Chapter 52

Sullust Libration Point ‘L5’, Sullust System

Brema Sector

At last, Kendal Ozzel thought, nervous despite himself, the Hydra awakes. Taskforce Conciliator’s lines had been disturbed by a burst of hyperwave communications from the galactic south, which they had partially intercepted via Sullust’s captured satellites. Not an hour later, the Separatist fleet stirred in its stone nest, like a beast awakening from its dormant slumber.

Commodore Ozzel stood aboard the Star Destroyer Imperious, a sense of unease coiling around his chest like a great snake, as the Perlemian Coalition’s Armada advanced. Two-hundred assorted warships streamed from the pores of the asteroid belt, like rivulets converging onto a silent curtain, sweeping off the star system as if it were a pre-set stage. The seventy-nine starships of Taskforce Conciliator moved to meet them as they recalled their starfighter wings from across the star system, the last two remaining Tectors of the fleet stationed dead centre of the formation as it stretched into a forward chevron.

Five-hundred thousand klicks away, a single, unified thought passed through the minds of all two-hundred captains of the 28th Mobile Fleet, droid and organic alike. The Rear Admiral’s standing orders were clear and explicit; follow the ship in front of you.

The command was as simple as they came, leaving no room for misinterpretation. After all, every captain worth their Hex could handle a task as simple as maintaining a safe distance between their allies, and the officers of the Perlemian Coalition were all veterans of some of the toughest battles of the Clone Wars.

Follow the ship in front of you.

Those words echoed through two-hundred minds over and over as two-hundred ships converged into a single column in line ahead, bearing perpendicular to their enemy. The Separatists achieved their formation perfectly, wordlessly, with not a single stray tightbeam caught by the enemy, because there was none.

There was an urgency in the Separatist ranks, an anxious eagerness to sweep up this battle as promptly as possible. They had, after all, been informed that the Anakin Skywalker was enroute with three-hundred warships of the Open Circle Fleet. On the other side, however, one could also imagine the Hero With No Fear, standing upon the bridge of his flagship Harbinger, clenching and unclenching his fist as he silently urged his fleet to hurry up. To hurry up and reach Sullust in time. Alas, he could only stare blankly into the blurred, passing motions of hyperspace, stewing in his own restlessness.

The stars would cross his viewports with the passing of time, blinking mercilessly.

⁂

An impossibly long pause settled between the two fleets, located in the exact same patch of space as they did six battles ago. This was to be their seventh. Kendal Ozzel shifted his balance from foot to foot, wondering what the usually decisive General Rees Alrix was waiting for.

Unbeknownst to him, his Jedi General was nursing a great pain. The Force flexed and shuddered in unnatural ways, contorting as it conveyed the agonising swell of twenty-two billion souls. Merely 500 parsecs south, the world was ending, bathed and bleached under a storm of brimstone. But Rees Alrix was stronger than that, she partitioned her mindscape, and shut away the distracting pain with lock and key. And her vision cleared, and she saw the bright flames in the Force once more.

From the far right wing of the Republic formation, fleet flagship Resilient opened a corridor for transmission. And just as the Jedi General raised her hand to give the order to charge–

The leading ship of the line of the Separatist formation surged forwards, sweeping towards the Republic left. Alrix’s hand froze midair as the fires swelled and disappeared, vulnerabilities in the enemy formation changing imperceptibly to all but herself. Ozzel immediately ordered for a full identification of the offending Separatist warship.

Providence-class carrier-destroyer Chimeratica, built in the orbital shipyards of Ringo Vinda.

After a brief moment’s hesitation, the next ship of the line, the battlecruiser Weisser Sand, launched its great mass after the Chimeratica, followed by the frigate Centaur, and the next–until the entire Separatist battle line was shifting towards the Republic left. Loyalist captains could only look on in anticipation at their opponent’s action. Just as a hundred and thirty-three hours ago, the Separatist auxiliaries were placed within the asteroid field, many million kilometres behind. Should the Separatist fleet continue their perpendicular strafe, the vector ahead will open up.

