Star Wars: Rise of the Battlemage - Chapter 87 - BX-01 & Talos Chariot Interlude (Patreon)

Chapter 87 - BX-01

With deliberate and precise movements, BX-01 through BX-05 slowly made their way up and around a nearly sheer rock face. Each movement was smooth and clean, their sensors and software easily picking out the best path, compensating for potential faults in the striated stone. Despite their seemingly slow pace, they made good time, reaching the flat portion of the plateau in just under two minutes.

BX-01 slowly raised his head over the lip of the cliff, peering around at the predominantly flat space that served as one of many landing pads for their targets. Sat in the middle was a medium-sized freighter, showing several signs of serviceable modifications. BX noted a ventral cannon system as a potential threat, wordlessly passing the information to his squad with a burst on his tight band comms. He also shared the location of four pirates, three of whom were working on the ship, replacing a carbonized panel along the aft. A quick visual scan showed the three mechanics were lightly armed, while the fourth pirate had a rifle strung along their back.

BX-01 made an internal note to request a debriefing on the last twenty years of weapons development, as they could not identify the make or model of the weapon. The galaxy had twenty years to advance while their detachment was powered down, and ignorance of tech advancements only put it at a disadvantage, which his programming demanded he do everything he could to eliminate.

His internal comms clicked twice, a final warning that the Boss was about to begin their assault. He signaled his squad to move up to the lip of the cliff, each of them slowly climbing around each other before pausing, poised to act when the signal was given.

A few more seconds passed before the sound of distant fighting finally echoed over the landing pad plateau. All of the visible targets dropped what they were doing and turned to face where the sound was coming from, their hands reaching for their weapons. Before they could do anything, however, all five of the BX units jumped up and over the edge of the clip, easily vaulting themselves up. Immediately, they opened fire, taking out all four with quick precision.

With the immediate targets dispatched, all five droids quickly jogged to the freighter's boarding ramp. A quick, silent command and BX-2 and 4 both slowed as the squad climbed the ramp, stopping at the top. They quickly turned and focused back out of the ship, stationed as guards to prevent reinforcements from ambushing and overwhelming them. The rest of the squad pushed in, weapons ready, as they took their first steps into the freighter.

They had barely stepped into the ship when a door right beside the boarding ramp entryway opened with a swish, revealing a disheveled but armed pirate dressed only in pants. He spotted the commando droids immediately but hesitated for a moment, just long enough for BX-03 to leap forward and wrap a manipulator around his throat, slamming him against the edge of the doorway. The droid wordlessly dumped three blasts of laser fire into the pirate's stomach before the stunned humanoid could speak.

The sound of running footsteps prompted the rest of the assassin droids to spin around, diving and rolling into cover as three pirates, each armed with blaster rifles, ran into the central space. BX-03 was still in the process of clearing the room their first kill had exited from and didn't have time to dodge, a blaster bolt catching him in the shoulder and forcing him to step back into the crew quarters and into cover there, but not before two blaster bolts slam into his shoulder and chest, the impact spinning him slight before he recovered, now wielding his blaster one-handed.

However, the pirates had no time to celebrate as BX-05 leaped over their cover, a decent-sized crate full of stolen goods, and landed on top of it with steady feet. It sprayed the incoming pirates with lethal red energy, hitting two of them. BX-01 quickly cleaned up the remaining targets with near-surgical precision.

A soft thrum passed through the floor of the ship, its internal generators kicking on as it prepared to take flight. BX-01 and BX-05 both turned immediately and dashed through the ship, following the bare sounds of cursing and muttering.

“C’mon c’mon c’mon, hurry up!” A male Rodian said in its native tongue, slapping the control panel, which flickered a few times before lighting up fully, just as the two assassin droids charged at the cockpit. “NO I-”

The Rodian never got to shout its last words as, with a single clean thrust, BX-01 stabbed through the seat and through their torso with his hefty vibrosword, carving the Rodian's vital organs.

As the assassin droid pulled his weapon from the pirate's seat and chest, BX-05 stepped up to the cockpit, scanning the controls before reaching out and shutting the ship down completely, the entire vessel going silent. Briefly, the droids debated sabotaging the controls but ultimately decided that, in this circumstance, going the extra mile would be detrimental to the mission.

The droids quickly regrouped, walking down the boarding ramp of the ship and out onto the plateau. With their primary objective complete, their secondary objective began, clearing nearby structures. All four undamaged droids headed directly for the two medium-sized structures closest to the landing pad they had just cleared. As they moved, BX-03 secluded themselves inside the freighter, finding a hidden ambush point to act as a guard.

