Chapter 67

Outer Los Approach, Recopi System

Humbarine Sector

“Right where the Admiral said they would be,” Commander Adar Tallon murmured, “So this is how the Separatists managed to run circles around us.”

Captain Jan Dodonna dipped his chin briefly, “This isn’t the only one. Commenor ACS detected at least six of them.”

Ahead of them, some three-million klicks far, were two massive vessels orbiting the mining world Outer Los, their silhouettes ringed by a halo of light as the great star of Recopi burned at their backs. They were converted bulkers, their superstructures gave away that much, and Jan could only presume they were the improvised auxiliary service ships Admiral Honor hypothesised the existence of. Further confirming their suspicions, Prudence’s sensors were picking up satellite signatures around the two vessels, likely tenders previously shuttling back and forth from the planet to resupply their motherships. They had kicked up the hornet’s nest, and now those tenders were racing back to their hangars and berths, while the auxiliaries’ combat patrols were arraying out for battle.

“Focus on the present, Jan,” Adar said, “We destroy these two, and we ruin all of Trilm’s local operations. She’ll have no choice but to further concentrate her squadrons around her remaining auxiliaries in order to maintain prolonged action.”

“...I’m going to need you in your fighter, Adar,” Jan told his friend, before turning to the data pits, “Contacts?”

“–Two auxiliaries,” a sensor officer hastily replied, “One Lucrehulk. We think it’s in carrier configuration... and three heavy cruisers. Rendili Dreadnaughts.”

Adar Tallon winced, “Lucrehulk-class carrier? We just couldn’t have it easy, could we?”

“Get out there, Commander,” Jan commanded, settling into his captain’s persona, “We’ll draw its attention and cover your vector. Remember–”

“Auxiliaries first, I know,” Commander Tallon waved him off as he departed, “They won’t see it coming, I promise you that.”

Captain Jan Dodonna breathed out, visualising his plan of attack in his mind’s eye. Then–

“All ships; triple line formation! Victory Division, forward!” he ordered furiously, “Intercept that Lucrehulk! Venator Division, launch all starfighters!”

Victory-class Star Destroyer Nike surged forward through the ranks of the Venators with six other Victorys, arranged in a stringent line abreast, missile bays yawning open in anticipation. Their thrust plumes washed across the formation as their supersized main reactors pushed the powerful warships to velocities far greater than any Separatist warship could outpace. The auxiliaries were already fleeing, abandoning what tenders that couldn’t rendezvous in time, while the lone Lucrehulk and three Rendili Dreadnaughts were forming a crude line of battle in a delaying effort.

“Firebolt Squadron launch, Talon Squadron launch, Nemesis Squadron launch...” an impassive voice rang out over the speakers as Prudence’s starfighter wings took to the void, shielded from view by the Victory Division’s backwash in the front. Jan almost missed Adar Tallon’s fighter-bomber wing as he circled around, collecting his starfighters as he did, before taking off on a perpendicular vector to the rest of the task force.

As soon as his Talon Squadron made clear of the fleet, Commander Tallon ordered his drives cut, and the live feed of his wing disappeared from Jan’s displays, replaced with a blinking last known vector track.

“Let’s hope you were right about those auxiliaries needing time to warm up their drives,” Captain Jan Dodonna mumbled to himself, observing the enemy’s fifteen-hundred Vulture droids roil into their classical swarm ‘formation.’

He could see why the tactic continued to prove its usefulness. For a host of droid brains, there was no more natural tactic, and the psychological factor a smothering, devouring cloud of droids possessed was truly fearsome. One reason, of many, Jan would never pilot a starfighter. There had been horror stories from the Perlemian, where over a million droid starfighters executed the greatest swarm ever known in galactic history at the Battle of Centares. Suffice to say, starfighter tacticians across the Republic had been sent scrambling to find a solution.

And the solution was, once again, found in the Victory-class Star Destroyer.