This had to be some sort of trap, they all thought.

They remained transfixed, nerves frayed, as Chimeratica turned hard to portside, following a natural, imaginary curve that rotated her bearing by 180 degrees, until she had settled on a reciprocal course back towards the Republic right. Obediently adhering to their standing orders, one by one the ships behind her turned and followed her, creating a double-ranked line before the Republic line.

Minutes later, just as she reached Taskforce Conciliator’s absolute right wing, opposite Resilient, and Chimeratica banked portside once again, until she doubled back onto her original vector. Anticipation transformed into bewilderment as Kendal Ozzel and his staff observed the Separatist manoeuvres. The enemy battle line had now transformed into a squashed, conveyor belt-like shape. This wasn’t any tactic ever used before, and it could hardly be called a formation at all.

The lead ship, Chimeratica, burned harder, until her bow had caught up with the last Separatist ship of the line, the battlecruiser Feranmut. But as she burned harder, so did Weisser Sand behind her, and Centaur behind her, until the unspoken order fell down the chain like a wave through a whipped rope, until Feranmust also sped up. And when Feranmust sped up, so did Chimeratica to keep pace.

Thus the formation became a snake eating its own tail, as the ship at the head increased its velocity, so did the entire body, forcing the head to speed up again. But there was seemingly one key oversight–the reason why this so-called ‘formation’ and all formations like it were never used before; it was unsustainable.

Every warship in the fleet was of a different size. Every warship in the fleet possessed different turning radii, and different acceleration and thus different velocities. Every warship in the fleet possessed different drive ratings, and some were unable to keep pace with the rest of the fleet, while others raced ahead. Order and discipline never lasts long within constantly evolving formations, and especially not when there was absolutely no communication between captains.

And as expected, the formation began to break down. As every captain struggled to avoid collisions, the single-file line began to fall apart. Fast cruisers were forced to swerve to avoid the slow battleships in front of them, just as frigates took evasive action before cruisers before them. As lumbering dreadnoughts pushed their etheric rudders to their extremes, they were still unable to attend the sharp turning circles at the end of the conveyor belt, and adopted shallower turns instead. Some followed those adapted turns, others couldn’t afford to.

Taskforce Conciliator watched as the Separatists fell into chaos, the lead ship Chimeratica melting into the turmoil. ‘Follow the ship in front of you’ became meaningless as the ship in front you changed with every blink–but the Separatist captains nevertheless did so to the best of their ability, while expending admirable effort to avoid colliding with each other in the whirlwind of battle steel. And as they picked up pace, pseudo-forces stretched the conveyor belt, forcing shallower and shallower turns, until the entire formation existed within a single revolving circle–like a mammoth whirlpool deep in the void.

⁂

Aboard the Imperious, Kendal Ozzel observed the unfolding formation through the lens of his Star Destroyer’s scopes. The individual drive cones of each enemy warship had since blurred away into a brilliant, flat, torus-shape–and as the formation only picked up speed, it was soon near-impossible for his scanners to fix on any specific contact without a blind toss, much less accurately target hardpoints. They no longer knew where the enemy line of battle began, and where it ended.

In fact, not even the Separatists themselves knew where their own battle line started and ended. All they had on their minds was to keep following the ship before them–no matter how many times it changed–and avoid smashing into the ship next to them. Indeed, for the Separatist captain, this was a marathon with no time to breathe. Any hiccup, any break in the rhythm, any singular mistake could result in them crashing into their allies, and creating a chain reaction that would have the entire 28th Mobile Fleet collapse in on itself.

But for Kendal Ozzel, he saw something different. This formation reminded him of something curious that used to fascinate him when he was still a child. As the minutes ticked away with no signs of the enemy formation changing, his suspicions only deepened.

This looks like an ant mill, he confirmed to himself. Known as a death spiral, or a death march, it occurs when a swarm intelligence such as ants loses their pheromone track whilst on the march, and end up following each other in a continuously revolving circle. Sooner or later, if there is no interruption in the death spiral, they would die of exhaustion.

