Back in the Game (COMPLETE)

9.10.4

Rig and Adi sent a call to Windu, who answered it immediately. "Are we sure we entered the right coordinates?" Rig asked, looking around at the surroundings. "Surely, the governor would have called us for more than a bit for smoke on the ground. Don't they have local guards, or something?"

"This is Corellia," Adi confirmed, double-checking with the clone commander at her side. "I'm checking with the Corellian airspace port, they should have some track of what was here. They-"

After a long and discouraging pause, Windu inquired. "They what?"

"They're gone." Adi looked up at the Jedi Master, eyes wide and hands shaking. "The Separatist cruiser must have destroyed it before leaving."

"So what?" Rig implored, growing impatient. She turned to her commander and began barking orders. "Get our troopers down to the surface. IF there's any threat remaining to the people, take care of it."

Windu felt the feeling in his gut grow, and he turned to his own troopers. "Scan the airspace around us. What is there that we can work with?"

Answers didn't come right away, so he began ordering his own men. "We need to support whatever resistance is down on the surface. I want eyes and ears covering the capital. We need to know what kind of threat we're dealing with."

"Yes, sir!" his officers saluted him, before turning on their heel and running for the gunships. Alarms began blaring, and more than twenty gunships from the three cruisers combined descended to Corellia. 

From the bridge, the Jedi began debating. This was just slightly off, enough to make them feel uneasy. "This has no strategy in it," Adi said, shaking her head. "The Separatists attack Corellia, a neutral system, out of nowhere, lay waste to the capital, and destroy the airspace stations before running from the fight. I don't understand what they're trying to accomplish here."

"I don't think we should have come here," Rig murmured, looking out of the windshield of the bridge. "To support the Corellians, yes, we were right to come, but the fight seems to be over already, so what purpose are we serving here?"

Windu was about to answer, but one of his officers yelled from behind him. "Sir! We have ships incoming! Separatist!"

"Where?" he demanded, and the officer pointed out the window. The Jedi Master turned and quite suddenly, the feeling in his stomach grew tenfold. He remembered what had been tormenting him now. Over half a year ago, he remembered a mission he had taken with Skywalker and Kenobi. One that hadn't ended well for the Republic. 

"FIRE UP THE SHIELD!!!" he ordered, sending his men into a frenzy. "Call back all the gunships! This is not a rescue operation! I repeat, this is NOT a rescue op!" 

"Master Windu!" Adi demanded, startled by his sudden outburst. "What is this if not a rescue? Did Corellia not send for help?"

He didn't answer, but instead his eyes were trained on the not one, not two or three, but six, Separatist cruisers that had just cornered them. Windu remembered where he had seen this. The Inquisitor had lead the same mission against them so long ago. This wasn't a rescue. This was a trap.

The other two Jedi hadn't been there for the first mission, but they could tell what was happening with this one. They too began ordering for the defenses to be raised, but the Separatists had caught them off guard. They attacked from every side, and they had their weapons hot. The Republic had too many of their forces down on the ground, and not enough in the air. The droids started coming, but the fighters of the Republic were just receiving orders to take to the skies. Not to mention, they were hilariously outgunned. 

Out of the corner of his eye, Windu caught sight of a very bright light on the nearest Separatist cruiser. Lights of an ion cannon, focusing on every target possible. The cruisers were aiming for Corellia, for the cruisers, for the gunships that were beginning their retreat, for anything that wasn't them. There was no time to run, no time to hide. All they could do was hope that their shields were charged enough.

The cruisers began firing. There was nothing that could be done for the capital or for the clones on the ground. Two shots went blazing down to the surface, lighting up the planet even more than the Separatist recruits had. Another blast shot towards Windu's cruiser, hitting the shields with so much force that it rocked the ship. Everyone fell to the side, and a few unfortunate clones ended up taking an elbow or knee to the face. That was the worst of the damage with that shot though. 

Only their shields managed to save them. As Windu scrambled to his feet, he saw the other cruisers fire. His eyes darted to his fellow Jedi, and he hoped, desperately hoped, that their shields were up and charged.

They weren't.

Adi Gallia's cruiser took a hit straight to the bridge. The front end lit up, the oxygen in the ship fueling the explosion that followed. The rest of the ship lost all of the programming that controlled its systems. Every computer, weapon, and control was without instructions. However many clones had survived the initial hit, wouldn't for long if they didn't evacuate. 

Thankfully, none of the ion cannons had a clear shot at Rig Nema's bridge. What they did hit, though, were the engines. The hyperdrive and the orbit engines both caught flame, and the heat spread all the way to the fuel cells, which ignited combustion. The back end of the cruiser exploded in a glorious yet terrible flash of light, and the damage didn't stop there.

The blast knocked into the intact half of the ship, sending it spiraling out of control. With no engines, there was no way to control the ship's descent. It fell out of orbit and became the victim of the gravity field of the nearest planetary mass: Corellia.

Rig scrambled, trying to get her men out of the bridge. If they stayed here, the ship would take them down with it. They swarmed towards the hangars, trying to evacuate, and Rig started yelling frantically into her comlink. "Windu! Windu, we can't slow down! We have to evacuate, there's no way we can take six cruisers with what we have left."

Windu watched with horror as he tracked the broken cruiser towards the surface. He kept talking to her, trying to keep her moving, but he couldn't see a way out of this one for her. "Send anyone you can get out to me, I'm already taking Master Gallia's men. Just get them in the air!"

"We can't!!" she yelled, not even trying to hide the fact that she was panicking. "Master, the hangars are destroyed! Even the ones intact don't have any ships left, they were all used to get men to the surface! We can't get off the cruiser!"

Another ion blast rocked Windu's ship, straining the shields but not destroying them. He didn't want to find out how long they would last, though. He turned to his commander. "Radio out for help! We need an opening, but we can't make it ourselves! We need someone to come and give us an out!!!" Looking back out of the bridge, he stared as Rig's cruiser picked up speed. It was hurtling towards the surface now, and he didn't see how anything could stop it. "We're calling in backup, reinforcements will be here soon!"

"Just go!" she shouted, as another piece of their ship fell apart. "Get out of here, you need to get back to the Council!!!" 

"Rig!!" he shouted into the comlink, but there was nothing he could say or do. The ship met the ground at over two-thousand meters per second, leveling the city beneath it for kilometers around. If Corellia hadn't been obliterated before, it certainly was now. Nothing within the blast radius had survived.

Windu fell to his knees, holding his side and trying to keep his breathing even. He felt the loss of his fellow Jedi tearing at him, and the deaths of so many clones and civilians along with them. Gaping holes were ripping into the Force where there should have been life, and now was only a corpse, if even that. They sucked the hope of survival right out of him, and if he had had the strength to speak, he would have given up.

It was only by a miracle that another voice crackled to life on his comlink. "Master Windu, this is Obi-Wan, do you copy?"