Chapter 11

Orbit of Leesis, Christoph System

Savareen Sector

Valkyrie 2929 swerved through the debris field, thick armour shrugging off the worst of the microbodies littering Leesis’ orbit. Clone Sergeant Kano felt his bones rock about as the gunship weaved its way towards the drop point, expertly handled by its pilot.

“Grim Reaper reports ready, Sergeant,” Hawk–their pilot–announced over the intercom.

Kano looked up. Bellow stood beside him in the crowded troop bay, unidentifiable if not for the paint job of his battle armour and his ID number. Kano glanced at the HUD icons set to one side of the main display to make a last-minute headcount, counting the transponder blips and ID numbers of the platoon.

“Right, thanks,” he replied to Hawk, before cycling to his platoon’s circuit, “Are we ready, Bellow?”

Bellow rested his DC-15A on his right pauldron, “Aye sir. All weapons right and ready, and everybody’s suited up. We had to downcheck one set of armour that wasn’t sealed right, but we had a prepped spare.”

Kano nodded at him, and swept the troop bay again–this time without the HUD. One trooper nodded at him, and he returned the gesture. As he dropped into Grim Reaper’s circuit, he was forced to snap his hands around the handles above as Valkyrie violently shuddered.

“Birds got kicked up, boys,” Odd Ball called over common frequency, “We’re moving in to keep ‘em off your backs! Good luck!”

He could hear a screaming fighter rush past their starboard, before his weight disappeared as Hawk forced the gunship into a steep dive. Explosions rocked the ship from above as Flight Squad 7 and droid vultures engaged in a treacherous dogfight amidst the debris. However, it meant that the Seps had lowered their own particle shields to deploy their vultures.

“Reaper, this is Valkyrie,” Kano checked in, urgency colouring his voice, “Do you copy?”

“Reaper copies, Valkyrie. Go ahead.”

“Commence your runs, Reaper,” he nervously glanced over his head as another tremor rocked the gunship, “I say again, start your runs.”

They had to insert before the battleship could recycle its physical deflectors.

He cycled back into his platoon’s comms, greeted by an expected amount of nervous chatter. An expected amount. Because even clones get nervous. In the privacy of their helmets, they can speak with each other undetected. Sometimes odd quips to ease the tension, sometimes meaningless nothings just to keep their minds off things. Sometimes Kano wondered what their Jedi Generals would think about that, if they knew their men were talking behind their backs not two feet away from them.

Kano knew General Skywalker didn’t care, however. Sometimes he even joined in on the fun.

The moment Kano’s ID appeared in the channel, all the talking hushed. Even as the firefight grew further and further away, their faces tightened and nerves clenched as they steeled for the Lucrehulk’s close-in weapons systems to open fire.

But there was none.

Hawk pulled them out of their steep approach, kicking in Valkyrie’s repulsors and riding its thrusters to convert momentum into howling dives straight for their targets. The sensors indicated they had plunged beneath the battleship’s ray shields.

“Coming up on target– arm, arm, arm!” Hawk chanted to his gunners, “Sergeant, get your boys to hold tight!”

The standby lights blinked to red aboard each gunship, and the gunners’ fingers curled around the triggers on their yokes. Over their heads, the mass-driver launchers clanked as a fresh pair of rockets were loaded in. There was a brief moment where Kano could only hear his own artificially calm heartbeat echoing in his helmet.

Quad-mounted armour-piercing rockets ripple-fired from beneath each wing like flaming meteors. Eight of them blasted ahead of each gunship–soon followed by two more heavy concussion missiles–and the gunships charged onwards down their wakes.

The rockets smashed home, spoiled for targets, like a fist of thunder. A second salvo was launched, and then a third, and then a fourth. When the final rounds had finally impacted, the Lucrehulk’s hull had been thoroughly torn open, peeled back like broken bone and revealing its vulnerable organs.

The gunships’ chin-mounted turrets opened fire, ripping into the dust and smoke and scything into the battle droids pouring out of the breaches. The ball-turrets echoed, their gunners precisely cutting into the thinned plating with amplified composite beams to open up portals for the boarding troops to insert through.

A section of Flight Squad 7 peeled off their engagement, pushed over and came in for a run in at the remaining Separatist rectenna arrays. Concussion missiles screamed off their racks, six seconds later they punched in the Lucrehulk’s eyes, and then the gunships rolled back onto their original attack vectors.

