Chapter 9 After his master’s declaration, one that seemed to set the bridge crew alight with anticipation, the resulting actions were. . . well, anticlimactic. They didn’t break off from the planet’s orbit, rushing towards the pirate’s last known location. They didn’t call back the shuttles that were already heading for the planet. No, the crew continued working, though with a bit more energy than before. But that was it.

“You seem disappointed, Padawan,” his master observed wryly, reading him like a datapad. “Not matching up to the tales of old? Expected us to go bounding off on a new adventure?”

Jorel flushed with embarrassment. “I, well, no master. I mean, yes,” he admitted, trying to answer both questions at once.

“And why aren’t we?” Er’izma asked, and the younger man could practically feel the eyes of the crew on him.

He wanted to say he didn’t know, but, thinking about it, and everything he’d been doing, it made a certain sense. “Um, we need the supplies here, and while some of them didn’t make it to this planet, some of them did? It’s better to get them now, while we know they’re here, rather than risk something else happening?” The Jedi Knight nodded, motioning for him to continue. “And, if the convoy was hit days ago, an extra few hours won’t matter that much. Will it?”

The larger man nodded, “Good, Padawan. Shore leave will be on hold, and the negotiations for additional supplies will not occur, yet, but logistics is something that cannot be put off. It is hard to hunt on an empty stomach, let alone run a starship. However, there is not that much you can learn by standing here and waiting. Sergeant Hisku’biatha’pusi, if you’ll take my Padawan to inspect the Cranes?”

The blue skinned woman saluted, “Yes, General,” before turning and accidentally smacking Jorel in the leg with her sheathed sword, still getting used to wearing it. Pausing only for a minute, she marched off, Er’izma shaking his head and making a shooing motion, obviously suppressing a chuckle.

>​

Hisku didn’t say anything the entire way there, though, by the time they had arrived, her darkened cheeks, likely with embarrassment, had returned to their normal cerulean hue. The hanger bay, the upper forward one, was busy with activity. No one rushed, but there were ten times as many people as normal, working on all sorts of tasks. Shuttles were being loaded with empty containers and launched, though most of the spaces the small craft normally occupied, parked snugly against the walls, were empty.

Higher up, the purple forms of the other ships, because of course they were purple, hung in racks, but there, too there were some vacancies. The wide, but short, craft were stacked two deep along the walls, though some had been taken down to sit on the Hanger floor, where small teams were going over them. In each team one of the crew was wearing a dark purple flight suit, standing out visually but working with the others.

“Is one of these yours?” Jorel asked, looking a bit more closely at the ships. They’d all been stacked up high every other time he’d been here, and while Hisku had been having him go over the workings of the hangers themselves, those star-craft had been notably glossed over.

The woman, who had been looking around for something, stopped to give him an incredulous look, her pupil-less red eyes well suited for it, before turning her back on him to continue searching.

“So. . . no?” he asked, before pointing out, “Kinda still new to this entire thing, Sergeant.”

She stopped glancing around and sighed, “No, Padawan Jorel, I am, I was, a combat officer, not a pilot. I can fly a shuttle, if I have to, but that’s all.”

“Ah, something else I’ll need to teach you,” he joked, a little surprised when she spun back around, staring at him in disbelief.

“What.”

He shrugged, grinning, “Well, you might not be a pilot, but I am, and since Er’izma-”

“General Er’izma,” she corrected automatically.

“Wants me to get better by teaching,” he continued, having gotten used to the correction, “then it makes sense he’d have me help you get better at piloting.”

She stared at him, her tone not nearly as sure. “The General wouldn’t. . . I’m a combat officer!”

He shook his head slowly. “You were a combat officer, now you’re an attaché to a Jedi pilot. I’m not an Ace, but I’m not exactly ground-bound either. Now, let’s see what it is I’ll likely be flying!”

Turning her back on him once again, rather than admit he might be right, she found what she was searching for. Without another word she marched off, and he followed, coming to a ship that looked like every other, the crew around it completing checks on various systems.

It was odd looking, nothing like the Sprites he’d trained on. The Delta-6 Sprite-class starfighters commissioned for the Jedi were small, lacking in armor or shielding, but with sensor equipment that allowed one in touch with the Force to not need those things. What they lacked in defenses they made up in offense however, the dual laser canons packing far more of a punch than they’d first seem to, allowing a Jedi to take advantage of the overconfidence of his foes. Shots that an enemy shield would normally be able to disperse would punch through, or drain the shield so completely the follow up shots would destroy another fighter completely.