Ozzel looked at the spiral on the holodisplays again, and transferred the data to the combat information centre. The processed data that returned made him smile in disbelief. It was certain then, that if the Separatists didn’t break out of their death spiral sooner than later, all it would take is one trip-up to create a chain reaction of collisions.

But there was a second development he noticed as well, one that turned his smile into a worried frown.

“They’re coming towards us,” Ozzel said aloud.

“Sir?” his XO asked.

The Commodore handed the captain his tablet, “Despite being in a death spiral, they are still headed in our direction.”

To prove his point, Ozzel ordered his sensor officers to tag a single ship and observe its displacement across a single rotation of the spiral. Should it be a stationary rotation, the ultimate displacement of the ship should be zero–as the tag would end up in the same place from which it began. Instead, just as Ozzel initially observed, the tag would be displaced towards the Republic’s lines by around a thousand klicks every rotation, consistently, without fail.

The only question was: is it intentional?

⁂

Aboard the Resilient, Rees Alrix knew it was intentional. She knew it not because she recognised a formation that doesn’t exist, but out of instinct alone. Rees Alrix never studied the naval arts, she never cared to memorise the tactics and stratagems the Republic Navy relearned after dusting off ancient databanks. A blazing fire in her mind’s eye, she only trusted in her gut feeling, and the Force that drove it.

Unlike Ozzel, she did not see a death spiral, she saw the hydra’s nest, its many heads laying in wait for them to make but a single mistake. She knew the steady advance of the steel hurricane was intentional precisely because she looked–and found no single vulnerability. She wanted nothing more than to recall the name of her opponent at that very moment, but their name slid through her fingers like sand.

In their place, she remembered a cognomen she overheard from two spacers in the mess hall– so this is the man they call the Battle Hydra…

⁂

Rear Admiral Rain Bonteri watched in satisfaction from the bridge of his flagship, as the cyclone continued to pick up speed. Riding lights and brilliant plumes of ion gases smeared into a blur, until individual ships were no more differentiated than minnows in a raging school of fish, or raindrops in the eye of a typhoon. Carefully, his personal squadron dispersed throughout the whirlwind would nudge just a bit further towards the Republic lines, and with each rotation, the whole fleet would unknowingly shift with them, like a responsive hivemind.

Just as Rees Alrix experimented on how to defeat the 28th Mobile Fleet over the last five days, so did Rain Bonteri experimented on how to defeat Taskforce Conciliator. After six separate engagements, he had finally placed his finger on the pulse of her ability.

Rees Alrix finds weaknesses. Just as a trained duellist could find an opening in their opponent’s guard, Rees Alrix could do the same with the Force alone. It didn’t matter if the formation he used was simple, or complicated, or anything in between; Rees Alrix would sniff out the slightest opening without fail. A truly unfair ability, was it not?

But fleet warfare was no simple game. A duel could end in seconds, but a naval battle never will. A fleet formation could bear one weak link, or a hundred. Did the Force show only the weakest link, then, or all hundred? If it showed only the weakest, did it account for all future moves as well, as a chess computer would? Would that not be precognition?

So Rain Bonteri experimented. Over five days, he deployed numerous formations against Rees Alrix, gauging her reaction as he gauged his, observing which intended vulnerabilities she exploited, and which she ignored. And Rees Alrix would always, without fail, wait for him to finalise the translation of his formations before attacking. She would always wait for a static enemy before deciding to attack.

And that’s when he understood; the Force revealed all weaknesses.

So instead of trying to outplay this terrible, unfair ability called the Force–he would beat it at its own game. Over his year-long career in the Confederate Navy, Rain Bonteri had only ever faced one formation that he could not find any exploitable vulnerabilities in–

Jedi Master Plo Koon’s revolving arrowhead.

It was the one tactic no normal commander could ever hope to overcome, on the basis that it was a tactic that existed so far outside the current era’s technological and tactical capabilities to reproduce without the employment of supernatural means. Though he wouldn’t know the exact parlance, said supernatural means was known to the Jedi Order as battle meditation.

