[b][i]Kuat Drive Yards - Space Battle[/i][/b]

Despite the ship's inertial dampeners keeping them from jostling around as the pilots no doubt were sending the craft every which way, a certain stormtrooper couldn't help but feel as if things were going badly. In fact, he felt like he could feel the ship wildly scrambling side to side. This trooper undid his safety harness and rose to his feet, personally intent on seeing just how their trip was going.

Despite not being a pilot herself, Mara had enough experience to know better, and stayed seated. But she did make the effort to grab his arm.

Suddenly the engines cut, and the retro maneuvering thrusters cut in, reverberating loudly throughout the frame. The hull made a strained groaning from the sudden redirection of inertia, of which had proved to be too much for the internal dampeners. 

Mara hung onto her harness with one hand; the other she used to keep the trooper from flying across the cabin.

The intercom suddenly came alive. "Hang on, Hang on!" A man's voice shouted as several muted alarms bleeped in the background.

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[b][i]Kuat Drive Yards - Space Battle[/i][/b]
[i]5 Minutes earlier[/i]

Liam pulled on the yoke to get the Reaper climbing and banked hard to his side to evade an oncoming wave of laser fire. The bolts of hyper-accelerated energy brushed against the underside of their belly as he tried to put them in a spin. The energy of their shields flared as it clashed against the lasers. 

"Getting real hot up here.." Liam muttered as his eyes danced across his window and computer displays. The Kuat Drive Yards had formerly been an important Imperial shipyard and had been assigned appropriate defenses. Defenses which were to be used against the rebels were now aimed at him and his comrades, and just numbers alone were not going to stop them forever.

"You're doing good, keep it up." Ben said from the co-pilots seat. The sooner they got this little jaunt over with the sooner he could be back in an interceptor. The hospital ship was lightly defended, only a few laser cannons designed for asteroid defense were mounted on its ventral and dorsal sides. 

Meaning it was easy prey for a squad of pilots. Liam thumbed off the safety on his missiles and synced them to his squad. A blossoming trail of ions left them as a sphere of missiles launched simultaneously from all five of their ships. A fiery explosion burst out as the exhaust from the engines quickly died out, sending out bursts of dying energy and bits of nearly vaporized durasteel shooting out.

"It's disabled, that's one." Blanche added in a cold tone.

"Guys, I spotted Rogue Squadron!~" Maran suddenly shouted over the squad comm, setting off Liams' nerves, putting him into a small sweat. "Sector C-24, looks like business is good for them." 

Liam entertained the information and sent an eye over his computer display. Yeah, the Rogues had plenty of other TIE pilots to duke it out with. But his squad bombing a hospital ship had caught their attention, and they had all performed a sudden turn-around.

Rogue squadron was coming for them.

"Boss, lets hit'em!" Maran happily suggested, and before their squad captain could even reply Liam angrily spoke up.

"Not on a Bantha's backside we are! Me and the cap are flying a support ship, if they get serious about nailing me I'm dead weight!"

"Ahh, he's right, and he's got that weirdo agent in his back." Jarael said. "Let's try and not get our teammates dusted."

"Whether you like it or not, Rogue is going to be on us soon." Maran said flatly, loosing the flippant attitude from before. "O-7, think you can make it?"

Liam's eyes went wide, Rogue-1 was going to be on him in just a few more moments. The dip he did to avoid a missile only shortened that time. Ben flipped a switch to his side, deploying some kind of flare, intercepting a proton torpedo from a certain X-Wing, as Liam spiraled upwards. Their original mission of invading Kuat via Hangar 5, the same one the hospital ship was docked in front of, was looking harder all the time.

"The Hangar's defenses are still up, we can try to lose Rogue in the chaos with other pilots." Liam offered. "Maybe get some help. Everybody wants a kill after all."

"Could take a while. Rogue has a better kill ratio than all of us." Blanche stated a fact they all would have done without hearing.

"We still have most of our missiles, if we really try we could blow our way in. We'd still take a lot of fire going in though." Jarael offered over the crackling of her radio.

"Your call O-1." Liam said as the ship shook from incoming fire. Missile alarms were constantly blaring now, despite Liam shuffling the ship around as best he could.

"We're going in." Ben said, making a forward motion with his arm. Their ships all dipped, climbed, or blasted to their respective sides, creating a wide flower-like pattern with their Ion trails.

Liam banked again and opened fire, holding down his trigger as hard as he could, as if the pressure would make his lasers hit harder. The rest of his squad did the same, and a river of fire streamed toward the anti-air towers. Liam hit the firing stud for his missiles, sending a volley towards the shield generator on the side of the hangar doors.

The defense towers answered their sudden offensive with their own wave of lasers, sudden movements and quick strafing kept most of the squad more or less safe. Though nobody made it without a scratch. Missile alarms continued to blare, but with their objective being so obvious, not even the defense flares would be enough. 

Liam realized, he wasn't going to make it if he didn't change his vector. He sent the engines into as hard a burn as he could, then cut them and smashed his hand on the maneuvering thrusters. The Reaper suddenly spun 180 degrees. Inertia continued to carry the ship on its old vector, but now the bow was pointed 'backwards'. Ben quickly caught on and started adjusting the navigation display. He split the screen into fore and aft.

Using his finger he clamped the trigger down and rapidly hammered his thumb on the missile stub, quickly leaving a volley of laser and an unpredictable wave of dumb fired missiles in their 'wake'. The X-Wings following them weaved and waved off to avoid his attacks. Liam guessed they probably left without a scratch. The wave of missiles and lasers already on their way crashed violently into his ship, creating a corona of fire and destruction in front of the cockpit window that made it impossible to see through, forcing him to rely on his computers cameras. 

The towers continued to barrage them, the ship rocked heavily as Liam attempted steer appropriately, adjusting their approach, with the hangar opening swiftly growing larger on his screen.

"Hang on, Hang on!" He shouted into his radio. They entered the hangar at what felt like lightspeed. The force of their entrance shot a concussive wave throughout the hangar, blowing over technicians as they desperately attempted to scramble out of the way, spare fuel containers flew and detonated somewhere on the edges of the hangar, several maintenance machines were completely crushed as the rear of the TIE Reaper bowled right through.

Liam tried the rear thrusters, the ship slowed, but not as much as he wanted. The Reaper slammed into the far wall, both he and Ben jerked heavily in their seats, the force of the G's nearly blacking them out for a second, held only in place by their safety harnesses. His thoughts dwelled on his passengers for a moment, he assumed they went through exactly the same thing, but with their armor and harnesses they'd be fine.

After regaining his senses, Liam took a glance around the cockpit. Smoke spewed out from behind loose panels, and sparks shot out from half the consoles. Apparently the shields had collapsed at some point, the engines were blown out from the laser fire, at some point they had lost a wing, and the cockpit window had more than a few cracks in it. 

Ben coughed a few times as he recomposed himself and performed the same checks. "Looks like we'll need a new ride out of here."

Liam adjusted himself and looked out into the hangar itself. Several rebel security personnel, or soldiers, approached the ship with their pistols drawn. Damage control personnel struggled to put out fires or carry out injured.

"They're reenergizing a shield over the hangar. Atmosphere is stable." Ben said as he tapped at the flickering computer.

Liam stood up and opened the door into the cabin. "Feel free to get up and move around the cabin." The sight of a stormtrooper already on the ground, struggling to get up sent a worry through his mind. While the others quickly stood up, eagerly shouting, their commander wasting no time in ordering them around. A certain dark figure approached him.

"We survived, good work." The Hand said, standing. She readied a blaster pistol. "But that was just the easy part."