Chapter 30

Somewhere in Hyperspace

Auril Sector

Sev’rance Tann watched the swirling chaos of hyperspace dance beyond Negotiator’s viewport impassively. How many times has she seen this exact view before? The sky-walker knew, better than anyone, of the beauty of hyperspace. And the horrors. The horrors of travelling off the beaten path, most especially. She could almost see them in her mind’s eye.

But in Lesser Space, the beaten paths were many and eminent. The Chiss Expansionary Fleet could only envy the mere sight of the spider web of spacelanes that traversed Lesser Space, and Sev’rance found herself among them. She had considered before, the likes of the Jedi Order’s Exploration Corps and Lesser Space’s boldest spacers, and the tribulations they must have endured throughout countless millennia to produce such a comprehensive work any other person would take for granted.

Hyperspace has not changed, not between Chiss or Lesser Space. What changed were the methods. Jumping in the Chaos was a more manual affair, what with the lethal plethora of anomalies that gave the Chaos its name. There was only so much course correction even a veteran sky-walker with an expert navigation crew could do in an instance of hyperspace, prompting the necessity of numerous micro-jumps to minnow through the invisible maze of interstellar aberrations.

Lesser Space was more… empty. It was the difference between a speeder race through the dense–if lifeless–blocks Csaplar spaceport, and a leisurely passage through the vast steppelands of Raxus Secundus. One might have to avoid a spot of forest or distant mountain ranges, but generally, Sev’rance could see them coming.

It was still dangerous, of that there was no doubt, but it was also true that realspace is more sparse further away from the galactic plane. So long as Sev’rance maintained their relative position within the galactic border, the lack of mass shadows made transit relatively simple. The greatest inhibitor of mass galactic exploration, she believed, was a lack of courage. Spurred on by the mass adoption of the hyperdrive, the great Expansion Era of Lesser Space saw eager trailblazers and pioneers set out to the stars with little concern for their own safety.

In the current era, most believed all there was to be found has already been, and what lies in the fringes of Wild Space were of little consequence. The drive for exploration was a thing of the past, and Lesser Space has become so much smaller.

As a sky-walker, she was not concerned with these constraints, nor could she afford to be.

Pors Tonith had stolen a march on her, and she needed to reach Columex before he could. By design, hyperlanes were not dissimilar to water bodies–always choosing the path of least resistance. That meant they were safe, if not always direct. By forging out a new spacelane, she could cut ten-thousand parsecs from her route.

Unfortunately, her skills were still found lacking. Chiss fleets were not as expansive, and she could not guide more than a few dozen ships at a time, even if they were in the same instance. It still served her means, however, as any fleet in hyperspace was only as fast as the weakest hyperdrive. By only taking Task Force Ascendant–thirty-three of her fastest warships–she could be absolutely certain she was outpacing the Confederate First Fleet.

Sev’rance Tann shut her eyes, allowing the Force to envelop her like a comforting shroud. Dooku told her every person saw the Force differently; a sinuous lullaby, as a ceaseless storm, a deep ocean, or even a great tree that reached for the sky.

If she must thank Dooku for one thing, it would be for unlocking her mind to the through depths of the Force. She saw the cosmic energy as an empty, dark space. The stars were her memories, the nebulae her visions, and herself an ethereal spirit traversing its infinite bounds. It was her freedom.

The Force responded, time and space warping to bring her closer to a nearby star. You are looking for something, it appeared to ripple before her mind’s eye, what is it? Who is it? She navigated the cosmic winds with practised ease, searching innumerate futures as she did. Futures of people she did not know, people she had forgotten, and people she had left behind. And as she ventured deeper into the sea of energy, the more she lost herself. Sev’rance knew not to stray too far from her consciousness, lest she lost herself to her Sight.

And then there it was, revealed to her. A massive battle, stretching across an entire star system, coalescing like a fresco drawn onto the walls of her imagination. The largest single engagement fought in millennia. Its star shone bright and vivid, drawing her in like a fish to a lure. She stood still, a silent witness to the desperate defence of the Separatist forces, and the desperate offence of the Republic.

