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POV: Dreams and Memories (V)

A voice from the past

By Michael Stauber

[Inside the Twin Sun System]

The impact on his rear shields caught Michael totally unaware and instantly he pulled up hard on the stick while putting all his weight onto the left pedal. Another impact, this time not as forceful as the first one before ate away whatever rear shields he had before and boiled off armor off his left right wing. A yellow warning light indicated a system failure and the smell of ozone told him that something had been damaged or was smoldering. He quickly diverted energy from lasers to shields and equalized his shields again. Their charge gauge showed a dull yellow, telling him that the protection of his craft was severely limited until he could afford to transfer more energy into the shields. Finally he noticed the approaching TIE Avengers in his peripheral vision. At first the blurring and fast movement got his attention and he had already leveled out onto them before he noticed what design he faced. He fired some stray shots at the leading pair of fighters until his survival instinct cut in and forced him to break his attack and to go defensive again. Not a second too soon, as both approaching Avenger’s opened up again, their laser fire passing through where his craft would have been by now, had he not reacted in time.

The Avenger had been his fighter of choice back in his Imperial days, but since then he had come to hate it for the dangers which it posed in the hands of skilled and able pilots. And due to their scarce numbers and their high costs only the very best Imperial pilots were allowed to fly them. Such as the ones he was facing right now.

"I’ve got trouble over here.", he said over the radio. "How’s going, Sandra, Dario?"

The pilot from Iberya sighed and then said: "Same here. Both Frigates are launching Eyeballs and Interceptors and they’ll be all over us in a minute. Our time is running out very fast."

There was no reply from Sandra and with a panic expression Michael looked around until he had located the unmistakably form of her Blastboat. The Factory station had opened up with her impressive amount of defensive lasers and bathed the dancing, drifting and breaking Blastboat in an eerie spectacle of light as it’s shields absorbed the brunt of the onslaught.

Finally he could hear her over the static, even though the transmission was garbled. "... almost there, almost there!", her voice overlaid with cracking discharges and full of tension.

Another hit diverted his attention to the tasks at hand and again he had to go evasive. This time he managed to follow one of the Avengers as he pulled out of his dive. Michael cut back the throttle pulled up hard and sped up again, the Avenger dead ahead under his crosshairs. He opened fire even before his targeting computer could finish it’s projection and beam after beam sliced into the T/A’s shields. The skin on his arms started to trickle in anticipation and he gave in to his instincts, aborting his attack just as he breached the Avenger’s shields. Not a moment too soon, as two T/A’s had managed to get onto his tail. With a sense of relieve he noticed that Dario was already taking care of one of them. The Imperial pilot had to break off and that left Michael with one worry less for the moment. A sudden cut back of his throttle and an aggressive bank and turn maneuver forced the trailing Avenger to overshoot, with most, but not all of his shot’s missing, but allowing Vyper to return the debt and to chase him in return.

[Aboard the Blastboat Millennia, Twin Sun System]

The Blastboat rocked again under the merciless impact of laser fire coming up from the X7 station and with a worried look Sandra noticed that heir shields would falter in a couple of seconds. Sweat run down her brows and into her eyes as she did her best to maintain an unpredictable course while getting closer and closer to the station. Her only chance was firing the Heavy Space Bombs in the last possible moment, or else the gun towers had a fair chance of setting the bombs off too early. She really wished that she had the kind of bombs that she had said to Michael and his companion while she had briefed them on the mission. But that had only been another bait to lure them into the trap so that she could catch the bounty and regain the Empire’s trust and confidence. But then again, somehow she had always known that the Empire would never fully trust her again and that had helped her to decide between duty and honor.

Another bundle of lasers lighted up the frontshields and partially blinded her vision as she finished her thought, still frantically working her controls. But the regular Heavy Space Bombs she had would do the job as well, provided that all of them would hit home. And there her circle of thoughts closed, because to make that happen she had to get dangerously close.

She dived the Blastboat between two of the outreaching structures that reminded her so much of space containers and pulled up hard, aiming directly for the center cone of the station. Two, then three more laser blast’s hit home and a shower of sparks behind her told Sandra that something important had been hit. Millennia’s sluggish reactions told her even more.