Nike plunged headfirst into the droid swarm, like a shark scouring through a school of fish, her teeth-like clusters of turbolasers and point defence lasers cutting a bloody slew through the enemy formation. Once the swarm’s greatest strength–its solidity–had been undone, Jan’s own starfighters poured into the breach like parasitic wasps, eroding the swarm from the inside out.

“Three points to starboard,” Jan ordered the helm, “Bring us onto the enemy’s port flank. We’ll push the Separatists into the damned planet if we have to!”Fịndd new updates at novelhall.com

Prudence brought her mighty form around, artillery deck gleaming with open bores, taking the point of the eight-ship formation in line ahead. Manoeuvring around the pinned down starfighter battle, his eight Venators discovered that the enemy cruisers had anticipated the attack, and a furious firefight began. Unfortunately for the Separatists, they were severely outgunned and outtonnaged, and were forced to give ground.

From the corner of his eye, he spotted the fleeing auxiliaries, and considered the idea of scraping up a reserve fighter-bomber wing to pursue them. The thought was proven unnecessary a moment later, when Commander Adar Tallon’s fighter-bomber wing pounced out from behind Outer Los, having circumnavigated the entire world, leaping onto the relatively defenceless auxiliaries and all but tearing through whatever combat patrols remained and shooting their engines dead.

As soon as they confirmed the auxiliaries were no longer moving under their own power and only inertia, Talon Squadron wheeled about and began closing the distance between itself and the rear of the remaining Lucrehulk.

“Broadcast an order to surrender,” Jan commanded.

“They aren’t responding, sir!” a deck officer shouted, instinctively ducking as one of the enemy cruisers ripped itself in half, an internal reactor detonation flinging out high velocity shards in every direction.

With the Victory Division bearing down from their front, Jan’s Venator Division asserting even more pressure on their flank, and Talon Squadron approaching from the rear, the lone Lucrehulk was completely surrounded.

“Send it again,” Jan’s fingers lightly brushed the growing fuzz on his face, “They must realise capture is preferable to death.”

“...With all due respect, Captain,” the communications officer inserted weakly, but pointedly, “This is the Perlemian Coalition. I don’t think they will be surrendering.”

Jan Dodonna resisted the urge to sigh. Regardless, he continued sending unanswered transmissions to the Lucrehulk, even as the last of the Dreadnaught-class cruisers shattered apart, as Nike and her Victorys unleashed their withering hails of missiles. Even as the hundreds of concussion warheads cracked open its shell, seismic waves rippling and ripping through her interior bulkheads and tore the massive vessel apart. Jets of boiling atmosphere burst through the crevices, shooting out debris and bodies into the cold void.

“...Where to next, Captain?”

Jan turned around, not an emotion on his face, “Where’s the closest Separatist raid party?”

“Scans indicated the Sarapin System, but it’s a couple hours old–”

“Based on what we know of their raid patterns, where would they jump next?”

“Well, the Seyugi System, Captain.”

“Plot the jump. We must not waste our momentum.”

⁂

Sarapin Orbit, Sarapin System

Humbarine Sector

Click, click.

Calli Trilm held up the Starpath unit to the light, inspecting it from every angle. She wasn’t so sure as to what had become of it, and she had half the mind to believe it had become infected by some sort of dormant virus... like a sleeper cell. It would make sense, and she could certainly give the GAR credit for such a novel anti-espionage tactic... except it did not behave like one. After all, what sort of sleeper virus would activate before it had been attached to a mainframe? And if there was a sleeper virus, why would it only activate after the device was no longer in use?

To prevent the CAF from reverse engineering GAR technology? Not for something as ubiquitous as a Starpath unit. In fact, the CAF had even better communications technology than the GAR. While the Republic may maintain its advantage in weapons and starship technology, the Confederacy was well and far in the lead with its automation, communications, and most things electronic.

“Tex,” she called out to TX-103, “Have you prepared the isolation chamber?”

