Chapter 61

Yag’Dhul Orbit, Yag’Dhul System

Harrin Sector

Admiral Wullf Yularen did not hesitate, even as Tallisibeth was frozen in her own surprise, and his command came as decisive as swift as a lion’s roar.

“All ships!” the Admiral shouted, “Flip and burn! Divert all power to dorsal attitude thrusters! Watch our portside shields!”

Three orders in quick succession, but each and every one rife with purpose. The first order–’flip and burn’–to slow down the rear-heavy Star Destroyers before they could strike the oncoming minefield, and the second order to have the fleet dive under the obstacle at the same time. The last and final order, to maintain strict vigilance against the Givin Defense Fleet, whose Wavecrests lurked like hungering sharks in the depths of boiling, bubbling gas.

Tallisibeth watched the images of the Open Circle Fleet flipping bow-over-stern and igniting their thrusters in a furious crunch against the time to intercept, all at the same time burning downwards so as to avoid collision altogether. She had a second to wonder why ships almost always sought to ‘dive’ down instead of ‘climb’ up, as if they were aircraft in the gravity well of a world, even though the two directions were purely arbitrary and required exactly the same effort in space.

In this case, it meant the Republic Venators pivoted their afts downwards, slipping right under the hastily laid minefield like aircraft conducting an acrobatic tailslide manoeuvre. The three-ship squadron of the forwardmost division was the most unfortunate, the three battlecruisers clipping the ventral sensor zone of the seeker mines. Within moments, the seeker mines were like moths to a flame, and explosions rippled down their lengths, collapsing shields so that other mines could strike the hulls proper. The battlecruisers reeled as the mines blew holes in them and sent fragments flying into space. One of the battlecruisers blew up as its power core overloaded, then the other two in quick succession, the three ships turning into fields of shrapnel blossoming out from the scenes of their deaths.

“Divert shields to the rear and dorsal region!” Scout was shouting before she even realised it, just in time for Harbinger to be rocked by debris and secondary explosions.

The entire bridge instinctively ducked as flames unfurled overhead, like fingertips brushing their heads as the rest of the Open Circle passed underneath the minefield relatively untouched. With a second flip, the entire fleet was once more well on its way towards the Twentieth Armada.

“Anomalous activity from the atmospheric field, Admiral,” Lieutenant Klev noted, “Those skeletons are still in there, and I’d reckon they’re going to keep hitting and fading away like ghosts.”

Scout squinted in that general direction, and she could most recognise the faint silhouettes flitting in and out of existence behind that curtain of gas and rocks. That, or her brain was playing tricks on her mind.

“Bring our heaviest cruisers to our port flank, in line ahead,” Yularen commanded promptly, “And have a squadron of starfighters picket our vanguard.”

“Very good, sir.”

“Commander,” the Admiral then turned to Tallisibeth, “Where is the main Separatist fleet?”

“The… main Separatist fleet?” at that moment, Tallisibeth was taken aback.

Why would the Admiral ask her where the enemy fleet was? Unless… he knew she had inherited a sliver of Master Alrix’s ability to perceive shatterpoints. But then again… Master Skywalker had told her that Admiral Yularen had grown comfortable being in the presence of Jedi abilities, and had accepted them as another integral facet of the fleet he commanded. It stood to reason, then, Admiral Yularen knew from the moment they made the decision to return to Yag’Dhul that some greater power was in play one way or the other.

“They are…” Tallisibeth swallowed, eyeing a nearby display as she gathered her bearings, “Bearing two-nine-six, relative to Yag’Dhul. I don’t know the range.”

Admiral Yularen narrowed his eyes, and confirmed his long-standing suspicions. Bearing 296 was directly on the opposite side of the planet, in the blindzone of the Open Circle Fleet. Unless the girl had access to a groundbreaking invention, an advanced sensor able to pierce not only the multiple asteroid fields in the way, but also ten-thousand klicks of mantle and core, the Jedi could only be relying on the mystical power he knew as the Force.

“Is that the main Separatist fleet?” Admiral Yularen asked again, just to clear the inherent distrust he bore for the esoteric energy.

Is it? Tallisibeth echoed the question in her head. What am I looking at? She had touched a flame in the Force, and could feel a presence behind her shoulder, but she did not exactly know what she was looking at. A more veteran Jedi Master would have recognised the flickering candleflame in the distance as a shatterpoint in the Force, but Tallisibeth had no such knowledge.

All she knew was that that’s where the Battle Hydra was. Shouldn’t it stand to reason, then, that that’s also where the Separatist fleet was?

“I don’t know,” she could only answer, and she hated that feeling of uncertainty.

