Chapter 54

Sullust Libration Point ‘L5’, Sullust System

Brema Sector

One tends to lose the meaning of time in hyperspace, even more so after days of continuous lightspeed. Watching the intricacies of the cosmos burn past the viewports in nothing more than a frenzied blur, stars and supernovas reduced to gleaming sapphire lines shooting through the void. In this otherworldly environment of somewhere between night, day, and twilight, even Harbinger’s internal chronos felt unreliable, ticking away in a steady limbo until they could resynchronise back in realspace.

It was well-researched, the speed at which certain hyperdrives hurled its host through hyperspace, but not quite understood. Such equipment were finicky, sensitive things, and even the lightest maintenance could change travel times–upwards to entire days, when transiting significant distances. The hypermatter feed, the hyperdrive motivator, the relativistic shield, all play their part, down to the smallest component. A hyperdrive was no more complicated than Anakin’s cybernetic arm, yet no less complicated than his lightsaber.

This, Anakin knew very well, and all who knew Anakin knew just as well. Excluding the precious few people the Chosen One held close to him dearly in his life, the Chosen One always seemed to prefer the company of machines over men. And the result? Harbinger and the cruisers of Anakin Skywalker’s personal division of the Open Circle Fleet were a definite cut above the rest. They were faster, and more responsive, and made a journey from Coruscant to Sullust, a journey that would normally take a fortnight, in less than half the time. And yet, every day they shaved off pushing their hyperdrives to the limit, every hour, minute, second–and it still felt like it wasn’t enough.

To make matters worse, they had no way of knowing whether they could still make it in time, beyond blind hope. Ships at hyperspeed ‘did not exist’ in the conventional sense, they were effectively cut off from all subspace–conventional–communications whilst in the simu-tunnel. Nor was hypercomm tech currently advanced enough to breach the walls of a simu-tunnel without hyperwaves being distorted beyond recognition.

Thus the only communication available was between ships within the same simu-tunnel instance, in which the entire division of the Open Circle existed. It was for this reason commercial freighters, supply vessels, and even military warships regularly hopped out of hyperspace even on long-distance transits; not just to reorient their bearings, but also to resync their chronos and check in with the galaxy. All the more in war, when the possibility one’s destination had changed hands was very real.

But Anakin wouldn’t risk it, couldn’t risk it. Leaping out of hyperspace, accounting for the fleet, and leaping back in could take hours, especially when wrangling over a hundred Venators in full. Time did not run linearly in this alien dimension, and every second counted in lives. They could wait and hope to detect the Sullust System’s upcoming hyperspace buoy sooner than later.

Even then, Anakin Skywalker knew something wasn’t quite right. His gut churned as he anxiously stared at the endless depths of the swirling blue ahead, his legs frozen in place even then.

“General,” Admiral Yularen’s gruff voice appeared next to him, “I am concerned about the possibility that we are heading straight into an ambush.”

“You think Rees Alrix has already lost?”

“This is the Rain Bonteri we are dealing with, not any Separatist commander,” Yularen tugged at his moustache, and despite his composed demeanour, Anakin knew his colleague’s habits enough to recognise the sign of discomfort, “I think you can forgive me for exercising severe caution on this instance, General.”

“What do you recommend?”

“I understand you intend on using Sullust’s mass shadow to force an extraction as close to the planet as possible,” Yularen said, “But might I suggest we extract at the outer planets, either Mumunubb or Munumubb? In this case, at least we won’t be leaping directly into an enemy trap, should there be one.”

“That will take time–”

“With all due respect, General,” the Admiral was clearly reaching the end of his patience with the Jedi General’s stubbornness, “But the only case in which we would be ‘too late’ would be if we manage to extract in the exact moment Alrix had been engaged in battle. It would require more than the stars aligning for that to occur.”

“…Very well,” Anakin receded, “I suppose you are raising this issue because we are approaching Sullust?”

“We had detected bypassing the Medth and Tshindral Systems’ relays,” Admiral Yularen confirmed, “We will be extracting in a few hours.”