"Damn, I’ve lost my port stabilizer!", she cursed and finally pressed the trigger on the console besides her legs. The Blastboat staggered as half a ton of steel and explosives were launched from the quad missile launchers and immediately upon reload she fired again without waiting for a target solution.

Sandra bit her lower lip as she did her best to pull the Blastboat into a steep climb to clear the station, but the failing stabilizer just spun the Millennia around until it sluggishly reacted to her input. She barely managed to clear the center cone and raced over one of the steel struts that connected one of the containers with the main hull. With a loud bang one of the monitors burst and showered her with sparks and glass fragments. All around her and warning klaxons went of and her ship started spinning without reacting to her frantic jerking on the controls.

[Outside the Joan d’Arc]

Of course he was used to flying an A-Wing, but Daniel Sutherland instantly noticed certain differences between the fighter he was used to fly and Psycho’s personal one. This one behaved like a racehorse and the slightest movement on the stick brought an instant, sometimes forceful reaction. To him it looked like Psycho had cut some deals with maintenance and they changed certain settings for him to improve the A-Wing’s handling even more. The differences were subtle, but still he needed to get accommodated to them fast, because the hostile TIE Fighters were almost within firing range. Drake glanced around and saw that Iceman’s B-Wing – "Avery’s B-Wing", he reminded himself – was half a click to his right and circling around to engage the approaching TIE Bombers from one flank. It was a fair shot at best, but the Imperial pilots noticed his tactics and simply adjusted to it by diverting half of their TIE Fighters – about seven or eight – to intercept Iceman.

"This is not going to work.", Drake said and switched to his Concussion missiles, targeting the leftmost quad of TIE Bombers.

Iceman pressed his left pedal and joined up with Drake again. "I guess you’re right. OK, let’s do the best we can. I hope that will be enough." He then checked the status of his Torpedo launcher and picked the closest Bomber.

As soon as both pilots had a solid lock they let lose and quickly switched through their targets, firing one torpedo or missile at each bomber. A deadly rain of homing projectiles raced towards the unshielded enemy TIE Bombers, still closing onto the Joan d’Arc and fully ignoring them.

A few TIE Fighters which happened to be in the path of the approaching missiles opened fire and bright explosions told the story of some successful hits.

Upon Iceman’s command they split up again, Iceman putting his B-Wing into a steep climb, while Drake inverted his A-Wing and then pulled the stick to his belly, diving under the enemy formation. A quick glance around told Drake that they had wasted a total of eleven Bombers, but before he could cheer up he noticed that seven were still continuing their flight, while half of the Eyeballs were chasing him and the other one was about to follow Iceman through his climb, with both groups splitting up and performing a perfectly timed Thach Weave maneuver.

One of the constant reminders that Moose had hammered into them came to his mind and for the first time since at least twenty minutes Drake smiled, despite the sweat that was covering his forehead and the tension with which his hands worked on the controls. "Control your breathing and always stay focussed on your objective!".

"As easy as that, sure!", he thought and veered around to open up with his lasers on the closest of his attackers, while trying to keep track of the Imperial’s deployment around him. The Eyeballs returned fire and their green energy darts filled the void around his Dodonna Blissex fighter, most of them passing harmlessly around, but more than he liked to found their mark and drained his shields. One TIE Fighter exploded under his fire, with a second and a third one taking minor damage as he skid right through their formation. Drake put Psycho’s A-Wing into a drastic scissors movement to avoid being hit, while he drained every last ounce of speed out of his ride, speeding closer to the Joan d’Arc and the Bombers, which were just about to open fire. Up and ahead he saw Iceman, who apparently had tried to follow the Bombers on his own, but by now he was forced to break, because the Eyeballs were getting nasty. Drake noticed that the B-Wing’s shields had already been badly mauled and that only skill, sheer luck and the rock solid design had kept the slow B-Wing alive such long against this impressive numerical advantage of the pressing TIE Fighters.

Drake targeted a pair of Iceman’s attackers, and a lucky hit blew the lead element up and forced the Imperial’s wingman into a defensive maneuver which forced him to abandon his attack on the B-Wing. For now, but that wouldn’t last long, as Drake knew very well.