The first gunships landed, disgorging their troops before taking off just in time for the next gunship to swoop in and take its place. Valkyrie 2929 followed them in, blast hatches swinging open.

“Move, move, move!”

Kano paid no attention to the roaring firefight surrounding them as he leapt off the gunship and launched his grapple lines–magnetic hook adhering to the battleship’s metal hull–and reeled himself down. There were already droids on the surface, and while many of them had been cut down by air support, as always with droids they seemed endless in numbers. Dozens of his brothers were already shot down by the returning fire, their immobile bodies dragged through space by their reeling cables.

The Clone Sergeant grunted as he hit the ground, thumping as he activated his mag-boots. Kano cursed the surviving members of his platoon to their feet, before leading them into the hellscape of smoke, laser, and murderous shrapnel to find firing positions. More gunships swept in, the whining of their repulsorlifts only faint over the howl of escaping atmosphere, and hundreds more white-armoured men drifted to the surface like lethal snow.

The firefight went on for minutes as the platoons methodically pushed up towards the breaches, stalking from cover to cover while using plumes of white-hot gases to obscure their approach. Red and blue blaster bolts whipped through the void erratically–but with the help of gunship air support, their victory was all but assured.

Boomer’s squad reached the portals first, securing their grapples to the ledge before rappelling into the breaches. Kano’s squad arrived next, and the Sergeant leaned over the ledge to observe the situation below–but couldn’t visually identify anything through escaping gases. All Kano saw were the biosigns of the squad below, and that was all he needed.

Fix grapples, tie cables, deactivate mag-boots, and jump.

A torrent of steam pummelled his visor, scrambling his HUD to bits, and then he was through. After descending to a safe distance off the ground, he cut the cable and dropped onto his feet. One trooper with a rotary cannon had taken point, mowing down an entire company of battle droids at the far end of the corridor.

“How many squads have we got here, Boomer?” Kano asked as he checked the IDs of the troopers present.

Boomer twirled to look at him, and then look at the final troopers entering the gaping hole above them, “Three squads, maybe two.”

“Bellow, this is Kano,” Kano called, “Are you receiving?”

“Loud and clear,” Bellow replied, “We found another way in.”

“All squads, check in!” he ordered.

The clone sergeants called in one after the other. Fourteen voices, Kano counted. Which meant two squads didn’t make it.

He breathed out, “Waterfall Company, find the prisoners. Cascade Company–you’re with me, we’re securing the control room!”

Boots clamoured against the metal flooring as Kano’s squads went down the passage with all the speed their battle armour allowed. With the ship’s atmosphere rapidly deteriorating and its artificial gravity systems failing, the troopers took to advancing with gliding, ten-metre jumps–all their training and instinct taking over until it was as if they lived in low grav their entire lives.

They came to an intersection, identifying a control panel from where they could pinpoint their exact location and orientate themselves. Kano’s group split into two, swivelling perpendicular with carbines raised–blue lights flashing against their stark white armour as they doused the corridors in saturation fire. A techie leapfrogged between them, snatching onto the panel and ripping it open.

Half a minute later, the trooper had transmitted the plans, gave the all-clear, and the squads were moving again.

Kano eyed the integrated chrono on his HUD–the entire boarding action only took thirteen minutes.

⁂

“It’s no good, Admiral,” Lieutenant Klev shook his head, flushed in dismay, “We’ve been calibrating and recalibrating the scanners over and over, but just can’t seem to get it to stick.”

Yularen glared at him, “That is unacceptable, Lieutenant. We weren’t able to locate a Lucrehulk only three-hundred thousand klicks away–a distance even our passives should handle with ease. Not to mention they misidentified a debris field as an asteroid ring. Find the problem, and fix it.”

“It’s not the software, sir,” Klev swallowed, “I had some of our techs run diagnostics, and they found nothing. It must’ve been the battle a week ago; Pioneer didn’t leave without a scratch. If you want, I can get some of the men up top with the droids–see if they can sort it out.”

In an active warzone? Unlikely.

Yularen bit back an unprofessional response. With malfunctioning sensor arrays, they were practically blind–no, worse than blind. They were outright hallucinating. No detection or observation could be trusted without visual confirmation at bare minimum, and that didn’t even include Pioneer’s targeting systems.

