It took just under two minutes for Keiber’s crew to relocate to the secondary bridge. On a ship of this size, however, the relief bridge was considerably smaller, and located close to the lower hull, with no viewports. Keiber noticed this as soon as he entered at a jog, flinging sweat from his forehead. The lighting was dim at best, the air muggy and damp.
Coupled with the confined space, lack of viewports, and loud echoing yells of the straining ion engines, it made for quite a claustrophobic work environment. Keiber hoped that his crew would be able to concentrate.
“Get to your stations, quick!” he yelled, projecting his voice over the sound of the engines.
People and creatures milled about for a second or two, then began discovering and booting up their workstations. Keiber motioned Ursul over, and punched in a quick combination on the ancient holoprojector set in the centre of the small space. The air above it flickered for a second, then an image of the immediate area around their ship resolved into focus, and slowly began drawing back.
Keiber looked around for his exec, remembered that he’d been killed just after the battle had commenced, and pulled Ursul closer to the holoimage. “Report,” he said.
Ursul looked confused for a second, then recognised the promotion for what it was and fetched a datapad from a nearby console. “Codes?” he asked.
Keiber leaned closer. “Alpha seventeen prime for general shipwide functions, Liue Zinark five for the overrides. Get it done.”
Ursul nodded, tapped in some numbers, and brought up a table of information, which he handed to Keiber. The ships captain glanced quickly over the data, muttered a quiet “damn,” and looked up at the TAC, handing the datapad back to Ursul. “We’ve lost the
Calpurt,” the other said.
“Mmm...” Keiber made a noise to register the fact. He was almost knocked off his feet as the ship took another hit, lurching violently.
“Damage?” Ursul yelled, to the bridge in general. A twi’lek answered in the negative, stating it would be mostly superficial carbon scoring but no actual hull breach. All systems were operating as before.
“Hold this course,” Keiber ordered. He was trying to think fast, trying to stay on top of the constantly moving Imperial ships that were advancing towards him and the other ships. If Foresawk could hold those fighters off for just a bit longer, he might have a chance of getting past those frigates, and then...
Keiber hesitated. And then what?
His plan had been to make a mad dash past the frigates, straight through the middle of their formation, and hope that they wouldn’t fire for fear of hitting one another. But there was no hope of that now. The frigates were breaking up into a looser formation, covering more space between them and making it impossible to get past unscathed. And both the
Isenhur and the
Calpurt had been destroyed, which left only half a dozen ships in Keiber’s attack group.
The Lieutenant looked again at the hologram, bringing the image out to cover the entire battle. Everywhere, green and blue dots fought one another, darting in and around. Swarms of smaller specks, travelling in packs of twelve, hounded the larger dots, chasing them down in packs. Small red rings denoted explosions and shockwaves. There were a lot of red rings. There were also a lot of blue dots.
Keiber looked at his own small formation of six green dots, flying steadfast into the flank of a sea of blue. To his surprise and alarm, he saw that there were no other green dots nearby. He looked again at the formation that his attack force was flying into, glanced at the shield readings for his ships, and tried to keep his balance as another volley of laser fire rocked the ship.
We can’t win... Keiber thought. It wasn’t a new thought; he’d known from the start that the battle was lost before it had even begun. He was trying to disable enough ships so that others could escape the system unhindered. So that
others could live.
And what others? Who was he risking his life to help escape? The fatcat executives in charge of Caspian, that was who. the ones who had brought this whole mess down on Muscave in the first place.
Fuck ‘em.
Surrender was out of the question. There were too many aliens on board Keiber’s ship for him to live on afterwards with a clear conscious, knowing full well the way the Empire treated aliens. Continuing the fight would only result in his and his crews’ deaths. So that left only one option; run.
Keiber began searching the holo for the closest picket. He spotted it quickly, and noticed with relief that it was relatively undefended, if a fair distance away...
He turned to Ursul.
“We’ll die if we stay here, won’t we,” the exec said. Keiber only nodded. “The picket on the north sunside edge of the battle, its our best bet.”
“My thoughts exactly,” Keiber said, slightly surprised that Ursul had reached the same conclusions that he had. At least he wouldn’t have to waste time trying to convince the younger man to desert Caspian.
“Call the rest of the attack force,” Keiber ordered. “Tell them our intentions. Say that they’re welcome to stay and fight, but if they don’t want to die they can tag along. Navigation.”
“Yes, sir?”
“We’re leaving. I want the shortest jump from here to the next non-Imperial world, assuming that picket in the fourteenth grid section is going to be destroyed.” Keiber glanced at Ursul, who glanced back, nervously.
“Let’s go.”
