The Immaculate fires again. This time it's a glancing hit off the Dragon's rear deflectors - deflectors which were luckily bolstered by Aurelia's frantic jury-rigging. She's thrown to the deck as the entire deflector system blows outward in a spray of components and sparks. Miraculously, the Action IV's engines are still pumping and its hyperdrive light flashes green - the only green in the sea of ambers and reds on the bridge.
Ganet drops the hammer and the Dragon leaps into hyperspace.
Meanwhile, Mandall, Calsera, and Ty are lining up shots on their respective targets when the reinforcement TIEs dive into the battle. Ty manages to dust his TIE, but the other two harried Imperials manage to disappear back into the flock of oncoming fighters before they're destroyed. The black void splits with laser fire now as the fourteen TIEs demand vengeance for their wingmates.
It's amazing just how many shots miss, but there's just too many of them. Ty jinks and rolls - the blasts come so close his deflectors are registering hits but aren't losing power - but his Miy'til takes a hit on the port wing. The deflectors take the shots but protest.
Mandall cuts across Ty's pursuer's path and the TIE breaks off to follow the wounded Headhunter. He dodges one, two, three TIEs' frantic attempts to down his fighter. It's like running through a pasture without touching the blades of grass. Finally one of the Imperials scores a hit on the Z-95. Mandall's shaken like a spray can and blacks out.
Calsera's doing her best just to avoid the TIEs when she sees the cockpit and nose of Mandall's Z-95 streak past her. The next thing she knows she's got no deflectors and her stabilizer's been sheared off. Her V-Wing's still in the fight, however.
Somewhere deep down inside Mandall's brain, Dutch is screaming obscenities at Crewman Daygon. Beside Dutch, Mandall can almost make out Lord Vader making an awful racket with a stewpot and a ladle. The clatter turns to a whistle, and then a dull roar, and then Mandall's awake, falling through Mygeeto's upper atmosphere in control of the front half of a Z-95 Headhunter. The view outside is a spinning vortex of gray fog. There is no up; there is no down; there is no altimeter.
Mandall has a spare moment to be glad that the Dragon is out of the system; then the dance begins anew. This would be almost impossible to survive even in an X-Wing, but all Mandall has is a half-dead Headhunter flashing angry red lights. When the hit does come, "Finally..." flashes through his head before the Gs overwhelm him.
Mandall's vision is not exactly pleasant - where's the beer? Don't you get beer when you join the Force?
Then his head bangs against a cockpit strut, hammering his reset button and drawing Mandall back into reality for what he soon realizes may be a very short comeback. He's coming in way too fast, and half his ship - including the engines - is finito. Mandall does his best to get the rolling under control, but as soon as he's semi-steady, he loses his lunch.
Ugh, so that's down...I think...
Clutching onto the stick for his dear life, he knows that he only has one chance - get the bird upright, trade in as much speed as possible, get into the lower atmosphere and eject before he kisses dirt at Mach 3.
Calsera's too busy right now to pay much attention to the Dragon's departure. With the sudden influx of TIEs, she has her hands full just trying to avoid being dusted herself. At least Ty manages to take one out before their targets disappear into the larger swarm.
Then all hell breaks loose as over a dozen TIEs open up at them with everything they've got. She sees Ty's rear deflector light up, but appears to take no real damage. Mandall isn't so lucky as his already wounded bird gets chewed up bad. In this case, it's actually to his advantage that they're in atmo, or he'd likely be dust now. Still, he looks to be in a death spiral.
Meanwhile, Cat's own deflectors wink out and a stray blast rips off her stabilizer. Cursing, she reroutes power as best she can to cover the deficiency.
"Ty! I'm hit! Meet us at the rendevous!" Calsera is running, knowing that she and Ty have no chance against this horde. They'll just have to come back for Mandall - if he survives - later.
Doing her best to avoid the TIEs, Cat counts down the seconds until she can make the jump.
Another fusillade comes close, but Calsera slams the hyperdrive lever before the swarm of TIEs can adjust and break off to bring their full firepower to bear. She sees the tell-tale starstreaks and then her little V-Wing is gone. Ty's only a few seconds behind her.
The Dragon arrives at the rendezvous, battered but still kicking. Ganet, Eritram, Aurelia, Murdoch, and Jorm (?) breathe sighs of relief when they see Ty's Hapan fighter, then the V-Wing leap into realspace.
Well, Murdoch doesn't sigh.
It's soon apparent that they're missing a fighter jock.
