Star Wars: Duel of the Fates

Chapter 28

When Kylo Ren became the Supreme Leader he afforded the Knights of Ren honorary positions in the hierarchy of the First Order. This included each of them being gifted with a modified TIE Interceptor; an enlarged black fighter with elongated solar array wings and advanced shielding and weaponry.

They tore out of the dreadnought hangar and bore down on the Resistance fighters, taking out numerous ships as they passed before tearing over the cruiser and blasting the dorsal sections. The deflector shield took the brunt of the impacts as they soared above it and came up behind a squadron of old Torrent starfighters, blowing up all six in half a minute.

"Is anybody seeing this?" Finn yelled down his headset, "The Knights of Ren are here!"

"Copy that," Wrobie said, "Gold Squadron, engage."

She led the other A-Wings and swooped down on the Interceptors firing rapidly. The knights split apart, jolting in different directions and pivoting back towards the Star Destroyers.

"Their deflectors aren't letting anything through," Wrobie said as they went after them.

She continued to fire at Trudgen and Ushar, who easily weaved and skirted around the red blasts. Ushar leapt upwards as Trudgen dived beneath her, before splicing back towards her A-Wing and pelting it with a laser barrage. Narrowly sliding to the side, she just managed to get away from them unharmed.

Cardo and Vicrul lunged down and started tailing a squad of U-Wings.

Two A-Wings changed course to follow them, drawing level with the knights. The pilots were just about to lock their weapons when the Interceptors quickly twisted away. They doubled back, hailing them with laser blasts and taking out all of the surrounding ships.

Wrobie looked at the remains of the fighters and cut to the side, firing her cannons and managing to hit Trudgen's fighter on his wing pylon. He started to spin uncontrollably. Ushar pursued him as he spiralled, extending a wide tractor beam. He fired the lateral thrusters on one side of his TIE and slowed the spinning until they were both facing the cruiser. Deactivating the tractor beam, they destroyed three Y-Wings as they advanced back towards the Resistance fighters.

Elbow deep in wires, Rose passed Rey the last high voltage cell.

"Is the interface ready?" Rose asked over her shoulder.

"Yes," Kyra said sliding it out.

Rey stepped across and swiftly placed the kyber crystal into the conductive gel at the heart of the interface. Bright blue lights activated, pulsing every second.

"The moment of truth," she said as they slowly closed it.

"Please work, please work, please work," Rose said, hugging an arm around her chest and kissing her smelt curved, teardrop necklace.

An agonising pause followed as the system calibrated.

A light on the right of the readout turned green.

"It's operational..." Rose said utterly stunned, "Has every systems shutdown procedure been confirmed?"

Looking over the screen, Rey took in the long list on the control panel, "The fuel line manifold isn't responding."

"Try overriding it using the subroutine."

Rey's fingers rapidly flew over the screen to no effect, "It's not working. But it isn't that far, I can run there and turn it off manually myself."

"Go."

The Falcon dived at four of the knights Interceptors. Finn successfully shot three of them but caused little damage.