Chapter 11

Once again, Jorel was on the bridge of the Dove, Sergeant Hisku beside him, both of them standing off to the side to observe. He’d told his master he could help, who’d in turn asked, “That familiar with our tactics, are you? I wasn’t aware I’d given them to you for study.” Rather than dig himself in any deeper, he’d just stayed silent and let his master continue.

At the edges of his perception, he could feel the Force swirl with energy, a feeling that had slowly increased the closer they’d gotten to their destination. It wasn’t churning with agitation, but eddied with anticipation, somewhere between Light and Dark, with elements of both. Taking a deep breath, he centered himself, letting the feeling slide past him. Glancing to his right, he saw Hisku was anxious, fingering the hilt of her sword while keeping otherwise still.

She caught his anxious look, and returned with one of her own, hers a little challenging as she raised an eyebrow in a ‘yes?’ gesture. He just smiled, roguishly, which caused her to roll her crimson orbs, breaking eye contact and facing forward, towards Er’izma and the windows showing the ever-shifting tunnel of Hyperspace.

“Arrival in ninety seconds!” one of the bridge crew announced, and Er’izma gave his apprentice a warning glance.

Bracing for it helped, as his master smothered the Force Presence of the ship, leaving nothing but a blank canvas from which to better hear the will of the Force itself. Jorel, too, tried to reach out, and could catch the barest hint of something in front of them.

It was Dark, though nothing close to Anaïs’s Master, however the feeling was also nowhere near as pure as that Jedi Master’s aura either. It felt sticky, and fetid, like catching a whiff of old garbage two rooms away, with a mix of Pain-Greed-Sadism jumbled together in an unpleasant cloud.

However, while to Jorel it was an incomprehensible mix of nastiness, to his master it seemed something else entirely. The Knight nodded, the pressure vanishing, and commanded, “At ten seconds, launch Alpha and Beta flights.

The Force presence of the ship, the chaotic jumble of every being’s emotions splashed together, quickly spun itself into a complex web as the time ticked down, aligning in unity of a common purpose. Jorel himself felt the push to join in, but resisted the pull of their collected emotions, as he’d been trained to.

He’d studied these kinds of confrontations enough to know how they’d go. The capital ship would exit Hyperspace and be vulnerable as it released its fighters. The defenders would have their ships scattered around, any fighters already out and ready to fight, along with any defensive emplacements. While the exact position of where their ship would drop out of hyperspace would be fairly random, the general location could be guessed, and the defenses would be arranged to quickly adapt to wherever they entered real-space. One could drop out farther away, giving onself more time to set up, but also losing any element of surprise, allowing one’s opponents to bring their defenses online if they weren’t already readied for an attack.

It was a matter of who knew what. If the defenders were ready and waiting, or well-trained enough that they could respond in under a minute, it was better to drop out early. However, if they weren’t that prepared then that first critical minute could be spent by the capital ship wreaking havoc and disgorging its fighters right next to their targets.

From what he could tell, his master would drop out as close as he could, taking advantage of either the pirates’ ignorance of their arrival, or their expectation of their ship’s arrival in several hours instead of right this moment. From there, after the initial barrage, the fighters would launch, and the battle would commence in full.

Jorel was half right.

Ten seconds before they were set to arrive, he caught the flicker of movement as Cranes started to launch from the forward bays while the ship was still in hyperspace. That’s suicide! he thought, watching in shocked disbelief. Fighters that left a ship in Hyperspace were either stranded in that other realm forever, unless they had a Hyperdrive of their own, which the Cranes thankfully did, or came out of Hyper so off the mark that they’d either have to make a jump without a hyperspace lane or take days to get back to their intended battlefield using sublight engines. Ignoring how risky it was to make a lane-less jump, there was a reason that ships waited until they entered real space before launching their fighters! To do what he was seeing meant they’d be scattered all across the system, at best, and more likely run headlong into the gravity wells of any nearby stellar body, destroying themselves instantly!

Only, that didn’t happen.