By creating an all-encompassing bubble of the Force in which every captain, officer, and spacer existed, a Jedi General could coordinate entire fleets of ships and have them operate at maximum efficiency. Battle meditation enhanced morale, stamina, cognitive ability, reaction time, and even chain together millions of minds to act as a single entity. It made impossible tactics and formations, such as the revolving arrowhead, possible. A truly unfair ability, was it not?

Rain Bonteri strived to prove one could recreate such an effect without the cosmic sorcery. He was in battle, not against Rees Alrix, but against the Force itself. He was embarking on a personal crusade to strip away the exclusivity of the Force and prove that he could achieve what many scholars believe to be exclusive capability of the intangible being of the universe itself, with nothing more than collective human spite and sheer will.

Rees Alrix and Republic hadn’t realised it, but they were observing how the Separatists achieved a primitive form of the battle meditation utilised by the Jedi Masters, not through any complicated or esoteric means, but by enforcing a singular, overriding state of mind. By issuing a single standing order and leading his entire fleet into a death spiral in which it only took a single mistake to kill them all, Rain Bonteri successfully created a hivemind not dissimilar to the effects of battle meditation. Unlike battle meditation, however, which could control the hivemind at will, the spiral’s hivemind was only capable of a single thought–

Follow the ship in front of you, and don’t crash.

But that was enough.

That had to be enough.

Because this death spiral was a product of two traits you couldn’t find in any other fleet.

First was an absolute and unshakable trust in their commanding officer, among the captains and crews of the fleet. During the brief strategy meeting, Asajj Ventress was concerned whether the 28th Mobile Fleet could trust their Admiral enough to follow through with a plan they knew nothing about.

But she wasn’t there. She wasn’t there on the Perlemian Front. She wasn’t there, fighting a hundred desperate battles to slow the unstoppable advance of the Grand Army of the Republic. She wasn’t there at Centares, where the spirit of the Perlemian Coalition was broken. And she wasn’t there at Columex, where a single man brought the spirit of the Perlemian Coalition back from the brink, and then broke the back of the Republic.

The galaxy lauds and curses the name of Sev’rance Tann for the Republic’s defeat at Columex, for the Confederacy had invested heavily into the sensationalism and publicity that came from one of the most infamous generals of the nation arriving just in time to save the day. So much so, that the names of those who sacrificed so much to buy that time simply faded back into the shadows.

But the men and women of the 28th Mobile Fleet knew who truly won the Battle of Columex. They were, after all, the men and women of the Perlemian Coalition. They were, after all, there to watch Columex shatter the Pride of the Core. And after the sacrifice of his personal direct command to save seventy-five ships of their comrades, the spacers of the 28th Mobile would silently follow their Rear Admiral to the Nine Hells and back, if he asked.

They would, soon enough.

Sev’rance Tann knew that by placing Rain Bonteri and Calli Trilm at the head of the 28th and 19th Mobile Fleets respectively–two halves of the Perlemian Coalition’s Armada–she was created two fleets with an unbreakable trust in their leaders, and in each other. Perfect, for the purposes of the war she wished to wage.

Second was the towering experience and skill of every single captain, officer, and spacer within the fleet. Just as the GAR Strategic Command had identified, and thus dispatched the quick response Open Core Fleet to engage these priority targets, the fleets of the Perlemian Coalition were the most dangerous assets the CAF had at its disposal. It was this well-known fact that Sev’rance Tann had relied upon to bait them in the first place.

Because they were, without a doubt, currently the most veteran spacers in the galaxy, witness to some of the toughest battles of the war. Their nerves were tempered in the cauldron of Centares, staring down the barrels of the Republic, unflinching as two lines of battle pounded each other into the abyss, fearlessly working at their stations even as their comrades were blasted and vaporised around them. Their skills were honed by the whetstone of Columex, in the chaos of five-thousand warships where every smallest action at the fire control station, or in the engine room, could mean the life and death of hundreds. These were men and women who had broken in their warships as an equestrian would break in their stallions.

