"In Medias Res."

Written and Directed by:
Paul Burton.
Fiction by: Paul Burton and (mostly) Anthony Hummerston.
STARRING:

Rojic,   Karnov,   Niall,   Mama
And special guest stars:
Hen3ry , Joe-9T, Trio and 'Blinkie.'
as the droids.

AND
Storm Cutter
Their most beautiful.... Magical.... Saggy.... -Old duraseel ship in the whole wide world!

"....Fire....." -An emergency communicator crackles into life. Over the crackles, Kima Venn’s voice is indistinct. “All my systems have gone down! Protect the transports. Attack pattern Delta. May the force be with….” The comm goes dead....

A second later, the crew of Storm Cutter spy a C-9979 landing craft, which disgorges a squadron of Vulture fighters on a fast intercept. There are milliseconds of frozen fear that sweep across the faces of Storm Cutter’s crew. This is followed by a mad dash to action stations, while curse words in several different languages swirl around. The duo of junior Jedi jog toward the turrets. “Top or bottom?” Karnov yells to avoid some embarrassment. “We refer to them as ventral and dorsal.” Niall tells her. Karnov is about to argue, when Mama pulls a half roll, making the choice somewhat academic. Mama’s voice is piped around the ship as she issues orders. “Fighter escort, close up and protect the freighters. We’ll take point and draw their fire…. Red wing veer half port and take on the leaders. Venn, keep working on that jamming. -Without it we’re gonna get fried!”

Niall and Karnov are finding it difficult to get a bead on the fast-moving interceptors. “Fire-control down. They must be counter-jamming us.”

“Venn should be protecting us against that.” Karnov yells.

“No I’m not.” Venn’s voice crackles across the comm. “Ship’s dead! Got emergency power and communications. You’re on your own for a moment.”

“We might not have a moment!” Mama screams, “Rojic?”

Even at a moment of extreme tension, Rojic can’t resist a quip. “What is it? I’m having breakfast….In the bath!”

“You’ll be toast of those deflector shields don’t come online!” Karnov warns him. The defence shield sputters to life, enveloping the ship. The droid fighters close to attack. “Double port side.” Rojic announces smoothly, and stray shots are deflected, however, one of the onrushing droid ships kicks down a fraction and then up, and scores a hit on the unprotected starboard side as it rushes past. Storm Cutter rocks form the onslaught. The hold fills with acrid smoke, which quickly turns blue from both Mama and Rojic cursing in the crudest Huttese.

The interceptors scream past the line of defence and are soon in among the freighters. Red wing start an intense dogfight, but are hampered by only having forward firing guns. – Karnov and Niall are denied a clear shot on the enemy ships, so fire long volleys into the mother ship. Blue wing swing their Z-95 headhunters to the port side, to face the enemy and to protect the dead-in-space Firespray. Inside the jamming vessel, Kima Venn is keeping calm, though frantically trying every trick in the book – and some that aren’t- to kick the lifeless starship into action.

“Status?” Mama yells, punching for more speed, and surging ahead of the pack. She draws off three droid ships, which swing around in pursuit. “Can’t get a bead on the droid fighters….They’re too small and fast for the turrets!” Karnov snaps off an opportunistic shot at the mother ship – though at this long range it is hit or miss whether it ….Er, hits or misses! Storm Cutter’s shields crackle a bit. The hull creaks alarmingly. Two droid interceptors have peeled off and are line abreast, pouring laser bolts into the sluggish freighters. Mama executes a fast-turn, and runs along behind them, giving Niall and Karnov a clear strafing run. Storm Cutter slews left, only to see even more droid fighters spraying fire into the Firespray! Mama guns the engines and homes in on the closest. It senses the onrushing freighter and peels off from the attack, pulling what would be a forty-G turn in atmosphere. Mama flips Storm Cutter 180 degrees, and back across the backs of the interceptors once again. She slips between two of them, who manage to clip one another, and go spinning off with sparks and shrapnel filling the void. It takes precious seconds for their droid pilots to right themselves, but Storm Cutter has streaked off again into the distance.

