364A Young Girl's War Between the Stars
23
Serenno System, converted Baleen-class heavy freighter Metalstorm, 41 BBY/959 GSC.
The ship I was approaching now looked massive, filling my vision as I neared, flying towards the starboard side of the ship—oriented as it was to fly in a counter-clockwise orbit against the rotation of the planet roughly over the equator, with its top oriented north. My computer on the Rusted Silver had identified it as a Baleen-class heavy freighter in its past life. I had also gone over the class's basic schematics, so I roughly knew what the internal layout should look like and, more importantly at the moment, where the external maintenance hatches were located.
The ship was big and ugly. It was made with the purpose of hauling lots of cargo all at once in mind, and no thought given to aesthetics. It did a job and it was good at it. I could see how its ability to carry lots of cargo would make it very desirable for a pirate or mercenary force to have.
After all, what were cargo containers but self-contained docking and storage areas? Any number of things could be placed in one. Starfighters, turning each container into a self-contained hangar bay, as these mercenaries had done. Missiles and torpedoes certainly, but someone creative could also outfit them with a battery of turbolasers per container. Extra generators and cooling to run a battery of turbolasers in another container. Extra fuel—and what was a container of extra fuel, but a bomb waiting to be dropped, or a torpedo waiting for propulsion and guidance? Troops—lots and lots of troops, and all the facilities needed to feed and otherwise take care of them without straining the ship's own systems. Equipment to support ground combat.
With the Baleen-class's design, all of the containers were connected to and accessible from the ship itself, so a lot of that could be modified in flight if need be, in the safety of atmosphere. Truly, I had to hand it to them. Acquiring such a large ship was inspired. I kind of wanted one for myself. I could use it as my own White Base!
I drew nearer and used my flight formula to decelerate, while directing myself closer. Until eventually, I flipped myself over feet first and touched down with a solid click of mag boots engaging against the hull. I breathed a sigh of relief, only to have to duck down and hide behind some protrusion or other jutting from the surface of the ship as fighters left the bays ahead and to my right—launching out of the top of the craft before turning and moving clockwise around the planet.
As soon as they were gone, I began moving quickly but carefully across the ship's surface, going heel to toe with every step and making sure my boot locked in place before removing my foot from the previous hold. I had practiced this walk with Jango during our time training together—he had taken me out for some EVA practice maneuvers above Mandalore just so I'd know what to expect and I made a mental note to get him something nice in return at some point in the future.
I made my way aft and around to the underside of the hull, away from the protruding cockpit on the top. It didn't take long to find what I was looking for—maintenance hatches on larger ships were clearly labeled, outlined in paint (orange in this case), and had a flashing green light mounted beside them to be highly visible from the outside. Of course, being visible didn't mean they were easy to get into. No one would just leave them unsecured. That would be a complete security oversight!
I crouched over the circular hatch and studied the simple keypad mechanism beside it—twelve buttons arranged in four rows of three, 0 through 9, backspace, and enter. The keypad was recessed and secured with bolts, with a simple anti-tamper alarm circuit that would go off it someone broke the circuit by opening the panel. It was about as secure as a civilian vessel could make it, without booby trapping the hatch—and a check with the Force showed it was safe.
Unfortunately for the enemy, this was a civilian vessel. The specs and documentation were all publicly accessible—documentation such as the repair and maintenance manuals.
Now, to be fair, I had not read the manual for this model—or any model other than that of Master Dooku's ship and my own Skipray, which was not publicly published, but was available on the Rusted Silver's computer. What I had done, however, was extensive study during my stay on Dathomir, for programming and penetration testing (hacking, or slicing in the local parlance) a variety of systems. One thing I'd learned was that, similar to my first life, ease of access—especially in an emergency—trumped security, every single time.
Put simply, you didn't need to break out a tool to open more than half of doors with electronic locks and a dumb physical access system such as a keypad because there were administrative and maintenance back doors built in. Default manufacturer codes. Publicly available on the space internet! Anyone could get the master list, and it never changed, only updated to include new models!
Why would they leave such an obvious security risk in place?
Simple. Security through obscurity. Most people simply didn't know about it. A keypad would defeat ninety percent of all people attempting to gain access illicitly.
