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| - Though we could see or hear nothing of the battle outside, it was readily apparent, to me at least, that we'd decanted right on top of a large force of enemy warships. Wordlessly, I removed my hand from Silas's gentle grip and fell into my own meditative posture as Bastila's battle meditation touched the minds of everyone in the Republic fleet. The Force crackled with energy as I exploded the sphere of my awareness outward; I picked up on the general orientation of the two fleets almost immediately. The seventeen warships under the command of Vice-Admiral Forn Dodonna, in a hemispherical vanguard formation that spread out before Battleaxe and Wrangler with Vibrosword tucked in between, had reverted to realspace on the flank of a loose formation of some ten Sith-crewed Interdicor-class cruisers, arrayed in three columns of three vessels each with one more leading the central battle line. We outnumbered the enemy in terms of capital ships, but we were certainly outgunned, and their starfighter strength was vastly superior. By pure dint of luck, however, we had come into the system at the back corner of their formation. The shields of the closest enemy warship began to buckle under the concentrated fire of Dodonna's lead vessels as they closed to optimal firing range. Through the Force's eyes, I once again witnessed the awesome power of battle meditation. I'd seen it put to use before, during the Iridonia-Lannik Campaign, but never from this vantage point. Bastila seemed to have cranked things up to a whole new level for this confrontation, because the enemy forces were soon falling back before the advancing Republic fleet. Battleaxe began to launch her Aureks, while the flying bombs from Wrangler were deployed in their wake; one struck the bridge tower of the nearest Sith vessel, its deflectors now overwhelmed. I felt an explosion of fear and death at the impact, and knew that one enemy ship had been taken out of the fight, at least temporarily. My senses buoyed by the effects of the battle meditation, I was able to gain a surprising amount of insight into how the attack was progressing, and I watched as the hemisphere became a wedge, plunging into the heart of the Sith formation. Our own fighters made slashing attacks on any flights of Sith interceptors that threatened the battle line, always keeping themselves well within range of the Republic warships' anti-starfighter laser cannons. Meanwhile, the vessels themselves stayed in tight formation, covering each others' flanks and preventing the Sith from launching an effective counterattack. At last, I felt our target, an Interdictor cruiser that radiated with the dark side. While another, nearby vessel gave off a similar signature, this one was the stronger by far, though strangely not quite as dark. Though I had only ever seen him once in passing, I thought I could detect residual traces of the Jedi that Revan had once been, though this might have been due to my senses being augmented by Bastila's efforts. My concentration was jarred, however, when I felt the destruction of one of our Foray-class frigates, which had been raked by turbolaser fire fore and aft from a pair of hostile warships. The Hammerhead cruiser Rapier took a nasty series of hits from another enemy vessel, and began to drop out of the vanguard formation to take refuge amongst our own heavy ships. Vibrosword shuddered under the impact of a mortally-wounded Sith interceptor that had attempted a suicide run. Several troopers' auras started to fidget, and I brought myself back to the here and now. “Easy, people,” I said. “We're gonna be—” The internal comm unit crackled to life. “Launch order received, brace brace brace!” “Alright, this is it!” I continued, not missing a beat. “Hold on tight!” The Jarhead-class lander leaped into the air and shot from the bay like a mynock with its tail on fire. Almost immediately after we'd cleared Vibrosword, it made a hard turn to port and relative down that the troop compartment's inertial compensator struggled to keep up with. I was forced back into my seat and upward against the straps, then thrown forward as the vessel made an even more radical turn to starboard, then shot forward at full acceleration. These dropships had been designed to engage in fleet boarding actions as well as planetary assaults, and as a result they were quite maneuverable in the right hands. Our pilot seemed to be no exception, as he jinked and juked the lander in the face of oncoming swarms of Sith interceptors. The gunners kept up a constant barrage of discouraging blasterfire that occasionally resulted in the detonation of an enemy starfighter, whose lack of shields proved to be their downfall. But it