To top it all off, there's a flurry of blaster shots from the cargo hold. POP POP - a brief pause - POPPOP POP POP... POP
---
With his stomach contents splattered across the console, Mandall instinctively figures out his sense of direction. Gritting his teeth aginst the G-forces, he slows his spinning. He's got nothing but the emergency flaps to steer with, and when he triggers them half of them peel off with the sudden decrease in speed. Mandall's helmet slams into the screen again, but he's got a bearing. Still no altimeter, and he could be anywhere over the planet - the damnable cloud cover's seeing to that.
Finally, he catches a break. The dead Headhunter breaks through the clouds and Mandall sees the surface. He's coming in too fast, but since when has ever done anything safely?
He strains for the ejection switch and yanks it back. Everything's a dizzying whirl again, then the repulsors kick in and Mandall's floating towards a sparkling field of ice-crusted ruins, an Imperial city looming on the horizon.
Mandall takes a righteous banging riding his bronco for all she's worth, but eventually he figures that he's reached that intersection between "safe ejection speed" and "the goddamn ship is falling apart", yanks the lever and feels the reassuring tug of explosive charges throwing him clear from the Headhunter's death spiral. As his own descent slowly stabilizes, Mandall watches the snubfighter spin out of control, ram into the ground and go up in a small fireball.
It's not easy, but Mandall manages to raise his hand enough for a quick salute to his fallen ride.
Still heading down towards the ruins, he taps the pouches of his flight suit to check his survival kit.
It's a relief to reappear in a different star cluster. Calsera can see the Dragon on her scope, and heads that way. Ty warps in a second or two later; Cat smiles, knowing that at least he made it.
"Dragon, this is Claw. We lost Wing over Mygeeto. Survival unknown." Her tone is quite sober, edged with pain.
To top it all off, there's a flurry of blaster shots from the cargo hold. POP POP - a brief pause - POPPOP POP POP... POP
Murdoch activates his internal comm.
"I'll investigate the latest in this seemingly never-ending streak of deplorable luck." quips the droid, powering up his forearm blasters and activating his targeting sensors.
MDK-911 stomps off to the hold, his targeting systems easily compensating for the flickering lights and periodic bursts of coolant from ruptured systems.
Murdoch finds the source of the disturbance near "Stumpy's" makeshift cell.
Targeting sweep: seaching for active targets. No targets found. Three non-combatants detected.
Accessing medical triage databanks:
Rodian, designation "Stumpy": One (1) blaster wound to face. Deceased.
Twi'lek, designation "Shasna'hoj": Two (2) blaster wounds; center mass, back of head. Deceased.
Human, designation "Jorm Taban, Lt.": Two (2) blaster wounds; abdomen, left leg. Critical condition.
Stumpy and Shas lay sprawled within 2 meters of the cell. A collapsed strut that sheared through the cargo container accounts for the Rodian's escape. Shas' blaster is in Stumpy's good hand, still smoking along with its two previous owners.
Jorm's in bad shape. A few blast craters pockmark the container he was using for cover. Likely he got tagged in the leg and fell out of cover, then traded shots with Stumpy. He's in shock but alive.
Human, designation "Jorm Taban, Lt.": Two (2) blaster wounds; abdomen, left leg. Critical condition.[/i]
Jorm's in bad shape. A few blast craters pockmark the container he was using for cover. Likely he got tagged in the leg and fell out of cover, then traded shots with Stumpy. He's in shock but alive.
*General frequency*
"Your commanding officer has been critically wounded. The ships two captives in your primitive form of incarceration are to blame. Fortunate for them, they did not survive."
MDK addresses Jorms immediate wounds until proper medical attention can be given.
"Great, just great..." Ganet says to himself as he appraises the situation.
He gets Jorm to the makeshift sickbay and helps with stabilizing their commanding officer. That finished, and the crew assembled, he begin speaking.
"You all know we've got a hard row to hoe right now, but I want everyone to keep their heads. Jorm is going to be fine. We did not see Mandall die; we cannot rule a man of his capabilities dead without evidence. I think he's alive, if you ask me. But this is not the time to mount a rescue operation. We've got a lot of repairs to make, and it's not as if we can just leave it to the techs back at HQ. Great undercover work we'd be doing then. On top of all of that, we have to figure out what exactly happened, and construct two different reports: one for the Hutt, one for Kolit. So, we've got a lot of work ahead of us.
"I think we should all follow Aurelia's lead while we're making repairs. We can figure things out further after that."