Also, liability and responsibility. If they published the codes in the manual for whatever product they sold, no one could sue the ship manufacturer if some poor maintenance technician got caught outside and couldn't get in because his suit had a tear and he was panicking and couldn't remember the code. And if someone tried to claim that the manufacturer was responsible for making a vulnerability that pirates could exploit, they could just point to their contract and manual, where it said one of the first things a new owner needed to do was go around to every single maintenance hatch and change the default codes.
As for the list of default codes… well, those were actually rather simple to memorize. The list was relatively short, in fact. Most people stuck with the classics, depending on how many digits were required to gain entry—0000, 5555, 1234, 4321, some variation of a plus, x, circle, or other simple shape. Or, in some cases, a good old button mash combo—press and hold two or more keys, such as backspace and enter, a certain number of seconds, exactly five, and then the door would open.
There was a very faint thump through my feet and knee from the hatch clicking unlocked and the light on it turned red. I pulled it open and pulled myself inside, quickly reorienting for the return of gravity and shutting off my mag boots. Reaching out with the Force, I tilted the camera away so it wouldn't show me, then sealed and locked the hatch and ran through the pressurization process. As soon as the room had atmosphere, and I'd confirmed it was breathable, I applied my camouflage formula and opened the inner door. Checking on the other side, I made sure no one was watching, then slipped out quickly.
The corridors were dimly lit, the ship apparently running on its night cycle at the moment. A second formula silenced my steps and I pulled off my helmet. The air smelled a bit rank, carrying the stink of an alien species I was unfamiliar with, but I could hear better so I collapsed the helmet and stuck it on my side.
Since I'd come in on the aft side, I was actually close to the engineering level, where the reactor was housed. Following my mental map, I hurried through the empty halls, little more than a blur to any camera that might happen to pick me up—an optical distortion or artifact, and dismissed just as easily.
Everything was going fine, exactly to plan, until it wasn't.
I opened the hatch leading to engineering at the same time a nearly seven foot tall, bulky form reached to open the hatch from that side. The alien was green skinned, with three-fingered hands ending in claws, a pot belly, a maw full of sharp teeth, and a single large eye set in a very ugly face.
"Hey, what—"
I reacted first, launching myself into the room and up, swinging my arm out and extending two fingers. A mage blade caught his head and tore through, in one side and out the other. He dropped like a rock but, to my annoyance, he wasn't dead—just incapacitated, as his wound began to quickly heal over. Grabbing him with the Force, I pulled him inside and closed the door. Looking around, I found a screwdriver and jerked it over. Rolling him over, I located the point where his neck and head met and slammed it in down to the handle. The alien, Abyssin?, jerked once but otherwise remained still as I dragged him over to a chair and propped him in it after making sure the rest of the room was empty. Then, I moved out of range of the camera and watched.
After about two minutes, the Abyssin jerked again, before his eye jerked open. It rolled around in his head and he radiated panic and pain, but it quickly became clear that he both couldn't move and couldn't cry out. He wasn't going anywhere any time soon, but I was on a timer now. Someone was bound to show up and notice he was here, and that something was wrong.
Moving around behind the reactor, I pulled off my backpack and took out a demolition charge. The stuff was remarkably similar to what I knew of plastic explosives from my first Earth. Clay-like in consistency, stable and non-reactive even at high temperatures, and requiring a shock to set off.
I slapped a block of the stuff to the underside of the reactor, then pulled out and activated both a radio detonator and a timer. The timer, I set for three hours—plenty of time to do what I needed to and get clear. Then, I planted a second explosive on top of the reactor and synced its timer and detonation signal with the first, just in case someone found one of them. I liked to have redundancies, just in case.
As I was about to leave the engineering area, I frowned as I spied movement. The engineer I'd disabled had somehow regained control over his mouth and was working it up and down. Sighing, I pulled out a grenade and thumbed it on. Making my way over, I grabbed his mouth and forced it open, then shoved the grenade in. His eye went wide as he registered my blurred form and I pushed and held his mouth shut, his teeth clamping around the timing mechanism on top and stopping it.