“Fire control?” Mama asks, desperately. “Venn’s still working on it!” Rojic reports. “Everyone else to shields….We’re not gonna take too many more direct hits!” Mama yells back. “What about protecting the Firespray?” Karnov asks, concerned that the stricken ship surely can’t last out much longer. “If we’re destroyed, there’s no hope for any of us….” Mama curses. “A Jedi’s duty is to protect and serve, not run for cover….” Niall reminds them, calmly. “Next time we drop out of hyperspace in the middle of a dogfight, we’ll draw lots for the pilot’s seat.” Mama tells him. “In the meantime, you concentrate on the shields, and I’ll work out a way of ensuring you’re not doing with only the force between you and the vacuum of space!” Niall isn’t happy at the situation, but there is not much he can do from his position in the turret. He starts re-routing power from non-essential systems into the shield capacitors. “The fridge light is rather dim, sirs…” Trio reports, just as Joe-9T picks her up bodily and plugs her into a socket. Her eyes dim as her internal generator is tapped for more power. “I could go out of the airlock and take pot-shots with Sarah-Jane if it’ll help.” Joe-9T offers. “No point, the gun would never penetrate the shields.” Rojic tells him matter-of-factly.

As Storm Cutter skims their backs again, the interceptors jump like scalded Nexu. Red wing are coming about, and are coming precariously close to the mothership. They too have realised the limitations of forward-only firing guns. The droid ships have some flexibility, and can execute eye-watering-and-gut-wrenching turns. Mama pulls back hard on the stick, and Storm Cutter soars high over the fray. This spoils the aim of the pursuers, which are seemingly locked in a narrow fixed-plane.

“Their thinking is decidedly two-dimensional.” Niall observes, over the sound of the cannons firing again. Rojic is also yelling. He barks orders at the droids, and maintains a running commentary as he busies himself with a dozen tasks at once. Karnov leans back, her hands deftly punching controls. “What’s with the commentary?”

Rojic snaps back. “It’s for the black box flight recorder….So in the future, the Republic will know what happened here….Learn from our mistakes, -and can say a few pretty words at your funeral, and….”

Joe-9T interrupts him. “Sir, a great suggestion, with two minor errors. –The black box is in fact bright orange….And is in fact just that. -A wooden box. But painted orange….It may have contained fruit at one point….Ironically possibly oranges.”

“Actually the orange paint peeled off some years ago.” Mama reports.

“So the only thing recording our final moments is a shabby wooden box….That smells of oranges.”

The enemy interceptors have taken the bait and swoop after Storm Cutter. Despite some inventive jinking, they manage to get a solid hit in. Storm Cutter’s shields disappear to zero and the hull screeches with the impact. Hen3ry beeps alarmingly. Joe-9T translates. “Shields zero over zero….Hull integrity six point three-six-three recurring.”

“Sixty three surely!” Mama yells at him. “-Stupid droid!”

“Six point three-six-three-six-three….” Joe-9T reiterates.

Niall interrupts. “We should be wolf-packing those droid ships. Concentrating all firepower on them one by one until they are destroyed.”

I know what wolf-packing is!” Mama retorts rather harshly. “Only one more minor hit and we’ll be sucking hard vacuum. I’m going for full burn!” Storm Cutter accelerates at maximum, but even so an interceptor drops into an attack position on their tail.

“Enemy fighter on our six.”

“Six point three-six-three-six-three….” Joe-9T can’t help saying again. Mama is jinking Storm Cutter for all its worth, and adding thousands of feet of altitude. In the process, it narrowly avoids a collision with an interceptor some five hundred feet below.

“How did that happen?” Niall asks.

“Search me…. Some people think that space exists in two diemnsions. –Must be a bug in reaity.”

“Talking of glitches, how’s our ‘Wild Weasel’ getting on?”

“Status?” Rojic calls into the comm. Venn is too busy to make a report back. “Well?” Karnov asks. Rojic fills her in on the details. “It goes something like “Yirt-Grek-Besh-Senth-Mern.” Karnov struggles to make a word out of the initials, but failing dismally.