Mandall hits the ground and ditches his ejection equipment. The landscape was glittering and pristine from the air, but now jagged splinters of ice and blocky Clone War ruins jut up menacingly from the white ground cover. Somewhere an avian predator shrieks as it downs its prey. Whereever Mandall landed, it looks like it used to serve an industrial purpose. The ruins are all large, all plascrete and metal. Probably the skeleton of a factory.
Mandall glances at the Imperial city on the horizon. Maybe a day's travel if the terrain cooperates. There should be a way off-planet there. Alternatively, If he had a way of knowing his position, and if he was close enough, maybe he could contact Lee and Landa's people - after all, they owed him and the Vandals.
At any rate, the Imperials would no doubt be sending scout units to check out the Headhunter wreckage. The pillar of smoke's a few hundred meters away.
Mandall weighs his options carefully. Comm is right out; he's not enough of a tech freak to salvage anything from whatever scrap may be lying around here, and travelling to the city through this kind of cold is not what Mandall would consider a nice little trip.
He glares at the horizon angrily, then shouts out to whoever may hear him; maybe that blasted Force will start paying some attention to him.
"Listen. You listen to me. You see that city over there? That's where I'm supposed to be. Not down here with the scraps, and the garbage, and the fucking snow blowing back and forth. I've had it with the Imperials, I've had it with the Force, I've had it with all this - I want to go home! I want to toss vibroknifes, I want the cold Dantoinean beer, I want a 10,000 credits-a-night hooker! I want a goddamn...motherfucking Tauntaun...and a lightsaber to slice it open with!"
Nothing answers Mandall's shouts, so he takes a few deep breaths, sits down on the wing surface of a nearby ARC-170 wreck and reconsiders his options.
He doesn't need to go anywhere. There's already a well-equipped rescue party on the way for him, they just don't know it yet. So what if it's a couple more Imperials - how big can that search party be? He's got a blaster, and as much as he's starting to hate the cold, his flight suit will keep him alive and give him the mobility edge against Snowtroopers. Then he can kill them, take their gear and vehicle, and everything will fall into place from there.
Getting up from the wing with a renewed sense of purpose, Mandall starts scouting the area to prepare his ambush.
Mandall's announcement cuts through the comm static just as Calsera is bringing her V-wing inside the bigger ship. She is stunned for just a moment, and nearly has an unfortunate incident, but relaxes and gets it under control.
This mission has really cost us... and we're nowhere near done yet.
She climbs out of the hatch, then hears Ganet over the ship speakers. "I'll help. Just point me in the right direction." She heads for Aurelia and volunteers her services, such as they are.
Ty hears the news of the deaths aboard ship as he lands in the bay, and as he steps out he, too, hears Ganet's little speech. Maybe I am bad luck, he thinks to himself, then goes off to find Aurelia.
Mandall takes cover in a half-demolished basement foundation a hundred meters or so from the majority of the Headhunter wreckage, cutting the wind significantly and providing some much-needed cover. Over the wind, he can faintly hear incoming speeder bikes. Two Imperial scout troopers in cold-weather gear slow their rides as they approach the crash site. Dismounting, one rummages through the saddlebags for macrobinoculars while the other one sweeps the area with his blaster rifle.
"I don't know why they send rescue parties for fighter crashes. TIE pilots are crazy - they know what they're getting into. Do those things even have ejection seats?"
"I don't think so," replies the macrobinocs trooper. "At least our bikes can take a hit. Meh, I got nothing on the binocs."
"I dunno about that, man," says the other. "Some of those rebels, man. They can blast your bike out from under you with one shot."
"That's a bunch of poodoo. Your average rebel is nowhere near as precise as an Imperial stormtrooper. That's why they say- hey, come here!" The scout kicks over some still-smoking plating. "This isn't even a TIE fighter. We've got something else here. Better call it in, have the movers run with an escort. Get on that comm and get us some air cover, would you? Put your damn blaster down, I told you I got nothing on the binocs."
Aurelia frowns, pondering the bruised and battered ship and crew. She nods to herself, starting off.
"Cat, I'm grounding your fighter...it's bad off. Move your stuff to the King & Country until I have a chance to look over it. And if you scratch the paint..."
"Next step is to get our interior cleaned up. External blastermarks mean extra pay, internal marks mean either incompetance or internal strife. We are *not* going to let a Hutt think we have either problem. If you all think you can handle that, I need to make an external survey of the damage to the Dragon while we limp back."
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