Chapter 7

Orbit of Teth, Teth System

Baxel Sector

“You know, this isn’t even my first time ambushing a Republic fleet like this,” I mused.

“I have no recollection of that event,” Tuff said.

“You weren’t there,” Stelle fired the retrothrusters, starting our deceleration–since our velocity wasn’t quite so high, we didn’t need to flip, “It was during the Sarapin Campaign. You can access the ship’s databanks later.”

“Mh,” I hummed, “It was the last major battle of the campaign, actually. A Republic battlegroup under Jedi General Echuu Shen-Jon had begun their counterattack, retaking Sarapin before tracing us to the Krant System, where General Tann had set up shop.”

“General Tann knew the Jedi would pursue, so she laid a trap,” Stelle’s tone was somehow reminiscent, “She scattered her fleets across the system, and when the enemy fleet was in low orbit, we ambushed them.”

“Not a single enemy warship escaped,” I said as the lights flashed red and the claxons howled–the Republic has noticed us, “The Jedi was planetside by then, so I don’t exactly know what happened… but it seemed General Tann prepared a ground ambush as well. If the Jedi wasn’t struck down by her, then he must have eaten plasma.”

I breathed out slowly, “Alright, enough of that. Fix range on Guarlara.”

“Roger roger,” the gunnery officer tapped his console, “Cycling power to forward turbolasers.”

“Maximum power,” I commanded, “Aim for her engines. I want to crack her deflectors in the first shot. Prep forward ion cannons. Once her shields are down, I want her dead in the water. Are you reading, Renown?”

“Roger roger,” Zenith replied.

Munificent-class frigates boasted one of the largest naval turbolaser batteries in the galaxy, with enough firepower to crack open battleships like eggs, or punch straight through planetary atmospheres for orbital bombardment. When you factor in the frigate’s rather pitiful armour scheme, it was this main battery that evened the playing field against any capital ship.

That was, only if you can shoot first. Because the frigate only had one battery of two barrels, and the entire thing was so fucking large it had to be mounted directly onto the ship. While the mount had some freedom in elevation, the only substantial way to aim them is to rotate the ship itself. Furthermore, firing them at full power reroutes so much energy from the reactors that you can forget having functioning shield projectors, or even main engines.

In the end, the Munificent-class–like all other Separatist warships–was the product of cost-cutting and conscious trade-offs.

It was only in this situation, when you were shooting up the ass end of a Venator–one of the largest blindspots in the history of naval ordnance–that you can be reasonably certain you weren’t going to get punished immediately for your lack of deflectors.

As more power was continuously diverted towards the turbolaser mount, the effects on the rest of the ship quickly grew apparent. Console monitors dimmed, and the lighting system started outright flickering. Our rate of retardation slowed dramatically as engine efficiency was essentially cut in half.

“Cut power to life support and artificial gravity in all compartments of the ship excluding the bridge,” I commanded, “We need our engines. We need our sensor suites.”

“That will free up some output,” the engineering droid consulted his readouts, “Should we cycle that back into the engines?”

“Feed the excess into the ion cannons,” I said.

“Roger roger.”

I eyed the sensor repeaters, keeping in mind how Guarlara was hastily cycling her shields to her rear. The reason Guarlara was targeted first is simple–the ship is most likely the escort carrier of the enemy fleet. Acclamators are troopships, and Tranquility is the headquarters of the 41st. I needed to disable the primary carrier before it could get its LACs in the air. If that happens, it’s all over.

Guarlara was halfway through its turn when my gunnery readouts beeped.

“Open fire!”

BOOM. Two heavy thuds reverberated throughout the ship, ringing it like a tuning fork. The tactical holo glowed as two–and then four–massive sources of energy appeared, beaming out like comets. The first two splintered against Guarlara’s deflectors, splitting into scores of daughter beams and ricocheting–but decaying before they could hit anything. Renown had a much better angle on Guarlara, their lasers smashing head-on and overwhelming their ray shields.

Our ion cannons didn’t wait to unleash fury on the hapless star destroyer, ripping into Guarlara electronically. Arcs of lightning danced across her engine block, frying her ion drives, hyperdrive, and primary inertial compensator. Their sublight thrusters wound down, fading to black and lifeless. In a single strike, the ship was made a dead fish.

As soon as all that power was discharged, the ship’s internal systems gradually roared back to life. The consoles burst back to their horrid green, while the lighting flickered back on.

“Tranquility is opening its dorsal doors,” Tuff observed.

Unduli’s flagship was violently swinging around to bring its gun to bear, red-marked hangar doors groaning open to reveal its deadly complement of starfighters. Behind it, the sole troopship manoeuvred away, fastidiously keeping Tranquility between us and her.