“That won’t be necessary,” Yularen resigned, “Find out the extent of the damage. I want to know if our fire-control systems were affected. Do your utmost to rectify any issues you can ID, save for sending engineers out there in vac suits.”

“Right away sir,” Lieutenant Klev nodded sharply, snapping to attention before scampering back into the crew pits.

As the Admiral redirected his attention, he spotted Triumphant and its two escort cruisers just a few hundred klicks forward beyond the bridge’s main viewport. The two warships had fallen into a geosynchronous orbit with the planet below, shadowing the industrial sector and the battle raging underneath. However, it meant they were also quickly approaching the ongoing space action between Admiral Wurtz’ Iron Lance Fleet and recently identified Separatist Admiral Tonith’s orbital blockade.

If Pioneer’s targeting systems also proved unreliable, then Yularen will have little choice but to break away. He had already lost two ships and their experienced crews, he could not risk the safety of another.

Yularen had to wonder if the disastrous First Battle over Christophsis would have gone any differently had he been on the bridge of the Resolute, and had not opted to accompany General Skywalker’s relief mission. Perhaps he would have been convinced in his own skills to recognise the enemy’s deceptively simple stratagem before it was too late, if it was not for been Obi-Wan Kenobi who had taken his place.

The Admiral had many opinions about the role of Jedi in the Grand Army of the Republic, and not many of them were favourable. Yularen considered himself lucky; while Anakin Skywalker and he did not always see eye to eye, he was mollified to know that while the Jedi’s strategies were often aggressive, they were backed by outstanding valour and keen tactical insight. These traits, combined with the trust he and his men had in each other, made General Skywalker a dangerous force on the ground. That was the case with many Jedi.

But that did not translate into naval engagements. To fight a naval battle, you needed tact, and Jedi–for all their renowned patience and diplomacy–had little. Their tactics were often elementary at best, and downright incompetent at worst. There were few exceptions Yularen knew of.

One of them was Obi-Wan Kenobi. Already, his many tactical exploits were being circulated through military channels, and some have even made their way into the textbooks on Prefsbelt IV.

If an esteemed Jedi General with all of his mystical clairvoyance could not see the trap in advance, there was the question whether a mere Admiral–albeit professionally trained–could. It did not help that the newly-coined Battle Hydra tactic was completely novel, as far as he knew.

What-ifs aside, Yularen could now pen a sternly-worded report about the Venator’s glaring weaknesses to the Admiralty, as generously exposed by their enemy. The only way his situation could get any brighter would be if Republic Intelligence could reveal who exactly he was dealing with.

“Admiral sir!” shouted Lieutenant Klev, “We have a situation!”

Yularen swung around, “Your training, Lieutenant!”

“S-Sorry, sir!” Klev fiddled his console with shaking hands, “O-Our sensors are picking up a massive instance of Cronau radiation on the edge of the system! Avrey, are you seeing this?”

Another officer leaned over to double-check, “Looks like a huge object is reverting to realspace. I’m contacting Triumphant right now sir!”

“Could it be another case of sensor malfunction?” Yularen demanded.

“Our sensors are twist out of configuration sir, not not working,” Lieutenant Klev insisted, “There’s still Cronau radiation–if they’re over-reading, then the ship isn’t as large as reported. If they’re under-reading…”

A single narrow finger stroked his moustache–a tick of unease Yularen wasn’t able to refrain from in time.

“Triumphant reports the same thing, sir,” Lieutenant Avrey looked to him nervously, “The magnitude matches… but our sensors are malfunctioning. We only picked up from a single instance, but they’re picking up hundreds. Confidence says it’s an enemy fleet.”

Yularen only took a second to react– “Comm Indomitable and Coruscant Sky, standby for orders, set Red Alert! All personnel to battle stations! Avrey, get me Admiral Wurtz, now!”

“There’s a line of Munificents between us and him, sir…” Lieutenant Avrey pointed out fairly, but it didn’t make Yularen any less incensed, “I don’t know how much I can do–”

“Then do what you can,” Yularen restrained himself from outright snarling.

The muted red alert lights were flashing now, claxons faintly baying in the Battle Room and throughout the ship.