‘Isolation chamber’ she called it. Simply put, it was just a digitally isolated space completely separated from any critical systems or accessible networks. It was a common enough technique to train any sort of novel artificial intelligence, especially if no restraints had been hardcoded into it, so as to prevent the intelligence from going rogue and infecting everything within reach of its immaterial claws.

“It takes time to partition a databank of sufficient size,” Tex returned from... whatever he was doing.

“Can’t we just use the same databank Handler One inhabited before?”

“It had been repurposed.”

Before she could reply, a chime on the comms module of her chair caught her attention. Cursing softly underneath her breath, Calli took a brisk glance at chrono before leaping off her seat and climbing down to the viewports. Battle Squadron Salvara–the very same Battle Squadron Salvara that participated in the Battle of Centares and Battle of Columex–were returning from their raid on Sarapin’s orbital relays. The boiling volcanic world was a wealth of effectively limitless geothermal energy on its own, and the old Republic had been wise enough to exploit Sarapin to its greatest effect; effectively using the world as the prime energy supplier of the entire Galactic Interior...

At the cost of making a single world produce up to 80% of the entire Core’s energy imports. Incidentally, Sev’rance Tann’s opening move of the war was to lead an overwhelming attack on Sarapin, knocking out the root of the Core’s entire power grid, completely blacking out tens of thousands of worlds for hours if not days until secondary sources could make up for the sudden loss. Suffice to say, the Republic had learned its lesson, and hastily made to diversify its energy suppliers. However, Calli Trilm would hazard Sarapin still dominated a large slice of that particular pie chart, considering the apparent renewal and improvement of its defence grid.

But Calli had no intentions to brave the defence grid; she was neither the Pantoran, nor did she have the might of the Confederate Second Fleet, or was its 2nd Fleet Group now? The 19th Mobile Fleet was designed specifically to raid spacelanes and transports, and that’s what she would do. Because energy was useless unless it could find its way to the consumer. And that meant energy had to be transported... in one way or another, as the satellite wrecks around Sarapin could testify.

“What is going on!?” Bengila Urlan demanded, “Is it the Separatists!? A Separatist attack!?”

He knew there was a Separatist fleet in the Core, no matter how the HoloNet wanted to downplay it. Bengila Urlan was the Arch-Provost of Rendili, not any ignorant citizen, and he had infochants all across the galaxy. The Perlemian Coalition had smashed through the gate at Commenor, and now... they were at Rendili, the largest shipyard system in the Core Worlds save for Kuat itself. He would not have been surprised.

But he was surprised. Because just like Kuat, Rendili had its own fleet, too powerful and too autonomous for Coruscant’s overreaching fingers to pluck up and fling out towards the frontier. The Rendili Home Defense Fleet was over two-hundred and fifty warships, all built in-house of Rendili’s own shipyards. Dreadnaughts, Acclamators, Venators, and now Victorys. State-of-the-art warships. Last he recalled, the Separatist fleet at Commenor numbered three-hundred before splitting apart to prey on the Core’s spacelanes.

A fleet of that calibre should have never been able to break through the Rendili Home Defense Fleet, much less even break through Rendili’s planetary shields. He knew that much. Arch-Provost Urlan built the Rendili Defence Fleet as it existed in its current state. It was he who renewed Rendili’s shipyards, who waged a shadow war against Kuat to diminish their influence in the shipbuilding industry. It was he who secured the contracts for the Victory Initiative Project, and he who oversaw the launch of the very first Victory-class Star Destroyer here at Rendili.

Bengila Urlan knew the Rendili Home Defense Fleet inside and out. He could hardly convince himself it made such a poor showing that the Separatist Admiral Calli Trilm managed to brush it aside so quickly and without warning. But if it wasn’t the Separatists, who could it be?

As the State Security trooper led him out into the hallways, the air mired with a haze of smoke and dust hanging over the luxuriously carpeted floor, and he could hear the frantic warbling of fire alarms over the roaring inferno rippling its way towards his suite. Urlan was almost surprised by the power of his own fear as the entire world seemed to quiver to the fury of explosions and combat. He’d seen so many reports now, so many HoloNet reels and news articles and vicarious images of the war that he’d thought he’d be desensitised to the thought of it now.

