Rage Against The Dark Ch 13

Good afternoon folks! Chapter hot off the press as it were. Hope you enjoy it.

Drop me a comment and lemme know!

=][=

I used telekinesis to slam down a bulkhead I’d cut out into the large hallway, immediately creating a chest high piece of cover that my boys exploited, allowing them to ignore the majority of the fire that the droids were throwing at us. Boom Box got unlucky and a blaster bolt took him on the shoulder, twisting him around and dropping him to the deck.

I stood shoulder to shoulder with my boys, melting droid heads with single shots from my Hellgun as Aegis dragged Boom Box back, getting him to her sister, who used magic and the Force to heal him.

A squad of super battle droids turned the corner at the next intersession. I mentally activated my helmet’s comm unit via my HUD. “Charlotte, take my spot in the line.”

Not waiting for her reply I dropped my Hellgun, its cable retracting into the backpack power supply assembly, drew my bolt pistol in my left hand and called my blue lightsaber into my right, then with the Force augmenting my movements I dashed forward, felling two SBDs with three shots in the two seconds it took me to cross the forty meters separating us. After that, swift, precise cuts with the lightsaber saw the other eight cut into pieces.

I ducked back around the corner, cut out another bulkhead and telekinetically moved it to create Fort Rylanor, fifteenth of its name. I switched back to my Hellgun and poured ruinous blue light upon the next batch of battle droids in my way as the three squads of clones and my girls abandoned Fort Rylanor the fourteenth and caught up to me.

The battle to take the Malevolence had been ongoing for the better part of an hour. With Grievous gone, we had to assume he’d left orders to scuttle the ship.

Anakin wasn’t about to have that, and the moment Obi-Wan arrived with the Battlegroup, Anakin had ordered the 501st to board and take over the ship.

Much to Obi-Wan’s consternation.

Which served me just fine, as it turned out, the Malevolence was too big for my Stamp to be able to claim it just by stamping the hull. I’d claimed a section of the hull, but if I wanted to claim the ship itself, I’d need to Stamp its reactor, hyperspace engine core, and its droid brain.

The scuttling of any of those systems would delay my stamping until they were repaired. And with Papa Palps Probably and Properly Panicking as he Pondered Pompously, I’d likely have a very limited window of opportunity to stamp the ship before any shenanigans were made to happen.

Which led to my current activities.

The moment we’d secured a foothold in the Malevolence, I’d ordered Rex to give me a platoon to break past the droid front lines, our objective was to take over engineering to prevent the Separatists scuttling the ship, or worse, overloaded the reactor, and hold it until Anakin, Rex, and the 501st could catch up.

Obi-Wan had been livid when he’d found out, but by that time I had already pierced through the Droid lines and said breach had been closed behind me.

Anakin had just laughed.

I now had a full quarter of Torrent Company with me, a layout of the ship provided by R2D2, and the type of urgency only greed can provide.

The Battle Droids were honestly doing their best, but they were disorganized. Going by what I heard on the officers’ comms circuit, the droids were fighting less like a large cohesive force, and more like isolated groups that the clones could destroy piecemeal, our ‘line’ was advancing steadily but slowly, having to clear each room and hallway. Fully taking the Malevolence looked to be a long, grueling, and bloody affair.

It was the work of twenty more minutes to arrive at Engineering. The only reason it took that little time was that the area we’d breached was close to the middle of the ship, that had still necessitated a fast and reckless advance through three kilometers of enemy held ground.

This feat cost me three of my boys. Ribs, Ankles, and Graviton, I’d ordered the bodies stripped of all equipment we could carry and had stashed their bodies in maintenance tunnels where they would hopefully not be desecrated before I could retrieve them. The only ones who hadn’t taken a blaster bolt at one point during the operation were myself, my girls, and Sergeant Slippery. But my decision to purchase two healers…well, okay, one healer and Aegis’ plea to also purchase her sister had proven the wisdom in always bringing a healer.

Securing Engineering was not difficult, most of the droids present were maintenance models, not battle droids. I did have to leave the fortification and defense to the clones while Charlotte and I worked at disabling the many explosive charges that the maintenance droids had been setting up, something which may well have proven impossible without the Science and Engineering Talents boosting my understanding of the many blueprints and other technical knowledge shoved into my neural implants.

After that it was all over but for the shooting, as the hyperdrive core could not be overloaded for a detonation without a massive spike from the ship’s reactor, which I now controlled. That said, as I looked at the genuine marvel of engineering and ship building that was this oversized piece of scrap metal and the fact that the reactor itself was largely undamaged by the destruction of the ship’s main armament…

“Girls, I have an idea.” I said as I looked over the design specs for the reactor as well as the Ion Casters, which were apparently called Ion Pulse Cannons which…I liked my name better, so from now on they were Ion Casters.

“Is it a good idea?” Aegis asked.

