Warm Loathsom, a general in the CIS army, could not hide his emotions.
Or rather, the former general of the ground contingent on Christophsis.
The Kerkoidan mentally directed his irritation at his last interlocutor—Admiral Trench, with whom he had finished a communication session minutes ago.
Count Dooku, dissatisfied with the state of affairs on the planet, had decided to shake up the command, transferring primary authority to the Harch.
Now the planetary forces were to obey commands from orbit.
In effect, the former Jedi had humiliated the general, subordinating him—who had expended so much effort on destroying the Jedi group—to a mere fleet officer.
Warm didn’t diminish the Harch’s achievements in blockading Christophsis.
Thanks to him, the planet was in an impenetrable ring of ships, preventing reinforcements from reaching the Jedi on the surface.
But he himself had also put a lot of effort into destroying the resistance forces on this planet.
How many clones had Obi-Wan and Skywalker lost before that damned Dougan arrived?
Thousands!
The Kerkoidan had lacked just a little to finish them off and force their surrender.
The arrival of reinforcements and the evacuation of the battered Republic forces lay on Trench’s conscience.
“‘You are incapable of dislodging a tiny Republic force, General,'” Warm mimicked Dooku.
“‘You have hundreds of times more soldiers!'” The general stared irritably at the crystalline monoliths of skyscrapers visible from the windows of his residence.
He had chosen the most luxurious mansion within the capital for himself.
A small district of the city, turned into a bridgehead, had become a reliable thorn in the side of the capital, controlled by Republic forces.
Yes, he hadn’t managed to break the Republic forces.
Yes, he hadn’t managed to breach their defenses.
But Trench’s landings hadn’t succeeded either!
And now, starting tomorrow morning, he had to hand over command!
The reservation for locals had been captured by those same locals.
The humanity of Trench’s approach to the people had backfired on him in a shameful defeat—now the people had seized a simply enormous amount of weapons and ammunition.
And all the proton artillery had fallen into their hands too.
And Loathsom had planned to use it to bombard the capital of Christophsis and force the Republic to peace.
The Harch was surely celebrating victory.
With what gloating he had told Dooku that Warm was trying to preserve the capital only for its bank vaults.
Perhaps that was the reason for the general’s demotion.
But, consider this—he had to get some perks from being forced to rot here, in a world of pompous and arrogant miners.
He could have been leading victorious offensives somewhere in the Core instead.
Dammit, Trench!
If he hadn’t so ineptly lost his first battle group, the Jedi wouldn’t have been able to bring their troops to the planet.
And these new ones turned out to be better than the previous ones.
Warm had butchered the previous clones by the hundreds.
The Jedi had literally paved the streets of the Christophsis capital with their bodies.
But this new Jedi, Dougan… He had allied with the locals.
Sure, people weren’t clones, but they could still hold weapons and point them at droids.
And they put them to use, regularly wiping out CIS patrols.
Loathsom began noisily drawing air through his nostrils, remembering the last successful attack on the Crystal City.
A bloody massacre, in the spirit of those Skywalker and Obi-Wan had been through.
Intelligence had discovered then that large militia forces—up to three thousand—had arrived in the city.
They also delivered a reserve shield generator, captured in the valley, to the city.
In the city, where only the central part remained untouched and all the periphery lay in ruins, the concentration of CIS enemies had reached its peak.
And once they deployed the shield, they would become extremely dangerous… They couldn’t miss that chance… Trench and Loathsom struck simultaneously, crushing buildings, equipment, mowing down enemy forces… It seemed like the CIS forces were about to reach the Republic’s central positions, but no… the enemy threw all their reserves at Loathsom’s forces, slowed them, stopped them, and then pushed back the mechanical army.
A second attack by Trench’s bombers ran into an activated shield and hurricane fire from the surviving anti-aircraft artillery.
Expecting a counterattack, Warm had worn himself out hoping the clones would rush to pursue the retreating CIS units and run into the minefields left specifically for them… But it didn’t happen.
The clone equipment didn’t budge.
The ‘meat droid’ units didn’t move either.
The only consolation prize was that many militiamen had found their deaths on the left ‘surprises.’ Almost a month had passed since the end of that massacre.
But, as before—everything remained in place.
The clones kept sitting in the capital, the locals holed up in a valley half a continent away from the capital.
Uncharacteristic behavior for a Republic commander.
The Jedi had turned the city into an impregnable fortress after the very first attack.