That, combined with extraordinary maneuverability and their small size, made the arrowhead shaped craft deadly in the hands of a Jedi, in way that non-sensitives couldn’t match. What he was looking at, however, seemed to be the opposite of the Jedi Starfighters in every single way.

The center of this fighter was a tapering triangle, flat side leading, two small cannons peering out. The cockpit riding forward instead of aft, large enough for two people, one behind the other. From the tapering sides, two forward sweeping wings emerged, sharply angled, giving the ship a V shape. Two large engines bracketed the central section, and, when the fighters were stored, the wings folded up, giving the ship a triangular profile when looking straight at it, much like a shuttle.

Extended outwards, the armaments were easier to see, two more pairs of canons of differing types, one of each per wing, with what looked like proton torpedo launchers near the ends. Twice as tall as a Jedi Starfighter, it was more than three times its size, and looked to be armored as well. Even with the fighter’s two engines, so large their profile extended above and below the fighter’s wings, though not tall enough to block the pilot’s line of sight, it looked like it’d be a pain to maneuver, at least in anything close to a dogfight.

“Sergeant Zisk’tiashi’logha,” Hisku stated formally, addressing the blue-skinned man in the flight suit who’d turned as they’d approached. He’d been standing on one of the wings and walked to its edge, crouching down to look at them, still a good six feet up. “General Er’izma has instructed me to help familiarize Padawan Jorel Drettz with a Rylooni Mark-33 Crane-class Starfighter.”

The man, who had been smiling, stopped, and turned a cool glance towards Jorel. “Then you’re the one who has knocked Sergeant Hisku off her career path?”

“I think that it was Knight Er’izma that did that,” Jorel pointed out, wondering where the sudden hostility was coming from. He hadn’t been part of the decision, and, as far as he could tell, helping him was a good thing for Hisku, at least the way that Er’izma and Gars had acted about it. “So, can you show me how this thing works, or should we find a different pilot?”

The pilot snorted, “I’m sure someone else can waste their time-”

“Sergeant Zisk’tiashi’logha,” Hisku interrupted. “I would appreciate your assistance.”

“Fine Hissy,” Zisk sighed, ignoring her as she made an angry noise. “C’mon Jedi, If the old man wants it, the old man gets it. Just don’t scuff the paint.”

Shooting a look at Sergeant Hisku, who was glaring at the pilot, Jorel wondered why she’d looked for this jerk in particular. There was a ladder nearby, but Zisk wasn’t waiting for Jorel to get it, already calling over his shoulder, “Come on, Padawan. I’m a busy man.”

Not bothering to get the ladder, a bit of the Force let Jorel leap the ten feet straight up, landing lightly on the wing and follow the blue-skinned man who grunted out an annoyed ‘Hn’, and motioned him over. Despite that, and whatever Jorel had done to offend him, Zisk got to work explaining the ship, using the cockpit as a reference, and its systems.

Jorel had to admit that the man knew his stuff, covering, in exacting detail, every part of the starfighter. The two forward cannons were standard laser cannons, the type one could find on any ship, but, with the ship’s enlarged power generators, could be fired near indefinitely. After the engines, which themselves had redundancies, the first set of canons were ion cannons, meant to disable instead of destroy, but also better at dropping an enemy’s shields. The second set were laser canons, on par with a Sprite’s, but overheated easily, requiring either staggered fire, or short bursts. The launchers were indeed proton torpedo launchers, though each ship only held a loadout of three missiles per launcher, six in total.

The ships could hold a second person, but there wasn’t a lot for them to do. They could watch the sensors, manage power, and help navigate, that was all. Earlier versions had apparently included a back-facing turret. Those had been phased out, but, at Er’izama’s insistence, the extra seat had remained. “You can have a helper, if you need one,” Zisk commented, “and you apparently do.”

With the sound of everyone working, their own conversation was masked, so Jorel looked at the man and asked honestly, “You are aware that I didn’t have a choice, right? That I found out she was assigned to me when she walked into my room?”

“You could’ve said no,” Zisk shot back.

“I offered to,” Jorel parried, “And she said no. That she didn’t want me to ask for someone else.”

The pilot glanced over to the woman in question, who was standing, arms crossed, watching them. “She would,” he admitted, turning back to look at Jorel. “Let’s get something straight, Padawan. I don’t like you.”

