Rising Malevolence (Part 2)
Everyone started running about getting ready at their stations, using the communicator on her right vambrace, Catra sent the message to the other two republic cruisers at Plo’s command. She never looked away more than a few seconds from the ship, ears twitching slightly and slowly beginning to hear static, a sign of massive energy converging, eyes focusing seeing an electric glow from the enemy ship.
“Quick, scan energy or electric fields for any worrisome signs!” Catra quickly shouted that command to Wolffe, panic evident in her voice, Plo nodding sensing the fear coming from Catra as he urged Wolffe to do so.
“We’re picking up a large energy reading from the target, sir,” Wolffe confirmed, eyes widening when looking at the reading, then to Catra and Plo.
“Open fire!” Plo understood Catra’s worries shouting with urgency, hoping they were in range to fire upon the ship. Catra was rubbing her ears hard as the static got louder and louder.
“We need to destroy and delay that energy!” Catra was losing focus, unable to hear her own voice over the static, “Otherwise we’ll be sitting ducks!”
“We’re not in range yet, sir,” Commander Wolffe was worried now as well seeing how Catra was acting. Plo then asked an important question, one he was sure he knew the answer to as well, “What is it, Catra?”.
Catra’s eyes widened as the static disappeared, which would be a good sign, if it didn’t mean all the energy was converted. Her eardrums nearly popped as the static returned with a second round of pain. The weapon fired a huge circle of electric energy their way, each minute it got closer the static was even louder than before, “It’s a massive Ion Cannon!”.
“Brace for impact!” Plo shouted over the intercom, quickly moving to Catra and covering her ears.
The energy field hit the cruisers, quickly wiping out the shields and draining energy rapidly, an Ion cannon usually didn’t affect living beings, the exception to this was Cartorians. She screamed in pain as she felt the screeching of nails on a chalkboard, her ears burning with pain.. Her hearing would have been completely destroyed if Plo hadn't covered her ears.
“We’re losing all our power!” Catra couldn’t hear what Wolffe was saying but was well versed in reading lips, the screeching and burning was slowly dying down, hearing slowly returning to normal, with Plo thinking she was fine enough for now to let go, “That energy field has left us defenseless!”
All the cruisers rocked about as they came under turbolaser fire, tearing through their hulls with ease, the shields wouldn’t be back up in time either. The closest cruiser to the enemy was the first to go as it was blasted to pieces, debris flying everywhere and colliding with the other ships.
“They’re tearing us apart one by one!” Wolffe shouted, the ship rocking with panels from the roof falling and static and electric wires sparked all around them as the second cruiser was also blown up showering more debris, some of it blocking the turbolasers firing onto their ship.
“Quickly! Into the pods!” Plo commanded everyone before running.
The cruiser kept shaking, threatening to pull apart at any second from the turbolaser fire, knocking a clone off his feet as he stumbled to the ground. Catra stopped and helped him back up as they ran. The corridors were broken and desolate as they were filled with bodies of dead clones, having not survived the initial blast from the enemy.
Ahead of them a panel, which had been hanging by threads, started to collapse in their path to the pods, focusing her thoughts and holding both hands out she strained to hold it up with the force.
Using her tail she grabbed her lightsaber and activated it, rushing underneath she cut through the panel with ease, splitting it in half and pushing both sides to either side of the corridor, leaving the path open for the others.
“We don’t have much time! Get inside! Hurry!” Plo activated a switch on a console, all the pods doors opening as clones clambered to get into them. Catra got into the same pod as Master Plo and Commander Wolffe, along with the clone she helped, with another wearing identical armour as the one she helped.
The hatch shut behind Master Plo when he entered, running up to the command seat and launching them out of the ship. Catra heard at least three other pods launching with them, unfortunately one of them was destroyed as it collided with debris, causing a small explosion. It didn’t damage their pod, but it spun them around to show them their ship one last time, before it was consumed in fire and energy as it blew up.
They were speechless, a silence filled the pod, none of them knew what to say as they watched the debris go everywhere, slowly coming to a stop to float and spin slowly in place.
“Commander Wolffe, give us a status report of the pod.” Plo faced Commander Wolffe, nodding as he did a quick inspection of the pod.
“Catra, sir,” The two clones across from Catra spoke to her. She turned and looked at them, curious and confused with her ears perked and tail laying still, one of them put his hand out for a handshake, which she accepted as he spoke, “Thank you for saving me, sir.”
“You don’t need to keep siring me, I'm not bothered with that. You can if you want to, but I would just prefer Catra.” Smiling as she shook his hand in return, “And I wasn't going to leave you behind.”
“I’m glad you didn’t, he’s been my partner for a while, don’t want him to disappear just yet.” The other clone spoke up, patting his friend’s shoulder, “My name is Boost, my partner whose bacon you saved, is Sinker.”
“It’s nice to know your names. I won’t forget them anytime soon.” Catra let go of his hand, resting back in her chair.
“Catra.” Plo gently got their attention when Wolffe finished his inspection, they turned and faced him, Boost and Sinker taking off their helmets.
“The power grid is burned out. We’ve no engine, communications, or…” Wolffe was listing off all the problems, Catra knew from his tone that wasn’t the worst of it, his next words confirmed it, “Or life support recharge.”
“So, we’ll just sit here and hold our breath.” Sinker joked a little trying to lighten the mood a bit, he wasn’t expecting an honest answer for the joke.
“I mean, I could probably do that, give us half an hour of extra breathing.” Everyone else looked at her surprised and worried, as she shrugged, “That’s the longest I've held by breath underwater, figured it could be the same here.”
“Someone’ll come looking for us, right?” Boost turned to Plo after the awkward silence of Catra’s statement.
“Let’s get the power restored so we are here to be found.” Plo gave a pretty good suggestion, as dark as it could be.