The approaches were mined, snipers and scouts on the buildings.
Heavy weapons burned tanks and equipment before they even got close.
The wide streets were blocked with barricades, and the houses fortified.
Everywhere those clones with jetpacks scurried about, sniffing around… And that artillery!
Even though the Republic guns had a shorter range of fire, they still had them.
And they inflicted incredible damage on his troops.
Though… they weren’t his troops anymore.
Trench had taken command.
Let him figure out how to beat this Jedi.
Warm scraped his needle-sharp teeth—a gift from his ancestors—against each other with a slight grating sound.
The war had been going on for six months.
He had spent almost that long on Christophsis.
His plan—to starve out the Republic forces—should bear fruit… He just needed more of those metal tin-cans… The bridgehead held by CIS forces in the south of the capital was a small district where the elite once lived.
A luxurious library, expensive boutiques, shops, immodest villas furnished with the latest technology, gleaming with opulence.
Occupying barely a dozen blocks, this district had its own station for a high-speed underground highway, blocked off as unnecessary years ago.
Warm understood the rich—why would they use transport for the poor when a highway passed through their district?
And only the rich on this planet had personal ground transport.
However, after the capture of the concentration camp, Warm had ordered precautions.
A good hundred meters of the tunnel were mined.
The blast doors, designed to seal the tunnel against possible flooding, were lowered, and their controls were disabled.
A similar procedure was repeated in all settlements on the planet controlled by the CIS.
The general didn’t make the same mistake twice.
The droid army had managed to entrench itself in this district because Warm had taken a liking to this refuge of oligarchs long before Dougan’s forces appeared on the planet.
Minefields, force barriers, barricades… Tanks had become part of a massive defense system.
The latter became so threatening that the Republic didn’t dare to storm it… A massive explosion, somewhere on the outskirts of the district, was so powerful it blew out the fragile crystal used for window glass.
The general felt the floor shake beneath his feet but managed to stay upright.
Sounds of gunfire from outside reached his sensitive ears.
Rushing to the window, he saw with horror and dismay white figures of clones flashing inside the guarded perimeter of the bridgehead, mercilessly shooting the dim-witted B-1s.
Like demons in the night, the clones soared into the air on their jetpacks, using heavy weapons to destroy tanks, landing transports, and walking assault tanks.
All the equipment that could have given an advantage over the Republic was destroyed in the first seconds.
Looking more closely from the balcony at the crowd of attackers, the general noticed with surprise that besides the clones, his base was swarming with hundreds of native inhabitants of the planet, constantly supporting the clones with fire from captured CIS weapons.
“Get me Trench,” the general, with uncharacteristic energy, returned to the operations room.
He activated the holoprojector and gave the order to the appearing image of an OOM droid.
The fleet idiot didn’t understand him the first time, so he had to repeat.
“Got it, got it,” the latter finally said dully.
His image was replaced by the Harch’s hologram.
“Loathsom!” the native of Secundus-Ando didn’t hide his irritation.
“What’s going on there?” “I’m under attack!” the general snapped.
Did he have more important problems?
“The clones are inside the perimeter.
Militias with them!” Somewhere below, the front door, torn from its hinges, collapsed with a metallic clang.
Almost a ton of armor, by the way.
The Kerkoidan felt a sucking sensation in the pit of his stomach.
They had come for him… An angry chittering came from the Harch’s mouth.
The same OOM droid appeared in the holo-zone, handing the admiral a datapad.
“These attacks are happening in all major cities,” he said, glancing at the message’s contents.
“Both megacities are already under attack.” “That’s impossible!” Loathsom seethed.
“How did they manage it?” Christophsis had over a dozen cities.
But only three were significant—the Crystal City, the capital of the planet, and two smaller megacities—the Northern and Southern cities.
The latter were controlled by large military contingents of the droid army, and attacking them was simply impossible—if only because the space around the cities was under surveillance.
Each city had an occupying contingent—at least five hundred thousand droids with associated heavy weaponry.
The Northern City housed all the interstellar infrastructure of the planet—workshops, launch pads, fuel depots, cargo areas and hangars, a spaceport capable of receiving the most massive civilian ships.
At the very beginning of the occupation, the spaceport was bombarded from orbit—when the Jedi tried to use its defensive batteries to fire on the CIS squadron.
Two megacities remained under the firm control of the separatists, their defensive lines impenetrable even for the new Jedi and his militia allies.