Again he looked at the Bombers, their trailing element as far away as 1.08 klicks, at extreme distance of his lasers, but within range. He knew he couldn’t afford it, but there was no choice. So he leveled out and brought his crosshairs into match with target. As soon as he got the green light he poured shot after shot into the rear of the Bomber. Just as it was about to break it’s attack run and to pull up, one of the shots went through it’s armor and set of an internal explosion which obliterated the craft. Ignoring an impact onto his rear shields Drake targeted the next Bomber and opened up, but this time he wasn’t that lucky and the Imperial pilot skidded up, to the left and than downwards, avoiding the laser fire and continuing it’s approach. Several further hits onto his already weakened rear shields told Drake that this was something he couldn’t afford. He broke his attack run, transferred energy from lasers to shields and helplessly watched as the remaining six bombers opened up ripple firing their torpedo’s into the shieldless and powerlessly drifting Joan d’Arc. The sensation of loss, failure and grievance came over him and with high flaring anger he leveled out behind the closest Eyeball. "This ain’t over yet!", he uttered and pressed the trigger, well knowing that this could not save the Joan d’Arc or any of his friends and comrades aboard. But that didn’t matter to him anymore ...

[Aboard the ISD Guardian, Bridge]

"Torpedo’s launched, Admiral!", the Tactical Officer said and looked up from his console. Vice Admiral Garner gave him a nod of approval and then continued to look at the main screen, whose live video feed, running on a high magnification, had locked onto the helpless Frigate and the deadly blue stream of homing projectiles that raced up and onwards towards a helpless prey.

"Mark this day. It’ll be the first victory of this new campaign that once and for all will deal with the Rebel Insurgency." The Admiral was about to say more, but steps behind him and the presence of an uneasy officer behind his back made him stop. Slowly and with a lot of anger in his eyes he turned. "What is it?"

The Communications Officer swallowed hard and then said nervously: "We lost communications with the station. The last report indicates a serious attack, Sir."

Vice Admiral Garner slowly turned and glanced over the tactical display. His eyes radiated fury as he then locked his glance at the bearer of the bad news. "Recall all fighters as soon as the Frigate is finished off and set course to the Twin Sun System for immediate jump after recovery of all flyable fighters."

The ISD’s captain moved closer to the Admiral and whispered softly, but with worry for his men: "What about those who had to eject? We can’t leave them behind, sir."

The Admiral shrugged the comment of and said with a harsh tone in his voice: "We have no use for pilots who have just proven their incapability." His facial expression left no doubt that the matter was closed with that, as he continued to watch the deadly stream of torpedo’s, which were about to end another matter real soon now.

[Aboard the FRG Joan d’Arc, Communications Facility]

"Come on, you don’t want to upset Uncle Psycho, won’t you?", Stephen whispered as he caressed the main computer core. He had restored it’s power by connecting an auxiliary power supply which usually was used for field repairs on droids. But he wondered if it would be sufficient to sustain the high drain when the computer core initialized it’s three dimensional memory gates. Again he flipped the power on switch, but this time he started a different initializing sequence by not energizing all the computer’s system at once, but one after another. Finally the screen lit up and the automatic diagnostic started to run through.

"Phew! That was that.", he mumbled and slowly stood up and pulled himself closer to the keyboard, which had started to drift away in the zero-G environment.

Suddenly he heard a weird noise from the corridor and turned his head in curiosity. The unmistakably figure of Ledner, Drake’s R2 unit filled the door, but what amused Psycho the most, was that Ledner had Shok’wave in tow. Literally, as the droid was using his magnetic wheels to stay attached to the floor and Shok’s had wrapped her arms around the droids head to let him pull her in.

"Uuh, Shok’s, I can explain ...", Psycho started and gestured around.

Sherry let Lender pull her closer to the main computer terminal before she launched herself towards Psycho and grabbed one of the handholds to stop her drift. With the free hand she cut him off. "Oh, I’m more than sure that we’ll have a long chit chat once this is over. But first of all we need to get moving."

She gestured towards Ledner, who had opened one of the small hatches in his torso and extracted one of his arms to connect himself with the computer core that Psycho had just brought back half way online.