“Nope.” I said. “But we’re doing it anyways. Aegis, Iris, with me. Charlotte, Sussurro, stay here and help the boys hold this location, it is paramount we don’t lose control of engineering.”

“What will you be doing, sir?” Slippery asked, by the feeling in the Force, voicing the question that was burning within the whole platoon.

My helmet hid my bloodthirsty grin as I began rerouting power. “I’m gonna go take care of the droids.”

“Very well sir.” Slippery said, and that was that.

The sheer level of trust the clones had on me was heartening. As soon as I was done rerouting power, I pulled Iris and Aegis deeper into engineering. “Not much time to explain so answer my questions quickly and do what I say without questioning me.” I ordered. “Iris, can you turn us invisible?”

“Yes.” She said. “But after all the healing I’ve been doing, I’m rather low in mana. I can’t keep it up indefinitely, so we’d have to do it in bursts. It’ll also hide us from each other, as, well…we’ll be invisible.”

I grunted as I got out a couple lengths of rope from my backpack and tied it around their waists, then to my own. “Good enough. Aegis, keep an eye and ear out for your sister. Iris, whenever you or your sister detect an enemy, turn us invisible. We’ll only engage enemy units if we absolutely have to. Understood?”

“Yes sir.” Aegis said, standing up straighter. Iris merely nodded.

With that, I set a nav-point in our helmets’ HUDs and began walking, pulling them in the direction of one of the doors leading to and from Engineering. I felt Iris’ spell take hold a moment before I opened the gate leading out of engineering, her spell actually made it so I couldn’t see my own body, I could see the inside of my helmet without a problem, but placing my hand in front of my face, I couldn’t see it.

The reason for the spell became apparent as a few dozen B-1 battle droids came into view, milling around at mid-range from the huge metal doors.

+Hey, who opened the door?+ One of them asked in their high-pitched modulated voice.

+I didn’t.+ Came the immediate answer from another one as I had to crush my instinct to draw one of my guns and my lightsaber and jump into the fray.

+Of course you didn’t, you were standing right here.+ Chastised another.

After a lengthy silence, one of them managed to work all the way through their logic routines. +Should we move forward?+

+We should ask command.+ Said one with a red strip painted on its face and red accents on its chassis.

+Roger roger.+

That one ‘Roger roger’ set off a chain reaction.

Not daring to use my communicator, I walked forward, pulling on the ropes until I was certain the girls were past the door, then closed it.

This, of course, did not go unnoticed.

+Oh! The door is closing!+ One of them astutely said…well, astutely for a B-1 battle droid.

+What should we do?+ Asked the one that proposed moving into engineering earlier.

+I’ll ask command.+ Red-Stripe insisted.

+Roger roger.+

+Roger roger.+

+Roger roger.+

+Roger roger.+

Red-Stripe waited for the rogers to end before speaking. +Command. This is B-1-C98-V259. The doors to engineering are closed…Yes they are closed…yes…yes…But you said to inform you of any changes…Yes they are closed…Weird, command hung up.+

Leaving the droids behind to wallow in their confusion and their ‘roger roger’s, I let Iris take the lead, as she was the one that knew how long she could keep the invisibility going. Our trek paradoxically felt much longer than the running firefight to Engineering, but was actually significantly faster, even including the fact that we had to quite often stop at a corner and wait for Iris to rest enough to cast the invisibility spell again.

The assault to take Engineering took an hour and twenty minutes, the trek to the Ion Casters, a distance that was almost one and a half times as far, took less than half the time. Seriously, perfect invisibility was broken, I needed to figure out a way to automate it. Once we arrived, what we found was a dark, cavernous chamber intermittently illuminated by flickering lights and sparks.

The Ion Casters were largely abandoned, it was easy to see why, the large complex that was their control interface was damaged enough that any kind of serious repair to its systems would require time spent at a yard, perhaps the very yard where the ship was made, seeing as to, looking around, I saw a lot of custom parts rather than off-the-shelf components. This thing was likely as chock-full of ‘proprietary’ parts as whatever megacorporation that built it could get away with. Something that was going to bite me in the ass whenever I got around to repairing my newest big toy.

“Okay Iris, drop the spell.” I said, grabbing one of my lightsabers.

My body suddenly became visible to me, and the half-dozen meandering droids that were puttering around fixing what they could stopped and turned to look at us.

I thumbed the activation button, and a blood-red blade illuminated the gloom.

+Ooooh noooooo.+ One of the B-1’s said, its shoulders hunching in dismay an instant before the red lightsaber, humming in seeming bloodthirsty glee as it soared through the air, spinning like a buzz saw made of plasma, split it vertically in two.

I took three more droids down in half as many seconds, Iris drawing her vibro-longsword and cutting down the other two with well-practiced, elegant, and somewhat stiff movements. I made a note to go over the sword-forms she learned and seeing what could be improved.