And she saw the exact moment the Confederate First Fleet arrived.

I must arrive a step earlier, Sev’rance decided, and no more. It must appear that I had led the First Fleet into battle, so that I can leverage my case to Parliament.

As her senses returned to the present, Sev’rance found herself standing in the deathly quiet bridge of the Negotiator. Jedi cruisers did not see fit to install a seat for their captain, she mused softly.

Sev’rance turned around, purposefully striding through the abandoned Battle Room and towards the turbolifts, her heels echoing in the empty corridors. Timing her arrival at Columex to exploit the First Fleet was a simple enough task for someone of her calibre, but it would be difficult to distinguish herself considering Dooku’s preparations. If her plan was to be accomplished in totality, Sev’rance had to arrive first.

But she had a secret weapon. One only she had.

Upon arriving at the main hangar bay, Sev’rance took in the organised chaos of droids loading ammunition and fuel and the distant hum of war machines preparing for battle. In the centre, rising like an art sculpture even the most highbrow of the Aristocra could appreciate, was the stealth corvette Carrion Spike. There was no other vessel like it, and she could certainly appreciate its design as well, if not for the same reasons.

When Commodore Bonteri reported its existence to her, she knew she just had to seize the machine.

But that was not the centrepiece of her vision, however. Instead, she took in the space around it, the vast hangar bays not stocked with starfighters, but with Decimator main battle tanks, retrofitted to operate in the conditions of vacuum. It was no difficult ask, considering that tractors and repulsors were adjacent technology, and that the crews were to be droids.

Despite the almost derisive evaluations her staff had of the Venator-class Star Destroyer, there was one thing about them she could admire as a flag officer. And that was that they accomplished the one purpose they were designed to do peerlessly; to carry and deploy war machines as expediently as possible.

Because that meant she could fit four whole regiments of repulsortanks in a single ship, for a total of four-hundred and fifty-six Decimators.

Her gut twisted, to her own displeasure. The future was in motion. Shifting, changing before her very eyes into something unrecognisable. If she didn’t want to be left behind, she had to get there in time.

⁂

Columex Approach, Columex System

Vorzyd Sector

“Oh kriffing shit,” Counter Admiral Diedrich Greyshade of the Commonality Joint Defense Fleet said to himself very, very quietly as the claxons howled around his ship. The sandwich in his hand had disintegrated inside his fist, plates left half-eaten on the mess tables as his crew stared up at the wailing sirens blankly, as if this was the first time they had ever heard them ring.

That wasn’t true. This wasn’t going to be Kronprinz’s first scuffle, nor her last. But this was the first time hostile warships kept multiplying on the scanner displays with every stuttering update, endlessly and endlessly like a self-replicating virus. Diedrich kept his breathing slow and calm, reminding himself of all the times he had waited for this exact moment. The exact moment when Columex’s planetary batteries were facing the wrong way; the exact moment the Republic would bite.

If it didn’t feel real before, it felt real now. Excitement bubbled up his throat.

“Well?” his voice struck a sharp chord, and just like that his crew were leaping off the benches, tripping over themselves as they raced to battlestations.

He carefully extricated himself from the mess table, reaching the panel on the wall and smashing in the big red button, “This is Admiral Diedrich Greyshade. I am declaring a system-wide Red Alert on my own authority. Clear the hyper-junction of all traffic immediately. If you aren’t already on final, you are required to divert to your pre-designated mooring points.”

Diedrich released the button, cleared his throat, toggled the comms to internal, and leaned on it again, “Kronprinz, this is your captain and admiral. We’ve all been waiting for this moment–get ready for the ride of your lives.”