The smaller ships moved lethargically, much more slowly than they could if they wanted, flying down the twin tines of the Dove’s hull, and, as the lines of hyperspace streaked down to points of light, each one a different star in the void of space, the Cranes dropped out with them. In an instant the fighters’ engines flared to full blast, twisting upwards and downwards in two groups even as a second pair of squadrons emerged, the battlefield map on the holo-display showing more groups of starfighters being launched from the Dove’s side hangers.

Before them was a space station, built into a large asteroid, or maybe a small moon, easily over a dozen corvettes and frigates hanging around it, a few still docked. The planet it hung above glowed a dull red with tectonic activity, another dark blue world in the distance, and a dull red star at the center of the system shone like a baleful, unblinking eye.

A single cruiser, larger than the others but still likely dwarfed by the Dove, peeked out from the other side of the moon, slowly moving out of sight. It was likely getting in position to surprise them, and would have had they arrived ‘on time’.

Jorel looked over the battlefield and weighed it against what he knew of the Dove’s capabilities. They still would win, but it was going to be a close thing, far more ships here than they’d been told about by Er’izma’s supplier. In addition to the enemy ships were several dozen gun platforms, small single turbolaser satellites, spread out around the base, their turrets already starting to swing towards his ship’s position, but most never got the chance to fire.

The Dove’s guns thundered in a chorus of destruction, having aimed in mere seconds, the muted sounds running through the hull as their turbolasers obliterated the closest platforms, the blue bolts from their ion cannons arcing out toward the two nearest corvettes, at first splashing against shields before striking true, actinic blue lightning playing across their hulls.

The flights of Cranes, six, then ten, then fourteen, each consisting of six ships, streaked out, guns blazing, each one carving a path of destruction through the turrets and hidden mines, which Jorel hadn’t noticed until they’d started to explode.

The Force presence of his master seemed to flow outwards in a torrent of power, the Legion-In-One that was the Jedi Knight’s aura spreading out, seeming to infuse itself with the bridge crew, then everyone on the ship, then the pilots careening across space in front of them. Jorel could feel it against his Mental Shields, not pressing, just offering aid.

Hesitantly, he took it, and could feel the crew around him in the Force as if they were Jedi themselves, all connected and moving with a singular purpose, words not needed to convey understanding, all still individuals, but sharing a communal consciousness.

Battle Meditation, the Padawan thought, and understood. It was a rare technique, both because of the power it required to use and of how useless it was to the modern Jedi. It allowed one to take control of a group of soldiers, raising their spirits, helping them to work at peak efficiency, and sometimes beyond. With their roles as peace-keepers and diplomats, it was a skill that wasn’t even mentioned in his training, one that Jorel had only heard about by studying historical accounts to try to find a way to improve himself, in order to be chosen by a Jedi Knight.

The accounts had been vague, only speaking of an ‘upwelling of spirits’ and of the Jedi who performed it directing the group as if they were his or her own body. Feeling it was something else entirely.

He could feel his ‘spirits’ raise, in a way, but it wasn’t a rising feeling of hope, it was the calm confidence of someone performing a well-practiced skill. That this was not his first battle, even though it was, nor would it be his last, but just another clash he’d weather, like he felt like he had countless times before. Even though he hadn’t.

Looking out over the battle, feeling it instinctively, he was better able to pick out the details he’d missed before. The movement of the enemy ships as they frantically tried to move into position, undocking as fast as they could, their ill-maintained weapons sluggishly moving into position, charging up and ready to fire.

The Dove’s guns were discharged once more, not the cavalcade of fire that it had been before, but a single shuddering pulse as they went off as one, a wall of plasma and ion lashing out at a corvette, overwhelming its shields and blowing flaming craters in its hull as the ship broke in two. The lights of the ship flickered in the forward half, its guns blindly firing, even as the back half detonated in a flash of deadly luminescence.

While an impressive display, it was the Cranes that benefited the most from the technique, the sixteen flights coming together in three large groups, twisting and spinning together in dizzying patterns, moving so close to each other that Jorel worried they’d crash, even as he knew they wouldn’t, the fire from their lasers falling upon everything before them in waves, leaving trails of destruction in their wake.