wasn't a completely one-sided affair. As we progressed nearer to the target vessel, the gunners began to pour fire into the deflector arrays surrounding the vast hangar bay, and three interceptors took advantage of this lull to make a strafing run on us. The dropship shuddered under multiple laser cannon impacts, but our deflectors held, and the interceptors were soon forced to break off as a flight of Aureks blazed to our rescue. “Two minutes to drop!” the pilot advised. I chanced a glance over at the other Jedi; like me, they were also in meditative postures, no doubt lending their support to Bastila's efforts to maintain her battle meditation. They had opted to wear their traditional robes for the battle, though the younger woman once again wore her nonstandard outfit of nearly skintight red-orange cloth, with maroon shoulder pads and boots and an embroidered design down her front that extended beyond her belt to form a sort of loincloth. When I'd first seen her in it, part of me had been slightly jealous at how she was able to bring off the whole ensemble, and how the Jedi had let her prance about like that. But that was before, and in the heat of battle, as we were about to go toe-to-toe with Darth Revan's finest, the thought only made me slightly queasy. I put it past me, however, thankful that the Force allowed me to perceive the battle at all. The other troopers, blind to the goings-on in orbit over Ord Mantell, were becoming increasingly fidgety, and I didn't blame them; I'd suffered from such feelings often enough prior to becoming a Jedi. At the thirty second mark, the lander performed a series of hard weaves as several nearby Hammerhead cruisers unleashed a massed volley of turbolaser fire aimed directly at the deflector array around the hangar. “Their shields are down!” the flight engineer announced over the intercom. “Repeat, their shields are down! Commencing landing procedures, prepare for dustoff!” Even as the small craft rocked back and forth, everyone detached themselves from their restraint harnesses and stood up, grabbing onto the series of hoop-grips built into the ceiling. Ibratu'na's soldiers began unlimbering their blaster rifles, while the Jedi and I took hold of our lightsabers. Only Bastila continued to stay where she was, still deep within battle meditation. Even the other troopers could tell that these last few seconds were crucial, that by remaining in this state, she was buying yet more time for the fleet and for us. The moments ticked off like miniature eternities, and I could hear the hammering of my heart in my ears, like the thudding of a pneumatic permacrete-breaker. Suddenly, the dropship gave a great lurch as its ultra heavy duty landing skids slammed into the deck of the Interdictor-cruiser's hangar bay, probably leaving good-sized dents in the durasteel plating. A split-second later, all prior feelings vanished as the hatches hissed open; suddenly I was leaping out through the nearest portal, hot on the heels of Keeh Rha and Georg Oakes. The cerulean blade of my lightsaber was ignited before I hit the hard surface of the bay; I immediately sprang into a lateral Force-enhanced leap in order to distance myself from the other Jedi so as not to get in their way. Alarm klaxons whined and blaster bolts rent the air moments later, and even as I directed the first of them into the high upper walls, I felt for their source. The Sith were as bad as their word, and no less than five self-powered blaster turrets were secured to the bay's interior bulkhead. I focused my concentration on the nearest one, falling into the familiar cadences of Soresu as I redirected its fire back at it. It was too dangerous to try and charge the thing and slice it to ribbons, even with the Force to enhance my speed; it would most likely have sliced me to ribbons before I got to within three meters. The turret was tougher than it looked, and it took several direct hits from reflected blasts to finally knock it out. Clear! I thought into the Force, getting similar confirmations from the other Jedi as they neutralized the rest of the hangar defensees. “Everyone out, we're clear!” I said into the platoon tactical frequency, noticing only as I did so that Bastila hadn't yet left the lander. As the boarding party poured out to secure the exits, I sprinted to a nearby hatchway, checking my chronometer as I leaned against the bulkhead. Fourteen seconds from landing, good, I thought to myself as I extended my awareness outward, feeling for hostile presences. Silas arrived a moment later, clutching his DL-3 in ready position as he adopted a similar posture on the opening's other side, but I ignored him for the moment. The intruder alarms continued their keening wail, but the crew was still recovering