"Mentor, you really shouldn't have teased Ziro the Hutt," Max said under his breath.
A Jedi can be "handled" with a gentleman's rules—same goes for a Jedi Knight. The instant the Hutt fleet dropped out of hyperspace, Max decisively dumped the blame onto the Jedi Flower.
While Max and Aayla Secura were whispering to each other, the bridge crew of the Cloud City ship turned green in the face. Without so much as a warning, the Hutt fleet appeared behind the Bespin–Corellia joint formation and immediately dumped a full volley into the Tyrena.
Dense, high-energy particle beams hammered the ray shields, dyeing the entire starfield a horrifying sick green.
A Hutt battle line—one 1,200-meter Dor'bulla-class warship plus three 800-meter Chelandion-class warships—focused their fire. One single coordinated salvo overloaded the CR-12 Thranta-class corvette's deflector shields.
It was obvious the Hutt warships' ion cannons and turbolasers could cycle and recharge far faster than the Tyrena could restart its shield generators and restore output. If the Hutt fleet kept firing, the next volley would kill the Tyrena for sure.
"Hutt vessels, this is the Corellian Defense Force warship Tyrena. Repeat, this is the Corellian Defense Force warship Tyrena. Your attack on—"
Before the sentence could finish, the Hutt fleet fired a second salvo. A brilliant explosion—silent, brilliantly silent—bloomed in vacuum as the Corellian delegation's flagship was blown apart in open space.
"Fire! Avenge our Corellian brothers and sisters!" Max issued the first order.
"Fire!" Admiral Berethron finally snapped out of it.
As the Bespin–Corellia joint fleet began to return fire, the Hutt fleet's third volley was already on the way. This time, their concentrated target was the Mandalorian Navy First Fleet flagship, Wide-Area Silence.
The Hutt tactic looked simple: call targets in order, from most dangerous to least, and delete the joint fleet one ship at a time.
Simple—and brutally effective. The Hutt warships were far larger than anything in the joint formation, with vastly stronger firepower and defenses. In a straight exchange, the Hutts even had a path to wiping out the joint fleet without taking losses.
If they couldn't win, could they run?
Probably not.
To jump to hyperspace, a ship has to divert power into its hyperdrive. That means less power for deflector shields.
In the ten-odd seconds between "spooling up" and entering hyperspace, the Hutt warships would have more than enough time to vaporize any cowardly ship that tried to flee. In the later Battle of Scarif, Rebel ships that attempted to escape via hyperspace were almost all destroyed by Darth Vader's flagship.
If the joint fleet wanted a way out, it could only bet on starfighters breaking through and knocking out the Hutt warships' deflector generators.
"Mentor, let's go." Max broke into a long stride toward the hangar.
"Max!" Aayla called after him, helpless frustration in her voice. "My T-6 isn't armed."
Max didn't slow down. "It is now. Ours is."
At this point it wasn't just a bad situation—it was inches from a total disaster. The power gap was too extreme. In a moment like this, sitting on the bridge to "command the fleet" had lost most of its meaning.
So: flip on the Force cheat code, and get in there.
"Chris…"
"Here."
Max hesitated for a beat, then decided. "You take one too. Have Wind Team man the tail gun."
"Yes."
…
"Starfighters, laun—"
"Stop."
Aboard the Dor'bulla-class warship Evona, Hutt Clan Master Kosak Desilijic Tiure cut off the captain, who was about to order the fighter group to launch and intercept the enemy craft.
"Let Ziro's people handle it," Kosak ordered.
"As you command, Great Kosak."
…
"Swing around to the enemy formation's rear arc. Split their point-defense fire and cover the Commander's breakthrough!"
Michael Saxon redirected all forty-eight Z-95 Headhunters from Army Aviation's Ardor, Fervor, Zephyr, and Zenith squadrons—craft that had been running combat air patrol in-atmosphere around Cloud City and Sky City—and sent them to reinforce.
In his eyes, the Commander's safety mattered more than the safety of Cloud City and Sky City.
Navy Second Fleet was now the only reserve force left in Saxon's hands. He didn't dare throw it away.
…
"Captain Reeves—have Wide-Area Silence fire its ion cannon and twin main battery at me!"
"Commander?"
Tracy Reeves was sure she hadn't misheard. She suspected the Hutts had hijacked the channel and altered the order.
"Aim directly at me and fire—no lead. I've got Force precognition. You won't hit me. Fire, now. That's an order!"
For whatever reason—maybe the Hutts hadn't brought starfighters—they'd thrown a mass of armed freighters up to intercept the Mandalorian starfighter wave.
Armed freighters were sluggish, but they did have deflector shields. Black Sun's armed freighters couldn't catch Max's T-6 shuttle, but the T-6's own firepower was too weak to quickly chew through a wall of shielded freighters.
Max had to use Wide-Area Silence's guns to carve a fast lane forward.
Wide-Area Silence was still alive—for now. The moment she heard Max's bellow of "Deflectors to full! Prepare to engage!" Tracy Reeves executed without hesitation.
But if they didn't take down the Hutt warships, the focused fire on Wide-Area Silence would finish her soon enough.
"Fire!"
The instant Wide-Area Silence's heavy ion cannon and twin heavy turbolaser battery fired, Max yanked the stick, snapping the T-6 hard to the right.
Behind Max's T-6, two YT-1300 light freighters detonated into fireballs.
…
("My turn to take the stage.")
Nym pushed the controls and drove the Havoc straight down toward Bespin's atmosphere.
PS: The Hutt vehicles appearing in this chapter are all from Legends.
PPS: Deflector shields in Star Wars generally fall into two categories: ray shields, which defend against energy weapons, and particle shields, which defend against kinetic impacts.
Deflector projectors can only be mounted on the exterior surface of what they're protecting—vehicle, city, or planet.
In Star Wars, deflector shields are usually bi-directional. For example, a warship must lower its particle shields to launch/recover embarked craft. Destroyer droids have to extend their blaster muzzles outside the shield to fire.
PPPS: Before the Clone Wars, the Jedi Order's T-6 shuttles generally did not mount weapons. In this chapter, the protagonist faction's T-6 configuration matches Ahsoka's shuttle setup as seen in the live-action series Ahsoka.
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🛡️🔥🌌 STAR WARS: THE RISE OF MANDALORE 🌌🔥🛡️
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The clans are stirring.
The armor remembers.
And Mandalore will rise again.
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⚔️ Mandalorian warriors🔥 Clan warfare🚀 Galactic conflict🌌 Star Wars worldbuilding👑 Power & leadership💥 Massive battles🛡️ The resurgence of Mandalore
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