Stephen swallowed hard and turned the screen so that Sherry could see what was going on.

"We were stuck by a virus, a computer virus which shut down virtually everything.", he mumbled.

Commander Krenzel looked around and noticed the jury rigged repairs that Stephen had undertaken, approving them with a quick nod.

"Figured that out from what Granite said. He’s currently heading towards the bridge to find out if they know anything we don’t. How far are you with the computer?"

Stephen cleared his throat and threw his face into a sour expression. "Just started it up a few seconds ago. Diagnostics is running through, but the virus is still active and as soon as I start one of the sub-programs like Lights or Gravity, the virus switches it off again."

Shok’s was about to say something, but then Ledner beeped a series of tones, and turned his "eye" towards Shok’s.

She looked at Stephen and asked: "Do you understand him?", but when seeing Stephens face she didn’t need to wait for an answer.

"Look, Ledner, I don’t understand you. Please do your best to get everything working, OK? I have the feeling that we need to get the hell out of Dodge."

The R2-Unit started whistling another set of tones and the small arm attached to the computer core’s main data bus started rotating a half turn left and two turns right. Long tables and statistics flowed over the main screen as Ledner battled his way through all the subsystems and innards of the Joan d’Arc’s very heart and soul.

Another shadow appeared in the door and leaped into the room. As he slowly spun around and grabbed the corner of the table Shok’s and Psycho could see that it was Torpedo.

"We’re in deep trouble.", he uttered breathless, weeping sweat from his high forehead. "I just come from the bridge and they have a visual on an ISD and a whole bunch of Bombers and Eyeballs, heading our way. This was ten minutes ago and they should be all over us by now."

Shok’wave’s eyes went wide as she heard the bad news. "Has anyone been able to get to the hangar? Damn, with the loss of all power we probably lost the atmosphere there anyway."

Torpedo shook his head and replied: "No, I don’t think so. There’s still the backup ..."

He was unable to finish his sentence as the artificial gravity kicked in and the lights flared up without warning. The three White Squadron members fell like rocks to the floor, accompanied by everything that had been floating around ever since the loss of gravity. Shok’s landed hard on her belly, while Torpedo slammed into the table he had been holding onto. Psycho was a little more fortunate, even though he hurt his elbow while landing on the armrest of his chair. The turmoil of loud bangs, curses and breaking equipment was accompanied by the warning klaxons of the red alert and the spinning up of other vital systems. The most notably and welcome was the shipwide Intercom, which sprung online and immediately showed Moose’s worried face and behind it the main tactical console on the bridge.

"Incoming Torpedo’s! Twelve seconds to impact!"

Moose said even more, but Shok’s thoughts were already going at ballistic speeds. Provided that all systems would be running within the next couple of seconds, it would take their shields at least two minutes to recharge to full power. Moose’s announcement had made clear that they didn’t have the time. And the twelve seconds they had was too little to plot even the tiniest hyperjump, least alone to initiate it.

"Ledner! Full speed ahead, evasive actions and execute Gung-Ho-42!"

The Joan d’Arc’s powerful Kuat Drive Engines roared to life as Ledner fired them up and immediately kicked them to the maximum sustainable throttle they were designed for. He then switched over to the maneuvering subroutine and started another task that showed him the tactical situation outside, gathered from the active and passive sensor arrays. Lender had thousands of logged flying hours in various X-Wings, but so far he never had flown anything as big as the Joan d’Arc. But it took him less than fifty nano seconds to actually like it. While shiftig through the database of pre-recorded commands and maneuvers he searched for the one called "Gung-Ho-42" and executed all the commands and orders that it consisted off, flooding cargo bay 42 with water drained from the Joan’s reservoir and opening the outer cargo bay door without depressurizing. But all the time he was well aware that it would only buy them five of six seconds, if that much at all. So he started to beep a worried set of tones and pre-heated the hyperdrive coils by himself.