It was the sensation one felt when they had an answer in the palm of their hand, one they were certain was the answer–if not for the gnawing feeling at the back of their mind that they had missed a small but crucial step. Tallisibeth did not know what step she had missed, either, but knew she had missed one. Because as much as she wanted to say that yes, she had identified the Separatist fleet, she had also erroneously identified the Hydra’s initial target before.

“All I know…” the Padawan continued, before frustration could visibly creep onto Yularen’s stern visage, “Is that that’s where the Battle Hydra is.”

The incensed lines of the Admiral’s face disappeared, and a thin smile came to his face, “Then that’s all we need.”

“…Huh?”

“If you don’t know the range, then give me the bearings,” Yularen marched past the girl, brushing her shoulder with a palm, “I want an update every ten minutes. The rest of you; get plotting!”

“Alright folks,” in the Battle Operations Room, the senior navigation officer clapped, “We know there’s a hostile division bearing two-nine-six!”

“Range, sir?”

“Where would Swift Justice’s last known position be?”

There was one natural conclusion, looking at the astrography of the quaternary system. If the Swift Justice was bearing 296 from the planet, then they must have been attempting to circumnavigate the northwestern asteroid field. Assuming the Separatist fleet engaged them just as they made the port turn, that would put them at roughly 170,000 klicks.

“First mark; bearing two-nine-six, mark oh-oh-nine. Range hundred-seventy thousand klicks!”

Precisely ten minutes later, Tallisibeth gave the second bearing;

“Second mark; bearing three-one-five, mark oh-four-five. Range unknown!”

“Plot out all possible vectors they could have gone!”

Another ten minutes passed.

“Third mark; bearing three-one-six, mark… three-two-six! Range… around hundred-ten thousand klicks!”

Hearing the report from the comms, Tallisibeth wondered how the Battle Room could have gleaned the Battle Hydra’s range from mere bearings. Having tutored the young Padawan before, when time allowed, Yularen was keenly aware of the confusion swirling in the girl, and thus gave her a hint;

Yularen folded his arms, “The enemy fleet is bearing three-two-six vertically. Our point of reference is not the Harbinger, but the core of Yag’Dhul. What does that mean?”

Tallisibeth furrowed her eyebrows, visualling such in her mind’s eye, “It would mean they are diving beneath the orbital plane.”

“They are also bearing–laterally–three-one-six. What could they be diving under, in this case?”

Realisation dawned on her, and Tallisibeth’s cheeks flushed at such a critical oversight, “In that direction, they would be diving under Yag’Dhul itself.”

“Precisely. Working with the assumption, then, that they are sticking as close to Yag’Dhul as possible to avoid detection from our pickets, we can work out their range. Now, where is Rain Bonteri?”

“He’s… still bearing three-one-six, mark two-nine-two.”

“Then it is all but confirmed, is it not?” Yularen flashed a rare, if grim, smile, before speaking into his comlink, “Chief, hostiles are bearing three-one-six, mark two-nine-two. Plot it.”

A moment passed–

“Fourth mark; bearing three-one-six, mark two-nine-two. Range hundred-and-five thousand klicks!”

That’s right, Tallisibeth realised, if they’re vertically bearing 292, then they must be almost completely beneath Yag’Dhul’s south pole–which is bearing 270. Despite that, the nagging sensations at the back of her mind never faded. She was still missing something; something small, something critical, that could decide the entire outcome of the Battle of Yag’Dhul.

But what is it?

At that thought, Tallisibeth fell back on the one constant she’s had since becoming a Padawan, and Jedi Commander: her Master. What would Master Skywalker do? A recent, but nearly forgotten memory came to mind. In the hectic and adrenaline-fueled anxiety she has been brewing in since the loss of the 20th Armada, she had almost pushed Master Skywalker’s advice out of her mind.

“Stop thinking like a Jedi, Tal,” Anakin Skywalker told her, “You aren’t alone here. The Force is useful, but don’t rely on it, or you’ll end up like Alrix. Trust your gut, but trust the people here more. You’ll be fine.”

So this is what he meant, she thought bitterly; if she had simply consulted the Harbinger before the strategy conference… no, there’s no time to dwell on that. Tallisibeth sucked in a deep breath.

“Wait,” she spoke up, instilling as much assurance and confidence into her tone as she could muster, “We’re missing something.”

“And what would that be?” Admiral Yularen raised an eyebrow.

“What is the enemy trying to do, exactly?”

“Well, from the looks of it, sir,” Lieutenant Klev piped up, “They’re trying to slip under the orbital plane and hit us from below. I’ve got my active sensors tracking them, though. As soon as we can see them, we will see them.”

“So they’re trying to intercept us.”

“Not much else in-system to intercept,” Klev didn’t laugh at his own morbid joke, “They made sure of that.”