from the initial shock as they sprinted for any available weapons. As the Jedi stacked up alongside the platoon, I nodded to Bastila as we all felt for the presence of the Dark Lord of the Sith who was, surprisingly, unsurprised. But that was the only thing I could get out of him; he was a void, an emotional black hole, and even with my natural affinity for sensing the thoughts and feelings of sentient beings, I could have hacked at his mental barriers for months and not learned anything else. Meanwhile, I had a tactical plan to execute. Fortunately, the corridors immediately adjacent to the hangar deck were empty, as was the bay itself; no one wanted to chance getting sucked into space if a lucky hit from an enemy warship breached the shields and pierced the bulkheads. This is the key to any successful boarding operation of a large warship: get into their hangar, secure a toehold, and cause as much chaos as possible while your troops roam the halls, shooting anything that moves. I took in the rest of the hangar, and nodded with satisfaction that our lander wasn't its only occupant; a Herald-class shuttle and a pair of KT-400 droid-droppers lined the wall opposite. “Alright, here's the plan,” I began, still on the platoon tactical freq, but keying my helmet's speaker so the Jedi could hear as well. “First Squad, direct; Second Squad, circuitous, Third Squad, mayhem. Jedi, proceed at your discretion, but please stay with one of the squads for as long as possible. Dan'kre, stick with me and Second Squad, Ibratu'na, go with Third Squad. Move fast and hit'em hard!” Nobody replied as the platoon divided into squads and moved out, which was good. They knew what they were doing now, and they moved with alacrity and awareness. Second Squad fell into line as I slashed open my hatch, blowing the remnants into the corridor with a push of the Force as the other Jedi followed my example. I wasn't surprised to see that Bastila, accompanied by Haydin Biddell, Noi-Vas Jenn and Keeh Rha, had attached herself to First Squad, while Georg Oakes had joined with Lieutenant Ibratu'na in Third Squad, where I had placed Sergeant Dar after her promotion. As we marched into the narrow passageways, which were cast into shadow by dull red emergency lighting, the squads divided up on their respective routes, myself and the other Jedi slicing our way through yet more hatchways. Cutting our way through was a risky maneuver: if something went wrong and the magcon shield went down, those of us without sealed suits would be cut off from our own escape vehicle; however, it also prevented the crew from venting the bay themselves, as it would end up exposing large chunks of the interior to the vacuum of space. Ordinarily I wouldn't have taken this chance, but these circumstances were anything but ordinary. Fully alert and with their weapons primed, the squad followed my lead in tactical columns, each keeping to one side of a corridor and at least two meters apart from one another. We penetrated deeper into the bowels of the ship, heading for the auxiliary computer core en route to the engineering spaces. Silas led the right-hand column, while Sergeant Hellin DiSote led the left; both had placed themselves third in line so as not to be the first ones shot if we got flanked or otherwise surprised. After several minutes of terse silence, broken only by the steady thudding of boots on metal decking, my senses finally tingled with the telltale presences of hostiles. I raised my left hand, gesturing for a halt, then indicated a hatchway on the left side some thirty meters ahead, beyond an intersection. “Dan'kre, what's in there?” I asked on the squad frequency. “That's a barracks complex, Captain,” he replied after a beat. “There are several of them on this level, arrayed in an interconnecting square surrounding a central armory.” Better to avoid them, then, I thought, feeling out the areas ahead to get an idea on numbers. My instincts were confirmed when I detected the presence of a reinforced platoon's worth of troopers in the vicinity. The barracks complex could have held significantly more, if I remembered my schematics correctly. My gut told me that most of them had cleared out to face what they had assumed to be a single unit of boarders, leaving this bunch to guard the sealed cache of weapons and munitions within. Good, I thought, then gestured to Silas. “We need to find a terminal and seal these barracks, or they'll try to cut us off.” “Over here, ma'am,” Sergeant DiSote suggested, pointing toward the left-hand bend in the intersection. I nodded, then began to move in that direction, the squad swiftly picking up the pace as we rounded the corner. After marching several dozen meters down this new passageway, we encountered