"That's a grenade. Keep your mouth shut around it or the timer's going to start ticking down. If you spit it out, it's not going to go far, and if it does you risk blowing the reactor as well. Blink if you understand me." He blinked. "Good. Stay put."
I hurried out of the engineering room. Looking around, I spotted a camera pointed at the door. A bit of the Force crushed it. If they had a full time security team watching the monitors, then they would likely send someone to investigate soon, but that was fine.
Pulling out a lightsaber, I flipped it on and touched the blade to where the top of the hatch and the bulkhead came together, then ran it down a few inches. The result was a slurry of melted metal and, when I shut it off and put it away, the metal quickly began to cool, leaving behind a welded joint. It'd make it difficult to open the door without tools or a blasting charge—the latter of which they wouldn't risk using this close to the reactor.
I took off running down the corridor, coming to an intersection. To my right, the cargo area and escape on a fighter. To my left, the cockpit.
For a moment, I considered just leaving, before quickly dismissing the thought. No, there was still more I could do to disrupt things up here. So, I went left, deciding to go for maximum disruption to the enemy's forces.
I ran until I found the entrance to the bridge—just down the corridor, then a right from engineering. Instead of a standard door, what I found was a lift—not a design I'd encountered before, or one I could say I supported. Having the cockpit/bridge level be not just on the outer layer of the ship, but an exposed and highly visible vulnerability struck me as a bad idea.
I paused in front of it, considering what I was going to potentially be facing. From what I'd learned, Abyssins were big, looked strong, and not just healed fast but regenerated from what would otherwise be lethal wounds for another species. They could be incapacitated, however—maybe even killed. Most things tended to die when you cut their heads off. Not all, but most.
Once I got on the bridge, I would only have a moment to assess and act, a couple of seconds at most before whoever was on the bridge noticed me and mounted a response. I needed to take them down as quickly as possible—but as I had seen, a head shot would at least disable one for a short time, so I didn't necessarily need to kill them all right off the bat. Whatever I did, I needed to make sure no one got a message out or set off an alarm. I didn't need the entire ship being alerted and if I could keep from tipping off the rest of their fleet…
I pulled my helmet back on and secured it just in case someone had the bright idea of puncturing the hull and introducing the bridge to vacuum. Once it was secure, I took out both sabers and moved into the elevator, destroying the camera and hitting the button for the bridge level as I dropped my camouflage and prepared a shield and targeting formulas.
The bridge door opened and I rushed out, my eyes and Force senses taking in everything in an instant.
There were seven of them present. One in a central chair that might be a captain's chair. One forward, sitting in front of a pilot's controls. Two on the right—one on a radio, the other on what looked like electronic warfare/countermeasures. On the left, three—weapons control, sensors, and engineering.
I threw the saber in my right hand to my left, sending it spinning on an arc that would take it through the space those three occupied as I ignited both. With my next step, I launched myself towards the captain's seat, using a brief burst of my flight formula. Drawing my pistol with the right hand, I tracked on the radio operator first and sent a blaster bolt for his head, before doing the same with the EW operator. The Force enhanced bolts hit with more of a kick than I'd expected when they made contact with a biological, and I was treated to the sight of skulls cracking outwards under the force.
The spinning saber caught the first operator in the neck, doing its job of sending his head flying and moving on to the next, who had begun diving out of his chair—too late, as the saber caught the top of his head in a partial decapitation. I wasn't sure if it was enough to keep him down, but it was good enough for now. The third managed to hit the deck and roll, but my saber abruptly changed course at my direction, the blade coming down and planting itself in his head.
The captain, or whoever was in the central chair, had barely registered the sound of lightsabers igniting and the first shot, reflexively trying to turn around in his seat to see what was happening, when I reached him. A backhanded swing parted his head from his shoulders and I planted my boot on his seat, another burst of flight propelling me at the pilot. I caught him with a jab to the back of the neck, ripping my saber out the side as I turned and panned my pistol over the bridge.
Less than four seconds had passed between entering the bridge and putting down the pilot and I was the last one left standing. Perhaps I shouldn't feel quite as proud as I did about killing unaware people armed only with sidearms with a surprise attack… but I was.
