It was a curious experience, being on the CR-90 Devilish Dare.  Pherik ‘Serpent’ Zail found the vessel so similar to his own Defiance, and yet so starkly different.  The Devilish Dare smelled of a different brand of deck polish, and the hull plates’ paint job was a shade more crimson.  Zail could even swear that the engines hummed at a different pitch while at sub-light speeds.  It was disconcerting indeed, but he took an odd pride in noticing such small details.  It meant that he was paying attention on his own ship, for any good Captain had to have intimate knowledge of both his crew and his ship.

He was standing on the bridge, watching the kaleidoscope of hyperspace, and engaged in idle chatter with Warrant Officer 1st Class Hastelle Regus, the Captain of the Dare.

“Once again, thanks for doing this, Hastelle,” Said Serpent, “I appreciate the lift.”

“Not at all, Pherik,” Said the woman, a hard-nosed human with sharp bangs of jet-black hair.  “I was on my way to Belgaroth anyway.  Glad I could assist.”

Zail was truly relieved to find Captain Regus to be so agreeable.  He hated taking shuttles to and from the Atrus to make his reports as Fleet Intelligence Liaison.  Catching a ride home on an actual warship was much better.

“So tell me,” He asked her, trying to strike up a conversation as the bridge crew went silently about their tasks.  “How long have you commanded the Dare?”

“About a year now,” Hastelle said with pride.  “I was the former First Officer, and was nominated for the post by the old Captain when he moved on.  How long have you had your command?”

“Only a few months,” Said Zail, and with a tired smile added, “And it’s not easy, is it?”

She shrugged.  “Good and bad days,” She confessed.  “But really, there is nothing like having your own ship, is there?”

Serpent opened his mouth to reply but never got a chance to speak.  Proximity alerts detected a mass shadow in hyperspace and blared out, and with a gut-wrenching lurch the Devilish Dare was dragged back into real space, engines screaming in protest.

“Report!” Bellowed Captain Regus, though through the forward viewport the answer was clear.  Hanging close by was a large asteroid, towed into their path to knock them from hyperspace.  The vessel responsible for this towing was a heavily modified MC30c frigate, and the New Republic markings on the side of the Mon Calamari vessel were clear to see.

“Transponder reads it as the Redeemer” Said the bridge officer at the Sensor post.  “And its launching fighters!”

“Fraking thing must be on a solo missing to harass our shipping lanes,” Mused Regus, a scowl on her face.  “All hands, battle stations!”

As the Devilish Dare came alive around him, Zail had to fight the urge to take charge and start shouting orders.  This was not his ship, he was not even part of the crew, he was just a passenger.  Instead Pherik just stood there, listening as his fellow Captain barked commands.

Hastelle seemed to have a firm grip of the situation.  The MC30c, almost four times the length of the Dare, was way out of their weight class, but she was not about to run.  Captain Regus had her Coms Officer send a request for assistance to all Vast Empire vessels in the area, and then vowed to stay and harass the Republic ship.  Not that they could harm the Mon Cal frigate, but they could shadow it, and ensure that if it tried to run they could get a firm reading as to its course.

Meanwhile the New Republic fighters drew closer.  There were four of them, two pairs of X-Wings, and they advanced swiftly on the Devilish Dare as it tried to keep out of weapons range of the Redeemer.

Captain Regus gave orders to return fire, and a spread of turbolasers erupted towards the hostile starfighters.  One pair pulled up and away, drawing fire, while the other two slipped in close.

“Change targets!” Roared Hastelle, but it was too late.  The X-Wings let fly with their proton torpedoes, which slipped through the Dare’s shields and ripped four gaping explosions in the hull.

Both Serpent and the Captain staggered as the ship rocked under the impacts.  Damage reports came tumbling in, and Regus called for damage control teams to rush to the impact spots that were now leaking oxygen.

“How can I help?” Zail asked, stepping forward, unable to stand by any more.  “Whatever you need, Captain, I’m here.”

Hastelle turned to regard him, as if suddenly remembering he was there.  “Okay, Pherik.  Do you have engineering experience?”

“I do,” He confirmed.

“Then go help the damage teams,” She said.

He nodded and rushed from the bridge.