“Lookout reports visual sighting!” a clone officer reported, “Relative bearing oh-niner-niner, range– range… around a million klicks out!”

“Around?”

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The clone made a face, “Best our rangefinders can do right now, sir.”

Admiral Yularen took a short moment to relax, before steeling himself for action. He marched across the bridge to the starboard side, intently staring out of the transparisteel viewport. Below was Admiral Wurtz fleet. Further afield, Yularen found hundreds of black shadows gliding over the backdrop of stars.

“Combine feeds with Coruscant Sky,” he ordered, “Have them ID those ships.”

This was not the time to panic. They had time. While those ships could only be Separatist reinforcements, they had also made the odd decision to exit hyperspace a million klicks away–far out of range of any conventional laser batteries or even missile systems. First, they had to avoid getting trapped between the two enemy fleets–

There was a streak of purple, cutting straight through the abyss at an acceleration so great Yularen could blink and miss it. He did blink and miss it–and did not realise what had happened until a dim glow to his left caught his attention. The Admiral swivelled around, and saw Triumphant in flames.

Whatever projectile that was, it had pierced through the cruiser’s passive shields and armour, blowing out a gaping hole in Triumphant’s bridge stalk. Yularen was sick to his stomach, realising he could see straight through General Koon’s ship–and able to see the gas giant Erodsis on the other side. The amount of kinetic energy transferred alone had sent Triumphant reeling, snapping the crippled support structure and severing its twin bridges in a single decapitation strike.

Silence overwhelmed Pioneer’s pilothouse.

What in Nine Hells was that–a new type of weapon developed by the Separatists!? Yularen could not name a single weapon system in the Republic’s arsenal that could travel at such speed or distance–existing or in development. If the Separatists could now out-range them in every engagement… it was a thought with horrific implications.

For a brief moment, Yularen desperately clung onto the hope that this new weapon system was slow reloading in order to compensate for its power–but that hope was swiftly dashed as the Separatist fleet fired off three new purple sparks in quick succession. One whizzed right past Pioneer’s viewport, leaving a faint purple afterimage behind; another clipped the prow of Indomitable, blasting off a chunk of its dorsal doors and revealing the starfighters inside; and the last smashed directly into the planet’s atmosphere, and the resulting airburst created a cloud large enough to be seen from low orbit.

“At… at least it’s not very accurate,” somebody murmured.

“It’s hard to aim,” another officer corrected lowly, “You saw it blow the cap off Triumphant.”

“Evasive action!” Yularen commanded, “Bring us closer to the planet! What’s the status on that ID!?”

Lieutenant Klev whacked his console, cursed, and shot to his feet, “It’s the entire Confederate Second Fleet! We’re looking at three Lucrehulks, fourteen Recusants, thirty Munificents, two Providence destroyers, four Providence carriers, fifty-five Lupus missile frigates, and a hundred and two Diamond-class cruisers. The flagship is a Providence dreadnought… accessing registry…”

That’s an invasion fleet–what warranted a force of that size here…? A thought struck him–Geonosis–has Geonosis already fallen? What about Kamino, then?

“Match!” Klev announced, “Ascendant Sky, personal flagship of General Sev’rance Tann!”

Stang. The name immediately set off alarms in his head. Yularen mentally recited Sev’rance Tann’s registry in the Grand Army’s database; she was of an unidentified species, and was the only Separatist general who managed to reach the Core Worlds, striking as far as Sarapin in her opening campaign. The complete annihilation of a White Cuirass taskforce under the command of Jedi General Shen-Jon in Bothan Space was widely believed to be by her hand.

Extremely dangerous. Engage with excessive caution, and only with a superior force.

“We got a downlink to General Kenobi’s rear command post, Admiral sir!” Lieutenant Avrey said, “They’re forwarding the comms up to Admiral Wurtz–it’s our best bet of bypassing the jamming.”

“Very well,” Yularen replied with forced calm, “Inform them of the current situation, and advise for immediate withdrawal. I want a sitrep on the prisoner extraction, and get me in touch with General Skywalker and General Koon.”

“Extraction is proceeding on target, sir!” a clone reported, “An Acclamator has moved into position to begin evac. Prisoners were found well and unharmed.”

That warranted a sigh of relief, if the wider situation wasn’t so dire.