“Oh, I never would’ve guessed,” the Jedi replied, deadpan. “How completely unexpected. You’ve been nothing but friendly so far.”

“And if she gets hurt,” the pilot continued unabated, “I’ll hold you responsible.”

Jorel gave him a flat look. “Says the fighter pilot. On the warship. That’s hunting pirates. She’s not the one who’s likely to get hurt.” At the man’s red-eyed glare, Jorel tried another track. “I’m not sure what your problem is, but I don’t care for what you’re implying. Do you think that I’ll try to get her hurt?”

Zisk stared at him, as if he wanted to say yes, before he looked away and let out an explosive breath. “Your kind gets into trouble, is trouble,” he stated as if it were obvious, and Jorel was an idiot for making him say it. “We look after our own, but you aren’t us, whatever the General says, and that means she’s on her own.”

“Who do you think the Jedi are?” the Padawan demanded, insulted at the implication. “We wouldn’t do that!”

“You have,” the pilot replied, looking into the distance, but he didn’t seem to be looking at anything Jorel could see. “Not you, and not the General, but others. ‘No connections’ and ‘for the good of the galaxy’ lets your kind do a lot of things.” He blinked, refocusing on the Jedi. “You might, you might not, but if she dies because of you, I’ll kill you, or die trying.”

The intensity of the emotion coming off the man was enough to create ripples, however small, in the Force. However, while there was anger there, the ripples weren’t really Dark, only. . . there. “She won’t die because of me. At least, not if I can stop it,” he amended, trying to be honest but, for all the man’s antipathy, he wasn’t wrong that a Jedi’s path was often dangerous, but the same could be said for a soldier’s.

They stared at each other for a long moment. “Hn,” the pilot grunted, looking away again. “Best I’ll likely get. So, what do you think of the Crane?”

Glad to be on safer ground, Jorel commented, “It’s a flying tank, and it’s armed like one, but looks like it flies like a shuttle, maybe worse.”

“And what are used to flying? One of those dinky little deathtraps?” Zisk asked disdainfully, though without the seriousness he’d had a moment ago. “What do they call them, Sprats?”

“Sprites, and they’re meant for Force sensitives,” the Padawan stated. “You don’t need to lug around those shields if you never get hit.”

“Anything’s easier to fly when you cheat.” The pilot shook his head, closing up the cockpit as he stood, “And not getting hit? That’s what I’m talking about.” At Jorel’s look, not understanding the comment, the blue skinned man just shook his head again. “Just watch us when we take down those pirates, and you’ll learn, Jedi.”

The two of them walked to the edge, Jorel dropping down to the hanger floor as Sergeant Hisku approached and Zisk crouched down again. “He’s got the basics, Hissy, but he’ll need sim time ‘fore the Old Man’ll let him fly. See ya ‘round,” he called, nodding at Jorel before heading back to his cockpit, the dismissal clear.

Hisku glared at his retreating back, before taking a deep breath, turning to face Jorel. “I apologize, he’s not normally like that,” she stated. “I thought, as he was a pilot. . . I’ll find someone else.”

“What? No, he did a good job, he’s just. . .” he trailed off, trying to figure out how to say ‘a protective dick’ in a way wouldn’t that upset her. He’d only spent a few weeks with her, but he already knew she wouldn’t like that, saying something like ‘I don’t need protecting.’ “Abrasive,” he tried. “But he knew his fighter, and explained it. How do you know him? Since you’re a ‘combat officer’.”

She glanced in Zisk’s direction again. “He. . . We’ve known each other for a while. Since we were children. He’s not normally. . . I thought he was. . . what else did he say?” she demanded.

“That there was a flight simulator,” Jorel commented, answering the question without really answering it. “Why didn’t you mention that? Force knows we’ve seen everything else on this ship.”

“I was showing you the essential systems,” she replied a little defensively. “Flight simulators aren’t essential.”

The Jedi shrugged, grinning a little, “I don’t know, I’d say they’re essential.”

She scoffed, “Then it’s a good thing that I’m the one in charge of determining that.”

One of the engineers nearby laughed. It was a human woman, who called, “Either show him where it is, or lend us a hand over here. You’re getting in the way.”

Sergeant Hisku started to turn to say something, only to stop at the woman’s waiting look. Turning back, she asked Jorel, “Flight simulators?”

