The smell was the first thing Kellaro noticed as he boarded the ship. It was always the first thing he noticed. You could tell what kind of person ran a ship by the smell of it: the stringent smell of cleaning chemicals for uptight commanders, the smell of food for those with large families of Mandos living on them, a kind of scent like ozone and death for a Sith. This ship smelled a bit musky, like sweat, and Kellaro identified their captain as a battle-hardened Mandalorian before he even met him.
“Captain Anslor?” Kellaro called out once he reached the bridge. “I’m Kellaro Lok’kar, of Clan Lok. You were going to help me find the remnants of my clan.”
“I know,” said the captain. He didn’t turn to look at Kellaro immediately, pacing up and down behind the bridge officers as they steered the ship out of the shipyard and into deeper space. He paused behind one such officer, leaning on the back of the Mando’s chair as he read the data on her screen over her shoulder. “You’re in luck, kid. We’ve got a lead over the planet Jabiim. It’s on the border of Republic space, got a bit battered during the Dromund Kaas Invasion and that fake Hutt attack. Mostly old signals and one distress call. It’ll take us a few hours to get there. Why don’t you settle in?”
“Yes, sir,” said Kellaro, taking a seat.
“Ever flown in one of these before?” chimed in the captain’s first mate. Unlike Anslor, this man seemed less disciplined, casually swinging his hips as he walked, coming to stand just behind Kellaro as he swung his blaster pistol around one finger. “Name’s Trick, by the way.”
“Su’cuy. Flown a Shaadlar?” answered Kellaro. “No, sir. Just heard the stories. My mother’s clan used to have one. They, uh, they disappeared while on it.”
“Heh. Maybe if you’re lucky and we find them, we can have two in the fleet.”
“That would be nice, sir.”
Conversation was stilted, as the stars outside the cockpit turned into lines and then into blue cloud-like formations as the ship jumped into hyperspace. The whole ship hummed slightly, but it was a comfortable hum, like the creaking of an old house that had been in the family for generations. It reminded Kellaro a little of the old times, when he and Brant had been small, playing in the engine room of his father’s Mantis ship. They were pleasant memories, and as the first mate walked off again, humming in time to the hum of the ship, Kellaro begun to doze off…
The wailing of alarms brought him awake, and the stomping of many feet heralded Mandalorians as they rushed to their battle stations. Shortly after the Shaadlar had dropped out of hyperspace over Jabiim, shots had been fired on them. A Republic cruiser had been hiding behind one of the planet’s moons.
“It seems they’re still salty we broke their siege!” shouted Trick.
“And they brought the firepower to back them up,” growled Anslor.
“Taking significant damage to the hull, captain!”
“Bring the ship around and broadside,” ordered Anslor. “I want to finish this quickly.”
Kellaro leaped to his feet and jogged over beside Anslor and the three-dimensional holomap hovering before his face. “You really think we can take them on?” he asked breathlessly.
“Republic cowards,” said Trick with a snort, coming up on the other side. “They couldn’t be bothered to even scramble fighters against us.”
“There’s something strange on the scopes,” said another of the Mandalorians. “Look at that! It’s coming from down on the planet. Giant electromagnetic disturbance.”
“That must be why they won’t send fighters,” muttered Anslor. “It would overwhelm their systems, even at this range.”
“Are we going to be okay?” said Kellaro.
“So long as we stay clear of it,” Anslor said clippedly. “It is more a danger to them than to us. Mandalorian ships rely on a good strong hull, not on electronic shields. Republic ships are the opposite.”
Despite this, more and more alarms went off, as the Republic’s capital ship’s turbolasers flared again and again.
And then the unthinkable happened. As the two ships ran a parallel course, the Republic cruiser suddenly broke away, coming about to flash their engines at the Mandalorians, then present her other side.
“What are they doing?” Trick cursed.
Then Kellaro saw it, through the ship windows rather than their scopes. A white-blue flare where the cruiser’s turrets should be on that side, growing bright and brighter.
“Evasive action!” he shouted, and not too long after the captain also took up the call.
But they were both too late.
The unidentified weapon beamed a pure white, and Kellaro could see nothing but spots in his eyes. He felt it though, an impact as the Shaadlar lurched sideways. Again and again, that weapon fired, and though the Mando-made hull held through it, it knocked them ever closer to the gravitational pull, and that strange disturbance on the planet’s surface.
There was a clunk, and another lurching. “We’ve entered Jabiim’s atmosphere!” shouted one of the chief engineers.
“Brace!” said Anslor. “Lower the legs and prepare for landing!”
“We’re going too fast!”