The pirate ship’s guns fired into the mass of starfighters, assured of hitting something, only for the swarm to part, twirling around in the way that only they could, the turbolaser shots passing harmlessly through the groups as they fell on a corvette, ion bolts, then lasers, like glowing rain, blasting into and overwhelming its shields, then ripping it to pieces.

Starfighters started to pour out of the pirate's base, more emerging out of the remaining corvettes and frigates, who themselves were firing on the Dove to no avail, the battleship’s shields holding steady. Her small point defense canons shot sporadically, almost lazily, every time blowing an enemy missile or torpedo out of the metaphorical sky, and he could almost feel the minds of the crews, calmly picking off each projectile as it closed on their ship, their home.

The pirates’ fighters were a rag-tag mix of ship types, with bombers, interceptors, and others all together with no rhyme or reason. The Cranes, multipurpose superiority fighters, moved with a unity of purpose.

It was no contest.

One of the three combined flights peeled off, the other two descending on a corvette, even as the Dove destroyed another frigate. The pirate fighters opened fire, and Jorel expected the Cranes to dodge those as well, but they absorbed the shots on their shields, blasting forward at close to full speed, their shifting formation making sure that no one ship got hit hard enough to drop their defenses and take true damage.

As they neared each other, the groups on a seeming collision course, some of the pirates broke, going wide, while others tried to bully their way through. The Cranes turned, twisting with only slight changes in direction, flying sideways in a way that made Jorel’s head hurt until he realized they’d turned off their stabilizers, the things that allowed a ship to fly in space as if it were atmosphere, and without which spaceflight became nearly impossible.

However, impossible it wasn’t, as they used their positioning thrusters to roll their ships, seemingly flying straight up in the frictionless battlefield, keeping their forward guns on their chosen targets even as they passed feet away from them, lighting them up at point blank range.

The pirate ships that tried to pass through detonated in clouds of expanding, fiery shrapnel, as well as those that’d tried to pull away too late, but the Cranes were already past them all, twisting back to their original positions before swooping out and around, stabilizers re-engaged as they chased after the remaining enemy fighters en-masse.

Those groups devolved to a dog-fight, but while an individual pirate would gain an advantage, landing three or four hits on the same Crane, before they could break through that Crane’s shield another would be there, interposing itself between the pirate and the vulnerable vessel, while two more would box in the more competent fighter, blasting it apart with their more powerful weapons.

While this was going on, the other two flights, each consisting of five squadrons, destroyed the remaining corvettes, just as much of a mishmash as the starfighters were, while the Dove took on the larger, more powerful frigates.

While not as visually showy, the crew of the Dove were just as busy as the fighter pilots, teams working every turbolaser, engineers monitoring ship systems to handle the stress on the shields, part of him could even feel what was normally the kitchen staff handling the smaller aspects of a dozen other jobs, while the specialists handled the more difficult tasks.

The pirate cruiser, having had to turn around, started to emerge back from where it’d disappeared into, several small squadrons of fighters speeding ahead of it to try to join the fight and tip it in their favor. Jorel expected some of the Crane flight still in the middle of the dogfight to peel off and meet them, but they didn’t, nor did they redouble their efforts, smoothly and almost mechanically continuing to eliminate the last of the pirate fighters that had come from their base.

However, even as the whisper of Battle Meditation told Jorel that the smart thing to do would be to try a bombing run on the Dove, in order to weaken it for the cruiser’s capital ship scale weapons, the new wing of pirate starfighters tried to attack the Cranes who were mopping up the last of the small craft from the asteroid base.

Watching it, the purple-hued ships almost seemed alive themselves as they pulled away from the pirates as they were attacked, once more covering each other with their combined shields. The pirates followed, firing as the Cranes seemed to flee, but then, in a cloud of shifting metal, turned, and charged.

This time, however, they didn’t disengage their stabilizers, going through with a much more standard mass firing pass with their secondary lasers, their main weapons likely needing to recharge from the protracted dogfight they’d just been in. The Cranes, having made it to the other side of the pirate squadrons, turned down and away, starting to run away again even as a second flight of Cranes swooped in on the pirates from above, primary guns blazing.