When the droids reached the structure, they broke off into pairs, both groups easily jumping and scaling the simple blocky walls, reaching the roof in only a few seconds. A quick search of the roof revealed an access hatch, sealed and locked with a security panel. Rather than attempt anything fancy, the droids defaulted to speed and brutality, slashing the lock with their vibroswords and prying them open. One by one, they dropped inside, both pairs disappearing from view.

Despite the structures being self-contained, sealed habitats, the screams and shouts from inside the structures were audible on the outside. The commando droids tore through the dozen or so pirates that had hidden away inside each of the structures, hoping to ambush whoever was attacking them. Instead, they were ambushed themselves, quickly dispatched with cold efficiency. When the droids stepped out of the structures, all four of them were heavily splattered with blood of various colors.

With their objectives complete, the droids quickly moved to a location suitable to observe the area they had been tasked with clearing.

Eventually, the Boss called, and BX-01 gave their team status report, acknowledging their new orders. He quickly broke his team up into patrolling units, linking his comms with BX-06 to set up the most efficient and secure patrol routes. The squad immediately split up and moved out, BX-01 and 02 heading through a central portion of the middle landing pad, his sensors on full as he listened for any incoming threats.

Chapter 87 - Talos Chariot

Calima watched the sensor reading as they came in, her console linked to the sensor and comms console behind her. She was focused on any readings that might indicate something was wrong for the ground team, waiting for the signal to-

A double click, steady and distinct from the background noise that an open comms naturally picked up, echoed through the comms, picked up from the Brick, which was somewhere on the planet below them. The tight band comm link to the Intervention opened almost immediately after she heard it.

“Talos Chariot, confirm your comms picked that up?” Allum asked through the link.

“It did Intervention. Seems like… they are about to strike. We will follow you in,” Calima said calmly, before slowly engaging the thrusters and shifting the ship around slightly.

As usual, the boss preferred to keep his plans as simple as possible. To avoid early detection from the pilots, on the off chance they had any sensors looking up for threats, the Chariot and Intervention would wait for the double-click signal. Then, once the pirates were significantly distracted by the ground team's assault, they would quickly move into position above the pirate base, ready to provide support should anything go wrong. It was a middle ground between the safety of having the ships on call for support and the assurance they would have the element of surprise during the start of the mission.

With a flick of her fingers, Calima closed her console's link to the sensor station before guiding the Chariot into position behind the Intervention. The smaller ship's role as a light carrier meant that hanging back for most battles was generally the safe play, so even if they weren't expecting trouble, it was best to keep good habits fresh. The rotation of the planet below seemed to pick up speed as both ships pushed their thrusters to accelerate. A few minutes passed, and the droids assisting both ships updated their pilots as they finally began to slow, now in orbit far above where they believed the pirate base to be.

By now, the ground team would have been well into their fight, making their way through the pirate encampment. Since they were no doubt busy, both shi[ps had their sensors on full blast, actively scanning the target with no fear of their scans being detected since anyone watching would be forced to deal with the ground force.

“How do you think they are doing?” Miru asked, having made her way to the lounge as they began to move into position, and was now leaning against the doorway into the bridge.

“We are lucky that… our crewmates are skilled. They will be fine,” Calima assured the young genius. “Do you… really think the Boss would let anything happen to them?”

“No, I guess not,” She responded, letting out a long breath. “Hard not to worry though.”

“Of course, but you… did everything you could. Those commando droids are impressive.”

“They are kinda scary to be honest. I don’t usually like restraining bolts, but I was tempted to ask the boss if we could fit them with an internal kill switch,” She admitted, biting her lip. “There is no way for them to turn on us without bricking themselves in the process, but I was still tempted.”

The two were silent for a while, the only sound on the bridge was the occasional beep from a console or a droid calling out an update. After a while, Miru let out another long breath, this one of frustration and a bit of boredom, before breaking the silence.

“Well… I’m going to-”

Before she could finish, a loud beep came from the sensor and comms station.

“Hyperspace arrival detected!” The naval droid said, its volume cranked to cut over everything. “Nine signatures in total. Eight starfighters and one medium freighter.”

Calima was already looking down at her console, which fed her an image of the space around their ship, including the planet below. Each of the new arrivals was marked, sensors already having designated them separately, and a considerable distance away, where the planet's natural gravity well would have caught them. The Intervention was already pulling away from orbit, just enough that the ships would have to go through the heavier warship to get to the Chariot or the base below.

“Unidentified vessels, this is the mercenary ship Intervention. We are executing a lawf-” Vakim started to say, only to get cut off.

“I don’t karking care who you are!” An angry voice shouted through the comms. “Your space junk now!”