The Counter Admiral filled his lungs with air, immersing himself in the blaring sirens and cacophonous footsteps. The rampant orders thrown over the bulkheads, the stuttering pulse-burns of sublight drives coming to life, the groaning of casemates brought to bear. Diedrich felt himself in the belly of an ancient knight risen from the grave to fight for their king once more. This was the first time war had come to Columex in millennia, and Columex was eager to respond.

He wiped his hand on a napkin, and proceeded to the flag bridge.

Much like the Xolochi Dreadnoughts of antiquity, Kronprinz was chrome-plated smooth in her entirety, hull was shaped like that of an ocean-going polyreme, with mirror-finished spaced armour attached by sliding-girders covering the whole twelve-hundred metre length. Echoes from a forgotten age when combat-standard deflector technology was still in its infancy.

Fully extended and angled out, Kronprinz turned into a bird of prey gliding upon solar winds. For as long as she was within direct line of sight with a star, there was no warship her equal in speed and manoeuvrability. When retracted and flush against the hull, her shields hid a lethal array of torpedo tubes, missile launchers, and brutal pulse cannons for an unrivalled broadside.

Unlike contemporary warships, Kronprinz’s ancient Tionese design meant there were no transparisteel viewports anywhere on the ship, and the pilothouse was no exception. Holos and plotting boards, external camera and FTL sensor displays arrayed the expanse deep in the citadel of the ship, all buzzing and blinking with a buffet of information slowly being absorbed and transliterated onto Diedrich’s imagination.

He frowned, mind locked onto the main enemy force. They were jumping in increments of a few hundred, likely divided by battle groups. It was the practical option; while doing so forced them to give up the element of surprise, it also meant they could more reliably organise into their orders of battle as well as effectively obscure their true numbers. As more warships extracted from hyperspace, they created a ‘curtain’ of interference that hindered Separatist scanners from accurately reading the number of subsequent extractions.

It was a common tactic, Diedrich decided. They themselves were doing the same thing. The Coalition Armada–JDF included–had been arranged into a sorry excuse of a battle lattice. Two-thousand warships, tightly knit and five ranks deep, arranged into a poor imitation of water’s molecular structure–or lack thereof–rather than the rigid covalent network of graphite a proper battle lattice should mimic.

To Diedrich’s great shame, it was glaringly clear that the JDF posed the weakest link in the chain. In order to make up for the deficit in skill, Commander Trilm proposed a two-fold solution by dispersing JDF vessels among the veteran Coalition Battle Squadrons. First, it would eliminate the possibility of Loyalist forces pinpointing and targeting a specific ‘weakpoint,’ and second, that the inferior formation quality would ironically improve the purpose of this particular lattice formation in the first place.

Which was, staggeringly, to conceal the largest artillery pieces known to the galaxy.

Three behemothic Field Secured Containment Vessels travelled the distance between the edges of the lattice, each releasing one of their thirty containment bubbles at regular intervals. Carefully guided by a small army of tugs, each half a kilometre bubble contained anywhere from a hundred to a thousand asteroids captured from all over the star system.

Then there was the Victoria Louise. A forty-seven million cubic metre, hundred-forty million ton asteroid that had to be painstakingly sculpted into a rough sphere in order to fit into one of the bubbles.

To speak nothing of the man’s character, this was the sort of genius–or mind-numbing insanity–only an Onderonian could devise. The legendarily troubled history of the jungle world aside, the very fact that their archnemesis was their own moon spoke spades of their mastery in irregular warfare. Only someone who had spent his professional career warring against the ‘Demon Moon’ could conceive the idea of using asteroids as grapeshot. That’s what Diedrich believed.

The Republic took their time. He had fully immersed himself in the battle logs from Centares, and recognised the wildly different behaviour. Both fleets now had their cards all on the table–or so it seemed–and caution was the order of the day.

“Intercept in half an hour and falling,” someone called out, “Their accel-squared with rising steeply.”

