Carpe Diem (Open)

[Gamov]

The bulkhead doors to the turbolaser fire control center slid open, a squad of Overwatch soldiers pouring through moments later with their guns at the ready. Each man did his duty, sweeping the room and covering their corners as Major Venn was the last through the opening.

"We're clear in here, ma'am. No sign of the Jedi." One of the troopers said, moving out from a small maintenance access way and back into the room.

Venn was frustrated by the report, but soon took note of three of her men standing around a hole in the floor. Approaching the hole, the Major could tell it had been cut recently, as the edges were still glowing red hot from where the Jedi's lightsaber had sliced through the durasteel plating.

"It goes all the way down into the service corridor, ma'am." One of the men said.

The Major leaned over the hole and peered down into it for herself. There wasn't any visual sign of the Jedi, but that didn't mean he wasn't still down there.

"Should we flush him out, Major?"

Venn nodded, "use your gas grenades, Captain. We don't want to risk damaging anything down there."

The Captain nodded. "Masks!" He shouted into the room. Immediately, all of the soldiers in the squad removed their gas masks from their ruck sacks and placed them on their faces. Radioing ahead, the Captain alerted the other Overwatch teams on the levels below them.

"This is Tango Company, be advised all friendly units below turbolaser battery...." He scanned the walls for the numerical designation and found it rather quickly, reading off the big white alpha numeric code printed on the wall of the room ".... Zulu Twenty Three, we are deploying gas into the service tunnels. Say again, we are deploying gas into the service tunnels at position Zulu Twenty Three. Masks are advised."

As the Captain clicked his comm off, three soldiers stepped forward towards the hole and the Captain gave them a hand signal and a nod to deploy the gas. The men tossed their grenades down the hole, where they could be heard clattering over the durasteel plates on the deck below them. Seconds later, all three grenades began seeping a cloud of toxic gas into the corridor beneath the fire control center.

[MikDaTv]

The door fell outwards with a clang as it hit the metal floor plating. Jor deactivated his lightsaber and could hear the soldiers above him sweep the room. He closed his eyes and extended himself up to them, hearing their conversation via their thoughts instead their speech. When they mentioned gas he rolled his eyes.

He made sure the seal on his helmet was tight and did a quick check of his suits integrity to make sure he wasn't leaking. The XAN suit, as much as Jor hated it, came in handy during situations like this.

When the grenades fell Jor was walking out of the room. The service corridor and the main corridor Jor walked into quickly filled with gas, which was illuminated by Jor's green lightsaber giving him and his surroundings an eerie green glow.

"Big Blue this is Snake Doctor. Report your status." Jor said into his helmet.

Outside Sovereign's hull, Shard was kneeling next to one of the Super Star Destroyers small maneuvering thrusters planting another det-pack. "Snake Doc, I have currently placed det-packs on one of Sovereigns sensor arrays and maneuvering thrusters. Estimated damage from both det-packs is decimal, zero, two, percent. Repeat %.02. I have a few more det-packs to place however."

Jor dragged his lightsaber through the metal of another pressure door as he cut his into the ship. "Roger. Keep on it Big Blue. See if you can bring that figure up to a nice round tenth of a percent." The futility of it started to sink in. Two jedi working apart from one another just couldn’t do enough damage to make it even a remotely fair fight for the Halcyon, especially if they wanted to capture it. He should have stayed on the bridge. His hopes of getting all the sith together on the bridge of the ship had been squandered when he ran after Judicar. Maybe, if he had taken out the sith right then and there he could have taken the ship without having to kill dozens of good airmen for no other reason than being in his way. He sighed and pushed on. He made the decision and he would have to live with it like he did for so many other decisions.

"Jor, security encryption has been cracked. My subroutine has disabled the governors on that turbolaser battery. It's capacitors are now charging past their safety limits. Temperature in the capacitors is five degrees above red line and rising rapidly." Rita informed him.

Jor breathed. At the rate he was cutting through pressure doors, if those melting turbolasers caused a hull breach that would cause a huge atmospheric pressure problem for this small section of the ship. Jor didn’t really want to have to keep cutting through doors. He had to get out of this security lockdown to a place where he could free roam the ship again. “Can you override the security lockdown in this section?”

“Negative.” She answered. “I have the encryption codes to do so but that command can only be issued from the security console in this section which I do not have access to.”

Jor sighed and kept cutting. “I hate my job sometimes.”

[Ragsmire]

"Affirmative Halcyon, We'll help you out, that is until we're cleared for hyperspace, then this is your fight." Judicar replied, choosing, despite his pride and tendency to settle a score, to take the wish route and allow the Halcyon its support and escape without attempting to even things between them.

Placing the comms device back in the hand of the officer who gave it to him, Judicar stepped back to Wayneright's side, symbolizing their equality when it came to command, and informed him of the decision. Although equivalent when it came to leadership, Judicar still choose to make this call without consulting his parallel half.

