Jaster stood firm upon the bridge, unwilling to not be present for the oncoming collision. With luck, the asteroid may be slightly smaller, or made of multiple parts, and be easy to nose off path with full impact shields active.
But he doubted that. Right as they begun to slow out of Hyperspace, the officers in the bridge begin to charge up the Redeemer's heavy cannons. All twenty-four of them. It would be enough to put a whole in a small moon – and well and truly enough to knock an asteroid off course.
What shocked them solid was the sight that greeted them once they left hyperspace.
Right as the white and blue strobe of lightspeed travel faded, and the blue, green and red marble of Eterra became visible, so did it.
A large, outdated mining gunner, designed to melt the belt ice of Nhal Hutta's great moon. It stood positioned towards the asteroid seemingly sluggishly heading towards the planet, and the tell-tale violet light of the gunner's beam began to shine right on time.
"Full deflector shields!" Shouted one of Jaster's old Journeymen colleagues. "Now!"
(There is no sound in space. Sound cannot carry that far between atoms, in the vacuum of nothing. But vibrations do. And the melting beam of a Hutt Built Mining Gunner could cut a hole through an armada of ships, and whilst the beam itself gave no sound to the redeemer, the great carrier made its own sounds as the vibrations made by the sheer force of the Gunner's beam rocked the system. Ships swung in the docks. Joints vibrated. Verde grabbed onto railings for dear life. Jet packs shorted and smoked. Lights flickered eerily. There is no sound in space.)
The mining gunner fired, and in a spectacular shower of light, the oncoming asteroid split into four, five, more pieces. Jaster called the helmsman to turn them perpendicular to the oncoming rocks, showering some of the planet below from the debris, but the largest shard scraped the edge of the planet's atmosphere at a nail-biting angle, missing the planet proper by fractions of a degree.
It took two minutes for every verd to stop shaking, to stop watching as the rock flew harmlessly by. Jaster needed that time in order for his ears to start working again, rushing with adrenaline.
"Get me in contact with that gunner. That was either the dumbest or most Mandokar thing I've ever seen in my life."
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Down Comes the Rain
FanfictionMandalorians care about one thing above all else. The lives of children. Jaster Mereel's decision in the face of a disaster changes the course of history forever.
