"Hey, heyy! Not bad cowboy!" Tansu complimented, riding the coattails of the exhale from her co-pilot. She would have slapped Dax on the back if she could reach. And if she wasn't so mesmerized by the view of Jedha and the feeling it brought.
As far as sights went, Jedha wasn't much of one at this range. But there was something spiritual here, rich and ancient. She could feel it, albeit distantly.
That barely-there sense of connection was quickly dashed by the need for urgency by a very-there overload of all her other senses. Within seconds, their cockpit was filled with the sound of distant battle, interspersed with the voices of those involved. Kyric was somewhere all those red dots, all those shooting' ships that scratched through the skies, and they had to find him.
While Dax fretted about something she couldn't hear, she worked to triangulate the source of the outbound message to something a signal could be read from. Chieftain had sent the initial outbound they'd picked up, and she worked backward from that with BD-9's help.
<I think I've got his location.> She spoke up just as a tremendous jolt shook the ship. She clenched her teeth and tightened her grip on the yoke, keeping straight in the co-pilot's seat.
Oof. Her first response was to adjust an overhead switch connected to the deflector shields.
Dax's voice raised through their channel, demanding Talin shoot their attacker. Tansu's stomach pitched.
Talin had almost outright volunteered to be gunner as soon as the chance arose, which had unsettled Tansu for two reasons. One — something she couldn't describe felt off about Talin ever since Dax had called her bluff on the blaster ordeal. Two — co-piloting without her sister was not something she had done before. And Dax was a complete stranger. She couldn't imagine the level of synchronization required to enter a battlefield could be achieved with someone she didn't know or have time to practice with.
But Talin was a natural. Her shot met its target, and the eruption of their enemy was as glorious as it was short-lived.
Suddenly vertical, a series of indicators on the control panel slowly changed colour from green to something more sinister. Three vital gauges flashed. Dax's ship did not seem to like its perpendicular position. Tansu reached to the gauges to try and offset them and compensate for some of the duress from the imbalance in the systems.
<At this speed, we gotta level back out. C'mon Dax!>
Left rudder, then a snap-roll onto the port stabilizers pulled them wide out of their previous flight path. The red gauges relaxed and turned green again.
All the while the navidisplay had been orange, seeking the requested designation. Finally, it turned green and squared in on coordinates that overtook the navicomputer. Instantly, she punched the throttle full-forward along the vector that carried them back to target. She was so overjoyed by the success of finding Kyric in the sea of chaos that she took her eyes from the viewport. When she looked back up, the scene was horrifying.
<Do you see that? What is tHaT?!> At the end of her pointer finger, a brilliant, bright flare of azure spread out and a silhouette in the shape of something she'd never seen before contorted and flexed within a violent storm. They didn't have dragons on Concord Dawn, so she'd never be able to properly name the shape.
Whatever that hullabaloo was, it was confusing, terrifying, and way too close. Close enough that an extension of the swarm, or the storm, or
something, whipped up the ship and sent it into a frenzy that knocked it from the intended trajectory.
The impact sent the ship's controls into a frenzy. What had been green and solid was now red and flashing The signal that had locked on Kyric blinked. Their scopes weren't locking on anything. Desperately, Tansu worked on the controls, no longer able to discern even so much as their altitude. She flicked an overhead switch, palm-heeled forward a dropped lever, and finagled frantically with a stuck knob that was essential for re-establishing the stabilizers.
Fully absorbed in the duty of righting the ship and keeping it from spiralling out of control, Tansu realized too late that the sound of alarms was from the external sensors and collision warning systems.
By the time she saw the mesa, it was only meters away from impact. They were so close she could clearly see its foliated texture.
She screamed and, in a knee-jerk reaction, yanked her co-pilot's yoke to the right to veer the ship from crashing into the raised lump of Jedha.
