Binary Skies

Chapter 16: It's Complicated

To Luke's relief, they were slightly faster than standard TIEs, though the TIEs were also coming at them in a pincer formation with a volley of sloppy but thick shots. They didn't care about hitting the Interdictor, trusting the shields to ward off their stray bolts. Thankfully, the Jewel handled well, only taking a couple of hits that reduced the shields to seventy percent, as Anakin promptly informed him. Luke was rather glad that the shields had the chance to recharge fully before they'd been pulled out of hyperspace.

"Artoo, light up their particle shield generator for me on the targeting holo," Luke commanded, and the target popped up almost instantly as a small rectangle. He assigned two of the six concussion missiles to the shield, also locating his target in the Force. If that shield didn't come down with this hit, everything else he needed to do would be useless.

Spinning and juking with every maneuver that came to mind, Luke waited for that ideal moment, taking two more hits from the TIE fighters before launching the missiles. The heavy fire from the cruiser shifted to the missiles, which allowed him more breathing room to avoid the fire from the incoming TIEs. He pulled the nose of the Jewel starboard, diving past the shield generators shortly after the missiles hit and sending them right towards the hangar that the TIE fighters were coming out of underneath the ship. Not even thinking, and unable to physically see what was underneath the ship, Luke squeezed the blaster trigger and let the Jewel's blue death rain down on the TIEs that were coming out, catching two that had been emerging instantly and feeling a twinge of triumph when those two took out two more that had been chasing the Jewel since they'd arrived. Twenty left.

The concussion missiles hit one after another about that time, the first one weakening the shield and the second one penetrating and destroying it. Still, another hit took their shields down to fifty percent, and Luke briefly hid them from anyone's line of sight as he pulled the Jewel up to skate underneath the cruiser, just a meter above the shields to make it impossible for the TIEs above the cruiser to track them. He was planning to come up over the opposite side and take a shot at the newly vulnerable gravity projectors. He didn't hold the course though, knowing that the TIEs would expect him to come up in a direct line from where he'd dissipated. He drifted aft to reappear on the back starboard corner, keeping an eye on the three pursuing TIEs even though he knew they couldn't get a lock on the Jewel at the moment. They still took a few shots to make it look like they were trying, but the bolts dissipated against the Interdictor's shields. He couldn't help but notice that a few more TIEs launched out of the hangar, knowing that soon they would be all over the Jewel.

He cleared the starboard edge and climbed up with green bolts zipping past their position the TIEs topside had thought he would emerge. Some of the trailing fighters, however, saw where the Jewel had emerged and banked to intercept. To their astounding, once thought non-existent luck, one of the banking TIEs banked right into another TIE and they both erupted into flames. Eighteen left. Luke continued to hug the cruiser's structure to make the firing difficult for the cruiser's cannons, and as soon as he cleared the bridge he targeted the twin bulges of the port gravity projectors and sent two concussion missiles towards each of them; it wouldn't exactly see them free yet, as those that were left would still keep their hyperdrive from engaging with enough time to redirect the starboard projectors. They needed a kill shot, and he knew just what that kill shot was going to be. Luke's dilemma, however, was that it might just kill them as well; but he didn't have time to think it over again. He had to take the shot now. He couldn't expect to get another pass with only fifty percent of the shields remaining and TIEs coming up and forming now that the surprise of the attack had worn off. The remaining eighteen would significantly deplete the shields before he came around for a second pass at the shot.