The first flight, the one that had seemed to run, spun around and engaged their thrusters, only able to squeeze out two volleys of fire from their main laser cannons before their internal batteries ran out again, the more powerful weapons power-intensive. However it was enough, both sets of Cranes closing on the pirate squadron like a pair of plasma jaws, destroying all but a few in moments, the last survivors easily taken down by the combined fifty-six ships, not having suffered a single loss themselves.

The third flight, which had been on a run skimming close to the pirate base’s surface as they eliminated it’s defensive weaponry, pulled back and caught up with the other two groups, as the full force turned and sped towards the pirate cruiser, which had been trading shots with the Dove.

Jorel knew their ship could’ve easily destroyed the cruiser, but they had merely dropped the smaller ships shields, before carefully destroying its weapon emplacements, its gunners wielding meter-wide bolts of plasma like scalpels.

He could feel something coming, a mental firing solution lining up from a hundred minds, and then they pulled a hundred triggers. Every ion cannon available, both on the Dove, and on every single Crane, having had time to recharge, fired, a wave of prismatic blue-white that struck the cruiser in a wave, overwhelming even its extensive, likely hardened systems, the lights on the ship flickering before going dark.

The entire fight had taken less than five minutes, and he wanted to relax, but the Battle Meditation persisted, and he could feel others moving, as more ships launched from the Dove. Looking out the window, it only confirmed what he already knew. It was the shuttles.

They spread out in three directions, each one, he somehow knew, packed with soldiers in armor. The smallest group headed out to the two corvettes that’d been disabled in the opening moments, the middle towards the newly disabled cruiser, and the largest, almost half of all the shuttles that’d launched, flew as fast as they could for the Pirate’s base.

Even with Knight Er’izma’s Battle Meditation there, whispering to him what would be best, Jorel didn’t understand why they were doing that. Were they going to board the ships? He could understand the base, that was where the supplies they were after probably were, but not the ships. Thankfully, he had an expert right next to him.

“Sergeant Hisku,” he whispered, mentally withdrawing from his master’s technique, the sound easily carrying over the completely silent bridge, something he hadn’t noticed until he’d broken it. She didn’t seem to hear him, staring out the windows towards the pirate’s asteroid base.

He looked around, noticing most of the crew similarly focused, almost enraptured, with their tasks. Major Zara however, was staring straight at him with her cold, stony stare, a single eyebrow raised. Knight Er’izma was even focused, gazing out the window with an unblinking stare, but, holding the Battle Meditation together, that was to be expected. The fact that the man was still standing at all, the technique always done seated for a reason, was a testament to his strength.

Turning back to the blue-skinned woman again, Jorel tried again. “Sergeant Hisku,” he whispered again, a little louder, only to get no response. Carefully reaching over and poking her had her brush his arm away, still watching the asteroid. “Hey, Hissy,” he tried, going for broke.

“What did you call me?” she demanded instantly, head snapping around to stare at him, before blinking, looking around the bridge, eyes glassy but quickly returning to normal. “What. . .?”

“Sergeant Hisku,” he told her, which was true, from a certain point of view. “I wanted to know, I get you’re putting troops on the base, but why the ships?”

He pointed over at the corvettes and the cruiser as she looked at him, confused. “That. . .” she trailed off shaking her head, focusing on him. “That’s for prisoners, to transport them.”

“And the cruiser?” he asked.

“Parts,” she shrugged, as if that answered everything.

Jorel could see most of the Crane flights returning to the ship, three left flying in a patrol around the system as the Dove continued its slow flight towards the base. “So, how do you take a base like that?” he asked, since she was available for questions.

At her uncomprehending look, he explained, “As a Jedi, well, I’d likely sneak on-board and try to find key systems, sabotaging them, maybe setting the entire thing to explode before sneaking back out. Not, well, this,” he waved at the wreckage that dotted the area around the pirates base, purple shuttles stuck to the hulls of the disabled ships like metallic parasites, but some were already peeling off and starting to fly back toward their vessel.