Anslor dashed over to the engineer to check, while Kellaro rushed to the window. The cruiser hadn’t followed them, and soon his view of the Pubs was obscured by the Jabiim landscape stretched out before him. A yellow ground pockmarked with dark splotches resolved itself into rocky plains and forests. It all came up quicker and quicker, as re-entry flames burned past the window.
“IMPACT!” shouted the engineer. Kellaro had just enough presence of mind to fuse his boots to the floor with their inbuilt magnets before the ship crashed.
The Shaadlar drove a furrow in the ground, sending up twin sprays, each a mountain high, on either side of the ship.
“Yay, we’re not dead,” said Kellaro strainedly. The ship slowly ground to a halt, rocking back onto its rear legs with a creaking and groaning. All of the Mandalorians went silent, listening for the distant patter become hail that would herald the turbolasers of their Republic pursuers. Yet there was nothing…
“We’re within a few miles of that disturbance,” said Trick. “Blast, if only the thrusters had lasted a little longer, and we could’ve hidden under it.”
“What engines do we have left?” asked Kellaro.
“Just the port and starboard stabilizers. They couldn’t muster enough power to lift us even if they were aligned properly. We’ll be sitting ducks as soon as that cruiser comes down through the atmosphere. Haar’chak!”
Trick stared hopelessly at the dashboard. So did Kellaro and the rest of the Mandalorians.
“There’s nothing for it. They’ll light this place up as soon as they come around. We’ll have to abandon the ship and go on foot,” said Anslor.
Kellaro looked up at him. “Feet.”
“What are you jabbering on about, Lok’kar?”
“Feet. We’ll go on feet.” Kellaro got up, crossing over to the control panel showing the landing gear statistics. “This whole thing has legs–”
“Doesn’t work like that,” grumbled Trick. “They don’t swing back and forth like real legs, kid. They just hold up the ship.”
“No,” said Kellaro with growing excitement, hurrying back to the console controlling the engines. “But we could! Look, there and there. The starboard and port engine can pivot. If we just run them on full blast for a few seconds each, one after the other…”
Trick and Anslor looked at each other. “Try it,” said Anslor after a moment’s thought. “It might work.”
“This is the stupidest thing I ever…” but Trick turned back to the condole, implementing the codes.
The first engine blast came with such a sudden jolt everyone was grabbing for their seats. “A little more down!” cried Kellaro. “We have to lift up–”
Trick obeyed, and the cabin tilted crazily.
“Now just a little backward!” said Kellaro. “And…cut it!”
The ship flopped back straight, with another groan and creak. Anslor pulled up a feed of the outside cams. “It does appear we moved a few meters.”
“Now the other side!” said Kellaro.
“This. Is. Stupid,” swore Trick, but he obeyed, and the ship lurched the other way.
“And down!” commanded Kellaro.
“A few more meters,” confirmed one of the engineers.
He looked at Anslor, who was startled out of his shocked revery. “If we keep up that pace, we’ll be under cover by the Pubs’ second orbit,” he mused. “Very well, gentlemen. Take it away.”
Kellaro gripped the back of Trick’s seat, staring sideways at the outside cams that guided them. The ship continued to rock like a drunken sailor on board a sailing ship, and Kellaro kept the rhythm as steady as he could for sake of everyone’s stomach. Soon “starboard!” “port!” “starboard!” was being chanted by all the Mandalorians on the bridge, as their safe haven lurched ever closer.
“Fuel nearly depleted, sir,” the engineer reported.
Trick came away from his sulk, joining Kellaro standing behind the helmsman. “We’ll make it,” he said.
When the ship first breached the trees, there was a tremendous cracking sound and the next step the ship had to take required more of a burst than usual. Still, they made it, one step, two steps, then three steps, halfway into cover.
“The ground goes into steep incline here, sir. The trees get only taller. I reckon we could slide right under them and be fully covered from above.”
“Do it,” said Anslor. “Retract the landing gear and angle us down into that gully on next ignition.”
Trick did as he said, and the ship lowered down and began to slide. It tilted sideways, crushing undergrowth and the strange trees under its bulk, as the view outside the cockpit turned dark from the canopy and rocky walls closing down over and around them. One more triggering of the engines – using the last of the fuel – rocked the ship deeper into place, and then they settled.
“Well. We’re safe,” said Kellaro.
“For now,” said Anslor. He slapped the young Lok’kar on the shoulder, but didn’t say what he was thinking.
“You’re welcome?” teased Kellaro.
Trick snorted. “We’ll see,” said Anslor. “Assemble a team and scout out our position, make sure we’re covered from the air. I guess it’d be too much to hope for a supply depot, but I’d even take a primitive set of forges at this rate.”
“Yes, sir,” said Kellaro. “I won’t fail you!”
“Don’t worry,” said Anslor. “You haven’t. Yet.”