But today, it seemed, something had gone wrong.
“Impossible?” the Harch squinted.
“Look out your window, General.” Warm didn’t need to look.
The sounds of battle outside were already telling him everything.
“How did you let them through the perimeter?!” “I didn’t let them through!
They appeared out of nowhere!” Loathsom couldn’t believe his ears.
Just yesterday, everything was calm.
The front lines were stable.
And now, in a matter of hours, the Republic forces had broken through the defenses of three key cities?
This reeked of sorcery…
or something worse.
“Pull yourself together, General,” Trench snapped.
“We have a war to fight.
Hold your position, reinforcements are on the way.” Warm looked around the operations room.
The few droids that had been with him were already taking up defensive positions.
He was a general, not some coward.
If the clones wanted him, they would have to fight to get him.
He grabbed his blaster pistol and charged it with a gesture, the familiar hum of the weapon bringing a measure of calm to his raging thoughts.
“Very well, Admiral,” he said, his voice steady again.
“I’ll hold this position.
But when this is over, we will have a conversation about operational command protocols.” The Harch’s hologram smiled, a sight that chilled Warm more than any blaster bolt.
“I look forward to it, General.
Trench out.” The hologram vanished, leaving Loathsom alone with the distant sounds of battle.
He looked out the window again.
White-armored clones were advancing through the streets of his stronghold, their weapons firing precise bursts.
The defense perimeter had been breached, and now it was a fight for survival.
* * * The New Forge hummed with an eerie energy as HK-47 stood before them, his blaster rifle unwavering.
“Statement: You are in my master’s domain, meatbags.
You will explain your presence, or I will be forced to terminate you with extreme prejudice.” Atroxa and Malgus exchanged glances.
The situation had just become far more complicated than they had anticipated.
The Southern City was a residential zone — a vast metropolis where most of the planet’s population lived.
The remaining cities huddled around the two major ones, but they held no interest for the CIS — they had neither strategically important facilities nor the wealth of the capital.
“Just like they took the valley from you,” the Harch chittered.
“They’re attacking from underground.” Loathsom let out a guttural roar, like his distant ancestors.
He had been outmaneuvered!
Again!
“Sir,” the OOM droid appeared in his field of vision again.
And though its metal head couldn’t convey emotion, it looked extremely concerned.
The room’s door shattered into splinters with a loud crack.
Like a meteor, a short — even fragile-looking — girl burst into the room.
Her skin was snow-white, and her hair was the same silvery-white.
“Sarkai,” the general remembered the name of that race.
In her hands, the girl gripped an activated lightsaber with a pair of glowing golden blades.
“Another Jedi?” The general’s surprise was boundless.
“Here?
But how?” With a casual wave of her hand, the girl deflected a shot from one of the two droids near the general.
The clone following her, in unfamiliar armor, took out both opponents with precise fire, then trained his weapon on Loathsom himself.
“You’re under arrest, General,” the girl said, deactivating her weapon.
He had no choice but to raise his hands.
Seeing this, Trench’s hologram chittered in displeasure.
The clone instantly twisted his arms behind his back, clapped on cuffs, and led the prisoner away.
“A Jedi,” Trench stated.
“Another one.
Unexpected.” “Is that a problem, Admiral?” The girl smiled easily, focusing her attention on him.
“I advise you to surrender while you still can.” “I have nothing to fear,” the admiral said proudly.
“Soon I’ll sweep you off this planet…” The girl glanced at her left wrist, where a small computer was attached.
Then she smiled, turning her gaze back to the CIS fleet commander.
“Admiral, I believe your problems have arrived.” * * * Standing on the bridge of the Wanderer, Shea Vizsla watched the Hammerhead-class cruisers and corvettes form into strike groups.
The remote, uninhabited system in the Mid Rim held no interest for the warring factions.
Which was precisely why, for the past month, the ships upgraded at the Rendili shipyards had been stationed here.
“All groups have reported readiness,” reported Rear Admiral Ermin Shirano.
Tall, muscular, with a strong jaw and chiseled features, graying at the temples of his short chestnut hair — in Shea’s opinion, he could rival the finest sons of Mandalore in handsomeness and masculinity.
“We’re taking the fighters aboard and will be ready for the jump.” “Excellent, Admiral,” Shea praised.
“Are we on schedule?” “Of course,” the commander assured her.
“That’s what you’re paying us for.” “And a lot, at that,” the girl reminded him.
