"A gravity well has enveloped us!" The droid behind our sensors shouted, despite the organics crew's refusal to move. "The field extends far past us! Estimated time to escape, two minutes, sixteen seconds."

I blankly stared out of the viewport, looking at a battleship that dwarfed everything we had entirely by itself. I knew somewhere inside me that these ships weren't invincible, but I could not have prepared myself for the absolute feeling of dread staring down the barrel of one would bring. We weren't ready, no one was ready, we-

"Deacon. Deacon! What is it?" General Syndulla shouted, finally breaking me free from my shock. "Should we jump in the fleet?"

"What? No! No, it's an Imperial ambush," I explained. "A trio of Interdictors and… The Executor, Vader's super star destroyer. Just stay away, or you'll be stuck too."

Now it was her turn to be shocked into silence, which was fine because I suddenly had a lot on my plate. My mind was spinning at top speed, trying to see an angle, a play, a loophole. The SSD had more guns than my entirely newly gained fleet, outclassing us in everything, even weight...

"Incoming transmission from the unknown ship," The comms droid called out.

"Leave it ringing! Send a message to the Quick Deal! Tell them what's going on and that they should prepare to run, that they should jump away the second they have the chance," I said, clenching my fist tightly. "Send a message to the whole fleet to stay on standby for my order. Then put him on the projector."

I looked around at the bridge, and as the droid confirmed my orders, I saw my team. I could see Tatnia, Vaz, and Ahsoka, the first two still staring out the viewport. The fear, the hopelessness on their faces... It burned in my chest. So help me, god, I was going to pull us out of this, the burning sensation roaring into defiance in my chest. As the droid worked, I quickly ran to the closest control chair, jumping over the side to sit in it. Ahsoka followed me, standing beside the chair as I started tapping on the controls.

"What… what do we do?"

"We need to take down the Interdictors," I explained, frantically looking at the controls. "And if Vader is there, we need to throw him off his game."

"How do you plan on doing that?"

"By being an annoying bastard and pissing him off."

Before Ahsoka could comment, the comms droid called out that he was connecting us to the incoming call. Somehow, despite the mounted odds and growing panic, I managed to throw on a big smile. When the Holoprojection of Darth Vader appeared at the front of the bridge, I started talking immediately.

"So sorry about that, Little Ani. I was a bit busy enjoying having functioning legs," I said. "What could the Skyforged Vanguard do for you?"

For a long moment, all we heard was the sound of his mechanical breathing apparatus, a sound that spiked fear through anyone who heard it and knew what it was. Myself included.

"Deacon Roy. Your reputation precedes you," He said, his helmet barely shifting as he spoke. "You have attracted the attention of my Master, Emperor Palpatine."

"Oh, no need to be shy, big guy!" I said, still smiling, my hands resting on the chair's inbuilt control consoles. "If you wanted an autograph, all you needed to do was ask! Where do you want it? Your helmet?"

"...Your infantile jokes will not buy you time. You are trapped and outgunned," He assured me, confidence oozing from his mechanical voice. "Surrender, and perhaps we will let the rest of your crew go. The Emperor wants you, not your band of pirates."

"Yeah, sure," I responded, rolling my eyes. "You're as likely to let any of us go as you are to win husband of the year. C'mon, Little Ani, what else do you have up your sleeves? Should have plenty of room without any arms."

Now, the pause was longer, and I could see him shake. Some part of me wondered if I could even feel his growing rage pressing on me despite the distance between us. It was a full thirty seconds before he finally spoke again.

"The… Emperor wishes to meet you," He finally managed to get out. "Your abilities are interesting, and he wants to offer-"

"I could give two shits about what that gross fucking testicle abomination has to offer," I said with a frown, before forcing my smile to return. "But don't worry, I promise not to replace you as Grand Palpy's new apprentice. Wouldn't want to make you feel threatened, Little Ani. You might run off and murder a bunch of children again."

"You would spit on your only chance for survival?"

"I would spit on anything that bastard offered, as you should have done the day you met him," I responded. "A creepy old man taking an interest in a young, impressionable boy? Didn't Shmi teach you about stranger danger before you abandoned her to die on Tatooine?"

The sound of shouting and destruction was audible from the holoprojector despite the fact that it was entirely focused on Darth Vader. He must have lost control of his rage, unleashing it on the bridge around him. I could hear the crack and crunch of breaking computers, shouting in the distance.

"Woah, careful there, Little Ani. Throwing a temper tantrum like that can be dangerous," I pointed out, my hands slowly moving along the armrest consoles, glancing down slightly. "I-"

"ENOUGH! You will surrender, or we will wipe you from the galaxy!" He responded, cutting me off with a shout. "You have no hope of escape! You have five seconds to comply, or we will open fire. Maybe destroying your people at the repair station will change your mind."