Doing the impossible was what they did best. No other fleet, save perhaps their brothers and sisters in the 19th Mobile Fleet, could recreate such an implausible tactic.

And so the death spiral inched closer and closer to the Republic lines, gunports opening and missile launchers gleaming with steely glares.

⁂

Kendal Ozzel gritted his teeth. There was a lack of orders from their flagship, and the enemy was bearing down on them. He wasn’t so foolish to think a straight charge would defeat any enemy formation. Taskforce Conciliator’s speciality was in straight offensives, in that there was no doubt, but the reason they were so abnormally effective was because of their Jedi General.

It was despite their Jedi General that they were some of the Republic’s best, having beaten back fleets many times their number many times over. General Rees Alrix’s ability was not battle meditation, and her tactics–if they could be called that–would have never succeeded so many times if not for the skill of the many captains of her fleet. They may not be peers to their rivals in the 28th, but they acted with complete comfort and trust in their Jedi General, and knew how to cover for her blindspots.

So when Ozzel gave the command to withdraw, the entire battle line of Taskforce Conciliator pulled back without argument, burning retro and matching their retreat with the advance of the Separatists, patiently letting their commanding officer devise a plan. They have seen through the death spiral, and its purpose. By creating a rotating circle, as the Separatists came around to face the Republic formation, those along the nearest tangent could unleash a devastating storm of missiles. Since the circle was continuously rotating, the effect was a continuous stream of missiles onto their formation.

And should the Republic attempt to fire back, their shots would glance harmlessly off the swift-moving deflector shields of the enemy–which could be entirely concentrated on their starboard beam–as each warship constantly replaced the one ahead of them.

It was not as effective as the full-frontal revolving arrowhead of Jedi General Plo Koon, which could most efficiently take advantage of a Star Destroyer’s forward firing envelopes. Similarly, however, this death spiral adaptation could fully exploit the broadsides of Separatist warships, even if the rotating design meant it couldn’t produce nearly as much forward momentum as the revolving arrowhead.

⁂

Meanwhile, Rees Alrix herself was struggling. There was no formation without weaknesses–such an incredible phenomenon did not exist, much to the chagrin of military theorists across the galaxy. Not only did she know this, she saw this. Nobody could outsmart the Force. And yet… she couldn’t find anywhere to attack.

Not because it had no vulnerabilities, no–for every armour would inevitably have chinks in its plating–but because the vulnerability was constantly and randomly changing. As the death spiral grew more and more chaotic, that flame she tried to chase would leap from one location to the other. In one place, a corvette struggling to keep up, and in another a battlecruiser that mistimed its etheric rudder, and in another an old dreadnought with a struggling main reactor, or a destroyer with depleted power cells–all of them chinks in the armour which Alrix could stab and unravel the whole formation. And yet, they appeared once, again, and disappeared just as swiftly as the formation evolved without rest.

For the first time, there was no single weakness she could exploit.

Realising this, but unwilling to concede defeat and surrender the star system she spent so much effort reaching and defending, Alrix naturally gravitated to the next closest vulnerability she could exploit. The very same fire that constantly threatened inferno, that has hampered her enemy for nearly a week–the five auxiliary ships in the Sululluub Asteroid Field.

But to reach it, she would either have to go through, or around the great whirlpool. She chose the latter option, recognising that the revolving circle, for better or worse, was largely a stationary tactic, despite its slow advance, and could not change the direction of its heading easily.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

The order was transmitted, and Taskforce Conciliator’s line of battle translated from a line abreast to a line ahead as each individual ship turned 90-degrees to starboard, with Resilient herself at the head of the line and Imperious now in the middle. The plan was simple; circumnavigate the spiral in a single file line, and should the Separatists react by breaking that spiral, they would be too disorientated to form a proper line of battle, allowing the Republic to charge in and sweep up the disorganised remnants.

