The next attack came when Nix least expected it. Which was so sadly predictable that the two Elders who led it were dead before they had a chance to cry out.

“To be fair, dropping down from the catwalk behind us was a good ambush,” Ayli said, shutting off her lightsaber.

The Elder’s hadn’t been the ones to jump off the catwalk and make the first assault. Three of their empowered Storm Troopers had been poised to led the charge, and likely would have been backed up by the five others who were moving to get into position in case the ambush failed.

They’d been quite and, within the limits of Nix’s abilities, impossible to sense in the Force.

What they hadn’t accounted for was that Ayli didn’t need to use the Force to be aware of attack lines and ambush spots. It had required precisely a single glance up to the catwalk and a frown to communicate to Nix the danger they were in.

It had then taken Nix a single thought to breech the fuel wall in the flight pack of the Storm Trooper at the center of the formation. A significant amount of lift is required to hoist an armored body into the air and keep it there for an extended time. Turning the fuel required to produce that lift was only advisable when you were well away from the fireball which followed.

Nix and her people were.

The Elders were not.

Why the Elders hadn’t donned armor was an interesting, if no longer relevant question. Contrary to the reputation it had for flimsiness, the Storm Troopers armor was sufficient to save them from the blast. Well, the ones who had another trooper or two to act as shields at least. The Elder’s had been at the center of the pack and had been making very sure the Force would provide no danger warnings to anyone. 

The few Storm Troopers who’d survived had, despite their sudden depowering, rocketed down at their targets and opened fire indiscriminately. As Nix had learned though, firing blaster bolts at a Force User with a tool capable of deflecting them was a bad idea in general and a worse one when the Force user in question had been drilled by both a Jedi and a former-Sith mentor in sending attacks back where they’d come from.

“We’ve always avoided using Light Savers to avoid being confused with the Jedi,” Lasha said. “I’m thinking we may want to reevaluate that policy though.”

“We can show you how to make them,” Ayli said. “If you don’t start with a processed crystal, it makes for a nice workout.”

“And if you do, the rest of the circuitry takes about five minutes to put together,” Nix said.

“So why do people think they’re magical?” Nulo asked.

“Probably because anyone who tried to parry a blaster bolt without training in the Force would be laughed out of the afterlife,” Nix said. “Any sane person brings a blaster to a blaster fight.”

“No. Sane people bring a starship to a blaster fight,” Ayli said. “Anyone carrying one of these around is saying they don’t mind if someone confuses them with a Jedi, which has been a bad idea for a long time.”

“Since the Empire?” Nulo asked.

“Since the Jedi were founded I think,” Ayli said. “That’s the problem with being a troubleshooter, trouble gets good at shooting back, and if you’re just pretending to be one, you’ll run into troubles that’re way out of your league.”

“Speaking of troubles, the other Elders are going to have felt those two die,” Nix said. “So they’ll know exactly where we are.”

“Do you think they’ll start running?” Lasha asked.

“I think they’ve run as far as they can,” Nix said. “If they’ve been working for the Imperials, and there’s no chance they fled here otherwise, then this is the strongest ally they have access to.”

“And Imperials do not make for forgiving allies. They’re probably be tolerating the Elders for concessions the Elders gave them like this whole Force-powered Storm Trooper thing they can do. If the Elder’s try to abandon them and the Imperials survive, the Elders will have turned an ally into an ugly, ugly enemy.” Ayli’s tone suggested that she’d seen that happen more than once.

“They’ll still be on the bridge then,” Lasha said. “Which we know is guarded by about a legion of Storm Troopers.”

“And the automated defenses. Storm Troopers are vulnerable to misdirections and aren’t generally the brightest of sorts,” Ayli said. “The automated defenses, we really need someone to splice into for us though because they will absolutely rip us to shreds.”

“If we can find a working terminal would you be able to do it?” Nix asked, recalling the design schematics for the various types of Star Destroyers and considering where the closest terminals with the right access might be.

“Doubt it,” Ayli said. “I lost some of my stuff when the Lich’s droid grabbed me, and even if I had it, most of the codepacks I had are older.”

“Knowing Imperials standards, I’d be shocked if they’d ever updated the systems. In fact given that they’re systems are still working and they don’t have an Imperial starport to do overhauls at, I’ll wager hard credits they’re running old code on everything here.”

“I’d still need better stuff than what I’ve got to splice it though,” Ayli said.

“We have some tools that could manage it,” Lasha said. “But they’re back at our home. This wasn’t meant to be a mission with Imperial entanglements.”

“If we can’t turn the automated systems off, then maybe we can get them to come to us instead,” Nix said, not particularly liking the plan she’d come up with but not having a better one to offer in its place.

“The Elders and the Imperial command will agree on one thing unanimously,” Ayli said. “And that’s that their own lives are more important than anything else. I don’t think we can trick them to put themselves in any significant sort of peril.”

