Final Moments
“Hard roll. Brace brace!”
The warning and associated chitter came over Comms, and she locked her boots to the gantry. The pitch and roll could be felt even through the dampeners, slivers of power taken from it to bolster other systems. The monitors showed a chunk of durasteel and sparking systems that had once been the bulk of a Hammerhead Cruiser’s forward section. It spun slowly past on the console screen as the Nasryc maneveured.
The shields had gone, and enemy fire bit deep into armor and hull. However, the Mandalorian design was feared for a reason. Even starved of resupply and refit, it’s crew did not lack for courage or ship-handling skill. Most were veterans of the war not long past, and that for some had never ended.
Shattered ships lay scattered across deep space, and for a brief time they had glimpsed victory. Before Republic reinforcements had flashed into realspace.
Hull straining and screaming in protest, the bow lined up once more on an enemy ship.
In the crewspace of a capital ship weapons bay was her place by inclination and experience. Ara’novor was best known for it’s bes’uliik, the wardroids that had helped to bring the combined vode, or clans, so close to greater victory in the war past. But for each pilot there must be those doing other tasks, and she had found her place in a series of corvettes, including one lost in the highly contested orbital space over Dxun during one of the largest battles of the war.
The final surrender after whatever had happened at Malachor had caught her as a lone detachment as part of a crew on a remote tasking. The Comms and Transportation networks in that sector fell apart shortly thereafter as vode heeded the surrender, started the path that led to the Mandalorian Remnants, or sought to disappear into seclusion.
Her crew had been a mixed one, and she would not follow them into the Outermost reaches, nor challenge for a fight she would probably lose. Her duty was to rejoin.
If the others still lived. And that was in doubt as reports of the losses at Malachor reached them. Certainly vode Ara’novor’s presumed destruction was heavily insinuated by others seeking to draw her into their ranks or employ.
Mando’ade are stronger together. In the turmoil after the war, the dangers to a lone vod were many. Those they had fought and defeated found new courage against a lessened people. She took employ but not new oath with a group of like-minded Remnants from many vode. That group then found employ in turn with the Remnant Neo-Crusader vode Iviin. Those moves were not without their difficulties for her or her compatriots. But any vode is better than no vode.
And that vode now coordinated what might be it’s final action. The primary emitters on it’s flagship cycled just as another salvo of incoming fire hit. Knocked against the machinery, when the flash cleared she caught sight of stars and sparks visible beyond the smoke. As an old engineer saying went, when you don’t need monitors to tell you pitch and roll, things are not going well.
Further strife was coming from sternwards. The rumble of collapsing systems masked the scream of tortured durasteel. With a jarring lurch the vast ship came apart. The vast emitters on either side of her might usually signal her death sentence. However, caught at the right stage in their cycle they remained stable even as they were ripped apart. And the emitters’ own dedicated inertial dampeners, that usually served to maintain alignment during maneuver, lasted long enough to prevent her from being turned to paste by the forces involved. She escaped an immediate detonation for the somewhat lesser peril of being aboard a chunk of only-partly inert debris.
Escape pods did exist. But they were not a design feature given particular or weighty consideration, at least by vode Iviin. And as she took stock of her surroundings, they were very clearly not a part of her immediate future.