When no one moved immediately, I jerked the pilot out of his seat and cut his head off, throwing his body down beside the pilot. Moving quickly through the bridge, I did the same for the others, making sure none of them would be getting up again while collecting my other saber.
Once I was sure I was the last living thing in the room, I went around the bridge, checking systems over and making sure no one had set off any alarms. Then, I engaged the lock on the lift and spot-welded the lift to the floor—making sure no one would be getting in before I was done.
Room secured, I went back to the consoles and began checking things out.
A check of the radio/comms gear showed only light comms chatter. All of the ships in the fleet were in their night shift and the patrols coming and going were only checking in at scheduled intervals of their flights. No one had raised any sort of alarm or mentioned anything about spotting vessels entering the system, even mentioned the asteroid flying by them, or had noticed a small human-shaped figure flying through space from the asteroid. It looked like I was in the clear.
Moving on to sensors, I checked the sensor log and confirmed that this ship and all of those sharing sensors in their fleet's network had likewise missed our entry into the system, my flyby, and any ships approaching the planet. From there, I checked the fleet's current position and numbers to see if any had joined, left, or gone down to the planet since I'd begun my spacewalk. There were no changes in relative positioning, as far as I could tell.
Sensors didn't just tell me what was in space, however. They had been scanning the planet on and off, acting as eyes in the sky for someone on the ground—I'd find out who and where from the comm logs in a moment. For the moment, I pulled up the scans they had taken along with recorded flight paths of their allies and grinned as their own computer told me the story of the 'civil war' from the moment this ship had arrived.
With their flight paths, overlaid with my own map data gathered on Coruscant, I now had a map of every point of interest to the enemy on the planet. Every base, from the big ones their army was using as a staging ground, to every FOB or listening post. Every target they'd conducted raids against. Every suspected rebel stronghold. The tunnels and bunkers they had been using to run their ground war. Every asset they currently had on the ground or in the air on planet. The positions of their allies' own troops—what looked to be a fairly large droid army being controlled by a ground based station.
I knew everything they did and more, since I could fill in the gaps and extrapolate where the 'good guys' were most likely hiding. Needless to say, I recorded everything to report back later.
Once I had the updated map data, I moved back to the comms station and went digging, relatively certain that at some point, they had likely called their client/contact planet-side. It didn't take long to find a set of comm numbers that kept coming up, all traced back to the planet and correlating to location pings on the map. This close to the planet, I could just use their computer system to query the local directory and…
Ramil of House Serenno. Got you. Now, where have you been hiding?
I checked the map and raised an eyebrow as I realized he wasn't hiding, at all. He spent his days in the capital city and his nights in his manor, typically. Though not always. It wasn't like I could just pull up the current location data of his personal comm unit without calling it—all I had was a record of calls and the corresponding sensor logs showing where he was when he picked up.
Can't confirm he's there right now, so there's no point to trying to drop him with a decapitation strike. Can't target the city and risk civilian casualties, and if he's not home, then he'd know we know where he is and bug out. Best to let him think he's relatively safe.
Still, there were things I could do to cause problems both for the fleet in orbit and the troops on the ground. But first, I'd need an accurate count.
Heading over to the weapons console, I whistled quietly at what I saw. Just about half of the cargo containers were loaded with either missiles or torpedoes. The missiles were only rated for space, but the torpedoes I recognized as a model that could be used for orbital bombardment.
Tapping away at the fire control system, I realized that I didn't actually need to turn on the active targeting system and paint any targets—it could use the feed from the sensors, battle net/IFF system, or have targets manually entered. So, sitting down, I began to do just that.
For the ships in orbit, I used their own IFF signals to tell the missiles where to aim, then refined their aim manually by telling them to go for bridges, thrusters, and if possible to stagger hits to blow through hulls to get to reactors. Any ship I disabled now was one we didn't have to deal with later. Moreover, if I could take out their thrusters, we were close enough to Serenno for the planet's gravity well to pull them in, meaning they'd be going down pretty soon.
As for the torpedoes, I programmed those to strike at the largest collections of men and materials. The bunkers were designed to withstand orbital bombardment, but nothing in the field was, so I could clear a large section of the board in one pass.