“Where’s the other Acclamator?” I demanded.

“Low atmosphere,” Stelle answered.

My tablet vibrated, prompting me to look at it. I glanced at Tuff. He looked back at me impassively.

“Fine,” I muttered, slating over my annoyance with cold rationality, “Renown, deploy all your vultures. The Commander needs air support. Tuff, get our fighters and C-nines in the air.”

“Roger roger.”

There was a warning: large object approaching at dangerous velocity. It usually only appears when there was an approaching interstellar body–like a sizable asteroid–that our passive deflectors couldn’t brush off. I checked our perimeter, and then my chrono. Resistance was closing in quickly, her velocity capping at 18,000 KPS before she flipped on her axis and fired up her sublight thrusters in a very last minute burn and violent attempt to slow down. ETA: seventeen standard minutes.

“Seal blast hatches,” my gazed skipped to another readout, “And cycle deflectors to dorsal–concentrate around the bridge. Clone pilots only know how to attack from above.”

“Roger roger.”

Clunk, clunk, clunk–duralloy plating tiled over the transparisteel viewports, darkening the pilothouse. The lighting was purposefully dimmed, and the custom holoemitters were toggled, projecting a near-duplicate holoscape of the pitch outside onto the screened viewports. It was all in shades of blue and red–I didn’t have enough clout, or cash, to order full-colour projectors–but colour was an unnecessary affectation.

The holoemitters were directly fed data from the repeaters–superimposing vectors, 3D bearings, and sensor data onto the display. Along with internal data from Repulse itself, such as power levels and operational capabilities, it was like a bastard hybrid of a RTS and FPS heads-up display. I no longer had to juggle half a dozen readouts–I could just look at an enemy ship on the projection and figure their shield levels, or which guns were reloading.

Originally, the blast hatches were an emergency system meant to seal the bridge should the viewport be undermined in any way–such as, say, perforated–but I think this purpose is much more useful. After all, windows in a space battle are liabilities. I’m still not sure why this galaxy liked them so much–you should really keep the sightseeing to pleasure cruises.

But that was a bit disingenuous, coming from me.

Pointers popped up all around the periphery as our vultures swarmed out of the hangars, escorting the C-9799s planetside. Just under a hundred of them, orbiting around the transports as they converged and stuck precariously close to the ventral side of Guarlara, smartly using the disabled cruiser as cover.

“Fighter contacts!” the sensor engineer announced.

Hundreds of LACs poured out of Tranquility, zipping out of the hangar approach and banking hard on their etheric rudders to sweep back around. It took only a moment for our scanners to identify the make and feed it into the tactical holo. V-19 Torrents.

I could sigh in relief. Those were starfighters, not bombers.

Renown reacted quickly, driving hard into the wedge between Guarlara and Tranquility and rolling portside to angle its armour scheme against the LACs. If the V-19s wanted to get to the transports, they were going to have to go through them. Sparks darted across the display as Renown’s point-defence turrets howled, spewing out veritable curtains of anti-fighter fire. Republic pilots were getting downed by the dozen.

Tranquility and Renown soon devolved into a brutal broadside exchange, casemates roaring as both ships pumped the other full of superheated tibanna. In a prolonged engagement, however, the Tranquility will come out on top–Separatist frigates were simply too fragile. My chrono read nine standard minutes.

“Forward turbolasers are thirty percent charged,” the gunnery droid said.

“Fix range on Guarlara’s bridges,” I ordered, “Light them up.”

The entire ship pitched itself upwards, almost like breathing in before a great scream. Then a flash of red–energy readouts on the sensor repeater spiking–and Guarlara’s primary conning tower disappeared in a massive explosion. Just like a game–I smiled in satisfaction.

“Hard right hard over,” I called, “We’ll come around and support Renown from the other side–”

The tactical holo flashed, and the network of system readings orbiting Renown’s marker, glared baleful red. Relief turned to ash in my mouth.

The enemy starfighter wing had pivoted, unleashing a torrent of concussion missiles down the frigate’s spine and detonating her power cells, before sweeping down her hull and pursuing the transports. Explosions rocked the warship–which I could only see as warning symbols popping up all around Renown’s icon–before our shared feed desynchronised. That could only mean one thing; her command bridge had lost all power.

In an impressive display of tenacity, Renown continued to brawl with Tranquility, as if the ship itself was defiant even in the face of her lost command. Her automated turrets continued to barrage the Jedi cruiser with plasma unceasingly, determined to carry out their last received orders to the bitter end.

My chrono beeped– ETA: one standard minute.