another hatchway, set on the opposite side from the barracks complex. “Two inside,” I said, flashing a hand signal. “Dan'kre, with me. The rest of you, cover the hatch.” Sergeant DiSote's people proceeded to flank each side of the portal, in order to cover it in case reinforcements arrived. With a nod from me, Silas pressed the actuator and the door hissed into the bulkhead; it was still opening when I catapulted myself through the hatch in a spectacular dive, tucking into another roll that brought me to within range of the two technicians. One was dead before he'd even registered the intrusion, my lightsaber sending his head rolling to the deck. The other, suddenly horrified, scrabbled for a weapon, but I plunged my own into his heart and he crumpled like a sack of tubers. The Bothan intelligence officer was hot on my heels, reaching the terminal that the Sith crewers had been working on. “Hooking up,” he said briskly, hands flying over the input console. “This will take a couple of minutes, Captain.” “Acknowledged, let me know when you're in,” I replied, deactivating my lightsaber. I then selected a quartet of troopers at random. “You four, hold this room. The rest of you, keep guarding the entryway.” “What about you, ma'am?” DiSote asked. “I'm going to see if I can cause some more distractions,” I replied. “I'll keep my senses up, but alert me if you so much as smell incoming Sith.” And with that, I scampered off down the corridor beyond the hatch. The most effective way, I knew, to defend a warship against boarding is to concentrate your best troops around critical areas, having the rest of them and any crewers with battle training or experience roam the innards, coordinating units in order to funnel the enemy into the best kill zones. Containment and isolation was the key, but the tactics involved only worked when dealing with known quantities. That was the reasoning behind my desire for a mayhem squad in addition to the two different infiltration routes, and while one of my skifters was doing his thing, I planned on being the other one. As I reached another intersection, I extended my awareness through and into the compartments beyond. A cluster of humans lurked within the closest one, but instead of entering the room from the hatchway, I activated my lightsaber and carved my own entryway through the bulkhead itself. As I finished the circular cut, I lashed out with the Force, sending it hurtling into the room and forcing the crewers who had gathered to defend it scattering, lest they be crushed by the flying mass of metal. One of them wasn't quick enough, and the cut-out panel clipped his blaster arm, sending his weapon flying as I waded into the six other defenders. The nearest two attempted to back away to snap off shots, but I was on top of them before they could so much as take a single step, sending them both to the deck with deep cuts to their torsos. The four remaining effectives started shooting, and I began picking off their fire; the wounded crewman went down with a deflected shot to the sternum, while two more caught bolts in their guts. The two remaining Sith attempted to flee, but I cocked my arm back and sent my blade flying, using the Force to guide it toward them; within moments, they too were dead. As I summoned my deactivated hilt back to my hand, where it landed with a soft flap!, the comm unit in my helmet crackled. “Captain, we're in,” Silas's voice whispered into my ear, making my skin tingle slightly. Taking in the contents of the room I'd just ruined, I realized that this was a maintenance facility for Sentinel-class battle droids. About a dozen deactivated units lined each wall to my left and right, and I hit upon an idea. “Good job, I'll be right there,” I said. “Can you get a fix on my location?” “Affirmative, I've got you,” the Bothan replied, and I could sense the smirk he was now wearing. “You thinking what I'm thinking?” “Go for it,” I said, smiling wickedly to myself. A few minutes later, as I backed out of the hole I'd made, the two squads of droids, now reprogrammed to fight for us, came to life. Unlimbering blaster rifles of their own, they began to walk out from their niches, exiting via the hatchway toward whatever predesignated patrol routes were etched into their digitized brains. I didn't stick around to see where they were headed, instead quickly making my way back to the computer room. The deck vibrated slightly as I made my way through the cordon of troopers to the Bothan's side. “What was that?” I asked him. He punched up a security monitor and nodded, satisfied. “Third Squad just hit their primary life support control room,” he replied. “They're switching to backup. This is perfect, ma'am; I've already penetrated that system, so we now