A/N I decided I needed to try writing something a little different for a little while. I'm not giving up on my other story. I have the next chapter about done. I just wanted to play around in a new fandom. I'm taking a few liberties with the accepted Cannon of the Mandalorian wars, and Revan's part in them. Since these are just "Legends" now according to Disney, I feel just fine doing this. If this will bother you, just simply don't read.
I could almost taste the treachery in the Force. Even though many dozens of kilometers separated our two ships, I could feel his intentions as clearly as though he was feet away from me. Clearly I had not taught my apprentice to hide his emotions as well as I thought I had. Contemplating this for a moment, I decided that the far more likely truth was that he was simply over confident and didn't think I could sense him from this far away.
Darth Malak always had overestimated his own abilities. Which is why he was the Apprentice, and I, the Master. It had taken me separating his lower jaw from the rest of his head to finally settle the matter of the hierarchy. The man had spoken with the help of a vocalizer ever since. Due to the vocalizer, his voice had taken on a metallic scrape against the vowels, a grind with the consonants, and overall was very displeasing to the ear. I would amuse myself from time to time thinking that I had done him a favor and added to his image as a Sith Lord.
Malak, who was known as Alek before our Fall, and I had been together since before we were knighted by the Order, we had grown up together and for the longest time, I had considered him my closest friend. We had left the Order together when to protect the Republic when the rest of the Order were content to allow the Mandalorian threat to burn the Outer Rim.
The speed with which the Mandalorians had cut across the Rim had been staggering. It was clear to us even sequestered on Dantooine, that the Mandalorians wouldn't stop until either the Galaxy had bent it's collective knees or the Mandalorians burned up in a great fireball. Malak and I had given them exactly that.
When we left the Order, we didn't leave alone, we had gathered a following of several dozen like minded Jedi who also found themselves at odds with the council in their decision to not come to the Republic's aid.
We found that when we reported to the Fleet in the Outer Rim, we were welcomed with open arms, many of us were commissioned directly into the Officer Corps of the Navy and Marines. Alek and I were assigned as squad leaders in the 120th Forward Marine Recon Division. The FMRD was an elite unit of the Republic Marine Corps that specialized in what it's name implied, recon. The FMRD had had observers in ships designed to look like merchant vessels paying careful attention to the movements of the Mandalorian fleet and was reporting those movements to the main fleet in an attempt to intercept and force the Mandalorians into a single pitched battle with the Republic Fleet. This tactic had seen limited success and the Mandalorians managed to keep most their fleet out of the aim of the Republic heavy turbo lasers.
When Alek and I were assigned to the 120th, we had been mildly disappointed when we discovered that we weren't going to be front line combat troops. Its almost comical looking back now, just how wrong we were.
An alarm ringing on the bridge shook me out of my reverie and brought me back to the present and alerted me to the fact that a Republic battle group of 5 cruisers, 3 carriers, and 17 destroyers had dropped out of hyperspace just out of gun range. My muscles tensed only slightly, the battle group was significantly smaller than the fleet at my back currently. We nearly tripled their number of cruisers and aside from my own battleship, two more accompanied this fleet. One of those battleships was helm-ed by Darth Malak, the other was captained by a senior Admiral whose name escaped my recollection at the moment.
I stared out through the expanse of space to the lead Republic Cruiser as it ate the distance between our ships. Being a smaller ship, it had the speed advantage, but my ship carried the bigger guns. And a large compliment of fighters and bombers. I was content to allow the Republic to make the first move, the ship's shields could take a number of salvos from their medium guns before even beginning to weaken. I could afford patience.
The cruiser slowed as she was steered closer and closer to us, no one on my command bridge moved, the well trained and disciplined sailors on board my ship trusted me implicitly. Most of the crew of my ship had followed me after the war to beyond the known regions of space, searching for an artifact of great power. We when found it, we returned. Not as heroes or saviors, but as villains and conquerors, determined to make the galaxy strong enough to slap down such threats as the Mandalorians with little effort. Me and my fleet would bring about the change necessary to forge a galaxy made of steel and diamond, versus the fat and nerf dung that it was made of now.
Turning to my Admiral, I spoke: "Admiral the bridge is yours, I trust that you can handle a few cruisers and a carrier or two."
The Admiral's reply was a simple "aye aye," a sailor's term that simply meant, "I understand and will comply." The Admiral turned away from me and began playing the crew of the bridge like a conductor in front of an orchestra. Granted, this orchestra brought destruction and the end of lives, but it was beautiful in its own right. Watching an opposing vessel get ripped apart by the turbo lasers of your ship presented you with so many different colors: greens and blues, reds and oranges in all of manner of combination. I smiled behind my mask at the simple beauty of watching a man such as Saul Karath, Grand Admiral of the Sith Fleet, go to work.
"Ensign Katte, bring our port broadside to bear!" The Admiral spoke quickly to his navigation officer, who executed the his desire tp the letter.
"Chief gunner, swivel batteries to that cruiser!, Flight Chief, begin launching the squadrons from the starboard hanger! Colonel, ensure the marines are prepped to repel any attempts to board the ship!"
Calls of "aye aye," and "aye sir," rung out as the bridge crew took to their tasks to defend the ship.