-----

The Devilish Dare was a standard configuration CR-90, with a total of six turret weapon emplacements.  Four of these were single turbolasers, two located on the port side and two on the starboard.  The remaining two weapons were dual turbolasers, one dorsal and one ventral.  These two were accessed from a central shaft running through the decks, and it was the corridor adjacent to this shaft that had been blown open by the torpedoes and exposed to vacuum.

Emergency bulkheads had lowered, sealing the breach, but there was still major wiring issues to be taken care of.  When Zail arrived, three of the damage control personnel were already inspecting the mess.

“How bad is it?” He asked.

“We can repair it quite easily, Chief,” Said one of the techs, noticing the Chief Warrant Officer patch on Serpent’s uniform.  “However,” He added sadly, “That isn’t the real issue of the damage.”

Zail frowned, and this prompted a second tech to speak up.  “Grylis and Zham, they were both in this section.  They seem to have been sucked into space when the atmosphere vented.”

Serpent quickly put the problem together as he looked up and down the shaft at the empty turrets.  “The gunners?” He queried, and the techs nodded in grim confirmation.  “No time to mourn their loss now.  Get some other gunners up here now!”

“There aren’t any other qualified gunners on board!” Replied the first tech.

Zail was angered by the news but not entirely surprised.  The Devilish Dare only had a small crew, and it was unlikely to find many of them cross-trained in other starship departments.  “Fine!” He snapped.  “You, get to the ventral turret and do your best!  I’ll take the dorsal turret.”

“Me?” Exclaimed the lead tech.  “I’m no gunner!”

“Neither am I,” Said Serpent, “But anyone is better than no-one right now.”  And with that he barrelled into the shaft, scrambling up the ladder and into the turret.

-----

Pherik strapped himself in to the chair and put on the communications headset.  He gripped the controls of the dual turbolaser and with a flick of his thumb toggled on the targeting computer.

“Serpent to Weapons Chief,” He said into the headset microphone.  “Two of your gunners are gone.  I shall be filling in at turret Five.”

There was a long pause before the voice of the ship’s Lead Gunner came back to him.  “Understood, Chief Zail,” Came the measured reply.  No doubt he had taken a moment to confirm this with Captain Regus, and it seemed that Hastelle had okayed it.  “Good shooting, Serpent.”

Good shooting, he mused.  Yeah, right.

The truth was that, with a blaster, Pherik was one of the worst shots in Naval Intelligence, and he wondered if that would apply to capital ship guns too.  On the other hand, his father, Ardus Zail, had served both the Republic and the Empire as gunner on a Venator-Class Star Destroyer.  He hoped that, whatever natural abilities had aided his sire, Pherik had inherited them.

He gripped the handles of the gun firmly and pulled back, lifting the nozzles of the twin turbolasers and looked around.  Sat atop the CR-90, he was able to spin three hundred and sixty degrees in a circle, taking in all of space around and above him.  There was no sign of the X-Wings, so he consulted the scanner nestled among the firing control.

There!  A pair of the New Republic fighters were coming around the underside of the Devilish Dare and were about to come into his firing line.  He swivelled the turret to their direction and watched carefully.

The two X-Wings flew into his line of sight, moving fast in a large arc.  Zail squeezed the trigger and fired after them, the nozzles of the twin turbolasers sliding back and forth as they fired alternately.  The fighters moved fast, and he chased them with a stream of fire but they were just too fast.  He tried to compensate, moving his targeting reticule to where they were about to be, but he misjudged either their speed or the distance or both and overshot.

The X-Wings flew out of his zone of fire, splattering fire across the Devilish Dare as they did so.  Pherik had only a few moments to analyse his mistakes before the second duo swung into his firing arc, and he tried again.

He checked the distance with the firing computer first, and considered the relative speed of the X-Wings to the Devilish Dare.  Aiming somewhat ahead of them (and being aware that lasers travelled fast enough to reach their foes pretty much instantly) Serpent depressed the firing buttons.

A continuous stream of lethal energy flew out at the X-Wings, passing just ahead of them.  Seeing the spread of tubrolasers, the New Republic fighters banked away and Pherik gave chase by angling the cannons after them.  Again he tried to aim just ahead of them, and this time connected with one!  There was a flare of shields as the X-Wing swallowed the first few shots, but Zail doggedly stayed on the target, firing relentlessly.

