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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dr Midnight" data-source="post: 1594037" data-attributes="member: 69">Magnus said “Jaren, you’re a pilot, correct?”The comlink crackled. “Uh, yeah, yeah.” “Okay. You take the north walker. Mikau, Pock and I will take the south.”“Check.” They flew off to their opponents, cutting through a sea of Pheleeni and Separatist forces fighting furiously in the air.A droid fighter came in behind Mikau and began singing the sides of the Air Tower with its lasers. The glass surface of the ship acted as a mirror, reflecting glancing shots. More accurate shots, however, cracked the surface and sent sparks raining. Mikau’s ship was trailing a thin line of black smoke. “I require assistance,” the Kaminoan said politely. “My ship has been hit.”Pock leaned on the controls and the Air Tower wheeled around to come up on the offending droid fighter’s starboard side. Magnus fired and the fighter was struck several times. It broke off and circled, taking fire from other Pheleeni ships nearby. The Republicans flew in toward the giant destroyer droid. The small turrets on its shoulders each had one battle droid in a swiveling seat. The turrets began firing on the heroes, and the Air Towers turned and rolled to avoid the bolts of red energy. Magnus centered his concentration and shot a long line of blasts at the closest turret. It blackened, then exploded in a shower of sparks and fire. The giant walker was not slowed. Mikau swooped around and shot the other turret. As he did, Pock saw that the giant scythe arm was drawing back, slowly, then raising, then stopping. “That arm’s going to cut again,” he said to Magnus. Magnus looked and saw that the arm had raised to about the level the ships were flying at. “They’re trying to destroy us with the scythe. Arming missiles.” He flipped a cap at the top of the control stick, revealing a red button. “Firing.” He thumbed the button and two missiles shot out from the Air Tower towards the scythe-arm. Magnus then closed his eyes and began to feel around in empty space for the missiles, using the Force. He gently nudged them and corrected their paths, guiding them straight to the five-meter thick arm. The missiles detonated and the arm was blacked and practically ruined, but the scythe still held. The arm released and began swinging. Pock shouted “Mikau, look out!” as he piloted the ship over the scythe.“Thank you, Pock, I see it,” Mikau replied calmly. He aimed his ship straight at the oncoming arm and fired a stream of laserfire. The lasers cut through the remaining piece of arm, and the scythe itself flew out over the city, spinning on a horizontal plane. The walker’s scythe arms alone are made of several tons of metal, and the motion of its swinging would severely unbalance it if not for the internal evenweight, which at the same time throws an internal pendulum to compensate for the great shift of mass.The internal evenweight performed its action, but now with no scythe to balance for, the evenweight threw the walker to the side, pitching it over into a small portion of the city. The giant droid kicked uselessly on the ground, then lay still. Meanwhile, Jaren Creel was trying a different approach. He was not a pilot, as the Jedi believed, yet he still had more piloting experience than any one of them. He was looping and weaving around buildings, trying to keep enemy laserfire off of him long enough to reach the other walker. He cut in and began firing at the walker’s great red eye. He blackened but did not destroy it. He looped down around the walker’s back and flew through the legs, firing at the inverted pyramid that formed the robot’s hip. Jaren did damage here and there, rarely concentrating on one area, rarely staying still enough to take a shot, though the droid turrets did their best to hit him.Finally, a starfighter managed to slip into his wake and followed him, taking shots that Jaren had to quickly dodge. The droid fighter was closing, and Jaren was having trouble splitting his concentration between dodging lasers and avoiding giant metal spider-legs. The droid abruptly detonated in a cloud of sparks and light, and the Jedi-piloted Air Towers flew through it. “Thanks,” Jaren said tensely. “Not at all. What’s the plan?”“Let’s take out that scythe-arm on this one, it seemed to work pretty well on the other. Missiles armed. Fire.”They each fired missiles on the scythe arm. Though some flew off into the distance, most crashed into the arm, severing it immediately. The arm dropped slowly to the city below, crushing buildings beneath it. The walker, however, was not discharging the arm at the time, so the giant robot stayed afoot. Its legs could still pierce the buildings below, its turrets could still shoot the Air Towers. Pock dodged some turret-fire and said “It didn’t fall over. What now?”Jaren replied “I don’t know, kid… let’s take out those turrets at least.”The heroes swept over the turrets, destroying them within moments. Several enemy starships had come in and were trying to shoot them out of the sky, seeing what a threat they were to the walkers.A reddish light began flashing on Pock’s control panel. “What is that?” A moment later he felt the Force twinge, and he knew what it was. “Oh no- they’ve locked onto us.”The droid ship on their tail fired its two proton torpedoes, and they shrieked through the air toward Pock’s Air Tower. Pock pulled back on the controls, and the ship shot up from its low point beneath the walker to climb up its front, barely five meters from the hull of the robot itself.“I hope you know what you’re doing, Pock,” Magnus said, not quite anxiously.“I do,” Pock said, easing back on the throttle. The ship slowed in the air as the torpedoes flew in at them. They grew large in Magnus’ eyes, and he wondered if his padawan had just gotten them both killed. Pock then yanked back on the throttle-lever and the ship shot up into the air. The proton torpedoes couldn’t correct in time and struck the giant walker droid in its already damaged eye. The red optic lens shattered and the entire head of the droid shook and pulsed with the explosions wracking its insides. The entire head then exploded in a mushroom cloud of black smoke. The dead walker swayed on its feet.Jaren saw what was coming next and said “Mikau, follow my lead!” He swept under the walker and fired his remaining missiles at one of the two rearmost legs. Mikau saw what he was doing and fired on the other of the two legs, right at the joint. Both legs were blasted through at the knees, and Jaren and Mikau flew out from under the droid as it fell back into the wake of its own destruction. It crashed to the ground and a great thundering wall of broken glass and steel were thrown up into the air. This rained down, sparkling in the light. The giant walkers were destroyed. The Air Towers had little trouble mopping up the remaining droid starfighters, and in short order, the day was won. The heroes landed their Towers carefully at their docks and walked back into the city. Here, countless Pheleeni were crowding the halls, waving their tentacles and sending rippling cries of victory into the air. They greeted the pilots with great hails of glory. In the following ceremony, the Pheleeni honored the pilots with medals. Mikau Me, Jaren Creel, Magnus Turon, and Pock Sirus stood alongside fifteen of the Pheleeni pilots to survive the battle above the city. They faced the cheering crowd and smiled. The Separatist ships had left orbit and the Pheleeni would live to fight another day. Planning for memorial services and cleanup efforts was already underway, but this moment was for the victory.More to come… </blockquote>

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