“If they are coordinating with the Givin to track us–which we must assume they are–then they would know we are headed to a new battlespace which would give us an advantage,” Tallisibeth aired her thought process aloud as she began pacing the deck, under the Admiral’s watchful eye, “So they should be trying to intercept us as quickly as possible.”

“And you believe they aren’t?” Yularen questioned.

Tallisibeth produced her own comlink, “Battle Room, bridge, can we plot a straight intercept vector from the enemy fleet’s last known position to ours? Can you give an ETA?”

“Bridge, Battle Room. Assuming the enemy fleet is maintaining their velocity, anywhere from forty minutes to an hour. But considering it’s a straight shot, at full combat accel, they’d be right on top of us–or below us, rather–in fifteen minutes.”

“…Transmit the plots to my datapad, please,” ‘Scout’ asked politely, the latent abilities that earned her such a cognomen swiftly coming to the forefront, “Thank you.”

From there, she tracked the plots–the solid blue lines linking pulsing red dots, and dotted lines tracing possible vectors. There were four main marks; on the four bearings she had provided the Battle Room, from which they extrapolated the enemy direction. She traced the lines again, slowly, one by one, checking for that single crucial piece of the puzzle she knew she had overlooked.

However… everything appeared to slot nicely. The Battle Hydra had maintained the momentum he accrued from defeating Swift Justice to double back starboard on a reciprocal course and was now meeting their vector on a practically straight beeline for the Open Circle–well, as straight as they could get with the planet in their way. Scout rubbed her eyes, half in exhaustion, half in frustration. There had to be something else to it, in this she was utterly adamant.

Something is off. If Scout was confident in one thing, it was her uncanny ability to detect the slightest details from something large. That was the one inherent gift the Force had deigned to allow her. And sometimes, she had learned over her tenure in the Jedi Temple, you just needed a new perspective.

“…No,” she mumbled, “Transmit this data to a holoprojector.”

Admiral Yularen snapped his fingers, and it was done. Time was ticking, Scout knew–fifteen minutes–but Anakin Skywalker’s stubborn streak had rubbed off her, and she had to figure this out.

The holographic celestial globe appeared before her eyes in its three-dimensional glory–and then she found it. The Perlemian Coalition’s Armada wasn’t the Givin Defense Fleet, and they couldn’t have possibly navigated the northwestern asteroid field in any form of haste, and thus opted to ‘climb’ over it.

First mark to second mark: vertical bearing 009 to 045. Then second mark to third mark: vertical bearing 045 to 326. That means in between the second to third mark, the Battle Hydra traversed a whole 79 degrees down on the vertical plane, when they could have simply traversed another 45 degrees ‘climbing’ instead of ‘diving.’

They were already climbing, thanks to the asteroid field. Why would they suddenly dive again? If speed was a factor in intercepting us–which it is–wouldn’t the obvious decision be to circumnavigate Yag’Dhul’s north pole instead of south pole?

Unless…

“We’re looking in the wrong direction,” Scout blurted out, suddenly short of breath, “Battle Room! What if the enemy fleet had continued from the second mark to the planet’s north pole instead!? What would be their ETA to intercept then!?”

Admiral Yularen, at the very least, didn’t need to wait to know the answer.

“Lieutenant!” he roared, “Expand our dorsal sensor grid! I want eyes above our heads! Helm, standby for evasive manoeuvres!”

As Harbinger’s sensors locked into place and blasted out just about every wavelength on the electromagnetic spectrum, Scout blinked around a hundred contacts materialised into being out of the black.

“Contact!” Klev and his operators hastily began painting targets, “Eighty ships!”

“Why didn’t we catch on the passive sensor sphere!?”

“They’re flying dark, sir!” another sensor officer gritted his teeth, “We had to paint the entire spherical section with light. But that means they know that we know.”

True to word, the skies over the Open Circle exploded out in hundreds of gleaming sublight drives, thruster plumes blazing like newborn stars in the celestial sphere. They were shaped in a deep spindle, and had obviously been aiming to spear straight through the top-down profile of the Open Circle’s formation. After they had been discovered early, however, the enemy division evolved into a more flat, rectangular shape, with capital ships anchored at the centre and corners.

A picture-perfect Separatist battle lattice.

In a split-second, Harbinger’s innumerous displays were blaring with warning symbols as thousands of Separatist missiles rained down from above. Almost by instinct, the Open Circle’s formation convulsed as one like a living organism, with escort ships racing up and lighting up the void with a terrific roar of point defence lasers while bright-hot flares filled the empty spaces between ships until it seemed the formation was set ablaze by an internal inferno.