Resistance shot out of the abyss like a bullet, abruptly appearing right beneath Tranquility with thrusters faced forward and ventral guns faced up–and all hell broke loose. Fuelled by the voracity to avenge her sister, the frigate clawed into the cruiser’s belly, slagging the ventral hangar bay until it was melted shut and tearing out chunks of doonium plating. Caught at unawares, Tranquility didn’t have the shields to stop her.

A second wing of starfighters swarmed out of the cruiser’s flight deck–ARC-170s–veering up and then over Tranquility’s portside wing like some kind of fountain. They streaked down, S-foils setting into attack position–and then I understood what they were doing. Repulse was hardly in the position to support, so we could only watch as the ARC-170s fired off barrage after barrage of proton torpedoes into Resistance’s lightly armoured ventral surface.

The first volley was shattered against concentrated deflectors, as was the second. The third was a deluge of purple spells that finally overwhelmed the particle shielding– and then Resistance was consumed by inferno. The torpedoes smashed straight through the flimsy armour and mauled everything inside to hell. Fuel bunkers ruptured, gas lines fractured, and a series of chain reactions shredded the entire ship to scrap from the inside.

In less than a heartbeat, there was nothing identifiable left of the ship once named Resistance.

For a second, I thought we would soon join them, but the ARCs didn’t press their momentum after recovering from the dive. They instead took defensive formations around their mothership while she maneuvred away, apparently attempting to rendezvous with the Acclamator that had already withdrawn.

“Tranquility is retreating,” Stelle said softly, “Should we pursue?”

“…No,” I said after a long moment, “Hang back.”

I may have not had a direct hand in their programming, but I had personally and painstakingly cultivated each and every droid of officer value on my ships. I gave them names, personalities–I made sure they were programmed with the ambition to succeed–and when you do that, there was little between a droid officer and an organic one, except for one. Droids thought solely in numbers. They are cognitively incapable of being more incompetent than what you had programmed into them.

Three-One had pulled off that manoeuvre spectacularly, even ending it right beneath an enemy ship. In another world, he could have pulled that off. Zenith’s sacrifice allowed our transports and vultures to slip right past the enemy and reinforce Ventress on the surface, but Three-One’s?

In another world, I didn’t allow him to take that risk.

“Damage report for Renown,” I said.

“Power cells were struck,” Stelle reported, “But it was a contained detonation. The ship is disabled because the power feeds were severed. Once the crew recycles auxiliary, Renown should be capable of limited operations.”

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I breathed through my nose, “That’s good. We have a hundred-thousand deactivated droids in the hold. Activate them all and bring us over the Guarlara– I will give them only one chance to surrender.”

“Roger roger.”

I leaned back, pinching the bridge of my nose.

“Sir,” Tuff’s flat voice was even more irritating than usual, “Enemy jamming has ceased. We have reestablished contact with air control. The airspace is heavily contested between our vultures and enemy fighters, but all the transports have landed. The Jedi are retreating.”

“That better be,” I snarled, “I lost two fucking ships for this.”

⁂

“I have the evidence, ma’am. Did some simple splicing and editing to make the holocam recording quite… convincing. It was harder than usual–these two don’t give much to work with,” 4A-7 said, audibly self-satisfied, “Oh– and, the Jedi are approaching the main vault now.”

“Good work,” she whispered, “Transmit it to Count Dooku and warm up the junker.”

“Can do, Mistress,” the espionage droid replied, “And, ma’am, target the young one. She’s their weakness.”

Ventress preferred droids to organics, generally. Programmed well, you can be certain they will be the most trustworthy and competent individuals you have ever worked with. To her, 4A-7 was more of a real being than most organics she had to endure. When he had a duty, he would do it–and do it well. She could ask nothing more from a subordinate, and a partner.

She sprinted to the main vault and planted explosive charges on every exit, before sliding behind a column. As she waited, Ventress arranged each charge to different sequences on her detonator. Just as 4A-7 had said, she soon heard a multitude of footsteps coming through a nearby hallway.

The softer steps of Jedi, and the hard clacking of clonetrooper boots. She waited until the rustling of their robes were right next to her.

Ventress sprung out like a Rattataki redjacket, twin lightsabers springing to life.

In a few seconds, the squad of accompanying clones were scythed down before the Jedi could react, before she pivoted to deal with them as well.

One saber swung down in a bloody arc, humming with eagerness to kill. Red clashed against green, and for a brief moment she saw a terrified surprise illuminated against the Jedi Padawan’s face. Ventress grinned at that sight.

The Padawan pushed back, and Ventress transferred that momentum to bring in her other saber in a lightning arc, employing careful restraint to not hit the wailing Huttlet slung over her shoulder. Ventress’ blade missed her head by a fraction of an inch as the Padawan ducked.

“Barriss!” it was Unduli’s turn to leap at her.