"Don't threaten my people, Little Ani," I said, meeting the stare of his helmet. "You may not understand the concept of friendship or loyalty anymore, but most of us do. In fact, you're really starting to piss me off. So…"

I stood from my chair, still looking at Anakin, the pitiably miserable bastard.

"All ships, open fire! Scramble all starfighters!"

I shouted, and my droid fleet, whom I had been communicating with via the consoles on the chair, leaped to follow my orders. Weapons, which had been warming up once Vader had started to destroy his own bridge, immediately opened fire, and the entire fleet engaged.

"You have sealed your crew's fate," Darth Vader assured me. "You cannot hope to overpower this ship."

"Shut up, you whiny, broken excuse for a person!" I said, stepping forward as I shouted at him. "You know nothing of hope since you lost it the moment you gave in to your self-fulfilling prophetic nightmares! You're nothing but a broken child, unable to pull your head out from between your master legs to see he was the one who orchestrated your fall! From feeding you lies, to encouraging you to walk the razor's edge of the dark side, even isolating you from your peers! I pity you, Little Ani, because while the world may have been conspiring against you, you were too lost in your own suffering to stop making it worse!"

I motioned to the Comms droid, and he killed the feed, the large projection of one of the most dangerous people in the galaxy vanishing. With the projection gone, the viewports were clearly visible, and I could see the massive crisscross of turbolaser fire streaking across the gap between the Executor and the old CIS fleet. Nearly four thousand starfighters swirled around us, engaging with the TIE fighters, explosions spreading out between the two fleets.

But it wasn't just starfighters and gunships.

Mixed into the swarm were hundreds of other ships, everything that my newly acquired fleet had with engines attached to them, poured from our hangar bays. Transport shuttles, a few dozen C-9979 landing crafts, emergency transports, and anything else that could fly in space were staffed with a skeleton crew and sent out of every ship I had control over. Behind them was every ship in the fleet that was too small to really hurt the super star destroyer with their weapons. A wave of ships spread out through space. Many of them were destroyed, each one a distraction that bought seconds that our guns could fire unimpeded.

By the time they were in position, nearly half of them had been obliterated.

"Order half of the vultures to break off and fly into the Executor!" I shouted. "Overcharge their power cells and activate their solid slug fuel drives! All impacting ships, aim for the weakest shields!"

"Aye, Admiral!"

Suddenly, the waves and flows of our gigantic fleet of vulture droids drastically changed directions, all at once aiming for the massive warship. Whoever was giving orders must have seen it coming, it was impossible not to. Nearly two thousand starfighters and under a hundred small starships, all rapidly changing direction and dumping everything into forward shields and thrusters. Hundreds of starfighters were destroyed in seconds, along with dozens of the starships, before finally, the first wave made impact.

This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

In the X-Wing novel, the Bacta War, the SSD Lusankya was destroyed by wave after wave of hundreds of proton torpedoes. While I didn't have access to the time or resources to re-create that specific scenario, I could certainly think outside the box with the best of them.

Explosion after explosion slammed into the SSD's forward shields, ranging from thousands of little dots to explosions as big as my thumbnail, despite the distance. Each explosion forced the usually invisible shield to appear as it absorbed the kinetic and explosive energy. The barrage of thousands of ready-to-explode vulture droids and other ships continued for nearly eight seconds before a series of explosions went off under the shield, and suddenly the protection was gone, the top front two-thirds of the ship suddenly completely unprotected.

The next two or three seconds of impacts hit the SDD directly, exploding and destroying what remained of the shield generators, as well as turbolasers, proton torpedo launchers, and more. When the explosion cleared, a not insignificant portion of the dorsal bow was a pocket-marked mess of twisted metal and fires, though they quickly went out as the vacuum of space starved them of oxygen. Despite the damage, the ship was still firing. We had disabled a good portion of its shields and weapons, but it still had enough firepower to overwhelm us.

"Status report!"

"Shields at 67 percent!" A droid shouted. "Fleet strength dropping! Several ships have dropped below forty percent!"

"Starfighter fleet holding, sir!" Another droid shouted. "We are losing starfighters at a noticeably faster rate, but we will still beat them through numbers!"

"Dammit, now it's double-edged time," I cursed. "Any ship below thirty percent put all energy to forward shields and thrusters. Hit the bow! The rest of you, concentrate fire on clearing out more weapon emplacements!"

Three Hardcell ships, two of the Dreadnoughts, and a handful of other large starships moved forward with a surprising amount of speed, leaving the now noticeably smaller fleet as they crossed the distance between us. The Executor reacted immediately, concentrating its fire on the encroaching ships, turbolasers firing by the hundreds.

"Pull the Dreadnoughts back," I ordered. "Use the other ships as a shield!"