“Flight simulators,” he agreed, giving the engineer a thumbs up as Hisku walked away, only for the other woman to roll her eyes and turn back to the fighter. Smiling he quickly caught up to the Sergeant, as they made their way out of the hanger.

>​

It was two days later when Jorel and Sergeant Hisku were summoned to the bridge once more. Er’izma had put off overseeing his padawan’s training, telling the younger man to spend the time improving on his skills and teaching his student. Other than a single chance meeting in a corridor, the Knight hadn’t been around at all.

Walking up to his Master, the blue tunnel of hyperspace eternally unfolding in the bridge’s windows, Jorel wasn’t sure what to say. He wanted to make a ‘long time, no see’ joke, but the somewhat tense mood that was running through the room made him keep his comment to himself.

“Sergeant Hisku’biath’pusi and Padawan Jorel, reporting, sir!” the woman next to him said, saluting, much more comfortable with whatever was going on than he was.

“At ease,” the Knight ordered offhandedly, glancing over his shoulder at them, then going back to staring into the void. “Jorel, what do you think of the Cranes?”

“Uhhh,” the padawan said, buying time, trying to figure out how to put it nicely. He’d been using the simulators to try them out, having successfully convinced Hisku that spending some time ‘familiarizing’ himself with the craft was part of what his Master had ordered. He still hadn’t been able to get her into one, but it was a work in progress. However, the ships were. . . “They’re. . . oddly maneuverable for their size.”

The oversized engines weren’t just for show, and, while the Sprite was still faster, the wider placement of the engines gave the Cranes the ability to turn left or right much more rapidly, spinning about in space quicker than he was used to, one Engine lessening its output and letting the other overpower it. If the Sprite was a saber, elegant, quick, and graceful, the Crane was a club, dense, tough, and able to take you by surprise if you weren’t careful.

He still remembered how Knight Kalrune, who had visited their combat class at the temple, at their teacher’s request, had taken them all on with nothing more than a wooden stick, and defeated them all. It was a Force-infused stick, and he was a Knight, but still, a stick. He wondered how his Master would’ve fared, and who would win if they crossed sabers. Or weapons, at least.

Er’izma nodded sagely at his padawan’s admission, “Crashed on your first attempt?”

“Not really,” Jorel hedged. “Just a little.”

Sergeant Hisku added, “Padawan Jorel destroyed the left wing of his Crane, completely, but passed training program 1-A.”

“Truly?” the older Jedi questioned, giving Jorel an impressed glance.

“I did say I knew how to fly, Master,” the younger man replied, a little defensively. He’d also managed to melt one of his remaining laser cannons, and lost part of the cockpit, but he’d finished the exercise.

“Exiting Hyperspace in 30 seconds,” Major Zara announced, standing off to the side, tablet in hand. “Flights ready. Should we launch?”

The Force around them, which had been rippling with the tension and emotions of those on the bridge, suddenly, almost violently, stilled, becoming a flat, clear plane, like a calm pool, or a mirror. The change was so sudden it caused the younger man to flinch, a feeling like immense gravity, though without any physical component, pushing him down. Even his own reaction, his shock and fear at whatever just hit him, barely echoed in the Force, being shoved down under the surface so only stillness remained. He received a knowing look from his Master, before the moment of artificial peace passed, Er’izma’s Force presence, which had seemed to disappear, slammed back into being, the tumult of the emotions of the others washing over him once more, but not breaking through his shields.

“No, Zara, I believe we’ll find no welcoming committee,” the older man commented. “But send out Alpha Flight, just in case.”

Space reasserted itself as they dropped out of hyper, the stars streaking into stationary dots around them. “Scanners are showing wreckage and asteroids, but they’re spread out. No life signs, but we’re seeing some activity from one of the wrecks,” one of the officers behind them called out.

“Activate Jamming, and destroy it,” Er’izma commanded, as a squadron of seven Cranes shot out from the hanger below them, pulling up and out of the open space in the battleship’s forked hull.

“Jamming activated,” A Rodian replied. The Dove turned slowly, the capital ship’s maneuvering thrusters working to swing the enormous ship about, just in time to see the Cranes finish a strafing run on the blown-out section of what looked to be the front half of a freighter. The metal disintegrated under the barrage, all that left was a rapidly expanding cloud of gasses and metal flecks.

“Signal has stopped,” the first officer called, “no other signals detected.”

