarn. (Until now, at least.) They had shared a bunk and made life bearable for one another at this lonely, Force-forsaken outpost. The rest of the crew rotated out on a regular basis, so Carla and Em never had time to know anyone else. They had laid awake into the late hours of the night, sharing stories of ex-lovers who had jilted them, confiding to one another their deepest fears and what they wanted in life. And they discovered that what they wanted more than anything else was each other. They understood one another in a way that no one else had before, and somehow, on Saarn, they had managed to be happy. They made grand plans for once the 12-month stint was over; trying out for the Sabers racing tournament perhaps, or joining the Commenor Self-Defense League, or pooling their money together to fix up an old 1550-LEX yacht.
That wouldn't happen now.
She gunned the T-70's engines and blasted out of the hangar into the swirling cloud of dust outside. "Rascal Two is away," she said, though she knew there wasn't anyone listening in the control room. Her voice was so weak she could barely hear it, the words nearly catching in her throat. She decided not to speak again, concentrating completely on the situation at hand.
The Republic listening post on Saarn was made up of the vast, Rimward-facing sensor array as large as a phaseball field on the planet's surface, and a small control room, barracks, dining and recreation halls, and hangar. It had a crew of fewer than 30. It had a single turbolaser, a pair of X-wings, and a shuttle to rotate personnel in and out. As she climbed from the dust enveloping the base, Carla could see that the sensor array had already been destroyed, its delicate panels shattered under relentless fire from the First Order ship. She saw the laser fire sweep across the rest of the compound, overwhelming the deflector shields and pounding each building into white-hot scrap. The control room, the barracks—the hangar.
And for the first time in her thousands of hours at the controls of an Incom T-70, Carla felt dizzy.
Flight Officer Carla "Rascal" LeFreyr
New Republic starfighter pilot
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