And then there's just this ship and their fighters…
I considered what to do about them as I stood and moved over to check the sensors again to make sure nothing had changed. It was as I was looking at the map of the planet below that I glanced over their largest bunker, built into a mountain north of the capital.
What were those things rated to withstand again?
I didn't have to look it up because I had the information memorized as part of a presentation I'd given Master Dooku and the others when we reached Mandalore. Thinking back to the Baleen-class specs, I hummed and poked around in their systems some more from the captain's computer, getting a current read on the Metalstorm's tonnage, current cargo, and theoretical maximum speed in atmosphere upon reentry with the deflector shield up.
A grin pulled at my lips as my napkin math came out to one very large explosion. Couple that with the inevitable deflector shield failure when it hit, followed almost immediately by the reactor and fuel going up… This ship was effectively a bunker buster all on its own.
"Well, it's not a colony, but it'll have to do."
Hurrying over to the helm, I dropped in a course on a steep dive, maximum thrust. The computer brought up a warning about how that would send the ship nose first into the ground, but… The reality of life in space was, auto-pilot safeties could be overridden for a reason. A variety of reasons, really. It was meant to be easy to do so, but not unintentionally. So I had to manually enter a code the computer generated on the spot to approve setting the auto-pilot to any course that would potentially see the ship running into the ground.
Once the course was set, I put it on a short timer—very short. Then, I hurried over to the weapons console and set it to fire only a few seconds after the ship started moving. Finally, I finished my stops at the electronic warfare station. I set it for broad spectrum jamming then turned it on—silencing anyone who happened to be nearby from potentially calling out as the Metalstorm began broadcasting noise. Finally, I went over to the captain's chair and used the credentials of the Abyssin who had been logged in before me to issue the command to emergency vent the atmosphere for everywhere outside of the bridge and shut off the artificial gravity—another of those commands that was obvious why you could do it but needed to manually bypass the safeties to do so, when you thought about it.
Double checking that my helmet was sealed and my suit integrity was good, I ran for the lift, pulling one of my sabers out as I went—mag boots clicking all the way. The blade sliced through my temporary weld and the lift began moving down as the ship began accelerating. It wasn't a sudden jerk, not with the inertial dampeners and just how much mass the ship had, but I definitely felt it and had to lean into it a bit as it slowly began picking up acceleration, until the dampeners caught up.
I swiped my saber through the lift console, and then punched it through the floor and took out the grav repulsor powering it as well. That was about the best I could do to secure the bridge.
Shutting off and securing my saber, I took off at a run as the ship shuddered silently and repeatedly for a few moments—that would be the missiles and torpedoes being launched. With those away, I had very little time before someone potentially started shooting back. Shutting off my mag boots, I launched myself and flew down the corridor towards the containers holding the fighters.
The Force warned me a moment before I came to an intersection and I went high, shouldering my carbine and orienting myself. I flew through the intersection and my targeting formula lit up four targets, all carrying weapons and wearing helmets but not vac suits. I opened fire—spraying each target with a short, three round burst to the face as I flew by, much more powerful Force enhanced bolts creating a series of dirty fireworks behind me.
Another warning came and I dove for the deck, putting up a shield as someone stepped out from an intersection further down, spotted me, and opened fire on what was obviously an intruder given that I wasn't big enough to be one of them. Red bolts of plasma streaked past me as I maneuvered in the tight hallway, drawing a bead on him and opening fire, putting a white bolt through his head with explosive force—literally, as his head exploded in a shower of gore.
Following the guidance of the Force, I zipped right around a corner and fired again, taking out an enemy exiting the a bay further down. A pull had me pulling right and then down, into a cargo container hanger and slapping a hand on the button to close up the door. Looking around, I grinned at what I found unoccupied and ready to go—engines already warmed up.
That's a Delta-6 Sprite-class starfighter. She looks a little old, but well taken care of, I assessed as I hurried over and flew up to the cockpit. Quickly checking it over and making sure it was safe, I climbed in, strapped myself in, and hit the cockpit controls to seal it up. Which was good, because the ship began to shake below me—a rumble coming from the Metalstorm as, despite the inertial dampeners and deflector shields, the big ship was having a hell of a time coming in on a reentry vector at full throttle the moment it hit atmosphere.