The fleet commander grunted and retreated into the bridge.
He had to lead an armada of ancient but well-modified ships into battle — a battle whose outcome would determine his commission and the bonus for his subordinates.
The Mandalorian woman studied the ships with anticipation.
They were about to clash with Trench’s fleet.
All vessels were divided into five groups.
Each group was assigned its own front in the coming battle.
Mandalore the Avenger had left Christophsis a week after the bloody battle that had cost the legion a significant portion of one of its regiments.
The Fury had spent two days in orbit, gathering detailed reconnaissance on the CIS fleet.
Twenty Munificent-class frigates, five Lucrehulk-class battleships, and Trench’s flagship — a Providence-class dreadnought.
The dreadnoughts were positioned at six orbital points.
Frigates patrolled freely between them.
Multiple fighter groups of all types were on patrol, apparently hoping to catch the “invisible” ship that kept breaking the blockade.
The first group consisted of seven Hammerhead-class cruisers and twelve Thranta-class corvettes.
This group was to take on Trench’s flagship and its enormous fighter wing.
Groups two through five each had ten vessels — five cruisers and five corvettes.
Their job was to contain or destroy — depending on luck — the Lucrehulk-class ships.
Vizsla sighed and stepped away from the observation screen.
How much money had been sunk into these ancient — but admittedly sturdy — ships?
For the same sum, she could have ordered hundreds of medium corvettes or frigates on Mandalore that would be a solid match for most Confederacy ships.
But it wasn’t her place to count someone else’s money.
Spending it, though — that she knew how to do.
Jedi were decent enough people, in principle.
But when it came to war… No, just think about it!
Spending hundreds of millions to prepare an entire fleet… and not even remembering that the ships had no crews!
What went through the heads of these fools with their energy toothpicks?
Which one of them had flown to Rendili?
Thankfully, Dougan had decided to send her to Rendili to accept the shipwrights’ proposal for building new Aurek-class and Claw-class ships.
Her second task was to sign contracts for the repair of the Katana Fleet.
And the main task was to coordinate the fleet for an attack on CIS ships at the right time.
The Jedi had initially wanted to send Carsen to the shipwrights, but as soon as the matter of crewless ships came up, he changed his mind and gave the job to someone who at least knew what it meant to lead people into battle.
Of course, during the war with the Sith Empire, the Jedi had proven themselves — and quite well, at that.
But not in full-scale battles.
The personal top manager of Rendili StarDrives — Ion Grettcher, a native of Rendili and the son of a relatively influential family — turned out to be a remarkably sharp fellow.
Under other circumstances, he might have interested her, but… four thousand years of life experience left their mark.
The possibility of additional commission piqued Ion’s interest, and he shared information that the soldiers of the Rendili Defense Forces, closely tied to Rendili StarDrives, often took private contracts, escorting large trade caravans on dangerous hyperlane stretches aboard their Dreadnought-class ships.
The defense force command turned a blind eye, taking a cut of the contracts.
It was from these Rendilian soldiers that the ferry crews for the ancient fleet were assembled.
And perhaps someone from the ferry crew wouldn’t mind testing the results of months of shipyard work in action.
After paying the manager enough that he could have bought himself a cruiser, all Shea could do was watch as the man scurried across the planet, earning his credits.
As much as the Rendilians might have wanted to uncover the client’s identity, the buyer’s name remained a secret, as did the target of the planned attack.
It took Ion three days to settle everything with the corporation and the Rendili Defense Fleet.
Twenty thousand beings from the Rendili armed forces answered Shea’s call — and the credits.
In essence, that number was just the crew of one Dreadnought, but the selection principle didn’t much concern Vizsla.
She had sixty-two ships, nearly a thousand fighters, and very little time to prepare them for battle.
Given the enemy’s numbers, they could have jumped into the Christophsis system en masse and smashed the Separatists to pieces.
But the Mandalorian doubted she could later explain to Dougan the reason for heavy losses.
Newly formed units needed training and combat coordination.
That was exactly what the temporary commander of this entire fleet, Rear Admiral Ermin Shirano, was doing.
The number of ships, of course, called for a higher-ranking officer, but despite the generous commission, no one had volunteered.
Shirano, who had previously commanded ship transport at Rendili, had positive recommendations from both his command and the corporation’s leadership.
And there wasn’t exactly a wide selection to choose from.
Sparing no effort, time, or credits from the unknown employer’s pocket, Shirano drilled his subordinates relentlessly.
