Survivor: A Star Wars Story

Chapter XXV

REINA TAUTASKI

"Forward shields!"

The floor of the port-side bridge jerked violently as another incendiary blast pummelled the starboard edge of the cruiser.  Groaning, the floor lilted slightly and technicians rushed around the gallows, struggling to keep the ship in one piece.  Smoggy ashen smoke billowed across the seemingly infinite expanse of the dorsal plane, hanging in dead space before parting with the afterburn of a starship blasting through it, dispersing it into twisting wisps.  The dark well was alight with strips of neon gunfire that streaked brutally past the port bridge, occasionally connecting with the flaming vortex of a fighter and igniting furious chains of explosions.  A chaotic ballet of tumbling ships was painted across the stars, breathing pastel flame as they exchanged fire in furious waves and yet as more dancers fell to the side, exhausted and crippled, more took their place in seemingly infinite mass.  Admiral Yularen grimaced tightly, his greying brows furrowing into a deeper scowl on his weathered, pale skin.

"General, you need to get those heavy cannons out of commission!" Barking down his comm, the line picked up almost immediately, overwhelmed with the whine of a fighter's engine.

"Keep your hair on Admiral, we're working on it." Brash as ever, Anakin Skywalker's fighter shot into view with fantastic timing, flying loops around a vulture droid on his tail.  "Everything is under control, right Snips?"

Another Jedi fighter sliced past the viewport, painted in deep crimson.  "Don't answer that Ahsoka. Anakin's already jinxed this fight enough." Kenobi grumbled from his own cockpit.

"Calling this a fight is generous.  We're getting slated." The newest addition to the admiral's group of magic-wielding headaches, Reina Tautaski, growled, her fighter out of view; the scanners indicated it was around the stern of the ship, doing its best to fend off the most advanced enemy fighters swarming the cruiser's engines like a hive of aggravated flame beetles.

She was right in her observation.  Wherever the admiral looked, fighters were locked in dogfights, chasing each other amongst the inked well of space as starbursts sparked across the blank canvas in flickering blinks of shrapnel and annihilation.  Spearheaded by the Jedi-manned interceptors, swathes of V-19 fighters buzzed in flocks of elaborate spins and somersaults, attempting to repel the overwhelming force of Separatist droids, their spindly designs amalgamating into a complex shimmering structure of reflected celestial light.  It was a intricately designed DNA print of battle, alight and burning with each new chromosome added into the swirling double helix.

Reina was pressed flat against her fighter seat as her hands flew across the controls, doing her utmost to accordingly reroute power to the most vital systems.  Her assigned R-unit was aiding to the best of its ability, yet even it was getting its circuits crossed in the mayhem.  Another vulture droid pinged on her radars and she scowled deeply in concentration, tugging back hard on the system and lurching her ship in an overhead arc; a frail attempt to shake it.  Her radar still pinged insistently as she hit the engines, her spine locking against the fabric of her seat forcefully with the momentum.  Swinging side to side like an overenthusiastic pendulum, the droid's side mounted blasters clipped into her peripheries occasionally: that fact alone told her not to dare a glance behind.  Heart jammed in her ribcage and scarlet light bolted past wildly, just wide of her wing.  Aligning her flight path in line with the cyan-lit engines of the main cruiser, she skimmed the rings of the scathing engines, looping through to gain mere shreds of time.  Her ship's heat warnings rocketed upwards and the rapidly warming metal of the ship (from being so close to the supermassive engines) tickled her skin.