“The first group is the strike teams,” she said, falling back to the calm tones and relaxed but formal stance she always took when instructing. “Their mission is to secure key systems. Power generation, command, engines, if it’s a ship, and the mission critical targets, if there are any. In this case, it would be our supplies which were stolen. Once there they hold their ground, keeping the enemy from overloading systems. The second group starts sweeping, assisted by the first, eliminating hostiles and taking prisoners, when possible. Once major opposition is eliminated they hold the hangers, allowing the third group, the engineers, to arrive and fully secure the target, going room to room to clear it completely, if it’s a claimed target, or to extract the mission critical objects and personnel, if it is not,” she rattled off.

As they watched, the shuttles had returned, some already leaving the ship for their destinations once more. Jorel started to reply, only for their ship to fire a single ion cannon, hitting one of the disabled corvettes. “The enemy probably got their systems back on-line. That would have shut them back down long enough for our people to secure the bridge.”

Compared to the practical ballet of space combat he’d just watched, waiting for the ground troops to do their job was, well, boring, Jorel thought. Likely terribly exciting for those fighting though. Even sinking back into the battle meditation Knight Er’izma still kept running gave him no extra insight, only urging him to stay where he was.

Pushing his way out of that once more, he closed his eyes, meditating, trying to reach out in the Force, and nearly recoiled at what he felt there. The Force was in chaos, the Dark simmering in the area with the strength of several thousand deaths, more still happening on the cruiser and the pirate’s asteroid base, keeping the Force rolling with cold maliciousness on a level he’d only felt once before.

His hands clenched into fists tightly at the memory, one that he’d done his best to suppress, to ignore like the Temple’s instructors commanded him to, again and again, and which he never could. This time they were the attackers however, but it was not the same. He did not feel the grief, the sorrow that the other Jedi said he should feel, watching these pirates die, sensing each one perish distantly through the Force, he only felt cold satisfaction.

“Jorel?” Hisku, asked, voice low, and his eyes opened, broken from his thoughts. “Are you alright?”

He looked to her, still sensing his surroundings through the Force and her presence seemed. . . stronger, almost like an Initiate’s, bolstered as it was by Er’izma’s Battle Meditation. She felt. . . guarded, but worried, yet even that worry itself was guarded. “I, I’m fine,” he lied, pulling his emotions back under control, even as they threatened to roil upwards again. “Just bad memories. This isn’t the first time I’ve fought pirates, not that I’m actually doing anything right now.”

“You are learning, Padawan,” Er’izma’s voice intoned, which, while calm, cut across the Bridge like a knife. The man should’ve been stressed, trying to handle such a large technique, but instead sounded calm, almost emotionless. “You must watch the Dance before you can join in it fully. It is the height of arrogance to believe that, because you can hear the Force, you are competent in all things. That skill in one field confers skill in all. Soon enough you will begin your own movements, when you are ready, not before.”

The certainty in the older man’s voice was absolute, his words as if they were carved from stone, firm, resolute, and completely unlike his normal, joking tone. Jorel just nodded, not knowing what else to say. Distantly, he could feel the rate of deaths slowing, the distant points of Darkness that were their deaths flashing into the Force less and less. The presence of Er’izma’s soldiers shone like a network of glowing corral in the black miasma that was the Force right now, sharp and resolute, though even now the choking clouds were starting to dissipate. The Dark side thinned as it spread out, the constants black starbusts of death, like a staccato drumbeat of hate and rage, no longer keeping the cloud of greasy despair together and concentrated.

Jorel, watching the spread of the Dark Side throughout the Force in this system, noticed its odd nature. It didn’t move out equally in all directions, but every new death called it together in the area in swirling pulses, as if it were attracted to the new point of cold, unfeeling nothingness in the Force, causing it to twist and condense in ways that seemed almost organic, like a giant slime mold underneath the surface of the universe.

On one level, he could understand the intrinsic revulsion so many Jedi had to the Dark Side. It was ugly, and filthy, and everything the Light was not. But that didn’t make it any less real. It was like ignoring the fact that sewers existed, which, in the light and airy halls of the temple, one easily could. However, just because sewers were necessary didn’t mean you should put them through a kitchen, and just because filthy things weren’t intrinsically evil didn’t mean he wanted to touch the mess in front of him.