Meanwhile he overrode the bridge’s helm, as he noticed that the helmsman had started to make some inputs to change course and for good measure he disabled the auto-pilot, too, because he had noticed that an emergency program had just started to keep the Joan on course despite the twenty thousand cubic meters of water and wreckage that flooded out of the open cargo bay door into the void of space, where the water froze immediately. The sudden rush of water and atmosphere decompressing from portside into space threw the Frigate faster around than even her massive thrusters would have accomplished and with the main engines running on full speed the Joan d’Arc had managed to sidestep out of the first half dozens of Torpedo’s attack run. Of course those who had lost lock reacquired and looped around for another turn, while those following after had time for a course correction. But nonetheless it had bought them an eyeblink or two of time.

Lender ignore the hardship that this maneuver had unleashed on the humans around him and while he registered that they slowly rose back onto their bi-pedaled extremities he finished his jump-calculations and initiated a mini-hyperjump that would bring them no further than two light-years, but to temporary safety. But then he noticed that something was wrong. The hyperdrive coils had not recharged as fast as he was used to from the X-Wing’s and it would take at least another five seconds until they could jump. The droid checked the tactical feed and helplessly acknowledged the data: "Time to impact, closest warhead: four seconds."

[Inside the Twin Sun System]

Vyper noticed a red stripe on the hull of the TIE Advanced as it overshoot and missed his A-Wing by less than five feet, indicating that this was either the Wing Leader or the Element Leader of this flight. His peripheral vision noticed that his shield gauge showed all red and that the Avenger had probably scored two or three hits more on his fighter than he could feel comfortable with. But he wasted no time and pressed his trigger, while his left hand quickly flipped the switch to equalize his shield strength. It was a helpless and automated gesture, because now a kid with a sling-stone could penetrate what was left of his shields.

His burst of concentrated laser fire hit home and the Avenger’s shields flared up as they absorbed the rain of energy. The enemy pilot was very good and already had started to pull up hard, which forced Michael to follow him through this maneuver which broke his lock, until he could gain enough lead to continue firing with any chance of hitting home. For doing so he had to cut back his speed, which naturally increased the distance between him and the fast Avenger. He scored another hit or two, until the Imperial pilot broke hard to the left and pulled down and then leveled off. Michael smiled as he noticed what his adversary was doing and refused to play the game by other than his rules.

"So they still teach this at the Academy? Good to know!", he mumbled and kept the T/A between himself and the Corellian Corvette that it was heading to. If he had followed the Imperial pilot through his loop, then he’d allowed the Corvette a good share of shots on him. From where he was now, he couldn’t fire at the Avenger, nor could the Corvette open up without hitting one of their own fighters, until the faster T/A had left the slower A-Wing behind it.

Michael used this situation for a quick glance over his tactical display and to transfer some laser energy into shields, but not all of it. Dario apparently had managed to destroy his target and was now taking care of several Interceptors which had been launched from either the Carrack Cruiser behind them, or one of the Frigates above. It didn’t matter, because they were quickly running out of options and would be overwhelmed in less than a few minutes. Then Vyper found what he had been looking for, and not a single second too early.

His canopy lit up with an eerie glow of light, as the first Heavy Space Bomb hit the Factory Station and sent a shower of light, fragments and debris out into space. Every explosion shook the massive station as if Thor’s Hammer would pound it to pieces. One of the attached containers drifted away, shaken by secondary explosions and then a ball of fire expanded, consuming the entire station and even one of the corvettes hovering above it.

Michael’s heart missed a beat as he noticed no signs of the Blastboat, but then he had to close his eyes to shield them from the explosion.

Out of instinct he firewalled the throttle, threw his A-Wing into a loop and then pulled the stick up to change his course and heading, away from the TIE Advanced and the Corvette.

He needed to blink twice until he could see clearly again and a third time to find out where Dario was.

"Dario! Do you see her?"

The pilot from Iberya glanced around himself, throwing his A-Wing from side to side to avoid the stray fire that the TIE Interceptors rained at him from extreme distance.

"Negative!", he replied with clenched teeth and as he pressed his trigger to return the hospitality of his Imperial adversaries he added: "Our time has run out. We either leave now or never, do you hear?"

Michael sighed heavily, while he kept track of the TIE Advanced, which was now looping around to get into attack position on him, while he sneaked his A-Wing through the first volleys of the Corvettes main battery. All that was left of the Factory was drifting debris and it was impossible for him to see anything whose shape resembled as if it had belonged to an Blastboat. He was about to give up his search, when he finally noticed a flickering, third green blip on his tactical display.