His determination to minimize losses through long training and discipline impressed Shea.
As a Mandalorian, she did the same.
“Sweat saves blood.” This fundamental truth had been left in Mandalorian culture by their ancestors — the Taungs.
With time in hand before D-Day — that’s what the Jedi had called the day and time of the Christophsis blockade-breaking operation — the Mandalorian watched the temporary fleet personnel at work.
Dubbed the “Hammer Fleet,” the cruisers and corvettes relentlessly pounded nearby asteroids, turning them to dust.
The crews improved with each passing day.
Their prior fleet service experience showed.
Later, once the mercenaries received their pay, they would return to service in their home system.
And the owners of all this upgraded old junk would have to find new crews to train.
Of course, clone mercenaries from the Fett clan were promising material, but it just wasn’t the same.
The fleet, along with its crews, needed to be loyal to its master — Dougan.
Not to the Republic.
No such task had been set for her, but as a leader of her people, she was used to thinking big.
Though, in this situation, nothing beyond obvious conclusions came to mind.
About two weeks into her mission, she received a notification from Grettcher that the company’s leadership was ready to proceed with the second item on the list.
This straightforward message indicated that the Rendili Shipyards were ready to begin the operation to reactivate the Katana Fleet.
She needed to transmit the fleet’s coordinates and be present when the company’s ships arrived.
Literally — she had to participate in the ship count.
The Rendili military fleet consisted mainly of Dreadnought-class ships, of which Shea had two hundred at her disposal.
And the company very much wanted to avoid any accusations of wasteful spending or possible misappropriation of vessels.
“Admiral Shirano,” the Mandalorian pulled the commander from his routine work.
“We need to depart.” “As you command,” the man agreed indifferently.
Turning to the comm systems operator, he said: “Signal the Peacemaker that training command is being transferred to Rear Admiral Dellis.” Then, addressing the girl in Mandalorian armor, he said with a slight smirk: “I’m entirely at your disposal, ma’am.” * * * “Your employer isn’t as simple as he seems,” were Shirano’s first words as the Wanderer dropped out of hyperspace at the rendezvous point.
“You think so?” Shea smirked.
The admiral gave her a skeptical look.
“These are Dreadnought-class cruisers,” the man said, pointing at the uneven formation of ships drifting in space.
At first glance, nothing remarkable was visible in the blackness of space.
Only a trained eye could distinguish the specks of stars from the soft glow of running lights on hundreds of ships.
“I could be wrong, but there are two hundred of them here.
Give or take.” “That could be,” Vizsla said, standing on the Hammerhead’s bridge, watching through the transparent section as empty warships — sent here by the will of one long-dead being — moved before her eyes.
She paid no attention to the quiet chatter of the bridge crew, who were discussing what was happening in hushed tones.
“This is the Dark Force,” Ermus offered his opinion.
“These are Republic ships…” “Admiral,” the girl looked at the commander.
“These WERE Republic ships.
They’re now in neutral space.
Neither the Republic, nor the CIS, nor the Hutts, nor even the last gizka have any claim to them.
Except,” she emphasized, “my employer.” “We’re going to have big problems,” he warned.
“The Republic won’t let this slide — they desperately need ships and…” “My employer,” the girl interrupted, “will handle any potential problems.
As you can see, repairing old ships and hiring an entire fleet of specialists isn’t difficult for him.
The Republic won’t be a problem either.
We spent a considerable sum to acquire these ships,” she warned.
“And we won’t let anyone take them from us.
The secret of the Dark Force will remain between us.
My employer won’t spare effort or resources to silence anyone who threatens the secrecy of his plans.
I trust you understand?” The man nodded affirmatively.
“The Unconquered is approaching,” one of the navigators reported.
“Arrival in a few minutes.” The admiral nodded again, acknowledging the information.
Hands clasped behind his back, in the matte-black uniform of the Rendili fleet, he stood at the front of the command center, lost in thought.
Vizsla didn’t disturb him.
She understood that sometimes a man needed to “stew” in his own thoughts before making a fateful decision.
Nothing is more convincing than the arguments we form for ourselves.
The reflective silence was broken by the arrival of another ship.
Vizsla wasn’t particularly surprised to see a tactical command ship here.
“I thought these were scrapped long ago,” she remarked.
The arriving vessel looked more like a massive station equipped with engines.
In the era of the Mandalorian Wars, these ships had served as coordinators for small Republic fleets.