Not again.

“How long will that take to. . .” he trailed off as he realized that now, in the middle of combat, might not be the time to ask.

However, his master replied, in that perfectly placid voice, “A decade or two, before it fades completely. The lack of any life nearby will extend it, whereas even a single colony nearby would cut that it half, though they would suffer for it. Now, we are almost done, so please remain silent.”

Jorel did just that, watching the screens of the nearby consoles, several made of a thin grid of images, every cell moving. It took him a moment to realize they were views from the soldiers, and, focusing, he could barely make them out. Most were fairly stable, people standing guard, but a number were moving, the flashes of light probably the exchange of blaster-fire.

Less than fifteen minutes later it was done, the deaths having stopped and the fighting over. The presence of Er’izma’s Legion, an undeniable truth in the Force, faded. The Knight took a long, shuddering breath before standing up straight. He seemed a little tired, but otherwise as if he was ready to do the entire thing again.

The effects rippled outwards; the others on the bridge also relaxed, starting to communicate through words once more, not the near-telepathy that Battle Meditation provided. The quiet whispers as those all around Jorel communicated into their microphones rose once more and breaking that crystal clear, and crystal sharp, silence.

Jorel’s master accepted a drink from a lieutenant, sipping it as he walked over to his student. “So,” he commented with a smile. “What did you think of your first engagement, Padawan?”

The young man considered the situation. His training in the Temple would say what they did, arriving and killing en masse, was wrong. On the other hand, these were pirates, who had attacked innocents without mercy. As a Jedi, he was supposed to try to find a peaceful way to end a confrontation, but there was no way the pirates would have surrendered. He would’ve thought they would have lost the fight, had he not known how powerful the Dove and her Cranes were, and the Pirates likely thought them overconfident merely because of the size of their ship.

Even then, knowing what the Dove could do, he hadn’t expected what he’d just seen, how completely one-sided the seemingly close fight had been.

“How many did we lose?” he asked instead. All of the Cranes had returned intact, and their shields had held throughout the fight, even if they had gotten a little low, but infantry usually-

“Losses?” Er’izma smiled. “We suffered no losses. A few soldiers will need Bacta time, but that’s all.”

Jorel’s thoughts ground to a halt. That made no sense. He’d remembered his studies of large-scale warfare, and of the technique he’d just seen used. One of the main strengths of Battle Meditation was that it allowed soldiers to fight, even if they were to die, paradoxically winning battles with a fraction of the losses they would’ve suffered otherwise. “But, that’s not how Battle Meditation works!” he finally replied, feeling almost like Anaïs did whenever she got something wrong in training.

While Sergeant Hisku looked horrified at his arguing with her commander, the man just smiled even more widely. “Then you knew what that was? I did choose well. Tell me, Jorel, what you read emphasized sacrificing the few for the whole, the few for the many, correct?” Jorel nodded, not sure how else to respond. “But my Flock is worth much, much more than the lives of a few pirates,” the large Jedi noted, with just a hint of scorn. “If there is no other option, then yes, they are willing to sacrifice their lives, but to throw them away merely for a faster, or more assured victory, especially when the stakes were this low?”

The Knight laughed, shaking his head, “No. My duty is to my crew, and I’d be a terrible commander to spend their lives like that. Now, with all the fun done, we can start the real work.” At his Padawan’s uncomprehending look, he laughed again. “Logistics. We’ve acquired quite a bit of goods, a number of prisoners, and an enormous amount of scrap. Now we get to sort through it, and see what we can use. A Jedi should never be wasteful, after all,” he grinned.

Jorel was pretty sure that wasn’t what Master Dystara meant, when getting the younglings to eat their vegetables, but he couldn’t disagree that it still held true. However, a horrible thought struck him. “We’re. . . oh by the Force, we’re going to have to log everything out there, aren’t we?”

His master’s booming laughter wasn’t comforting in the slightest.