have full control.” I gave him a nod and flicked over to the platoon tactical frequency. “First Squad, Third Squad, report in.” “Ibratu'na here,” the Twi'lek replied, slightly out of breath. “Resistance is stiff but we're making progress. The squad is proceeding toward the backup hyperdrive, having hit the environmental systems.” “Any casualties?” I inquired. “A couple of us have taken glancing hits,” he replied. “Private Utides got the worst of it; an enemy Force-user took his right hand before Jedi Oakes dispatched him.” I breathed a sigh of relief. I'd lost troopers to Dark Jedi before; it was never pretty, and I made a mental note to thank Georg for managing to save the unfortunate soldier. “Good work, Lieutenant, keep up the fight. First Squad, what's your status?” “We're progressing swiftly,” Bastila's voice replied over the unmistakable tzap! tzap! noise of blaster bolts being deflected by lightsabers. “Resistance is heavy but we're dealing with it; so far everyone's okay.” “Where are you?” I asked “Three decks down from the bridge,” she said as blasters whined around her. “I don't think they realize where we're going.” “Don't push things too quickly,” I advised. “If you go in too fast they'll simply cut you off and tear you and the squad to ribbons!” “I'll take that under advisement,” the young Jedi replied, the sound of her weapon igniting drowning out the last syllable. I turned back to Silas. “Get me a fix on her location,” I ordered. “See what surprises you can cook up.” “Got it,” he replied. “They're on Deck Six, Section—oh, this isn't good. If they keep going on their current path, they'll run into two companies of entrenched Sith troopers!” He looked at me full in the helmeted face, and I didn't need to see his expression or his sense in the Force to know that more of them were heading our way as well. “First Squad, abort your current heading!” I said into the general tactical channel. “All units, fall back! Rally on...” My eyes flew over Silas's schematics “...Section Leth Fifteen Six Two Eight!” That earned me several curious looks; the area I had pointed out was the auxiliary gunnery control room, which was just a deck below where the bridge tower met the upper hull. My reasoning was threefold: first, due to Silas's slicing efforts, we had access to all systems, so there was no need to defend this one terminal; second, the Sith were now fully aware of our presence and the fact that we were a divided force, and I wanted the three squads to be in positions where they could cover each other in case one got pinned down; third, and most important, I wanted to draw the Sith troops out of their prepared defenses and force them into chasing us over half the ship. I got acknowledgments from Lieutenant Ibratu'na and the staff sergeant leading First Squad, but neither Bastila nor her Jedi teammates responded. Sithspawn, she's going for it anyway, I thought angrily before directing the sergeant to select a quartet of troopers to accompany them. I then ordered my own people into action. “Alright, let's get out of here!” Going back through the damaged compartment where I'd ordered the release of the reprogrammed combat droids with Second Squad behind me, I picked up lingering traces of death in the passageway beyond. Blaster burns stippled the bulkheads and ceiling; one droid lay facedown on the deck among the bodies of several uniformed technicians and a pair of silver-armored soldiers, its right arm blown off. I gestured for one of the troopers, pointed to where the trip mine hung from his belt, and motioned for him to place it next to the defunct automaton's empty arm socket, which he did. “Double-time it, people,” I said, setting the pace. “We've got hostiles on our butts!” I should have known that Bastila would have chosen to press on ahead despite my orders. She was headstrong and proud, and could no more retreat than cut off her own arm. Sure, she might learn the wisdom of restraint eventually, but now wasn't the time for a lecture, not with swarms of Sith troopers on their way. We hadn't gone a hundred meters or so when the distinctive woosh! of a plasma discharge reached us, and I felt the agony in the Force as a tightly-packed knot of six hostiles were burned to a crisp. I ordered another trooper to drop her trip mine in the midst of another intersection, then had the squad run full-out down a different passageway and into a nearby turbolift, Silas shooting a lone tech as he poked his head around a nearby corner. “Nice shot,” I said as the squad piled in. “And here I was thinking that working Intel had dulled your eye.” “Thanks, Captain,” he replied as the lift closed around us. “Datawork can be such a chore, gotta relieve the boredom somehow and it might as well be with pistol