“Get the men up to battle readiness,” the Jedi General ordered, “Inform Appo to get his buckets into the larties, and pilots to their squadrons. Where is Tallisibeth?”

“In her bunk, General,” Yularen replied dryly, “Catching some rest is far more productive than… pacing the deck, in my opinion.”

“I see you’ve warmed up to her.”

“She’s a hard worker, and gets along well with the troops,” the stiff Yularen admitted, “I may have drawn the short end of the stick for my Jedi General, but I couldn’t have asked for a better Jedi Commander.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment, considering I chose her,” a short laugh spilled out naturally, releasing some of the tension coiling in his muscles, “Get her up here. And get the men ready.”

“Very good, General,” Yularen dipped his chin, and disappeared back towards the battle room.

Alarms rang wildly, klaxons blaring the sound of upcoming battle into the heads into a million grim-faced spacers and soldiers. Beneath the shut dorsal hangar doors, hundreds of pilots climbed into their starfighters, while clone troopers boarded their gunships, running through their pre-combat rituals. This was to be their third battle with Separatist viper, and the remembrance of their previous engagements have been carved into their memories.

“–Jedi Commander Esterhazy on deck!”

The snapping fabric of salutes didn’t seem to affect Tallisibeth so much this time around, as she half-jogged up to her Master’s place, “You wanted us to fight the Coalition Armada, Master, back on the Perlemian.”

“Not like this,” Anakin breathed out.

With a shimmer and thud, Harbinger lurched out of hyperspace, coming face to face with the rocky, barren mass of Munumubb. Behind the cover of the planet, a hundred Republic cruisers launched their complements of starfighters and combat escorts, massive turbolasers batteries groaning as they pointed their barrels towards Sullust, fully expecting an armed and ready enemy fleet to meet them.

Anakin found out what had been bugging him all this time.

It was silent. Too silent. The Force hung over the star system like mist over a graveyard, the stillness eerie and pervading. The cosmos was sheets of green and blue and red, and everywhere were but stars, twinkling like an infinite number of baleful eyes, the stellar audience of a battle only they witnessed.

“…We’re not picking up signs of either fleet, Admiral,” Anakin could hear Lieutenant Klev inform Yularen, “The system’s empty.”

“Deploy our recon fighter wings,” the Admiral immediately commanded, “Bring our fleet across Munumubb’s orbit and plot a vector towards Sullust.”

“Were we too late…?” Tallisibeth murmured, stepping back and descending into the data pits, naturally melting into the operators and officers as if she had always belonged there.

Hours passed, Admiral Yularen’s concerns unfounded, as the Open Circle Fleet carefully cut its way through the stillness of the black ocean, long-range scanners systematically sweeping every planetoid, asteroid, and satellite in the vast expanse of space. Anakin wrapped himself in the Force, its familiar presence like a quilt against the cold vacuum outside, even as he overhead his apprentice instructing the sensor operators in the data pits with a finesse one might expect from career officers.

She seemed at home, down there, as Anakin might feel at home surrounded by droids and machines, using her keen insight to guide the fleet towards objects of interest any normal person might not be able to pick up on.

“Found it!” Lieutenant Avrey suddenly exclaimed.

“Your training, Lieutenant!” Admiral Yularen snapped, “What did you find? Bearing? Range?”

“Distress signals on GAR frequencies!” Avrey clutched her headset as she jockeyed her station, Tallisibeth’s close gaze right over the officer’s shoulder as she observed the wavelengths for even the smallest detail, “Bearing oh-three-two relative, range… ten system astro-units! It’s faint, sir, but it’s there! Must be running for days…”

Days. They were too late by entire days.

“Fix contact!” Jedi General Anakin Skywalker swung around, “Helm, bring us on that bearing! I want a precision jump right on top of it! Get a message down to medical; I want warm beds on standby, bacta patches and tanks!”

“Yes, sir!”

Admiral Yularen stalked closer to Anakin, his voice hushed, “This might be a Separatist trick, General.”

Anakin narrowed his eyes, “It isn’t.”

