Exegol preplay

[bb8_dad]

The ships exited hyperspace, and Poe's first thought upon seeing Exegol was that it looked dead. It was the the ugliest thing he'd seen in a long while, and he wondered if it had always been this way, or if building a colossal fleet of Star Destroyers here had killed the place.

And when the ships dived into the cloud cover, they nearly ran into the Sith fleet. It was massive. Their triangled hulls were enormous, but they grew even smaller as their numbers seemed to stretch into infinity.

"Great dark seas," Aftab Ackbar gasped across the comm. "Look at that!"

"No sign of the Falcon or allies," Tyce said from her ship.

"Help will get here," Poe assured them.

Comments

Spaceships

[bb8_dad]

At once, thousands of simultanous cannon blasts lit up the sky like a nova. Immediately a ship was reduced to a fireball, and the shooting was coming hard and fast at them. It was already on.

"Stay at their altitude!" Poe yelled into his headset. "They can't fire on us without hitting each other."

And from somewhere else, Snap called, "Incoming TIEs!"

And then hundreds of Sith TIE fighters were screaming their way towards them.

Re: Spaceships

[somethingwithturquoise]

Any reservation Summer had felt about being in her ship instead of on the ground for this immediately dissipated the moment they arrived and it became firmly clearly that every ship was going to count in this one. She felt a rare twist of doubt in her gut as she clutched the wheel of her ship, trying very hard to remind herself that she'd gotten out of a lot of really impossible situations before, why should this be any different? But even for her, that massive fleet was looking pretty insurmountable, it made the New Supposedly Improved Galactic Federation fleet look like babies.

But it was fine. They could do this.

Somehow.

Maybe.

Oof. But with determination, she latched onto what Poe had said in particular.

"I'm heading in," she informed everyone. "Tell me this baby's not just screaming to be hit."

But she was faster than she looked, and she had portals. She could be an excellent dodgy target.

Re: Spaceships

[tros_npcs]

If that baby was begging to be hit, then good, because there was a TIE sweeping towards her to shoot a volley of laser fire at her.

She was kind of an obvious target.

Re: Spaceships

[notagoose]

Goose was probably the last person anyone would actually want to be a pilot since his methods were … unorthodox at best but he had a ship that he was very happy to provide to the cause and instead of being worried or anxious he was actually quite enthusiastic about it.

“Goose there are a lot of enemy ships,” his AI Alma spoke up.

“Steady Alma,” Goose told her, “I know what I’m doing,”

Alma seriously doubted that but she had been Goose’s AI for a while now and decided to focus on her calculations and targets for Goose to be able to fire back and hopefully not cause too much damage to his ship, even though this was Goose's third interceptor since he had become a Galaxy Ranger.

Goose’s interceptor was going to be lucky to survive this.

Re: Spaceships

[tros_npcs]

The TIEs were plentiful in numbers, too, so there were several coming at him at once, firing the whole way to him.

Re: Spaceships

[sith_happened]

Anakin was up in an X-Wing, relaxing into the Force and using it to make his ship engage in maneuvers that were seriously testing the laws of physics. "They still haven't shielded the TIEs?" he asked over the comms, firing on the nearest one as it closed in.

Re: Spaceships

[grenadesandohana]

Steve had done really well in his summer flying classes with Jaina, and the Navy had spent many millions of dollars to teach him to adapt to his surroundings and fly whatever he found himself in.

Looking at the TIE fighters screaming in towards him, sitting in space, he realized he was hopelessly outclassed up here.

"Shit."

Re: Spaceships

[imafuturist]

As much fun as riding a space horse would be, Tony was where he could be of much more use with the armor. Which meant up in the sky rather than down with Steve.

"A ship would have been a much safer option, sir," a greatly aggrieved JARVIS chimed in.

"Aw, where's your sense of adventure, J?" Tony asked, doing a very unnecessary spin in the air to avoid one of those TIE fighters.

[nothowtheforceworks]

Finn's original plan had been to set the Tantive IV down on the ground and attack the navigation tower to keep the First Order from deploying their sqadrons. Moments before the TIEs were released, he changed his mind, and landed them on the actual hull of the Steadfast instead. Sometimes you had to go with your gut.

And then a couple minutes later, the landing ramp had gone down, and a cavalry charge of Resistance fighters on orbaks went running onto the surface of the Star Destroyer, with all the fighters they had at the moment running right after them. The First Order knew they were there. But at least they could make some headway to the tower before the stormtroopers joined them for a fight.

[solo_sword]

Jaina had decided an orbak would just slow her down, and she was more than happy to run after the others with her lightsaber drawn, violet blade adding an interesting new light to break up the dark blue.

And the instant the red-armored Sith troopers were released to make their way into the fight, she was charging towards them, because really old habits died just super, super hard.


[Can be pingable!]

