"BOOM!"
Another Kimogila-class fighter blossomed into a fireball under the T-6's guns.
In this kind of tail-chase fight, Force precognition was straight-up cheating.
Max stayed glued to the enemy's six at a distance of three to four fuselage lengths. No matter how the target sped up, slowed down, or threw itself into violent maneuvers, Max always matched it—biting down and refusing to let go. If he weren't worried about getting caught in the blast when it went up, he could've closed the gap to less than a single fuselage length.
Three to four fuselage lengths was already dangerously close—close enough that the Hutt fighters chasing Max didn't dare fire casually anymore. One wrong burst and they'd hit their own wingman ahead.
Yes, the Kimogila carried a high-performance deflector generator—far tougher than your average light fighter. But even so, it couldn't endure Max's point-blank, glued-to-the-tail sustained fire.
Half a minute of continuous fire, one enemy fighter destroyed.
A minute to find the next target, slide into position, and let the cannons cool.
Then another half minute of sustained fire—another enemy fighter destroyed.
Nine minutes of pursuit: nine kills.
One per minute.
Aayla Secura's tally was six.
The Jedi "flower" cared for all life. After stripping a fighter's shields, she would always call out over the public channel and tell the pilot to eject. Only when they refused did she add a short, final burst to end it.
Christopher Rhen also downed one fighter. For a pilot whose "cheat" hadn't activated yet—who still hadn't awakened to the Force—that was excellent work, especially given how undergunned a T-6 shuttle was.
The Navy's Shriek-Hawk Squadron claimed ten kills. A Gozanti light cruiser carried only a single heavy laser cannon; each Kom'rk carried two. A Kimogila that took a T-6 thirty seconds of sustained fire to destroy could be dropped by a Kom'rk in two short bursts of five shots.
But the Shriek-Hawks also lost two Kom'rk Mark I fighters. Even with superb agility, their massive sixty-eight-meter hulls made those two Mark Is easy focal points for concentrated fire from the pursuing Hutt fighters.
Behind them, in the chaos of a running brawl—pursuit, counter-pursuit, and constant entanglement—the Navy's Falcon carrier squadron paid dearly.
The Fang-class fighter was small, nimble, and outrageously maneuverable—but its fatal flaw was the lack of shields. A single stray shot could cripple it or outright destroy it. Since the battle began, Falcon Squadron had destroyed five armed freighters and thirteen M12-L Kimogila heavy starfighters—but had lost eight Fangs in return.
Army Aviation performed extremely well.
Since contact, the Passion Squadron and Gale Squadron—units formed less than half a year ago—had destroyed fourteen armed freighters and twenty-seven M12-L Kimogilas at the cost of eight Z-95 Headhunters, achieving a 1:5 loss ratio.
At this point, the Bespin–Corellia joint fleet had left: one lightly armed MPO-1400 Purrgil-class support ship, Cloud City; one C-80 Sphyrna-class corvette, Sphyrna; and two Gozanti-class light cruisers, Courage and Resolve.
In the Hutt battle line, the Dor'bulla-class flagship Evona had taken only minor bow damage. The three Chelandion-class warships—Narkoska, Narhetta, and Naryeshu—were untouched.
But now, in front of the Hutt fleet, two Kom'rk Mark III heavy fighters, three T-6 shuttles, four Fang fighters, sixteen Z-95 Headhunters, and forty M12-L Kimogilas were all in a tightening chase—closing fast.
Behind the Hutt fleet, twenty-nine Z-95 Headhunters had reached optimal concussion-missile range.
The power gap was still enormous.
But in this moment, the roles had flipped.
"Commander, our unit has reached optimal concussion-missile firing position. Request permission to change target—switch to the enemy flagship's engine cluster." Griff Skirata, commander of Ardent Squadron, came over Max's headset.
The four squadrons under Griff—Ardent, Zeal, Zephyr, and Zenith—were brand-new units formed in the second half of this year. Their pilots still weren't fully comfortable with the Z-95 as a platform. Asking them to lock distributed, small-profile deflector generators was simply too much.
(For a split second, a ridiculous thought flashed through Max's mind: If that ship were an Imperial-class, it'd be easier—two big balls, easy to aim, easy to hit.)
"Approved!" Max answered instantly.
Then he ordered the attack group rushing the flagship's bow: "Concentrate fire on the flagship. But don't hunt deflector generators specifically. Radiators, turrets, missile/torpedo launchers, tractor-beam projectors, deflector generators—whatever you can hit, hit it."
"Yes, Commander."
Unlike the later Imperial-class Star Destroyers with two enormous, centrally placed ISD-72x deflector generators, the Hutt Dor'bulla—and other capital ships of the era—used distributed arrays of smaller, mid-sized deflector generators.
Their shields weren't as strong as what a massive generator could project—but the units were compact, visually subtle, and hard to identify. An enemy unfamiliar with their layout couldn't easily target them.
Just like now: Max's strike group couldn't realistically search for those generators under the flagship's dense point-defense fire and still land precision hits.
And if they couldn't drop the flagship's shields, then attacks on external systems—radiators, turrets, launchers, tractor projectors—were, at best, superficial. Scratches. Annoyances. Nothing that killed the beast.
Max knew that perfectly well.
And yet he still issued the "scratch and irritate" order.
Because what he needed wasn't immediate lethal damage—he needed his allies to split the flagship's attention and point-defense arcs long enough to give him a single opening.
If space dogfighting was "retro," then what Max was about to do was downright primal.
"Wenban—brace for impact. Protect yourself!" Max roared.
"Yes, Commander!"
"Three, two, one—!"
"CLANG!!"
Max drove his shuttle straight into a breach at the flagship's bow—one blown open by proton torpedoes.
Space boarding had begun.
PS:
In Star Wars Legends, during the First Galactic Civil War, the Rebel "Lightspeed Panther" Squadron used T-65 X-wings (shielded) to destroy 286 TIE fighters (unshielded) over nine months while losing only four craft—an astonishing 1:72 loss ratio.
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🛡️🔥🌌 STAR WARS: THE RISE OF MANDALORE 🌌🔥🛡️
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The clans are stirring.
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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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