practice!” We came out on the same deck as Section L-15-628, a pair of flashbangs soaring out along the corridor before the doors had finished opening. The high-pitched pow! of the grenades was tempered by the durasteel between us and the detonation points, and we boiled out of the liftcar with blasters blazing. A dozen dazed Sith troopers and crewers bounced off the bulkheads, but their pain was snuffed out quickly as my people opened fire. I dropped another trip mine into the lift and sent it back to the level that we'd just left, hoping that more hostiles would flood in after us. For the next ten minutes we fought our way through Sith troopers, officers and warship crewers, working steadily toward the rendezvous point. My lightsaber was in constant motion as we progressed closer to the auxiliary gunnery control room, deflecting blaster shots, striking down Sith that got too close, or cutting holes in bulkheads to carve out a faster route. Second Squad kept up a constant vigil while I did the latter, shooting errant hostiles as they attempted to interfere, but our foes were no pushovers. Private Axeli was clipped in the ankle by a bolt fired from a Sith officer; while the heavy armor ablated most of it, he was in considerable pain and walked with a pronounced limp until Silas could administer a painkiller. The officer, meanwhile, soon found herself without a head as I once again sent my weapon sailing through the air. Several other troopers received ugly black stains on their plates as they were grazed by more shots, and the squad's third fire team leader narrowly missed death when, at the last possible moment, I was able to deflect a bolt that had been aimed squarely at his faceplate. At the final corridor, however, the squad came under heavy fire from both sides as we were sandwiched between two large groups of hostiles. With my focus dedicated fully toward preserving the lives of my people in the midst of a frantic lightfight, I wasn't able to take a full accounting of what happened next. As I fought desperately against one set of attackers, a trooper from the other set managed to tag me in my left shoulder, piercing my armor and burning the flesh underneath. White-hot agony ripped through my upper arm and left torso, but I managed to bite down on it as I fished for a grenade that I didn't have. Realizing my mistake, I attempted to dive for the deck and chuck my saber at the attackers facing me, but no sooner had I formulated the plan then they themselves came under a withering hail of blasterfire. Third Squad had arrived, and just in time. Ibratu'na's people, having seen what had transpired as they charged the line of hostiles, were spurred on to greater heights. Yelling invective at the tops of their lungs, both squads ran the second enemy formation down, forcing them to break and run. This heroic effort didn't come without cost, however, as two troopers were down and another three more were nursing significant blaster injuries. “Captain, are you alright?” the Twi'lek officer inquired, coming up to me after his and my people gathered themselves back together. “I'll survive,” I bit out. “How are your people? Who'd we lose?” “Privates Dekker and Elbe from Second Squad are dead,” he replied. “Thankfully, the rest are fit to fight despite their wounds. Third Squad is in similar shape, but no fatalities...thanks to this heavier armor.” He pointed to a neat, black gash that a blaster bolt had carved into his helmet, just above where his ear would have been were he a human. “Private Utides is proving to be a good off-hand shooter.” I looked the passageway up and down, noting that the deck at either end was covered in the silver-clad bodies of dead hostiles. At least two of them, however, bore the crimson armor of Sith trooper officers, which seemed to indicate that most of Lieutenant Ibratu'na's people had survived the combined firepower of at least two platoons' worth of crack troops. “Well done, everyone,” I said as Silas teased off my punctured shoulder plate and stuck a medpack to my blaster wound. “Let's get in there and start making a ruckus!” As the two squads breached the room and overwhelmed the techs, gunners and officers that were inside, Lieutenants Dan'kre and Ibratu'na, along with a private from each, kept an eye on me as we watched the corridor. Once the Second Squad sergeant gave the “all clear” signal, a sudden thought occurred to me. “Lieutenant,” I began hesitantly, turning toward the Twi'lek, “where is Jedi Oakes?” Ibratu'na looked uncomfortable for a moment, and I could sense his disquiet even through the effects of the pain and the mild sedative in the heavy-duty kolto patch. “He...he left to join Bastila's team...”
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