The Last Venator: A Star Wars Story

Part 9

"You! You! You!" Clips either pointed at or physically grabbed soldiers as they rushed past him across the deck to the port-side hangar door where the available troops were gathering to meet the charging droid army. The group of soldiers on the LAAT that Clips was scrounging from the organizing troops were mostly inexperienced stormtroopers, though a couple of specialists in gray flak armor and a scout trooper had been rounded up as well. A TIE pilot whose fighter was out of action and luckily was certified to fly a gunship had been recruited to take the pilot's seat, thereby freeing up Mark from his usual spot as the gunship pilot.

Clips saw his clone squad - Mark, Starch and Gimp, easily identified by the thin red stripes on their stormtrooper helmets - standing slightly apart from the other stormtroopers on the rapidly filling gunship. He considered himself lucky that they had been on rest rotation when the attack began.

In my experience, there is no such thing as luck. The words echoed through the old clone's memory. He shook them away and put on his battered old helmet before stepping aboard. He hammered a fist against the hull to signal liftoff and the LAAT rose into the air, as quickly if not quite as smoothly as Mark's flying. "We're the backup plan!" he shouted at his hastily assembled troops. "It's possible the Ultimor won't make it airborne before that dreadnought is in firing range, and even if she gets into the fight she might not be able to survive a slugging match against a Providence and Hyenas! We need to take that ship out! Mark, Starch, and Gimp will be squad leaders! Sound off and group up!"

As the LAAT soared away from the Ultimor's flight deck, Clips looked down and saw a sight he had seen on dozens of battlefields before, and in that moment realized he would never see it again: an army of droids in formation marched steadily forward, guns blazing, while troopers in white and grey armor ran out to meet them. As the gunship swooped over their heads he could hear their shouts of encouragement to one another.

"Forward! Ten-thousand systems rely on us!"

"For the captain and the Ultimor!"

"For the Emperor!"

Then the LAAT was too far away, and the rain and thunder and the roar of blasters and rockets drowned them out. Clips turned to his own troops. "For the Emperor and the Empire!"

"For the Empire!" they echoed back.

Two TIE fighters screamed into formation with the gunship and they all raced towards the dreadnought, droid fighters soaring to meet them head-on.

***

"Lift-off in two minutes, sir!"

The Ultimor shuddered as it powered up. The tremble had a new quality to it that Farrow deeply disliked, and hoped it was merely due to a rushed pre-flight. "Close the hangar doors. Any stragglers and light walkers will be airlifted out."

"Hyenas are in range," warned a crewman.

"Fire at will."

The dorsal turbolasers flashed energy into the sky, filling the turbulent air with even more sound and fury, and the first wave of droid bombers were atomized. Their escorts met the Ultimor's TIEs and the air over the Star Destroyer suddenly became a dense swarm of starfighters jockeying for positions and firing solutions. Destroyed fighters fell from the sky and crashed into the volcanic earth, chewing up the landscape with deep furrows and scattering thousands of finches huddled from the rain beneath ferns.

"Lift off in thirty seconds! Artificial gravity is active!"

"Cross your fingers, Fetz," Farrow told his interim XO.

"Already done, sir."

"Ten, nine, eight..."

The Ultimor's engines fired, the ground shook with a small quake, and the Star Destroyer began to rise.