Diedrich leaned on a dashboard, exercising great care so as to not disturb the myriad instruments his fingers gingerly skirted. Staring down through the acrylic-shielded scanner display, he ground his teeth at the sight of Columexi battleship Hexenkoenig testing the patience of a tiny Coalition corvette. The mighty warship was like an ill-trained hunting dog snapping at the leash, biting to dress herself and her pack in the laurels of combat, while the more seasoned corvette boldly crossed her in order to force her down.

Almost foolishly brave, he thought. The Corellian corvette must be no longer than two-hundred metres in length, while Hexenkoenig was well over a kilometre stern to bow. Diedrich browsed his registry for the ship–Habatok II–and made a mental note to thank them after the battle.

On the other side of the plot, the enemy stratagem was gradually taking shape. The boiling mass extended outwards, splitting into three customary box formations. There were five-hundred ships of Cerulean Spear Fleet in the centre, with the Steel Blade and White Cuirass Fleets taking the flanks–each boasting around a thousand vessels–confirming Captain Harsol’s battle analysis exercise.

“What’s the effective range of our… artillery?” Diedrich asked out loud.

His XO shrugged, “We have ninety shells? Eighty-nine, excluding Victoria Louise. The ranging shot will be at ten-mil klicks, but effective is likely half that.”

The Counter Admiral nodded slowly. Eighty-eight shells meant every single one had to count, not to mention the ragtag propulsion system of commandeered freighters, bulkers, dreadnoughts and battleships meant each bubble was going to have different stats and parameters.

He eyed the integrated chrono, mentally calculating the time it will take to relay orders and manoeuvre into combat stations. Ten minutes, maybe less, with the enemy’s accel-squared. Diedrich spent the time reviewing the Confederate First and Fourth Fleets’ transmissions again, hoping to the Lord Above they would keep their word, hypocritical as it may be. If not… the plan was to stall for half a local day, until Columex’s planetary batteries could be brought to bear.

And if not that… then for Columex to fight. The world was only marginally less wealthy than the likes of Raxus Secundus. At the centre of trade on the Perlemian, towns and cities covered the surface, supporting billions of lives. At this very moment, the landing grounds were being fortified, civilians drafted, and armies marshalled. They would not surrender without a vicious fight.

But he hoped it would never come to that.

“i–Order received!” the comms officer slammed down his headset and sprung to his feet, raking his eyes across the bridge until it met Diedrich’s, “Crying Sun orders Hydra formation, sir!”

Diedrich swung around to the navigator, “Ventral thrust platforms– execute manoeuvring orders package immediately!”

Kronprinz whistled, her reflective armour plates ruffling like feathers and she fluently translated upwards, carefully adapting her thrust so as to not collide with the ship above, or block the ship below. He counted down the seconds on his chrono, a bead of sweat sliding down his forehead.

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Every second they took translating formations was a second the enemy got to figure out the existence of the asteroid bubbles. Each bubble was propulsion-less, and when covered by the Armada’s radar profiles, were effectively invisible to the Republic. But that didn’t mean they could take their time clearing the line of sight.

As the battle lattice moved into two affronting lines abreast above and below, the phalanges of tugs started pushing the bubbles forward before the screen fully cleared. Diedrich recalled the question of whether the shells should be stationed behind or before the main battle lines. If they were fired from behind, it would save valuable time. If they were fired from in front, it would eliminate the risk of friendly fire.

Friendly fire by ten-thousand asteroids. There wasn’t much of a debate.

Four-hundred merchant and a hundred-forty battleships followed them, and as the tugs dragged the bubbles to a total halt, the massive vessels arranged themselves into ninety three-point Cylinders that sheathed over the bubbles not dissimilar to how a shell would slide down a cannon bore.

“Range?” Diedrich stared at the holocam monitor with an intensity he didn’t expect from himself.

It was a morbid fascination. Would the cannons work to utterly devastate the enemy, or would they backfire… morbid fascination transformed into a nervousness when he realised what backfiring would entail. There was a reason there were only skeleton crews aboard those merchantmen.

“Ten–nine million klicks.”