“Is that the Force talking, General?”

“No,” Tallisibeth climbed back onto the deck, “Out of all the tricks our opponent has in his bag, this wouldn’t be one of them. Klev, what are you seeing there?”

The sensor officer shrugged in frustration, grinding his teeth, “Nothing conclusive, sir. It’s ten system AUs out–that’s a hundred-fifty million klicks. It’s all too dark, too small. It could be debris, or a small asteroid field… but considering the reflections, I’m leaning towards the former.”

“Too dark, too small,” Tallisibeth echoed, “Doesn’t sound like active warships to me. Even if they’re flying cold, we would still be picking up waste heat. Anything else, Klev?”

“It’s right on top of Sullust’s fifth libration point,” Lieutenant Klev reported, “Stable orbit. If left alone, that field will stay there for a couple million years, I’d wager.”

Anakin almost didn’t notice the stars lengthening as Harbinger threw herself into pseudomotion–before throwing herself right out of it just as quickly. Then, where there were stars and void before, there was now a vast debris field, just as the sensor operator predicted. Anakin felt his chest clench as he spotted the telltale red-painted schemes of Venators and Tectors, half-bleached by solar radiation, half-slagged by enemy fire.

That red, the colour of the Republic and all it stood for, now seemed to flow like shed blood. Chunks of durasteel, bent and blackened. Lengths of wire and conduit, slowly wheeling end over end. There were drifts of transparisteel splintered into jagged shards, reflecting starlight. And there were men. A few were whole. Their bodies were bloated and blue and they looked surprised—mouths gaping, eyes staring. But mostly they were in pieces.

They stood upon yet another mass grave for millions of Republic spacers.

The stars continued twinkling.

“I want bioscans–” it took a mechanical whirr for him to realise he was clenching his fists as well, “And get Appo out there. Avrey, find and relay the sources of those distress signals.”

“Right away, sir,” the officer had repressed her usual enthusiasm, stoically carrying out her duty.

From their vantage point, Anakin could see the dorsal hangar doors sliding open, dozens or LAAT gunships pouring forth before the doors were even fully open. That sinking feeling only continued to deepen as they pressed into the twisted forest of steel, following the trail of destruction. It was obvious to all who won. There were scores of Republic-made hulks drifting about, many still intact, but they have yet to spot a single Separatist warship.

“…Right,” Tallisibeth muttered beneath her breath.

But Anakin caught it easily, “Right?”

“Turn right,” his Padawan pointed at the debris, confidence burgeoning, “If we want to find out what happened, we need to find Master Alrix’s flagship, which will be at the head. So, we’ll need to retrace the line of battle.”

Anakin raised an eyebrow, but turned to Admiral Yularen anyway.

“Helm; hard right,” Yularen nodded, “Meet her there.”

To their left, a colossal durasteel corpse drifted past the viewports, almost twice as large as a Venator, its wedge-shape far more pronounced. A Tector-class Star Destroyer. Its hull had been punched in several places, and half of its bridge had been shorn off the stalk.

“…Callsign Imperious,” an officer said aloud as he recorded each wreck they passed, “Callsign Red Fox…”

“Left here!” Tallisibeth marched the length of the viewports, eyes darting from one wreck to the next, “Then starboard sixty-degrees in ten-thousand klicks.”

The silence… it became a deafening silence, muting out the universe, until not even the steady rumble of Harbinger’s sublight drives could be heard. Tallisibeth was sweating now, as she marched back across the deck, biting out orders to the helm. A furious roar. A furious heat. Like a great inferno burning where they can’t see.

“Tallisibeth,” Anakin ground out, he too was sweating even in the maintained twenty standard degrees of the bridge.

“I know,” his apprentice gasped, “It’s getting hard to breathe. Helm– left, here!”

The Force was like a wellspring of water, its rivers and arms running through the entire universe, binding every life, fuelling every living creature, from the greatest space whales to the tiniest insect. It cradled artefacts, shrouded ancient battlefields, and roared over great events of history. The Force was a living will, and it existed where there was life, where there was once, and even where there wasn’t.