Taskforce Conciliator began its transit burn, roaring around the circumference of the Separatist spiral. All they had to do was traverse a 90-degree arc of the spiral before they had a straight vector for the auxiliaries, an impulse burn that would take no more than a few minutes–

⁂

Chimeratica shot out of the hurricane like a stone cast from a shepherd’s sling, following an intercept tangent aiming straight for Star Destroyer Imperious.

This was the exact moment she had been waiting for, and like the monster that lended her its name, one could almost hear her snarling as she loaded torpedoes into her launchers and unleashed her horde of self-propelled droid starfighters.

There was a period of stunned silence, where it seemed the galaxy itself stopped turning, as both sides watched the lone carrier-destroyer shoot out of its formation, bravely charging the hostile battle line on its own.

Follow the ship in front of you.

The closest ship behind Chimeratica at this point was the ‘2nd Strike Division’s Durandal. The star frigate was nowhere near its division–not that there were any divisions left, as all subformations had quickly dissolved as sugar would swirled in a pot–but with their standing orders in mind, her captain ordered;

“Bloody stars– follow that ship!”

The spell had been broken, and the Separatist death spiral violently unwound as a steel coil would after snapping its restraints. The first head of the Hydra snapped forth, guns blazing and starfighters roaring out of their hangars and racks. After Durandal came Hound’s Tooth; then Sarffgadau; then Gleaming Fey and Melodiosa; then Repulse, Renown and Revenge; then the rest of the fleet.

Imperious barely had time to respond as Chimeratica bore down on her, unleashing a furious hail of torpedoes as she swung violently to portside. Even as she ran parallel to the Republic battleline, the rest of Chimeratica’s starfighters slammed straight into the two remaining Tectors, briefly blinding their scopes as the battleships’ point-defence cannons spat out flack and lasers into the void. By the time Imperious had swatted away the Vultures, Chimeratica was gone, having raced ahead to reach Alrix’s flagship Resilient at the head of the line.

⁂

It was then that aboard the destroyer Havoc, Commodore Horgo Shive was the first to receive his order.

TO HAVOC: INTERCEPT AND DESTROY FRIENDLY CONTACT ‘REPULSE.’ OVER.

Horgo paused, and his crew could almost see the confusion coursing through his elongated brain. Normally, he would be well pleased to receive an intercept and destroy order, but the target of this order in particular was… baffling, to say the least. From his vantage point in the rear of the fleet, he could almost see the whole battle unfurling before him–literally, as the coiled snake undid itself–gleaning off as much information as he could. Similarly to the Givin of Yag’Dhul, the Muun were notorious galaxy-wide for being highly intelligent beings. Most Muuns use that intelligence to pursue roads of business and economy, but there was nothing stopping them from applying their calculative powers in the art of battle.

Horgo Shive was unlike most Muuns. Muuns were cautious, but Horgo was decisive. Muuns was reserved and mature, but Horgo preferred tossing himself into battle and improvising from there. It was for this reason he was made the commanding officer of the ‘2nd Strike Division. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t just as every bit calculative and risk-perceptive as his kin, he simply preferred hedging his bets as opposed to holding them forever.

“Plot us a course for intercept,” he ordered the nearest navigation officer.

“Target, sir?”

“Repulse.”

Repulse was the seventh ship from the front, racing away to meet the Resilient along with Chimeratica and the rest, and she was a crippled thing. She had been one of the ships thrown headfirst against the Tector-class Star Destroyers in the 4th Skirmish at Sullust, and despite managing to escape, had paid a dear price. Much of spaced armour had been completely melted off by Imperious’s brutal turbolasers, revealing her frail superstructure, and her starboard radiator-wing had been completely torn off by a stray starfighter torpedo, making her prone to overheating. She was barely space-worthy, much less in combat condition at all.

But the Rear Admiral was insistent she, and the five remaining frigates of his direct command, be brought to battle, ostensibly to go out in one last blaze of glory. Horgo had his reservations; he would have recommended the ships–which held great symbolic value–be recessed from the battle and repaired by Jorm’s Auxiliary Division. Albeit, he might admit, they may be because he was as loss-averse as any other Muun.