“Yeah. I expect that to be true too,” Nix said. “Which is why we’ll need to let them see how much peril they’re in already.”

“We’re pretty formidable, but I think they have a sense of what our limits are,” Ayli said.

“I think we can make that work in our favor,” Nix said. “Remember how Kelda and Ravas brought Sali in to help us because they’d seen us being killed by a ship exploding?”

“Yeah. There’s a proton beam cannon onboard the flagship,” Ayli said and stopped. Nix watched as understanding dawned in Ayli’s eyes.

“You’re thinking to threaten their prize weapons to lure them out?” Lasha asked.

“Not exactly,” Nix said, still hesitant to even voice the idea.

“She’s planning to blow it up,” Nix said.

“That will cause us certain problems if we’re still on the ship won’t it?” Lasha asked.

“Or within a staggering large radius of it,” Nix said. “Which is why I only want them to believe we’re going to blow it up.”

“And how would you lead them to this belief?” Lasha asked.

“But setting the engine’s power drive to feed into weapon and breaking the cutoffs which would let them stop it.” Nix knew what her own reaction would be to discovering someone had done that as the Elders had, arguably, an even stronger self-preservation instinct than she did.

“Would that bring them to us though?” Lasha asked. “Or aren’t they more likely to flee to the escape pods.”

“Assuming they or the Imperials know anything about ship design? No. Escape pods won’t get them far enough away, and would be easy pickings for the pirates, who might or might not take them into the custody rather than blasting them out of the sky for a laugh.” Nix was reasonably sure any pirates Sali had conned into helping them would be of the ‘take prisoners and sell them to the new Republic’ variety but Sali had been pressed for time.

“So then their own real option will be to deal with us themselves? Ah, yes, I suppose it would be. If they brought along a legion of Storm Troopers, we might think the odds are hopeless and blow the weapon up immediately,” Lasha said, understanding the shape of Nix’s plan at last.

“We’ve dealt with the strike teams they sent. If they come for us again, they won’t make the mistake of coming against us in twos and fours anymore,” Ayli said.

“Yeah, I suspect it will be an all or nothing sort of thing,” Nix said. “They won’t like having to do their own dirty work, but they’ll like the idea of being atomized a whole lot less. Or am I missing something?”

Ayli and Lasha considered the question for a moment but it was Nulo who spoke up first.

“Could they turn to a tech solution to the problem? Like shutting down the engines, or ejecting the weapon out into space? Or venting all the air in this section of the ship?”

“Venting the air would kill all of their own personnel in whatever area we’re in,” Nix said.

“So they will definitely do that. We’ll need to find some space suits for us before we make it clear what we’re planning,” Ayli said.

“Shutting down the engines would be possible too, but that would be its own solution to the problem,” Nix said.

“Because there’s a bunch of pirates out there and they need power to keep them from boarding?” Nulo asked.

“Exactly. After they stabbed me and shot my wife, I’m less opposed to Sali’s friends coming in with plasma casters and cooking the whole lot of them it turns out.”

“The pirates would suffer significant casualties in the process.” Lasha didn’t seem to be arguing against the idea, merely pointing out an easily overlooked aspect of it.

“Not if we lend a hand,” Nix said. “After all if they shutdown power to the ship, the automated defenses go away too.”

“What about ejecting the beam cannon? Can they do that?” Lasha asked.

“It’s too valuable,” Nix said. “Those things cost a fortune to make, even if all they can really accomplish is the same as serious set of bombing runs. It would have to be a retrofit, and probably a shoddy one, which says if they’d put anything like explosive decouplers in at strategic points so they could jump the cannon’s assemble any jump away from it, they’d probably have lost it already. The cannon itself will be hard welded onto the super structure and its support assembly will be patched into the power grid with redundant connecting seals to make sure nothing comes loose when they fire.”

“Then it looks like we’ve got a plan,” Ayli said. “Let’s make it happen!”

—–

They did not have a plan.

What they had was a perfectly viable strategy up until the point where it wasn’t.

Getting Nix and Ayli a set of spacesuits was simple enough. A handful of Storm Troopers were easily distracted from a supply depot and the ones who were rushing to intercept them or on alert were not ready for five Force Users to ruin their day.

Things went well with navigating the Star Destroyer down to the lowest decks where the cannon was attached. There were more Storm Trooper patrols to avoid or fight through, but none of them were accompanied by an Elder, which seemed to confirm that the Elders were no longer willing to risk themselves, even in numerically superior groups.

Nix allowed herself a moment of hopefulness that her premonitions were only anxiety but a part of her knew better. She’d been listening to the Force for her whole life and she couldn’t deny the whispers which were making through any longer when they arrived at the main junction point for the proton beam cannon.

Only the void of space awaited them where an entire deck of the ship should have been.

Nix had been right, she saw. There hadn’t been any preplanned charges capable of ejecting the cannon. Instead the super structure had been ripped apart as though several powerful Force Users had bent their will towards removing the one thing which could threaten their position still.