They had responded well, Scout knew, but now they needed to react in kind. For a moment, she looked towards Admiral Yularen for directions, only to see the man carefully judging the enemy attack vector. His cautious disposition was prompting him to see the enemy’s tactics play out before responding, so he had the full picture in mind when devising a counterattack.

It was not an incorrect decision, by any means, but Scout’s every urge was telling her to counterattack now. They weren’t facing just this one division, but also the Battle Hydra’s personal division diving under them, and the Givin Defence Fleet as well. The tables had turned; now, they were the ones surrounded.

“Battle Room,” Scout held her comlink closely, “How long until the Hydra’s intercept?”

“Bonteri, sir?” a voice returned, “They should be slipping under the atmospheric phenomena in four minutes.”

And once they slip under the phenomena, they’ll be in sensor range. Four minutes. What sort of formation can be adopted in four minutes, while under fire no less? Scout drowned out the blossoming fires of intercepted warheads and screaming deflector shields, rifling through her mental library of tactics and formations he had learned and remembered under Yularen’s watchful gaze.

We’re being attacked from above and below. I need something that can leverage the firing arcs of our Star Destroyers…

What about the ‘Zeilla’? But that’s only effective in one direction, and will leave our carriers vulnerable… Scout drew out the hypothetical command package on her datapad–but if we can make use of our battlecruisers’ SPHA-Ts…

“Admiral!” Scout gasped, “If we use the Zeilla formation–”

“The Zeilla is only effective in a single direction.”

“But our battlecruisers have ventral SPHA-T batteries!”

Yularen paused, narrowed his eyes, and liberated the datapad from her hands. He inspected for a few, heart-thumping seconds, before briskly handing it off to a nearby officer.

“Execute it.”

Scout’s stomach leapt, “S-So… it’ll work?”

“Only one way to find out–” and then, Yularen roared, “Hard right, hard over! Bring us around!”

⁂

“We’re not fighting Anakin Skywalker, are we?” Commodore Horgo Shive muttered to himself as the ‘2nd Strike Division of the 28th Mobile Fleet thundered down its assault vectors, “Because this isn’t normal.”

The Republic’s transit formation was roughly box-shaped, anchored by a left-hand L-formation of heavy capital ships and the rest of the space filled with lighter vessels. Those lighter vessels were now rising to provide a cover screen of point defence to shield the L-shaped formation of Venators. And said Venators… starting from the leading ship–Harbinger herself–were circling around starboard. Just as the Harbinger reached the crest of her turn, she killed her turn and kicked herself into a deft tailspin, the kilometre-long vessel spinning like a top until her aft was facing the interior of the circle she had just turned.

The next eleven ships in the line ahead followed that manoeuvre precisely and in quick succession, until the ‘top-most’ layer of the Open Circle was a twelve-petaled flower, with their bows facing outward and engines inward. The next eleven Venators after them followed through, diving half a hundred klicks ‘beneath’ the topmost layer and forming a second array of petals, with each ship strategically placed in between the petals of the topmost layer. This time, however, they were ‘upside down,’ so that their ventral turbolaser batteries were facing the top.

All fifty Venators promptly executed such a formation, creating four layers of petals, each layer facing alternating directions, with such facility Horgo Shive could conclude some Jedi trick was in play–such as the one reported to occur at the Battle of Metalorn–or there was a truly skilled commanding officer behind these joint manoeuvres. As soon as the four-layered formation was completed, the Venators cut their engines, so that they were now drifting laterally on their resultant vector.

Then, to complete the formation, the Open Circle’s escorts speared themselves through the hole in the centre of the formation, organised into a similarly tubular shape with dorsal superstructures facing outwards, extending upwards–or downwards–along the formation’s vertical axis. This created a double-ended spindle shape, or perhaps, one much more akin to the profile of a pulsar star.

“They overextended their escorts!” Vinoc exclaimed, “We can destroy them piecemeal as we move towards the capital ships!”

The Muun Commodore curled his fingers, “It is not that simple. The purpose of their spindle-like structure is twofold–first to intercept any missiles or torpedoes targeting the capital ships, and to break up our battle lattice at the same time.”

“So we destroy them systematically. They are overextended.”

“If we slow down the entire battle lattice to deal with the escorts, those Venators will tear us to shreds,” Horgo Shive clenched his fist, “I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to know what it’s like being on the receiving end of quadruple-ranked Star Destroyer firing envelopes.”

If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it’s taken without permission from the author. Report it.

There was a brief pause from the Crying Sun, likely as Vinoc analysed the enemy formation once again– “And if we attempt to bypass the spindle, they can attack our flanks with impunity. We’ll be forced to decide whether to defend against the spindle or the petals.”

“It seems so. They’ve outflanked us without flanking us.”

Commodore Vinoc laughed, “Then we’ll revert back to the spindle formation as well.”