Their memory was firmly etched in her people’s history.
A three-kilometer-diameter giant, though slow, had never been a hindrance to Republic offensives.
Deep within this ship was a supercomputer that commanded its attached fleet group.
“Impregnable” that was their class name.
With impenetrable defenses from their own guns, these ships had brought victory in dozens of battles.
Few Mandalorians could boast of capturing or destroying such a ship.
Vizsla strained her memory.
If she remembered correctly, only one Impregnable-class vessel had ever been taken by Mandalorian hands.
In all known history.
“Almost all of them have been melted down by now,” Shirano noted.
“The Unconquered was converted into a mobile workshop around the same time the Katana Fleet was built.
I might be wrong, but they were meant to be sold as a package.
A mobile fortress capable of repairing your own fleet never hurts.
Its holds can carry up to fifty thousand tons of cargo.
Or,” he pointed at the nearest dreadnought, “it could serve as a drydock for these fellows.” “Judging by the fact that this ship stayed with you,” Shea noted, “the Republic didn’t want to buy it?” “Who needs a dock-base for a fleet that doesn’t exist?” the admiral smiled.
“Besides, it’s rather expensive — almost three billion credits.
The Republic considered it an excessively costly ornament.
Perhaps your employer might find such a ship useful,” he hinted.
“His ships will need to be repaired somewhere…” “I’ll bring it to his attention,” the Mandalorian promised.
The man continued watching as the enormous ship released hundreds of shuttles from its hangars, which raced toward the dead vessels.
“With a fleet like this, you could take a sector,” he said.
“And rule it…” “My employer’s plans span the entire galaxy,” Vizsla said cautiously, lowering her voice so the others on the bridge couldn’t hear.
“And he needs talented specialists whose services he will reward most generously.” The man looked at her with distrust and caution, as if expecting her to reveal it was a joke.
But the Mandalorian was dead serious.
Not a trace of a smile, not the slightest hint of insincerity.
“I think,” the man finally said, “your employer is an extremely ambitious man.” After these words, the man fell silent again.
Together, they watched the Rendili Shipyards workers prepare to revive the legendary fleet.
The seemingly excellent external condition of the ships was just a shell; inside were hundreds and thousands of faults that the Rendilians needed to fix, restoring the ships to their former glory and power.
Each was lost in their own thoughts, but that didn’t change the nature of what was happening.
The Emperor’s apprentice wanted this fleet.
And for it, he was ready to write off the lion’s share of the funds from the company’s numbered account.
The shipwrights could only rejoice at such a lucrative and profitable order.
Funds that had been lying idle had finally been released.
An enterprise starved of government contracts on the eve of war received an unprecedented boost.
Building new Hammerhead-class cruisers, repairing the Katana Fleet… even without Republic orders, the planet had every chance of continuing a comfortable existence.
And if so, the mysterious employer would always need experienced officers and personnel familiar with this equipment.
Whatever the Rendili government might want, the corporation had long since become one with the self-defense fleet.
No one was complaining, though.
The Republic protected Rendili, even if it didn’t use their services as much as before.
That stung the pride of most Rendili natives.
Rumors circulated in high circles about the government flirting with the CIS — the admiral’s friend, Jace Dellin, spoke of this.
Dellin was aiming to take the post of commander of the Rendili Defense Fleet by the end of the year.
Like most old-school officers, Dellin had no desire to meddle in political squabbles or bow to merchants.
And the Republic was cozying up to Kuat, whose shipyards were riddled with Rendilian spies.
No one likes it when a wealthy client goes to the competition.
Especially when that client determines whether your sandwich has delicacies or not.
“Tell me,” the man had made his decision, “how do I arrange a meeting with your employer?” “I can arrange that, Admiral,” Shea promised.
* * * The enemy’s superiority in small ships — fighters and bombers — became apparent almost immediately.
Like clouds of gnats, they swarmed the vessels, trying to drown them in a sea of laser fire.
The Thranta-class corvettes, Aurek-class strikefighters, and Claw-class ships handled the task admirably, cutting the small fry off from the larger ships.
In the first half hour of battle, Shirano’s squadron had lost a total of one corvette and a dozen fighters.
Not a bad result, all things considered.
Given that by this time, Trench’s ships had already moved out of orbit, with about five Munificent-class frigates disabled or destroyed, along with myriad fighters.