"Commander, as you know the Halcyon chimed in a moment prior, it has offered to allow us safe passage should we turn our weapons on the Star destroyer in pursuit. I have taken the liberty of accepting their offer, now issue the order to the men to turn our guns on the Manticore." Judicar spoke in a low, though respectful, voice toward Damon, who never let his gaze slip from the viewport monitors. At one point the commander permitted a sigh of relief, apparently fearful of the worse when it came to the conversation.

"Acknowledged, My liege." Wayneright replied, turning to address the deck. Judicar took personal note of the formality, earlier he had granted permission to refrain from the use of such a title, but Wayneright had apparently not taken to it. Leaving that topic for another more pertinent time, he stalked out of the deck in his usual fashion.

"Alright lads and lasses, forget Halcyon, she's on our side. Turn all weapons possible toward the Manty, and increase our shields facing her. Any extra power divert toward the engines."

[Gamov]

OOC: Sorry about the wait here guys. I actually forgot this thread was still here until recently.

BIC:

Turbolaser control room:

As the plume of gas filled the corridor below them, the Captain let out a sharp chuckle, "that ought to fix that bastard."

Major Venn glanced at the officer. "Don't be so quick to dismiss him. He's probably got some trick up his sleeve, I doubt we got him that easily." However, amid her exchange with the Captain, the worried voice of another of her troopers called out from the side of the room near the control panels.

"Ma'am, we may have an issue here."

Moving to see what the soldier was talking about, Venn looked over his shoulder at the computer screen the man was staring at. It didn't take long for her to realize that there really was a problem. A big one. The capacitors for the battery had been overloaded and the system was red-lining quickly.

"Can you run an override?" She asked in haste.

"I could try, but there's something in the system locking the controls."

"Then there isn't any time," the Major said, slinging her rifle over her shoulder and spinning to face the troopers in the room with her. "Clear out, everyone clear out!"

Her sharp tone and raised voice prompted the others to quickly follow her directions, and within no time the entire unit was pulling back from the control room. As they did, Venn contacted the Colonel on her comm. "Colonel Toth, come in. Over."

"Go for Toth."

"Sir, we've got a major problem here. That Jedi has set the gun batteries on this level to overload. We're pulling back now, but I have no idea how to stop this damn thing. Please advise, over."

There was a moment of silence on the comms before Toth's voice came back over the channel. "Major, fall back to tertiary positions and link up with Lima company. If that Jedi wants to blow our guns up, we're gonna make good and sure he goes with them. I'm initiating emergency protocols on my end. You'll have less than a minute to vacate. Toth out."

Less than a minute? Well, they had been ordered out of tighter situations, but not on such a strict time table. Still, that didn't replace the fact that it was either move it or lose it now. Giving another sharp command to her soldiers, Venn urged them onward through the ship's corridors.

"We're running on borrowed time boys n' girls. Get the lead out!"

Main command deck, Manticore:

As Captain Harkness ordered his ship into pursuit of the Ruina, he was surprised by what he was seeing when the Ruina turned back into the attack with the Halycon at its side. Moments later, his bridge crew noted the same thing on their sensors and blurted the alert out to their Captain.

"Sir, the Ruina...." But before the officer could even finish, Harkness was already barking commands to his crew.

"Fire control, direct all forward firepower at the Ruina. Helm, set for attack course, positive fifty degrees lateral vector. Lieutenant Bligh, have damage control on standby, deploy our reserves to secondary prep stations and await my commands."

The Lieutenant gave Harkness a quick nod and hurried off to relay the message as the Captain continued to issue commands at his back.

"ATC, recall all current fighters. Prep Talon Squadron for immediate deployment."

All across the bridge, officers and crew members rushed to complete their orders as the bridge became a blur of activity. Bligh returned to Harkness' side after a few minutes, "sir, we're going to attack them? We're but one ship. How...."

"Have confidence, Lieutenant. You forget I was Admiral Shelvey's former executive officer."

Bligh looked to the approaching Ruina and Halycyon, then back to Harkness. He certainly hoped the Captain knew what he was doing as the Manticore's forward guns fired on the Ruina again, lashing its hull with a volley of turbolaser fire. With any luck, the battle would proceed as Harkness had planned. If not, well they did have the Sovereign at their back if things came to that.

[MikDaTv]

Halcyon

"Runia is complying." Came the reply from the com officer.

"Operations reports that she is matching actions to words." Came the report from the XO standing by the sensor consoles.

"Cease fire on the Runia and switch targets to the Manticore. Give that impstar a full spread of torpedoes." The captain ordered.

The bridge crew set about the orders. The ships turbolasers shifted targets to the imperial star destroyer and another 24 proton torpedoes launched from the Halcyon and sped towards the imperial star destroyer.

* * *

"Rita, you still have access to the intercom?" Jor asked.

The voice in his helmet took a fraction of a second before responding. "Go ahead."

"Hey Toth, feel like giving up yet? I'm getting kinda up there in years and all this rigamarole gets old quick at my age. I've got nothing against you personally, i just want to have a chat with your boss. You know, that guy on the upper decks who drinks evil juice all day long and doesn't give a damn about whether your men live or die." Jor said as he started on cutting down the next pressure door in his way. He was getting really tired of all the cutting.