After all, was it not Rendili StarDrives supplying the war effort with warships and weapons?

But the Arch-Provost was no longer living the war through a screen or holo. He was living the war.

But all of a sudden, none of that mattered at all. The Separatists, the war... it all faded to the recesses of his mind and memory as they stormed past a cracked window. The Arch-Provost instinctively glared out of it in an attempt to finally understand what was going on–

And saw Rendili Dreadnaughts in the skies over his world. Acclamators, Venators, and Victorys. The entire Rendili Home Defense Fleet in all of its glorious form, arrayed over the capital city. The red rising sun was a halo of light at their backs, as if he was watching a host of angels descending upon him.

“Sir, we need to keep moving!”

Urlan hadn’t realised it, but he had stopped dead in his tracks, gaping out the window, as if his feet had been rooted to the ground. He saw the fleet, his fleet, arrayed perfectly above him, and thought it was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

“What... what is going on?” the Arch-Provost asked again, “I want an answer, trooper!”

The State Security trooper paused, expression half-hidden by his visor, “There’s been an attempt on the Arch-Provost’s life by Kuati and Republic agents. The... the Arch-Provost had been assassinated, and his residence destroyed in an arson attack. The Independent Provisional Government of Rendili has been convened to determine the future of Rendili and her shipyards. The Home Fleet has been summoned to block the assassin’s path of escape.”

“But...” Urlan didn’t know what possessed him then, perhaps it was simply the fact he couldn’t process what outrageous words were flowing into his ears, “But I’m the Arch-Provost, and I’m still alive!”

Arch-Provost Bengila Urlan looked up in rage and fear, and saw the State Security trooper’s blaster aimed straight at his head.

“That’s unfortunate, sir,” the trooper said, “But you burned in the fires of the palace. But worry not–Rendili will remember your legacy forever.”

"If you would have me disgraced like this, at least tell me why," if Urlan had feared death, he no longer felt it.

The trooper shrugged, seeing no reason not to answer the dead man, "The Republic is dying, and the Council of Provosts have no intentions of keeping to a sinking ship that does not see our worth. Rendili will be worth its weight in kyber to the Separatist Alliance."

I should’ve kriffing shot you at my door, the Arch-Provost thought, and he thought no longer.

⁂

Caamas Approach, Cirius System

Alderaan Sector

“Priority Alpha transmission from Coruscant, Admiral.”

Admiral Honor Salima hardly registered her Flag Captain, Terrinald Screed’s words as she impassively watched the Bulwark Fleet struggle to disengage from their battle. The Bulwark Fleet, a once mighty thing that laid waste to the Northern Core with three-hundred ships, had been, in its two month pursuit, whittled down to a paltry command of just over a hundred vessels. Most of the surviving warships were the eponymous Bulwark-class battlecruisers that gave the fleet its name, but compared to the Home Fleet which numbered theirs twice over, it was a foregone conclusion that Dua Ningo’s only hope of survival was escape.

“Fall back,” Admiral Honor commanded as a listing Bulwark began driving her thrusters hard forward, “And target that ship. Where’s Arcenciel?”

It took a moment for Captain Screed to pivot his thoughts, “Captain Autem’s leading the left wing, sir.”

Admiral Honor turned her head away just as a glaring sphere of unendurable brightness exploded across the viewports, huge and so hellishly bright it hurt to look at it even through the viewport’s automatic filters. The Bulwark, knowing its drives had been shot, had attempted to plunge straight into the Republic formation and scuttle itself with a main reactor detonation. But the Coruscant Home Fleet was a veteran of half a dozen battles with the Bulwark Fleet now, and they had long familiarised with Dua Ningo’s stubborn insistence that his vaunted warships would never fall into his enemy’s hands.

“Pin them down!” Honor roared with the rage of her warfleet, her tablet havng informed her that three of her Victorys had been mortally injured by the blast, “Have Arcenciel form a wall of battle and drive up the enemy right!”

