20 Years Before the Battle of Yavin - The Clone Wars rage…

Outer Rim

The warm blue tunnel of hyperspace illuminated sixteen Munificent-class frigates as they shot towards their destination as fast as their Class 1 hyperdrives allowed. The drives in question shuddered at times; the effort required to allow a 825 meter ship to move across the cosmos at that speed was substantial. For while the hyperdrives in the Munificents were Class 1 on paper, they were still lower in quality than the military grade Class 1 drives installed installed in the Venator-class Star destroyers. This was the case for much of the Separatist fleet. While substantially larger than the Republic's fleet, the majority of Separatist vessels were nothing more than commercial vessels with upgraded shields and weapons. Only about ten percent of their navy consisted of the Recusant-class or Providence-class war vessels. The rest was mostly upgraded Munificent trading frigates and militarized Trade Federation ships.

Commodore Obarrel considered this as she stood atop the bridge of her command vessel, the Iron Thunder. Her dark eyes took in readings from the tactical screens in front of her. Her entire flight consisted of 4 sections, each with four Munificents, and all of these fed real-time data about the progress of the war. The news had not been very good for the last several months. The corrupt Republic was pushing ever farther into the Outer Rim territories, slowly strangling the Separatist effort to forge a separate economy by seizing resource-rich worlds. One such world, Elom, was the site of large Lommite deposits, which was used to make transparisteel. The Republic had recently seized control of the system, prompting the Separatist Senate on Raxus to petition the military to free the system from Republic tyranny once again.

Obarrel sighed, and looked out the transparisteel viewport in front of her. What a week. She had no sooner finished a successful defense as part of Ord Radama's planetary defense fleet when she received new orders to crush the Republic force at Elom. Joy.

"A hero's work is never done," she muttered, allowing a trace of sarcasm to color her tone. Every victory she won from this point on would allow her to rise in the ranks until she commanded an even larger force, hopefully with at least one battleship. Then she would be able to fulfill her duty to her government and desert, bringing with her a fleet that would ensure the safety of her home system. That was the best-case scenario anyway. A grim washed over her face as she sat in her seat on the bridge. As her flight flew ever closer to Elom, she allowed herself to slip into memories of home.

Her home system of Praumia had been settled roughly two standard centuries ago by setters from the nearby Borgath cluster, which had been settled roughly a century prior by humans from several Mid Rim worlds. The majority of the population in the system lived on its capital world of Praumia-2, a once metal-rich planet that consisted of mainly mountains and deserts, with temperate zones at the coasts of the many continents that housed most of the residents.

She and the rest of the Praumian system dreamed of a future free of the government of Borgath, which had so kindly strip-mined much of Praumia-2 to fuel their massive Separatist aligned shipyards. Borgath had seven planets in its own system that were all metal-rich, but its government couldn't bear to tell the tens of millions of its own citizens to move their cities off of metal deposits. That was what the Borgathian Legislature had told the Praumian Government before issuing a warning that all mines on Praumia-2 would be seized by force in 3 standard weeks. 15 standard days. The Borgathian government later thanked Praumia, saying it was for the good of the Separatist cause and they should be proud to be contributing to such a noble effort. It set her teeth on edge. At least her people would get something out of this, she figured. Maybe some of her ships will have been made from the minerals stolen from her people-

"Commodore," a metallic voice snapped her out of her memories. One of the B1 battle droids was facing her. Its yellow markings indicated that it held the rank of commander. "We are nearing the staging point that you set. Please be prepared to-"

"I am aware of my responsibilities, droid," she cut the droid off. "Just be prepared to open up a commlink to the rest of the flight."

"Roger, roger." The droid walked back to its post. She didn't hear even a hint of the resentment that might have been contained in the response if it had been made by an organic officer. That, she mused, was about the only benefit of these blasted droids. No need to worry about emotion clouding their judgement in most cases. But that hardly outweighed the fact that her droids were barely able to fight effectively beyond highly simplistic tactics. That was why most multi-ship operations were commanded by an organic officer that could adapt to changing battle scenarios. An organic commander like her.

Indeed, Commodore Erinn Obarrel had risen through the ranks of the navy already. Her successes in battle were the reason that a citizen of a "minor backwater" system such as Praumia had such a rank in the star-spanning navy of the Separatists. Perhaps if she won more battles like this one, the higher-ups in the navy would listen to her petitions to bring other officers from the Praumian navy into battle alongside her as Separatist officers.