With the enthusiastic confirmation that these ships were not friendly, Calima began shifting power through the ship, charging weapons and preparing for battle.

“Miru, go sit down somewhere secure,” Calima said, not looking away from her console as she moved with the Intervention, staying back and starboard of the larger ship. “Vakim, I’m deploying the raindrops.”

“No, hold off until they are closer,” Vakim said. “They might run if they think this is a fight they can’t win. Send four up with us to keep the starfighters from zipping by us, and keep two with you to defend and hunt down any that manage to get through.”

Stopping with her finger right above the activate button, Calima pulled back, nodding despite the fact that Vakim couldn't see her, quickly feeding the new orders through her console. While the Tholothian most certainly had more experience flying ships, most of her experience in combat was running away until they could jump to lightspeed. She had no problem following the Mikkian's orders regarding combat.

When Calima was done feeding orders to the still latched-on raindrops, she continually switched between looking down at her sensor read out and out through the viewport, watching the distant ships get closer and closer. Eventually, when they were getting concerningly close to the Intervention, the comms sparked again.

“Send them out now, Chariot!”

Calima activated the raindrops, and seconds later, they rocketed out from under the ship, hurtling up to and alongside the Intervention, circling around to stay around the larger warship. The approaching starfighters shifted, changing direction and breaking off into two groups of four. Unfortunately for them, they were well within the range of the Intervention’s weapons, which opened up at once.

The raindrops regrouped and easily caught up with their first targets, a quartet of Headhunters. They tore into the slower starfighters, the raindrop's heavy central cannons punching through the starfighter's shields, allowing their rapid-fire cannons to eviscerate them directly. Unfortunately, while they were focused on annihilating the Headhunters, they left themselves open. The other four starfighters, which Calima recognized as ARC-170’s took advantage of that, weathering the storm of Intervention’s weapons to attack the smaller, more nimble starfighter.

With their targets already taken out of the fight, the raindrops dipped and pulled back, trying to use the Intervention as cover. Two of the four raindrops weren’t fast enough, however, and their shields gave out, the heavy weapons of the ARC’s punching through and disabling them before they could dive under the ventral side of the Intervention. Unfortunately for pirates, the Intervention was not just another C70. Normally the retrofitted Consular-classes did not have any anti-starfighter weapons on their underbellies. After the recent upgrades, the Intervention had two.

When the ARCs attempted to follow the two undamaged raindrops down under the belly of the ship, they flew right into the kill zone for two military-grade quad lasers, which chewed them up as they passed. Two of the ARC’s exploded before they could even realize the mistake they had just made, while a third was disabled as it passed, flying out into space on its momentum, its engines dead.

The fourth and final ship survived the pass, its shields barely holding. The two remaining raindrops quickly oriented themselves to follow the larger starfighter, using their superior speed to hunt it down and destroy it.

It was at this point that the heavily modified medium freighter blew past the Intervention, having made no attempt to slow down to engage. Instead, it was headed directly to the planet at full speed. The retrofitted and upgraded Republic warship still managed to hit it with a few of its heavier weapons as it went by, but failed to keep up to its greater speed.

The Chariot, however, was much more maneuverable, and considering the ship was nearly half its size, it was more than enough to take it down. Calima pulled away from her position to bring the smaller ship in range, the CROC’s weapons deploying and opening up on the smaller ship. Their two raindrops escorting them peeled off and chased after the smaller ship, harrying its shields. The Chariot reverberated as the smaller vessel returned fire, a surprising number of weapons swiveling around to open fire on the carrier. Still, with its improved shields, it easily weathered the barrage, absorbing the energy and firing more than twice back in return.

Unfortunately, the raindrops were not nearly as tough, their low-end shields overwhelmed the freighters' weapons. Just before the Chariot could punch through its shields and melt a significant portion of the smaller ship's armor, one of its gunners was able to take out one of the robotic starfighters, its broken remnants immediately being pulled down to the planet.

The larger ship wasn’t far behind it, their last ditch attempt to get down to the surface meaning that when the Chariot managed to destroy its power core, the ship was well within the planet's pull. The smaller ship began to fall towards the planet immediately, with fire, slag, and broken chunks of the ship trailing around and behind it. As the ship began to burn into the planet's toxic atmosphere, the comms droid spoke up.

“Incoming message from the ground team, putting it through.” It said, tapping at its console.

"Talos Chariot and Intervention, this is Deacon! We cleared out the pirate base, but one of the landing pads is empty, and one of the leaders isn't here!" Boss’s voice said through the comms, urgency clear in his voice. "You need to get ready for the company in case they come back! Chariot, Intervention, are you there?"