[defenderofdesmoines]

As slow as she was on foot, Annie opted to ride into battle. (Also: that was just kind of cool, she could admit it. Hopefully they all lived through this so she could tell Diego how fucking awesome that part had been.) Orbaks, it turned out, were so much like horses it wasn't even funny. And while it had been a few years since Annie had been in any kind of saddle, she still found a natural enough seat on the creature's back as she charged along with the others. Being up a little higher gave her a little bit of a view ahead, too, which meant she could be more selective about where she drew power from. She took care not to drain anything that looked like a friendly was using it, opting instead to tap into the systems of the ship they were actually on. Might as well make use of the charging time.

By the time she was swinging out of her saddle, she'd pulled enough power to be one of the brightest things on the surface of the ship. Which was probably bad news for anyone coming at her, considering she was just going to keep pulling power until it was straight-up hard to look at her.

[heroic_jawline]

Steve was not a natural orbak rider (and he was very sure that throwing one at the incoming troops would be frowned upon. It wasn't a motorcyle.), and so as soon as he got close enough to the fight, he flipped himself off of his animal and used that momentum to kick the nearest trooper in the head as he came down to the ground.

That was a good start, he felt. He threw his shield test how it worked against unfamiliar armor.

[unusual_sith]

Once Lana felt she'd made the point which side she was on, she broke away to do some real damage. Troopers gathered in groups made excellent targets of lightning, as did mounted weapons.

[stykera]

Stark didn't have his own ship, or enough familiarity with the ships here to feel comfortable taking a useful position on one. He was, he thought, more likely to be of use on the ground.

He'd given the orbaks a sort of longing look before setting off on foot. He wasn't charging in. He was going to be more useful staying back from the front lines. He did have his own gun, and a blaster, and he could provide covering fire if nothing else. And if anyone was injured he was hopefully in a good position to offer assistance.

[bb8_dad]

BB-8 kept pace with Finn and Jannah on their orbaks, head canted forward with determination as he rolled.

And then...

[bb8_dad]

They were losing. Their forces were still being damaged and shot down. They'd lost friends. Poe didn't know how many they could afford to lose. It was just them. No one else. And cries of shock were lighting up his comm.

"General! Do we retreat?"

"What now?"

"What's our next move?"

Poe clicked his comm on. "My friends," he said, around a lump in his throat. "I'm sorry. I thought we had a shot. There's just too many of them." They'd learned nothing from Crait. He'd learned nothing.

A familiar voice broke through the comms: Lando Calrissian. "But there are more of us, Poe. There are more of us."

Poe flipped his fighter around to look, swooped over the hull of a Destroyer to get a visual on the atmosphere above.

Ships were popping into sight all over the place. Freighters, fighters, medical frigates, longhaulers, from every sector of the galaxy, every era Poe had ever heard of. Hundreds. No, thousands. A fleet of fleets.

"The allies!" Aftab said. "They're here!"


[For both teams' reactions if you want, and any additional shooting at things.]

Re: And then...

[nothowtheforceworks]

"Lando, you did it!" Finn yelled, looking up from the hull of the Steadfast. "You did it!"

Re: And then...

[savingwhatwelove]

"Finn didn't board the lander," Rose said, serious above everyone's excitement. "They're still on the command ship."

Re: And then...

[unusual_sith]

"Now that is a lovely sight," Lana said, smiling.

Re: And then...

[bb8_dad]

Suddenly a burst of blue lightning shot out from the planet, hitting a lot of the fleet. Readings blinked out all around, pilots at a loss without communication or anything besides emergency systems. A few ships dropped clean out of the air.

The console of Poe's own fighter started sparking, shocking his hand even through his flight gloves. "Artoo, my systems are failing."

From the X-wing's droid socket he could hear Artoo's squealing, but nothing from the comms.

"Does anyone copy?" Poe asked, trying to make the comms work, and of course getting nothing.

Finale

[bb8_dad]

All of a sudden, nav screens cleared. Their navigation wasn't being jammed anymore. The power coming from the planet's surface had stopped.

"We're back on!" Poe yelled. "This is our last chance. We've got to hit those cannons now! Finn, get everyone on the lander!"

Time to aim everything they had at the Steadfast and hope everyone on the ground got onto the Tantive IV in time.


[Make it messy if you want. Ground fighters can run for the lander, spaceships can fire what they have on the ship they're escaping. Don't hit the good guys.]

Re: Finale

[nothowtheforceworks]

"Ground team!" Finn yelled, waving everyone toward the lander. "Get back on, go go go!"

They'd all be quick enough, right?

Re: Finale

[somethingwithturquoise]

One of the nice things about basically having spent most of her time in the air being a portal-hopping erratic target was that Summer hadn't actually spend too much of her ammo resources on shooting things (although she'd definitely gotten a few pew-pews here and there, because, um, duh, obviously, why wouldn't she?), so she was ready to swoop back in with everyone else with plenty to volley at those cannons.

Re: Finale

[nothowtheforceworks]

When it was clear everyone was going to make it, Finn, Jannah, and BB-8 raced after the others and the orbaks toward the lander. But Finn came to a halt, realizing that every shot at them was coming from a blaster. The deck cannons had gone silent with the reset.

OOC

[bb8_dad]

Anything I missed?

Rey's post will be going on simultaneously. I'll throw one more Finn and Jannah bit at the finale and the Star Destroyer will blow up, and then it's to the live post!