The pursuing ships keep pace with Storm Cutter, but cannot bring their guns to bear on the erratically dodging freighter. Red three drops in onto their tails, and manages a telling shot, disrupting the attack vector. More of the Z-95s are making hits, but not enough to destroy even one of the enemy fighters. Niall has fallen back on his training and is insisting that running away isn’t his idea of sound tactics. “Nor is attacking a dozen fast interceptors in a thirty-year old freighter with six-point-three percent shields.”

“Three point six now....” Joe-9T keeps them updated.

“But it isn’t the Jedi way!” Niall insists, ignoring him.

“The Republic will thank you for your sacrifice.” Mama is close to full-on rage. “Now do your job, and let me do mine!” She screams across the com.

There is little Niall can do or say to resolve the impasse. He shrugs and turns back to the console and starts working on the shield configurations once more. Karnov, Rojic and the droids are doing the same. The blue bar creeps from six percent up slowly, as the scomp port turns. Then by stages, it climbs to one hundred percent.

“Oooh! Scompy!”

Mama is watching intently. “It’s now or never!” She says, flipping the ship once more and mollifying Niall. “How’s Venn doing, Rojic?”

Rojic has been racking what is left of his brains for a solution to the problem. A rapid conversation comes across the ships com.

“Run the diagnostics.” He says urgently.

“Already tried that.”

“Run the reapair.”

“Nothing. -It’s in the core.”

Rojic thinks on his wings. “Then dump the core and use the backup.”

“There is no backup.”

“Then disconnect between ship and core and use your droid.”

“No droid.” Venn sounds apologetic.

There is a harsh expletive from Rojic.

Venn asks, “What was that?”

“Nothing….Er, it’s a sealed system. Nothing should go wrong….Unless…..”

Venn reels off the problem in more detail. “I run the initiation protocols to launch the interdiction and fire control sequence…. And everything hangs.”

“Could you broadcast the code here, we could do a recompile and broadcast it back?”

“No, and…..”

“No!” Mama and Niall say in unison. “If there’s a glitch, we don’t want it aboard this ship!”

“We could blast Joe-9T out of the airlock with an emergency core, and….”

“The chances of him making it before being destroyed are a million to one….”

Rojic’s brain lights up, like the fridge light. “But still….Oh! -Stop talking everyone! Venn, do a glitch-check with these search terms….Anything strange, mark it for deletion.”

His fingers fly over the screen, uploading various algorithms to the stricken vessel.

“I see something suspicious. Taking the chance….Deleting now…..Hold on….”

Kima Venn: "I'm working on it!"

Outside, the freighters are pulling away from the fray, while the Z-95s and the interceptors are closing to firing range, firing at one another and over-shooting. Then they bank around for another pass and a repeat. Storm Cutter comes about in a 130-degree turn port-side. “It’s now or never….” Karnov says under her breath.

Z-95 Headhunter

A wing of enemy fighters is closing on the Firespray, looking for the kill. Venn’s fingers punch in the codes, and she isolates a suspect part of the computer program. She grits her teeth, and silently prays for some good luck. The computer fires back into life and gets to the point at which it has been dying…..And continues running! Lights light up, the engine roars into life, and the jamming signal is re-established! Venn leans hard on the stick, and whips the vessel around, climbing high over what was to be the Vulture’s final attack run. The shields come back up, and the jamming signal stutters. Venn slams a hand down on the console in frustration, and the signal re-establishes itself.

“Fire control back online.” She reports in, the relief palpable in her voice. “Jamming systems up and running!”

Karnov and Niall punch shots at the enemy ships, keeping them at bay. Venn swoops low and under her attackers and makes a bee-line for the mother ship. “The only sure way….” She tells Storm Cutter. Red wing banks left to cover their attack run. Mama gets a missile lock, and brings Storm Cutter about, sensing Venn's plan.

“Still need to get the shields down….” Niall reminds them. “All guns to bear….”