A wolfish grin crossed his face as the fighter blew apart, destroyed by his hands!

“Got one!” He cried enthusiastically into the headset, and eagerly shifted fire to the wingman.  The other X-Wing proved a little more adept at dodging, however, and soon slipped downwards, heading underneath the Devilish Dare and out of Serpent’s firing arc.

Zail sat, tense as a coiled spring, watching the scanner carefully for the next X-Wing to emerge.  He was also listening intently to the chatter on the gunnery coms, and a few moments later heard one of the women in the port turrets proclaim her own victory.  Just two New Republic fighters were left.

They formed up on each other’s wings, travelling as a duo as they continued to perform flybys of the CR-90’s hull.  A few moments later, they emerged over the hammer-head forward section of the Vast Empire ship and Zail locked onto them eagerly.

Serpent opened fire, but as the X-Wings came about and altered course he could see that they were moving differently this time.  Indeed, he found himself staring down their x-shaped profiles, for the two fighters were coming right at him!

They fired in his direction, and for the first time Pherik felt a surge of fear as he realised that he was a sitting duck with little but a transparisteel window between him and two deadly foes.  He fired back, face a mask of concentration as his foes slipped between his shots.  Alas, the Devilish Dare was moving hard to port, totally throwing off his aim.

The X-Wings drew closer, raining shots upon the hull, strafing along it towards where Zail sat in his turret.  At the last second Serpent threw up his hands in a primal effort to defend himself as blasts rained across the screen before him.  Luckily the window’s shielding held, and the Republic fighters passed without successfully blasting him into the vacuum of space.

Returning his hands to the controls, Pherik rotated the dual turbolasers and fired after the two fighters.  This time he tried extra hard to compensate for the fact that his ship was moving hard and fast, but the shaking CR-90 was not making his job easy.  His spray of shots went wide, and the X-Wings flew clear.

Come back here! He thought at them, willing the hostiles to turn around.

Serpent did not have to wait long.  The X-Wings struck along the side of the Devilish Dare, drawing fire from the two turrets there, and then angled back to strike again at the topside of the corvette.  Zail was learning every second, though, and was fully ready for them.

He checked the range on the scanner, and mentally factored in the turning arc and velocity of the CR-90.  Pherik knew his own ship well, and despite the differences between the Dare and the Defiance, he expected them to at least move at similar speeds.

He took estimates, made a few guesses, and went with his gut as he chose when and where to fire.

The lead X-Wing took the twin turbolasers full in the engines, battering through shields and searing through thrusters housings.  The starfighter blew instantly, and Zail switched quickly to the second fighter, catching it as well.  The final New Republic ship rocked under the impact, its shields barely holding, and then it pulled up and away, racing to get clear.

Pherik fired after it, but within moments it was beyond his weapon’s range.  Alone, it was rushing back towards its MC30c carrier.

It was then that he heard Captain Regus’s voice in his ears.

“Nice shooting, Pherik,” She told him.

“Thanks, Hastelle,” He replied, voice filled with pride, and then he sagged back in his seat, exhausted from the effort of such sustained concentration.

Shortly after recovering its last fighter, the Redeemer entered hyperspace, rushing off to its next assault on VE shipping.  However, the Devilish Dare sent High Command all its gathered data on the frigate/carrier, and it was only a matter of time before a Naval taskforce found and destroyed the intruder in their space.

For Zail, though, the real triumph of the day lay in knowing he could actually fire something successfully.  And that perhaps he, the son of a Clone Wars gunner, had more in common with his father than he thought.

OOC:

2369 words.  My (rather long) submission for the Gunnery Ancillary Skill.

After Action Report:  While travelling on the CR-90 Devilish Dare, Serpent is present when the ship runs afoul of a New Republic frigate.  When battle damage kills of two gunner, Zail volunteers to try out the dorsal turbolaser turret.  Despite some problems, he picks it up quickly (following in the footsteps of his father, also a gunner) and shoots down two X-Wings.

Thanks Hades!  I'll go and update my wiki page now!