The Rendilian commander’s tactics, based on Vizsla’s intelligence, were bearing fruit.
The enemy ships, stretched out in a blockade formation, were hit by concentrated massed fire from the invasion groups.
Outnumbering the enemy, the Hammerhead-class and Thranta-class ships could dictate the terms of the fight without fear of strong resistance from the mechanical enemy.
Target after target, the groups annihilated the blockade ships, shifting more and more deadly fire onto the Lucrehulk-class battleships and Trench’s flagship itself.
The third group, pressing a Lucrehulk-class ship positioned above the planet’s south pole, was making progress.
The Trade Federation vessel had lost its shields and was burning, spewing millions of pieces of debris into the planet’s orbit.
A well-timed run by an Aurek-class squadron had destroyed the giant ship’s hangar, leaving it without its fighter wing.
Finishing off the wounded — but still viciously snapping — beast took only another ten minutes… Trench’s fleet was burning.
The ships stretched across the planet’s orbit were locked in a confrontation with five massive, well-armed groups that, with a well-rehearsed maneuver, concentrated fire to strip the shields from a chosen target.
After that, the enemy had only minutes to live.
The Thranta-class corvettes, operating in squadrons, practically unopposed, picked off the Munificent-class frigates, using their overwhelming superiority.
The Hammerhead-class cruisers, using a similar tactic, “cracked” the Lucrehulk-class ships.
Of course, the Trade Federation dreadnoughts turned out to be tough nuts to crack.
Essentially serving as nodal elements of the orbital blockade, these ships flooded their opponents with streams of fire, forcing the Hammerhead-class cruisers to act more cautiously.
The Rendili shipyard products circled around the massive dreadnoughts, pouring fire on them, preventing the enemy from zeroing in on a single target.
The Thranta-class corvettes not engaged with CIS frigates — hardly inferior in armament to their larger brethren — supported the latter with fire while neutralizing enemy fighters.
Trench couldn’t fail to understand that the numerical superiority of the arriving ships over his forces would eventually lead to collapse.
After three hours of battle, more than half of the Munificent-class frigates had been reduced to clouds of debris.
Two Lucrehulk-class ships were also scrap metal, burning up in the upper atmosphere.
A third, dead in space and missing most of its weaponry, fought off the enemy with its last strength, sending wave after wave of fighters in a desperate attempt to break the onslaught.
The last two, with the five remaining Munificent-class frigates, converged on the planet’s north pole, where the Invincible-class heavy cruiser — Trench’s flagship — was fighting off the First Group.
It was the Quarren-made vessel that had managed to disable the Warrior, hitting it with a homing missile during a maneuver that struck the bridge.
A lucky hit caused a loss of control.
Before control was restored from the backup bridge, the cruiser had taken several more heavy hits, removing it from the active battle.
With its bow destroyed, the Hammerhead-class cruiser withdrew from the fight and remained under the protection of two Thranta-class corvettes for the duration, which kept the Hyenas away from the wounded ship.
By the end of the fifth hour of battle, when the Harch had only his own flagship — which would need extensive repairs — and a pair of Lucrehulk-class ships battered to the point where they were better off scrapped than repaired, the CIS admiral executed the most sensible maneuver the situation allowed.
Blazing with fires from unsealed compartments, spewing myriad pieces of debris into space, three barely alive ships from Trench’s armada left the Christophsis system, putting a definitive end to the blockade of the planet.
“Order to the squadron,” seeing the enemy’s retreat, the rear admiral snapped into action, “begin rescue operations.
Fighters are to continue hunting enemy squadrons.” In retreating, the Harch hadn’t bothered to retrieve even part of his fighter wing.
Shea noted the mission’s success with inner approval.
The enemy fleet wasn’t just beaten — it was destroyed.
Crushed in every sense.
The Lucrehulk-class ship that couldn’t get its fires under control was a fine prize — one that still had to be captured, however.
Having lost only four corvettes irrecoverably, the squadron had sustained damage of varying severity, but except for the Warrior, no critical failures were observed.
The losses among fighter personnel were disheartening.
Over two hundred machines, along with their pilots, had been lost.
The remaining forces would be enough to organize system patrols and hunt down stragglers.
But for the near future, the squadron had lost most of its fighter wing.
If the enemy brought in reinforcements, that could become a problem.
“Contact the planet,” he turned to Vizsla.
“The blockade is destroyed.
The ships are ready to provide support for the ground operation.”
It all helps promote the story.