“What now?” Iris asked, removing her helmet and wiping her sweat-covered face with a handkerchief. Once that was done, she put the helmet back on without a word of complaint, even though I could feel her annoyance at using the armor through the Force.

I made a note to check her armor’s ventilation system, it clearly needed fine-tuning to account for the effort of high magic use.

“Now we take control of the ship.” I said with a grin and looked around. A few minutes later, I’d found the access panel to the large cable that had the power I’d rerouted from Engineering, and a few minutes after that, through copious use of the Force, I’d tore it out of the deck as well as various pieces of the deck and bulkhead, and jury rigged the whole mess to connect to the Ion Caster’s capacitors, bypassing the big melted parts that usually served that function.

The closest one that wasn’t a melted ruin, anyway.

As that charged, I dove into the guts of the Ion Caster and demolished much of it in search of wiring and whatever parts ‘felt’ right, going by instinct more than keeping any particular design in mind in order to best leverage Engineering Talent.

In very little time, I’d rigged what remained of one of the Ion Caster’s two remaining capacitors into an EMP bomb that would either explode catastrophically and vent the entire deck into the void of space. Or cause a ship-wide ‘droid popper’ effect to get rid of all the B-1’s, short out and damage all B-2s, and hopefully burn out the shield modules of any Droidekas.

“Oh yeah.” I said as an angry hum began to build up. “There is no way whatsoever this will backfire.”

“Should…we be standing so close to it?” Aegis asked, Iris sitting next to her sister, hugging her legs to her chest.

“Nope.” I said, turned around, and sprinted out, Iris yelping as I scooped her up and tossed her over my shoulder as I ran. “We shouldn’t!”

Aegis took a few moments but she started running after me.

“I can run by myself.” Iris huffed, then yelped again as I slapped a palm onto her rear hard enough for her to feel it past the armored pants.

“This is more fun!” I said with a cackle and slapped her other buttock for good measure.

“Rylanor!” Iris huffed, beating her tiny fist against my backpack. “You should wait until we’re in the bedroom to do that! It’s indecent!”

“Noted.” I said and delivered a third smack as I switched my comms unit to broadcasting to all channels. “Attention, attention, in about…I dunno, ten? Maybe twenty seconds, there will either be a catastrophic explosion, or most of the droids will short out. So, be ready for that. Do not lean against a bulkhead, crouch, or lie down on the deck.”

[Rylanor what did you do!?] Obi-Wan demanded as Anakin cackled.

“Something to make my Master proud.” I said with a cackle of my own and stopped broadcasting.

[Padawan, you will explain yourself this instant!] Obi-Wan’s voice growled through my comms a moment before there was a thunderous boom, the ship shuddered and groaned like a man in agony, and a cascading electric wave suddenly enveloped every surface as it passed through the ship and scrambled all communications, the electric wave passing me by as the insulation on my boots kept it from affecting me.

I stumbled to a stop, Aegis coming to a stop beside me as we listened for any movement, for the hiss of the comms to subside after the EMP scrambled them. The smell of ozone so strong it penetrated through my helmet’s filters.

Through the Force, I felt a great trepidation that swiftly changed to surprise, then to elation, the contagious emotion resonating through the Force so strongly that it raised my spirits. I took a moment to bask in the relief and triumph of the Clones.

My moment of combined personal and vicarious victory and relief was cut short as Iris asked. “C-Can you put me down now?”

This time when I smacked her bottom, she moaned.

=][=

“That was horribly reckless!” Obi-Wan thundered as he paced back and forth at our foothold-turned-HQ in the Malevolence. I stood at a lazy approximation of attention in front of him, my helmet clipped to my belt.

There was still some fighting going on, but the only droids to survive my little trick were B-2s and a few Droideka, which meant that, for once, it was the Separatist forces that were outnumbered several hundred to one.

“Hey, it worked.” Anakin defended me happily.

“That isn’t the point!” Obi-Wan groaned.

“I agree with Anakin. It worked out, so what’s the problem?” I asked.

“You could have blown up the ship with all of us in it!” Obi-Wan yelled.

“Nah, the explosion would have happened way far away from our forces.” I said, waving a hand dismissively. “At worst we’d have to deal with decompression…probably.”

“Probably isn’t good enough, Rylanor!” Obi-Wan insisted.

“I took a calculated risk.” I insisted. “And it worked out! Speaking of calculation though, where’s Asami?”

Obi-Wan gave me a gimlet stare, then he turned it to Anakin, then he returned it to me. “My Padawan is with Cody, getting some more experience fighting droids. I told her she could take her time, but she insisted.”

“Nnnneat.” I said. “Anyways, if you need me for anything, I’ll be dismantling droids!”

I started to walk away, only to be yanked back by my collar.

“No you don’t.” Anakin said. “You still need to sit through my lecture.”