“Can we shoot bear out of season?” Karnov quips. Storm Cutter aligns itself on an attack vector as the two apprentice Jedi blast the mothership with every spare ounce of power. The guns spew long volleys. The Firespray is doing the same, with quicker bursts, though probably not quite as powerful. In a few seconds, the plucky little vessel is under the range of the mothership’s guns, and streaks through the gap between the long wings, firing all guns at maximum rate, and avoiding a collision by inches. Mama lets the missile fly….

The missile stars veering too far to the right! A quick course correction is punched in, as Niall and Karnov shred the remains of the shields. There is a big explosion, and the mothership rocks along its axis. Storm Cutter’s guns are blasting numerous greebles with powerful shots; Venn comes around for another pass. At the last moment the mothership starts to break up. Rojic lets fly with another missile, letting the forward momentum of the freighter carry it forward. Another bigger blast rips the mothership in two, while the guns from Storm Cutter and the Firespray keep blasting. The droid interceptors have little autonomous control,and slow to a crawl. Their Headhunter pursuers start cutting them down. The freighters punch for the relative safety of the Duros outpost in the asteroid field. Storm Cutter and the Firespray start mopping up, and collecting wreckage. Rojic can’t contain himself with his success. “We did it! We got them! I’m sure I can get some salvage off them!”

Niall tells him to calm it. “You need to patch us up first….As well as deliver the food and medicines to the outpost.”

“I’m sure we can fix their guns on Storm Cutter.” Rojic insists.

“Not the right size, shape, or mounts on the hard-points, I’m afraid.” Mama reminds him, cooling his excitement. She and Niall exchange a glance. She holds his gaze for a second, and then drops it.

“Sorry for the outburst….” She starts to say. Niall dismisses it. “No matter, we got the result….” His stern face looks on. After a second of tension they both say, “Tea?” Niall’s stony face cracks into a smile, relieving the tension.

A while later, they are unloading the cargo to the Duros outpost. The Duros pilots from the Z-95s are chatting in their own tongue. Rojic is poring over the salvage from the droid interceptors.

“These guns aren’t compatible, I’m afraid.” He looks forlorn. Venn is standing by, going over the schematics for the Firespray computer core. “I think I can see the glitch….Or should I say ‘deliberate sabotage’….”

“Sabotage?” Karnov asks.

“Well, the jamming fleet had a refit just recently. I wonder….”

“Where was that?”

“At Kuat drive yards.”

“But the drive yards are vast….They orbit the planet….So tracking down a saboteur….”

“I’m sure we can put something in place to lure them out….Crew manifests and the like….”

“But that’s a job for another day….In the meantime; we should warn the other jamming vessels about the problem.”

“No upgrade then?” Mama asks.

“No…But we could modify the power capacitors, so we get more clout.”

“I know a sure-fire way of testing the power output.” Rojic tells them. “Oh yes? How is that?”

“Here….” Rojic gives Karnov a couple of conductors. “Hold these two stripped-wire ends….”

Karnov isn’t going to be taken in by this. “Get it done….” Mama orders, and turns to a team of Duros engineers. “I want this to be spaceworthy before too long.” She advises them. The Duros nod, then as she turns away, shake their heads.

Later on, they are having something to eat.

Rojic is babbling on about what went wrong with the Firespray.

“It’s really simple, really.”

Rojic takes a deep breath. In one go, with very small pauses, he tells them the following:

“Actually we managed to track it down to an out-phasing amplifier which divides the variable envelope signal into two constant amplitude -but otherwise variable- phase signals which can be amplified more efficiently once the amplifier doesn't need to output both large and small signals. But normally combining the signals is inefficient because the combiner must absorb some of the power when the two halves of the signal are very out of phase with each other. What the saboteurs did was to extend the out-phasing technique to allow multiple discrete amplitudes on each amplifier to maximize the combiner inefficiency. It's less efficient than plain out-phasing, Of course, I'm sure that envelope tracking of the amplifier would have been better at masking the damage and making it more difficult to repair. – Once we attenuated the signal to the amp, we got it to process the in the correct phase. -Et voilà!”