Knowing it would only get worse, and more dangerous to jettison from here, I opened up the container and was treated to the sight of Serenno below me—framed by the show of heat and friction against the deflector shield as the Metalstorm was caught in Serenno's gravity well and truly began picking up speed.
I punched it, dropping out of the hangar and engaging my own deflector shield, before immediately whipping the fighter around to orient it the same way as the carrier. I quickly matched speed, then eased off the throttle a bit, falling back slowly as I hung close, within the converted freighter's deflector shield envelope. Soon enough, I was behind the Metalstorm and could pull in just behind its thrusters, riding its wake down through the atmosphere.
Engaging the scanners, I checked the space behind me and chuckled at what I saw. Over half the enemy fleet simply obliterated—twenty-six ships somewhere between flaming wrecks tumbling in space, or part of a growing debris field. Most of the rest confirmed disabled and falling for the planet without their thrusters. Only a few ships had managed to weather the attack, but even they hadn't come out unscathed—and going by the radio traffic, they weren't going to be able to do anything about the ones currently falling towards the planet in time to save them.
Twenty-six ship kills, soon to be thirty-nine. Out of forty-three. One of those taken by hand. Not bad at all!
The computer's projections on the bigger ship's potential speed turned out to be a little off, but not by much. Within half a minute, I could make out the city of Serenno and the mountain range north of it that the Metalstorm was aiming for. Ten seconds after that, I eased back on the throttle and let the bigger ship pull away, eventually exiting its wake with a bit of shaking but little beyond that.
I followed it in from a safe distance as the Metalstorm streaked over Serenno city, a faint blue glimmer in the air giving away the presence of a city shield. A moment later, the Metalstorm hit the mountain and exploded, sending up a mushroom cloud of fire, dirt, smoke, and debris. I flew over the city and did a pass over the base, inverting the Delta-6 so I could get a good look and take some recon photos with a formula. What I saw left me hopeful, but I'd need to go over the pictures later to be sure.
I flipped over and pulled up over the mountain then dipped down, tucking close to the surface and heading for the meetup point where Jango and our troops would be waiting.
Jaster was woken from a sound sleep by some sort of siren going off. Rolling out of bed, he pulled his pants on and grabbed a blaster. Poking his head out into the hall, he found a few people in the hotel doing likewise in various states of undress. From somewhere, he heard someone say, "I think that's an air raid siren."
Frowning, he went back inside and locked his door. Stepping out onto the balcony overlooking the city, he was amused to find the Jedi occupying the balconies on either side of him. Master Dooku and Qui-Gon were looking into the air so Jaster followed their gazes, spotting a fiery red streak coming down towards the city fast. Squinting, he thought he could make out the form of a ship through the blaze around the deflector shields.
Quietly, the girl, Obi-wan asked, "Master, what is it?"
"I believe it's the big cargo ship we saw parked in orbit," Master Qui-Gon answered, not sounding quite sure himself.
Jaster snorted. "Thousand credits says it's Tanya."
Master Qui-Gon spared him a sidelong glance. "It is said that a fool and his money are soon parted," he murmured, before a smile pulled his lips up. "But I don't mind winning easy money. I'll take that bet."
A few moments later, the ship crashed into the mountains nearby. They all felt the thump in their feet as the thing exploded. Thankfully, the city's shield protected them from any debris and the shockwave.
A few seconds after that, an older Delta-6 fighter flew overhead and buzzed the impact site, before flying off. Jaster turned and held his hand out to Qui-Gon, who sighed and nodded. "In the morning, if you don't mind."
"Ten thousand says that was a strategic target," Jaster offered.
Qui-Gon considered it for a moment, before Master Dooku chuckled, looking around the two to Obi-Wan. "Obi-Wan, let this be a lesson to you. Don't take after your master."
"Of course, Master Dooku," she giggled as Qui-Gon sent Dooku a betrayed look.
"Master, you're not supposed to make me look bad in front of my padawan."
"You brought it on yourself," Dooku smiled, before heading inside.