A war ship is never truly alive until it might die, when it is combat. All over the ship sirens were blaring, alerting crew members of the danger and instructing them to report to their battle stations. The engineers down in the engine room were ensuring that all available power was being diverted to the ship's weapon and shield systems. Flight crews were piling into fighters and bombers. Troop transports were being readied for boarding actions against enemy vessels. Marines were taking up defensive positions in key locations around the ship: in corridors leading to the bridge or to the engine bay or the shield generators. Marines with heavy repeating Gatling lasers were dug-in in the wide expanse of the hangers in order to repel enemy boarding actions. Heavy blast doors were sealed to provide additional cover to the marines and in order to hamper any advance should Republic forces fight their way past the marines guarding the hanger bays. All of these actions were done within seven minutes of the sirens first sounding.
Thirteen minutes after the sirens had been sounded, the first bolts from the Republic cruiser's turbo lasers slammed into the ship's shields. The force from the bolts impact caused a shudder to run through the spine of the ship.
"Gunner, return fire with which ever guns are ready!" another call of acknowledgment from the gunner, and the two forward-most turbo lasers sang their response. Our return salvo of only those two guns was about as effective as theirs had been. Even if all eight port side guns had been able to fire, we still wouldn't have been able to punch through their shields, it would take at least six full salvos to bring their shields down. From what I had seen in the past, another seven salvos would have been needed to punch through their armor enough to cripple the ship. Even though as soon as the shields were down we could start poking holes in the ship. Ship design and damage control practices would mean that nothing vital would be damaged until quite a bit of ship had been removed. Besides, our shields would hold until the bombers could get into range and start to tear into the cruiser's exposed life support systems. While our lasers would be more than adequate to bring the cruiser down, they were too imprecise to target smaller systems, like life support and the communications array. Bombers were far more suited to this task as their torpedoes could penetrate the energy based shields and cripple these cruisers quickly. That's why most modern warships had dedicated flak guns to mitigate the threat that bombers and snub fighters posed. However, if the smoke rising from very specific points in the cruiser's hull was to be believed, most of these flak guns had already been destroyed in a previous engagement. And as the cruiser was without gunboat support, she was almost defenseless against the incoming bombers.
Smiling grimly behind my mask, I watched as the bombers began their work against the life support systems that were providing the essential oxygen needed to continue to fight. After all, a suffocating crew wasn't a fighting crew.
To call what was sticking outside the ship a "Life Support System" was almost a misnomer. While all space fairing vessels did indeed have an oxygen generator, the generators themselves were inside the protection of the hull. What my bombers were targeting was actually the heat sink for the system. Converting carbon dioxide to oxygen in such large quantities produced a large amount of heat and external heat sinks were essentially in dissipating this heat. Without the sinks, heat would reach the oxygen containers and they would ignite. This would cause large explosions and knock out a ships capacity to produce oxygen.
By the time my flag ship had been brought to full broadside against the cruiser, the admiral had ordered the main batteries silenced. And a few moments later, the bombers struck pay dirt. The life support system detonated in a brilliant flash of light.
Without the life support system, carbon dioxide would begin to build up and oxygen levels would rapidly decrease. The crew would at first, find it hard to concentrate on their tasks, then find the world darkening and swirling. Then they would pass out, sleeping peacefully, until oxygen starvation would cause their brains to cease to function. Not exactly a flashy or glorious death, but one that was quick and easy to achieve. And seriously demoralizing to the enemy. No one wants to know that they are going to die. Sure, soldiers know that the possibility is high that they will, but they don't want to have the time to come to that realization. Most soldiers would rather just go in a literal blaze of glory. Not the slow and drawn out process of oxygen starvation. Even with the man portable oxygen tanks that crews carried with them, death would occur in just over twenty minutes.
Without a living crew to give input, the computer systems could only do so much. Essentially the computers could keep the ship from falling into the planet below us and could continue to operate any droid defenses inside the ship. If said ship actually had any of these types of defenses at all.
Reaching out with the Force, I could sense the panic that had settled over the crew of the cruiser as they realized that their end was at hand. Overwhelming sadness gripped the crew as friends and shipmates began to drop around them.
Thirty three minutes, and four additional Republic salvos after the destruction of the life support system, the guns of the cruiser fell silent. The entire crew was either dead or dying.
During that time, the Admiral had re-angled the ship to engage a Republic carrier that had seemingly been sent to provide support to the now doomed cruiser. All heavy guns concentrated fire against the bridge and under such an onslaught from three Sith battle ships, the carrier's shields didn't last long and burnt out holes began to appear in the facade of the carrier. Fighters and bombers could be seen pouring out just as quickly as escape pods were launched. The admiral ordered our fighters to ignore the escape pods and to focus on intercept missions in order to limit the threat that enemy the bombers posed to my ship and the rest of the fleet. After all, the Republic wasn't the only fleet that had to dissipate a lot of heat.
"Milord, a blast door has been breached and the marines guarding the main corridor are under attack by Republic commandos backed up by several Jedi."
Feeling the undercurrents of the Force through out my ship, I confirmed the presence of the Jedi. With a sly smile, I addressed Admiral Karath: "Start pulling the marines back, I will take care of the Jedi."
With a nod, the Admiral turned to the comm and began to order the marines back behind another blast door. The comms system was loud enough that I could hear the rifle fire being exchanged back and forth. I could even hear the faint hum of what was at least two separate light sabers.
"I hope they brought more than two Jedi." The admiral's mouth, set in a line, pitched upward in one corner at my comment. He had seen me in battle, he knew what I could achieve through the force.
I could feel my smile take on a predatory nature as I was guided by the force. Closer and closer to the Jedi and the Republic commandos. It was my turn to start feeling alive.