Karnov boggles at his technical know- how. “What about the printer? Did you fix that?”

“What was wrong with it?”

“It said ‘Jam in tray three’”

“So what did you try?”

“I put jam in it. –Actually it was kinda orange-y so….”

Rojic sighs. “When it says jam, it needs jam. Not marmalade. Not peanut butter, not marmite…..Not even mixed fruit conserve. Just jam.”

“Oh, right. -Thanks.” Karnov thinks. “You know when it says ‘Jam in toaster….’”

“Same principle.”

“I like jam on toast.” Niall says, “It kinda takes you by surprise how nice it can be.”

“I use the force on the printer.....” Mama says, raising eyebrows from the two Jedi. “Actually I just use force. -And sometimes a blaster.”

There is a pause. Trio asks Mama, “Shall I make you a double skinny espresso brandy....With a shot of coffee, Sir?”

They all much their toast. When three slices are polished off, in short order, Mama pauses. “You know, we were rather taken by surprise earlier. –We plonked down right in the middle of things. – No warning, no build-up, no back-story.”

“We were ‘in medias res.’” Niall says, unselfishly bestowing his knowledge.

Karnov can’t help herself, “I thought the ship was called Storm Cutter.”

“It is. –Stupid! –‘In medias res’ means in the middle of things. Straight onto the story, not at the beginning.

“Like jumping out of hyperpace, -and being attacked.”

“-And what happened before is not always noteworthy or even made clear, or sometimes just remains a mystery.” Rojic states.

“Yes. Exactly” Niall says.

They all pause for thought. “So what did happen before we dropped out of hyperspace.”

“Nobody knows….Unless it was recorded in some way.”

They all look at one another blankly. It lasts for some time.

Joe-9T offers some solution. “I could make something up. Something that sounds plausible….Something fictional.”

“In the absence of hard facts, fiction will have to suffice.” Karnov says, rather dejectedly.

Joe-9T stands. Servos puff up his armour plated chest.

“Okay….”Joe-9T says, in his smoothest tone. “It goes something like this….”

“Drink madam?” Trio purrs, turning to Niall, who grimaces just a trace. Trio looks a little forlorn, even though this shouldn’t be possible for a droid. Finally Niall smiles at her. –Though again there is no reason to do so. “Just tea thanks, Trio.”

The droid turns to Mama. “How about you, sir?”

Mama holds up a mug. “Coffee…..”

Trio is taken aback. “No alcohol?”

“I was just about to ask for a shot of brandy.”

Karnov asks, “Isn’t it a bit early for that?”

“Not from where I come from.” The cockpit falls silent. Rojic breezes in, full of the joys of a spring-gun. “Where’s that then?”

Niall echoes the question. “Yes. Where -in the entire galaxy- is eight o’clock in the morning not too early for one’s first drink?”

Mama swivels in the pilot’s chair. “That’s the point. -Time’s all relative. –I was born on a cruise ship, plying the space-lanes. –Nothing but hull plating beneath my feet until I was about five.

Joe-9T pipes up. “Never had a permanent home, captain?”

“Not really. I’ve lived in space for most of my life. –I can’t honestly say that I’m overjoyed at the thought of open parkland, mountains, trees, or the grass beneath my feet.”

“Grass is lovely stuff.” Joe-9T says, surprising everyone. “Yes. –All nice and soft and organic and verdant….Crushed beneath my durasteel boots and my half-ton body. –Nice and compliant!”

The console beeps. “Tee-minus-thirty.” Trio intones, interpreting. Mama takes a deep breath. “No. Plenty of fresh air here on board ship. All scrubbed, and recycled, and fresher than the air atop Colda Lunar mountain.”

Niall is about to correct her on this point, just as Mama lights up a fat death stick and offers one to Rojic, who obliges. Niall catches the glint of irony in her eye, and shakes his head in disapproval. Clouds of acrid smoke fill the cockpit, prompting Karnov to take her leave. “I’m off to do a bit more to my lightsabre.” The others snigger behind her back. Niall follows. “How’s it going?” He enquires of Karnov, kindly.