The Home Fleet had caught the Bulwark Fleet on the hyperlane egress towards Caamas, one of the most respected worlds in the Core, not to mention a founding world of the Republic. If one squinted the sensors, you could spot the meagre Caamasi System Fleet arrayed close to a battlestation in orbit.

As commanded, Captain Autem bravely led from the front of his Victory squadron, Arcenciel a flaming speartip as she raked Dua Ningo’s flanks. As soon as he reached the starboard quarter of the enemy formation, Arcenciel hooked right and began pushing the Bulwark Fleet away from Caamas and manoeuvring north to block them from jumping out of the Core. That left south or east–as the Home Fleet had chased them from Skako in the west–to which laid either Demophon or Alderaan.

“Captain Screed?” Admiral Honor summoned as soon as she was satisfied with her battleline, “You may proceed with the message.”

Captain Screed coughed, his cybernetic eye fixated sternly on his commanding officer as he pivoted back onto the prior subject, “Priority Alpha transmission from Coruscant, Admiral. A coup on Rendili had killed the ruling Arch-Provost, and the system has declared for the Separatist Alliance, along with the Rendili StarDrive. In order to prevent a domino effect that would see much of the Core following their sedition, we have been ordered to quell the insurrection.”

“...What?”

Terrinald Screed suppressed a wince.

“How many heads do they think I have?” Admiral Honor demanded softly, but severely “Do I look like the Battle Hydra to them?”

“...High Command has promised reinforcements from the Jedi Order. A second fleet will bolster our numbers,” Captain Screed said, nevertheless unmoved by the Admiral’s ire.

“Who? Which Jedi?”

“They’ve refrained from giving a name, sir.”

Admiral Honor Salima ground her teeth, “Then we’ll make for Rendili at once.”

“Very good, sir.”

“We must prevent the Sullustan from jumping to Alderaan,” Honor Salima ordered, “Have our right flank execute an orderly withdrawal, and shift the centre to the left. Order Captain Autem to extend along the enemy’s rear.”

Dua Ningo was a good battlefield commander, she allowed, as the Bulwark Fleet reacted promptly to the Home Fleet’s enigmatic actions. His age has not dulled his senses, Honor thought, as the Sullustan translated his most powerful Bulwark-class battlecruisers to oppose the Home Fleet’s weakened right wing. Shame he doesn’t realise he is reacting as I wish–or rather, he has no choice but to react as I wish. With Arcenciel and her sister ships now opening fire on his vulnerable aft flank with their powerful missile launchers, Dua Ningo must’ve realised the quickest way out was to ram straight through the purposefully thinned Republic lines with his heaviest capitals.

The alternative was to die, frankly, and Honor did not want that... despite the fact that Honor would’ve summarily executed anybody who even suggested the idea they let the Bulwark Fleet escape for any reason a mere week prior. No reason to toy with the hunted, as it were, unless it served an even larger quarry. And the Perlemian Coalition was the largest there was, in these parts.

“Have we calculated where the Bulwark Fleet will jump to?”

“Aldraig or Demophon, sir.”

“Good. That’s the direction we want,” she nodded, “Make sure Calli Trilm catches wind of our movements. Leak it if you have to. And send word to Caamas and Alderaan–we’ve prevented the enemy from reaching them. We could use the favours, and ships. We need as many able warships we can get our hands on. They may not give them up for Coruscant, but they will give them up for the Home Fleet that saved their lives.”

“Very good, sir. And... we are still going to Rendili, Admiral?”

“Coruscant has been kind enough to decide our battlespace for us, Captain,” Admiral Honor observed as her captaincies on the right impressively ‘break’ without breaking, allowing the Bulwark Fleet through while maintaining their order, “Far be it for us to decline their invitation. We will deal with Calli Trilm, Dua Ningo, and whichever stupid bastard he thought jumping ship into the sea of stars was a good idea–in the Rendili Star System.”