"Dropping out of hyperspace in 5 … 4 … 3 … 2 … 1 … now." The droid at the helm eased the flagship into realspace, and the rest of the flight dropped into formation around them. Empty space surrounded them for several dozen light-hours, more than enough for their hyperspace emergence to remain undetected by any conceivable sensors. She walked towards her command chair, her prosthetic leg echoing on the deck as she did so. She sat, and looked towards the communications screen.

"Ready all ships for formation change, and have all ships move into formation on my mark," commanded Obarrel.

The droid at the communications screen gave an acknowledgement. "Roger, roger." She waited until the other ships signaled that they were ready to change formation. One of them had to cycle its generators. She grimaced. The Gold Talon had been having issues with its port reactor for the past week. She really needed to request dry dock access. She waited patiently for the all clear from Gold's droid captain, tapping her fingers on her cybernetic knee all the while. Eventually, the signal came through, and she gave her orders to the flight. "All ships move to battle formation now."She paused. "Ships in formation with Gold Talon, keep all shields at full." The tactical displays showed the other ships in the flight rotating and moving closer together. She sighed inwardly as proximity alarms blared and the tactical screens flashed red.

"Operations. Turn those blasted alarms off. I thought that we had fixed this issue in the last set of drills." Once again she reflected with no small amount of disdain that any organic officer would have changed the alarms after the first issue during training. She had given orders to the engineering department for them to alter the parameters of the alarms. Obviously they had been sidetracked with repairs.

"Roger, roger," the droid at the operations screen manually shut off the proximity alarms, and throughout the flight, other droids did the same. The warnings on her tactical screens slowly faded, allowing her to see that her ships were now fully in formation.

Each section of four ships were now grouped closely together. Each ship was now centered around an imaginary axis situated roughly 20 meters below the "bottom" of each ship, with all four ships being rotated at a right angle from each other. From the front, it appeared as if the ships were aligned with the cardinal directions of a terrestrial compass.

Commodore Obarrel was rather pleased with this formation. It allowed the Munificents to divert energy from their lower shields to all other shields. In addition, it allowed the Munificents to focus the shots from their forward heavy turbolasers in to one single heavy barrage. It had worked quite well for her ships in the past.

"Prepare all ships for the final jump to hyperspace," she ordered. "Just like the other times, run the drives at no faster than Class 10. We don't want the interwoven quantum bubbles to fail after all." Indeed they didn't. With the ships at such close proximity, the quantum bubbles of their hyperdrives interacted quite strongly at the fast speeds of the lower Classes. Using the snail's pace of Class 10 had the effect of ensuring that the ships made stable jumps through hyperspace. It also had the added benefit of making the jumps more accurate. She personally loved that.

"Roger, roger," the communications droid relayed her orders. One by one, the indicators on her tactical screen turned green, indicating that the ship had the new jump coordinates locked.

Commodore Obarrel steeled herself. This would be a very brief jump, barely longer than five minutes at Class 10 speeds. It would likely be straight into battle with at least one Venator-class if the information that she had was still up-to-date. No matter. She had faced single Venators before, even a pair of them once. She would come out on top, just as she always had.

"Jump now." Her voice held nothing but calm determination.

"Roger, roger."

And with that, the entire squadron blinked into the blue tunnel of hyperspace. The tactical readout showed slight stress on the hyperdrive, but not much more than a prolonged trip at high speeds would create. But still, that was the reason that she only used this formation when she could prepare a very short distance from the enemy.

She counted down the minutes, barely listening as the pilot counted down the final few seconds of hyperspace travel. The ships dropped out of hyperspace, and five icons popped up her tactical display.

A Venator-class Star Destroyer. That was a given.

One small Arquitens-class command cruiser. Easy.

Three Acclamator-class assault ships. Workable.

She allowed a grin to spread across her face. This would be over quickly. Perhaps she would finally get dry dock time. Or shore leave back home. Both would be rather useful.

Putting those thoughts out of her mind, she prepared to issue orders. It was time to get to work.

AN: And here begins the first of the plot-based stories for this Saga. Of course, this is one of the short stories, but that's not the point.

If you are curious as to what Commodore Obarrel looks like in full, look up Ryoko Azuma. She look like an older version of her, with a metal leg.

And here's the disclaimer. I do not own anything that is officially part of Star Wars, Legends or Canon. I do not claim ownership of any of the property of Lucasfilm, Disney, or any published authors. I am not making any money from this story.