“Well, I’ve got a working prototype….But there’s a long way to go.” –Fresh giggles erupt from Joe-9T and Rojic who are following. Karnov ignores them. “I’ll give you a hand if you want.” Rojic offers. “No. This is something that Karnov has to do for herself.” Niall warns him.

Twenty nine minutes and thirty seconds later, Mama asks rather loudly, “Where’s that droid with our drinks?” The console beeps again. She turns back, “Okay people, stand by…..” The long streaks of stars resolve themselves back into pinpoints of light as Storm Cutter comes out of hyperspace. A few seconds later, their fighter escort and six stock-light-freighters appear. “All present….Except….” By the time that Niall has got to this part of the sentence, a Firespray-31 appears. Kima Venn’s voice is heard over the comm. “Sorry, computer glitch, I think I’ve got it covered. Jamming envelope online….”

“I find kicking it regularly helps considerably.” Rojic offers as rather unhelpful advice.

“That’s why they call it a re-boot.” Joe-9T says, somewhat ironically. Karnov is still puzzling out if this is true or just a figure of speech, when Mama interrupts. “Nothing on the local scan, but….” Her report is cut short when a C-9979 landing craft appears. “Nothing but company!” Niall finishes the sentence, as a dozen Vulture droids pour from the mothership.

“Venn, are you on this?” Rojic pleads, but the main communicator is dead.

As Joe-9T stops speaking. There is a moment’s pause, then the assembled group start applauding.

“Bravo!”

“Wonderful!”

“It’s almost like he was there!”

“Five stars out of five.”

Rojic screws up his face. “Nah….I didn’t like it!”

This stops the applause. Rojic breaks into a big cheesy grin. “I loved it! –Especially as he can put hyperlinks in his speech – the droid is a genius!”

Niall is pleased. “Great, Joe. –But tell me, where did that suddenly come from?”

“Well, I couldn’t quite let three thousand two hunded and ninety nine characters go to waste, could I?”

“That you couldn’t. Good job too. It makes everything just a bit clearer.”

“But now that the start of the tale is at the end, will anyone be able to sort it out?”

“Not if I put the opening crawl down here just before the end.” Joe-9T says. “In fact I’ll just do it now, and damn the consequences, or the sequences!” He switches to ‘deep resonant epic reading voice #7’ and delivers his prolog.

The clone wars have begun. The forces of the REPUBLIC are hard pressed by the TRADE FEDERATION.
Worlds change allegiance and Separatist guerrillas strike at the heart of the Republic.
No security measures have worked to halt the supply of arms and fighters to cells on dozens of worlds.

On the Galactic Rim a war of outposts is underway.
Small forces launch raids and attacks on lightly defended systems and facilities.

With fleet resources spread across the galaxy, the republic depends on traders to run the gauntlet carrying supplies in whatever ships can be mustered.
Few escort ships can be spared and convoys are at the mercy of raiders and pirates as they hurry to their destinations on the very edge of Republic space.

“Great, Joe! – And making the words crawl upward while you speak is a neat trick!”

Karnov isn’t sure of the sequencing. Mana tries to reassure her. “I’m sure they will figure it out eventually. – Anyway, time to get back to work. –There’s a war on, remember?” They all head back to the hangar. A loading droid trundles up with a crate of Durasteel plates to weld back onto the hull of Storm Cutter.

Soon, Rojic is grumbling. “I had to do some tough deals to secure these.” He tells Mama. “I’m not sure about their welding either. I think I’ll stop them right now and simply use superglue and candle-wax to fit the plates to the hull.” Rojic flutters off.

“No wonder the Durese for trader is ‘bodge’” Karnov observes dryly.

Good news about the guns, anyway….” Niall says, walking up. “We could do with more ‘punch’….Talking of which, where is that Toydarian?”

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Footnotes. (Not today, thankyou!)