"Sandra, do you hear me?", Michael yelled into his mike and headed towards the weak transponder signal, ignoring the closing T/A.

"I have you now!", Lieutenant Dahlgren muttered through clenched teeth and pressed his trigger, as his TIE Advanced leveled out behind the A-Wing.

[Outside the Joan d’Arc]

Iceman was too occupied with overriding destroyed and malfunctioning systems and to him it seemed as if Avery’s B-Wing would fall apart around him faster than he could say: "Holy shit!"

Nonetheless he kept firing at the Eyeballs around him whenever he could turn enough to keep one in his target sight long enough to press the trigger. So he did miss the better part of the show. Drake, who was heading towards his comrade and pumping shot after shot into the furball around the battered B-Wing, let go a sigh of relieve as the Joan d’Arc’s external lights flared up in all their brightness. Half a second later her main engines came to life and the powerful ion wash started to slowly propel her along an unknown course. But just as Drake’s spirit was about to soar skywards, he realized that it wouldn’t matter, because the torpedo’s would hit in less than a few seconds, which just added more fuel to his anger.

But the next set of events managed to cheer him up, even though he didn’t understand what exactly happened. Some kind of explosion ruptured the Joan’s hull just below the portside hangar bay and in an explosive decompression thousands of fragments, crates, and pallets rained into space. The force of the thrust was so strong that it rocked the ship around and changed it’s course by at least 30 or 40 degrees and rotated the ships along it’s lateral axis and throwing it out of the course of the first four or five torpedo’s, which missed the Joan’s tail section by only twenty or thirty meters and continued to loop around for another approach. The following torpedo’s managed to adjust their course and this time only a miracle could save their mothership, as Drake admitted to himself.

All the more the sudden and premature flashes and explosions of the next six torpedo’s took him by surprise, until he realized that whatever debris field the Joan had launched, happened to be in the path of the approaching Imperial warheads. The warheads traveled at or around 300 kts and their proximity fuses were set of by the mass of the freezing water and drifting objects. Another torpedo exploded, this time closer to the speeding Frigate and scorching one of the gun turrets on the upper foredeck, with still more of them raining in. Finally the Joan d’Arc jumped ahead as it’s hyperdrive kicked in and it seemed as if the Frigate’s hull would elongate into the cold void of space, as it made it’s jump to safety. The remaining torpedo’s, now without valid lock continued their flight and either detonated in the debris field or flew guilelessly on.

Drake’s heart made a jump in his chest, until he realized that Iceman and him had been left behind, the two of them against some probably very upset Imperials, who had just witnessed a seemingly helpless prey escape their grasp.

"I see it!", Iceman yelled. "Don’t wait for me, Drake, jump now!"

Drake almost bit his tongue off, while withholding a reply. Instead he continued to fire on one of the Eyeballs that still chased his wingman around. The TIE Fighter exploded after the second successful hit and one of it’s solar panels broke of and slammed into a second, unsuspecting TIE Fighter that Iceman had barely missed. Four others were a bit further away and splitting into pairs, while only two were close enough to pose an immediate threat to the damaged B-Wings escape. Drake targeted one of them and radioed his partner: "Take the other one and get the hell out of here as soon as it’s finished. I’ll be right behind you."

Iceman cursed as his targeting system exploded and threw a shower of sparks over his flightsuit. Through the smoke and ozone smell he saw the streaking bye Eyeball and switched his cannons to single fire and aligned his rather unresponsive B-Wing with only his Mark-I eyeballs as reference. He squeezed his trigger ever so gently and even though that only two of his three laser cannons opened fire, he managed to scorch the paint on the speeding T/F. Apparently the Imperial pilot had more brain than most of his colleagues and decided to take a time out from the battle, because it didn’t finish it’s loop around and headed upwards. That was all the time that Iceman needed and with sweaty fingers he reached over to the hyperdrive lever and pulled it. The B-Wings wings folded together and with relieve Iceman noticed the drive kicking in. The stars in front of his viewscreen elongated and the battered B-Wing jumped to safety, with Drake’s A-Wing in hot pursuit.

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