“Aw come on!” I whined. “It worked!”

“You did not clear your plan to strike deep into enemy territory with me.” Anakin said, crossing his arms. “And you certainly didn’t ask for my opinion about your idea of ditching the men to turn the ship into a droid popper.”

I said the first thing that came to mind. “Opportunity cost. Had I stopped to ask, the chance would have been lost.”

Anakin hummed. “No, it would not have. You decided that it was best to ask for forgiveness than permission.”

“I thought that was our modus operandi.” I shot back. “It worked when we went to rescue Master Plo.”

Anakin stared at me for a long time, his shield was fairly good, but the Force nonetheless quivered with the power of the gears turning in his head, ultimately he sighed. “Look, it worked out, and you saved the lives of our men, that’s what matters most. But next time, whenever you have some crazy half-cocked plan that might turn the battle around, run it by me first. Okay?”

“What if there isn’t time and telling you about it would mean I lost the opportunity?” I asked.

He narrowed his eyes at me. “Is that what happened today?”

I met his stare for as long as I could before looking away and mumbled. “No.”

“You’re smart, Rylanor.” Anakin said. “You’re not like most Jedi, and that’s a good thing. I meant it when I said that you are the exact kind of Jedi we need if we want to win this war. That hasn’t changed. There is a razor-thin difference between recklessness and boldness. Your plant to win us the battle at Christophsis, and to disable this ship? Those were bold. What you did in breaking through enemy lines, cut off from support, assistance, backup, and no possibility of extraction? That was reckless. It worked, but if it hadn’t, you would have eventually been overwhelmed, overrun, and killed, long before anyone could have reached you to offer assistance. So, again, the next time you have a crazy half-cocked plan that may win the battle? Run it by me first. Understood?”

“Yes sir.” I mumbled, my face feeling hot. Which was bullshit, I wasn’t actually some kid, I had everything under control the entire time. There was no reason for me to feel embarrassment or shame.

Anakin slapped my armored shoulder. “No sulking. You did good, just gotta keep a few things in mind for the future.”

I grunted and sulkily muttred. “‘M not sulking.”

Anakin snorted. “Go have fun destroying droids. I’ll go get a head start on the flimsiwork.”

“Whopee.” I said with only thirty percent fake enthusiasm, and dashed off, putting my helmet back on and setting a nav-point for the nearest firefight. The sooner the ship was fully secured, the sooner I could get started on fixing my newest toy. I would probably turn this thing into a mothership, tear out those Ion Casters and replace them with fighter bays, get rid of at least eighty percent of the turbo-lasers and replace those with manufacturing bays…with a few dedicated support ships, I could turn the Malevolence into the core of a self-sustaining fleet that could operate deep behind enemy lines and even manufacture new starfighters.

Oh! I could use it to create the first Hummingbird carrier!

I salivated at all the possibilities as I reached the first firefight I could and started turning droids into scrap metal.

=][=

Repairing the Malevolence to the point that it was sail-worthy was long, arduous, and thankless work. Poots was instrumental in it, taking care of the most sensitive components, each and every single one of which were custom proprietary parts. This included several of the bolts and screws.

I had spent much of my time elbow-deep in the guts of various systems. With the intent of getting the ship repaired just enough to survive the trip to a friendly port where I could begin the modifications I wanted in earnest, a process that had taken the better part of four days, a whole Republic fleet arriving and securing the system against Separatist retaliation. Which suited me just fine. It would be nice to have an escort while I limped the Malevolence to a nearby ship yard.

I had been wrestling with a particularly stubborn bolt when I’d received a call from Anakin to meet him at one of the Malevolence’s launch bays.

Not having taken the time to clean up, and standing as I was covered in soot and grease-stained overalls, I should not have cut much of an intimidating figure.

Nonetheless, I managed.

“The hell do you mean you’re taking the Malevolence?” I snarled; the Force quivered with my rage to such an extent that even the non-Force sensitive flimsy-pusher could literally feel how close to death he just came.

The bug-eyed Rodian did his species’ version of paling in fright, but pushed forward, secure in the safety of his station. “B-By order of th-the Supreme Chancellor, this ship is to be taken t-to Kuat Drive Yards. It is far too valuable a prize to remain so close to the front lines of the conflict.”

I took that in, and my wrath found a new target. The reason why nobody in this galaxy could have nice things.

“Rylanor.” Anakin said as he stepped between me and bug-fucker the alien, a clear warning in his tone. “I know you’ve been having a lot of fun fixing up the ship. But we were never going to get to keep it.”

I growled.

“Go cool off.” Anakin demanded. “Now.”

Not trusting myself to say another word without snapping the bug-eyed alien’s neck, which I suspected would make Anakin rather upset with me, I went to grab Poots to drag him back to the Resolute.

Palpatine would rue this day. I would make sure of it.