My order was quickly relayed, and slowly, the Dreadnaughts fell behind, just enough to let the other ships pull ahead. Within seconds, most of those ships' shields failed, explosions raking across their hulls as they got closer and closer to their target. By the time they were getting close, most of the ships were just broken wrecks, having done their job to protect the dreadnaughts, who were trailing just behind.

"Pull the Dreadnoughts up! Redirect them to the Interdictors!" I ordered with a shout. "Reorient shields to protect them from the Executor!"

As the wrecked and battered hulls of the nearly a dozen ships slammed into the unshielded bow of the SSD, the Dreadnoughts pulled up, their thrusters pulling them out of their suicidal dive, reorienting them to their new targets. While their heavily damaged, mostly dead fleet mates tore massive chunks into the SSD, sending debris spewing into space, explosions, and twisted metal strewn across the massive Imperial ship, the Dreadnoughts continued on.

Immediately, they must have realized what was going on, as all available weapons went silent for a moment, spinning to target the Dreadnaughts. An ungodly amount of laser fire tried to stop the older ships, filling the growing gap between them with plasma energy.

Unfortunately for them, it was too late, and the first Dreadnought reached its target with its shields still intact, slamming into the special star destroyer at full speed, its thrusters driving it almost completely through the ship. Before it could manage it, however, the SD detonated, blowing itself to pieces as its core went critical.

The second Dreadnought had a little more distance to cross, so by the time it arrived at its destination, its shields had been broken, and the Executor had begun targeting its engines, destroying almost all of them. Even that, however, was too late, as the Interdictor tried to maneuver away, and the last of the Dreadnought's engines failed, the ship slammed full tilt into the Imperial ship, punching up through the bottom. This time, the SD completely split in half before the dreadnaught's core detonated, destroying both ships.

"The gravity well has shrunk, sir!" A droid called out. "Estimated time to escape, fifty-three seconds!"

"It's still too far," Vaz said, looking over the sensor droid's shoulder. "We are already down to twenty percent shields. If they chase us, we won't make it out."

"We need to try! We won't make it just sitting here either!" I shouted, gesturing to the fleet readouts. "We are running out of ships to throw at them. Just pray we stripped enough weapons off them already!"

Our ship began to rotate, the hum of the engines turning to a dull roar as we dumped all energy into aft shields and our thrusters. We watched through the holoprojector battle map as our remaining ships pulled up behind us, shielding us from the SSD, which began to immediately chase after us. The Interdictor was trying to keep pace with it, falling back as its power was being drained by the gravity well it was generating.

As it moved, the time to escape the well increased, and the field moved with the ship to contain us. I fought to keep my hopes up as our chances of successfully escaping shrank with every second. Turbolaser fire still slammed into our fleet, and as we watched, the Recusant detonated, leaving the wreck floating through space. As we began to move, I cursed loudly.

"Where is the Talos Chariot?" I called out, shaking my head in frustration and correcting myself. "The Quick Deal. Where is the Quick Deal?"

"They already jumped away, Admiral!" A droid called out. "Damaged but intact. The pilot's last message before jumping was to report missing passengers."

"What? Why?" I shouted, a cold spike sliding down my spine. "How did we lose anyone? Who?"

"The Pilot reported Boxi and his team stayed behind to provide additional firepower."

"What?" I asked, looking over at Ahsoka and then Tatnia in confusion. "What do-"

"Admiral! The Providence is moving!"

I whirled around, looking at the battle map projection. Sure enough, the rather large capital ship had torn itself free from the repair scaffolding and was now accelerating toward the remnants of the Imperial fleet.

As we had begun to retreat, the Executor and its final accompanying Interdictor had followed after, trying to chase us down and disable us before we could escape. The Interdictor, with most of its power going to its gravity well generators, was falling behind, unable to keep up with us as we dumped everything we had into thrusters and our aft shields. But it was a race we were still going to lose, the heavily damaged SSD destroying yet another ship protecting our rear.

Until Boxi and his squadmates targeted the trailing behind Interdictor with their ship.

It was clear their ship wasn't fully repaired, as the Executor's comparably few backward-facing weapons and the Interdictor's own weapons slammed into its hull, its shields non-existent. It didn't fire back either, instead dumping its energy into its engines. As the large ship homed into its target, the SSD tried to make one final run at destroying us, but it was too late, Boxi and his team had come through once again.

"Transmission from the Providence!"

"Put it through!"

A projection of Boxi replaced the battle map projection, the familiar droid giving me a salute.

"Unit Boxi reports we will unfortunately be unable to return to the Skyforged," He stated. "It has been an honor, Boss."

"The honor was mine, Boxi."

Before he could respond, what remained of the Providence finally slammed into the Interdictor, punching up through its engines as it tried to escape. The projection disappeared with a split-second explosion, cutting to static that soon was replaced by the battle map.

"Gravity well has faded, Admiral."

"Make the jump."

A few seconds later, the stars streaked across the viewport, and we were gone.