Er’izma gazed out over the empty space, far away from any star system. “Stop Jamming. Send the recovery teams to the hulks, see if there’s anything useful. Have Astrogation search for any nearby stations, routes, systems, or other places they could be hiding,” he rattled off, tone becoming inquisitive as he prompted, “Tell me, Padawan, what do you see? Why did the Pirates use this as their ambush point?”

As the others on the crew started typing away, speaking quietly into their commlinks, Jorel studied the area, accepting a data slate from another officer and looking over the ship’s sensor readings.

It wasn’t just what he could see out of his window, this area of space was desolate, a few asteroids floating about, with bits of a dozen destroyed ships here and there. There didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to any of it, but he found himself looking back to one bit of ship near the edge, a few destroyed cargo containers that’d been mashed together like they’d collided and spot-welded together. It just seemed. . . out of place, for reasons that he couldn’t place, drawing his attention like a loadstone.

The ship’s sensors didn’t pick anything up, but there was an option to call for a more targeted scan, which he used. “I. . . I think there’s something there,” he said, pointing to it as the Dove slowly turned to face it. “I’m not sure what.”

A moment later the scan completed, showing an inactive tug, the space equivalent of a tow-speeder, hiding within. With that information, suddenly things started to make sense.

“It’s. . . they’re making a mass shadow,” Jorel said, seeing the parts of the whole coming together, in more than one way. “It wouldn’t be a large one, but if you moved the asteroids together, along with the wreckage, it’d drop a ship out of hyperspace. Maybe”

The gravity wells created by large objects extended into hyperspace, creating the phenomena known as a ‘mass shadow’. Running into one of those invisible hazards while in hyperspace was almost always fatal, so hyperdrives had built in safeties that would drop a ship out when it got too close to one. The small mass shadow made by pushing these asteroids together wouldn’t be enough to actually damage a ship, the intensity of the gravitational gradient was too low, but it might be enough to trip the safeties. Maybe not even the safeties of every ship, only half, or even a few, leaving them to be jumped by the pirates.

“Indeed,” Er’izma agreed, a shuttle already on its way towards the hidden craft. “While it may not be dropping a tree across the road, it would still be effective. Now, let us see if these pirates are as sloppy as they are clever.”

Less than five minutes later, the team reported that they ‘had the nav data’, which caused the bridge to break out in quiet laughter. “And they are,” the Knight announced, turning to his Padawan to explain. “While most tugs aren’t hyperdrive equipped, the computers used for them are, allowing them to be upgraded easily. All hyperdrive capable ships take note of the systems they are in, in order to make return trips possible. It’s a safety feature. And that, of course, means that. . .” he trailed off meaningfully.

“That if the pirates took it to their base, it’d have that location as well,” Jorel completed. “But wouldn’t they wipe it?”

“If I hadn’t told you about it, would you?” his Master inquired, before looking down at his own data slate, and smiling. “And neither did they. Hmm. With our speed, they’ll have six hours to prepare, even if they don’t know that we found their location. Major Zara, activate the backup hyperdrive.”

The woman nodded stiffly, sending commands from her computer.

Jorel, however, was confused. “Master?” he asked, hesitantly. “Your solution to the enemy having too much time to prepare. . . is to go slower?” Most ships had a backup hyperdrive, as a ship in hyperspace that lost their hyperdrive was trapped there, forever, if their main drive failed. However, due to the price of hyperdrives, as well as the space they took up, most ship’s secondary hyperdrives were normally a class ten or less, taking ten times as long to arrive at their destination, or even longer, than a class one. Better than nothing, but not by much.

“Whatever makes you say that, my young apprentice?” the older man replied guilelessly, Major Zara looking straight ahead in a way that seemed to express that she wanted to roll her eyes but was too professional for such things.

If he hadn’t been hip-deep in reports, and contracts, and every other Sith-spawned form of paperwork for the past several weeks, Jorel new he would’ve been lost, but reading through a frankly stunning number of soldiers going ‘well it isn’t technically against regulations had started him thinking in those directions.

Jorel looked his Master straight in the eye and asked, deadpan, “There’s no limit on the class of your backup hyperdrive, like there is on your main hyperdrive. Is there?”

Er’izma smiled, “And why should there be? Everyone knows you use your better hyperdrive as your main. And, if off of major lanes, we arrived faster than one would expect? An inspection of the ship would show our Hyperdrive is a class five.” Turning to the Major, he continued, “Recall Alpha flight, and tell the others to get ready. In two and a half hours, we strike.”