But it did not exist here. Something was consuming it, drinking it in like a desert would water. Like a flame would oxygen.

And it was suffocating.

“These ships,” Tallisibeth said aloud, “They were attacked from both sides. Look at how the wrecks are crumpled.”

“It was reported General Alrix was outnumbered three-to-one,” even Admiral Yularen appeared uncomfortable at the sight of such one-sided destruction, “But I cannot fathom how the situation worsened to this level, in such a short period of time to that end. She has known worse odds before.”

“…We’re reaching the end of the debris field,” Lieutenant Klev stood up, craning his head as if to peek over the rim of the viewports from his station in the data pit, “I’m running the scanners to try and pick up Resilient’s transponder. If her ship was destroyed, it would be right here.”

And Harbinger turned. The debris finally cleared. And there was nothing there to see.

Nothing but the infinite canvas of stars. They twinkled.

The datapits broke out in murmur, despite the presence of the Admiral, half a dozen sensor operators frantically scanning the surroundings for Resilient’s transponder. The transponder of any starship was located in the deepest recesses of their hull–the citadel, in the case of warships. Nothing but the complete obliteration of a starship could compromise its transponder, outside of internal foul play. Warships were sturdy things, especially capital ships. Battles end from the loss of atmosphere much sooner than the loss of the hull itself.

In other words, the crew almost always break before the ship.

“It’s a sharp turn,” Tallisibeth surveyed, “Wait… look, there. Can we rip the transponder out of that wreck?”

Anakin followed her finger–to the drifting husk of a Munificent-class frigate, the beaten Separatist Hex still proudly displayed on the hull. The ship had been bisected, its entire engine block missing. But upon that flared armoured scheme… were depictions of predator and prey, hunter and hunted. Ancient legends, ancient armies, ancient heroes.

Anakin knew the name of the ship before Lieutenant Klev even spoke it.

“Repulse. Flagship of Separatist Admiral Rain Bonteri.”

The entire bridge was silent. The name was spoken with trepidation. Much of Harbinger’s bridge crew were survivors of the 1st Battle of Christophsis, having barely escaped with their lives aboard the Pioneer, the only ship of Anakin’s original battle squadron to escape. Since then, this one figure had fought and defeated Jedi and Jedi, even going toe to toe with Master Plo Koon and Master Saesee Tiin, two of the High Council’s oldest and most veteran battlemasters.

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From the beginning, they feared Rees Alrix’s chances.

“Did… did she win?” someone asked hopefully.

“Escape, more likely,” Admiral Yularan crossed his arms, “She must have broken out of the Separatist battle line here, and jumped southbound. Nevertheless, we have lost one of the most veteran fleets of the Republic–even if they were only made veterans by her campaign.”

“…No,” Anakin Skywalker said with finality, staring at that empty patch of space, “You are half-correct. Rees Alrix attempted to break out right here. And she failed.”

“But the Resilient isn’t here, Master,” Tallisibeth pointed out, “How are you so sure?”

Anakin scraped in a harsh breath, “Some things, Tallisibeth, you cannot see with your eyes. Use the Force. This one, you can see. I believe in you.”

He met his Padawan’s eyes, and nodded meaningfully. Tallisibeth’s mature eyes–much too mature for her age, but war made one grow quickly–hardened with determination, and she took a deep breath. Anakin could feel the energy warp around the Padawan as she entered a meditative state almost on a dime, and then she opened her eyes once more.

And gasped.

“That’s the Resilient?”

Her shock swelled into the crew, as if that quiver in the Force rippled through every man and woman there. They could not see what she was seeing, but from the tone of voice alone, they knew it was not good. Anakin hated to confirm their suspicions.

“All that’s left of it, yes,” Anakin grimaced, “Or more accurately; all that’s left of Rees Alrix.”

In this case, the ship broke before the crew. There was nothing recognizable left of the Resilient, the famed warship that terrorised the Separatists for months on the largest hyperlane in the galactic south. Nothing left.