Prologue: Ambush
First chapter of the rewrite. Since disclaimers are customary, I will take this opportunity to state that I do not own Star Wars. If I did, keeping track of all the intricate details of its fractured canon would probably drive me insane.
"We didn't choose that battle, anyway. It got forced on us." Carth Onasi
It began with a sudden rumble of protest from the engines, the yellow flash of a warning light on a monitoring station, and a stomach-churning lurch as the Endar Spire's determined chug through hyperspace came to an abrupt and unscheduled end. White starlines flared and faded as the ship was yanked back into the blackness of realspace, alarms screeching over the now-discordant background hum of the shipsong.
Commander Carth Onasi felt only the briefest flash of surprise, because somewhere in the back of his mind he'd expected something to go wrong. By the time the alarms sounded, he'd snapped his datapad shut and grabbed his jacket from the back of his chair, the crew assessments he'd been reading through forgotten.
The cruiser's engines strained against the pull of heavyweight tractor beams as she fought the leading Interdictor's grip. Ion cannons fired in an unceasing volley, bombarding the Endar Spire's shields until they began to flicker and phase out. The other ships in the convoy were not ignored; a pair of arrowhead-shaped Centurion battlecruisers engaged the Hound of Rendilli in a hopelessly one-sided battle as the second Interdictor captured one of the smaller Forays with a tractor beam and held it helpless.
Bastila snapped out of deep meditation as fear, aggression, and determination exploded around her. She instinctively stretched out with the Force, then shied away as she encountered a twisted maelstrom of hatred and bloodlust. Fragments of not-thought—gloating glee, barely restrained rage, and cruel anticipation—tore at her unprepared consciousness like shrapnel, and she gritted her teeth against the assault as her body pulled itself to its feet, hands thrusting themselves into tunic sleeves and groping for boots. They were coming for her. Their leader's intent echoed in her head as surely as if he'd shouted it aloud; his desire to see her captured, broken, turned. I will not allow it, she thought defiantly.
One-man fighters attacked the Spire like a swarm of kretch, striking surgically at the shield generators and point-defense cannons at the base of the Hammerhead's nose. As the belabored shields dissipated into nothingness, dart-shaped boarding craft followed the crippling vanguard, rocketing towards the exposed hull. Their spiked noses thrust through the thinner metal where the command deck rose from the main body of the ship. Gangways burst open, disgorging the armored commando teams huddled in their bellies.
The man who called himself Darth Bandon smiled at the Jedi's fleeting mindtouch. She did not yet fear him; all the better. He closed his eyes as the boarding craft impacted on the Republic ship's hull, savoring the moment as months of plotting, subterfuge, and preparation coalesced into perfect opportunity. His hands clenched around his double-bladed saber hilt as he felt his heart beat fast and hard in tune with the word that had echoed through his soul for six long months, his oath and purpose: Vengence.
The Endar Spire's crew worked with restrained urgency. Pilots and crews scrambled to ready their fighters for launch as soldiers took up defensive positions around critical areas, and noncombat servicemen checked the power pacs in their regulation blasters as they rushed to their duty stations. Ambush, a thousand mouths whispered and snarled and shouted, and, Sith.
Sereyna Tahl woke in utter confusion.
Her first thought was a befuddled, wholly unoriginal What? as her hands groped senselessly at the cool surface pressed against her cheek. The mattress on her bunk was hard, but it wasn't cold, and it definitely didn't have a rivet-line running along it. Untangling herself from her blankets, Sereyna pushed herself to her hands and knees, tonguing the split lip she'd somehow acquired. How the serley hells. . . we hit something?. . . She squinted unhappily under the glare of the overhead lights and thought dour, half-formed thoughts about inconsiderate shipmates and incompetent helmsmen.
And then floor beneath her shuddered, the hated lights flickered, and a mechanical screech started blaring from the overhead comm. Sudden fear cleared the grogginess from her head, and she scrabbled toward the wall, craning her neck to look out the high-set rectangular viewports. Red laser fire scorched through the blackness, illuminating the silver shapes of fighters swooping and darting through the vacuum; far off, the shadowy bulks of larger ships were backlit by the white flares of cannon fire. She gaped in disbelief and clawed for a handhold as another deck-shaking volley illuminated the void. "No, no, no, no, not again!" she protested, as if her objection would send the enemy fleet skulking back into hyperspace. "This can't be happening again!"
AN: An inordinate amount of research and thought goes into writing a two-page space battle. How many ships constitute a "battle fleet," and what kind of ships does each side use? (That depends. . .) How do KOTOR-era Interdictors work? (Short answer: Not like Imperial Interdictors, because that would be too easy.) Do ion weapons pass through shields? (. . .No?) What's the crew and fighter compliment of each ship? (Oh, gods. . .) What's the range of a non-hyperspace capable escape pod? (Not far.) These answers can be found on Wookiepedia or, if you have a lot of time and money, EU sourcebooks, but it takes a while. The only thing that alleviates my frustration is the knowledge that someone, somewhere, sometime, had to gather, reconcile, or flat-out make up all the dren I'm trudging through.
Other questions aren't so easy to resolve: for example, what the heck was the Endar Spire doing near Taris anyway? How does Carth, a mere commander "on board as an adviser, for the most part," end up calling the shots during the attack? Why is your poor, confused, possibly noncombatant PC fighting off boarders—and how much of the attack would they have to sleep through if they run into boarders right outside their room? These things I have to flat-out make up, and I hope what I come up with makes sense.
For the opening battle, I've chosen to go with an ambush. The Endar Spire is dragged out of hyperspace near Taris and disabled with ion cannons. I imagine that the Republic force would've consisted of at least two or three ships in addition to the Spire, so I've added a Praetorian frigate (the Hound) and four Forays. The Endar Spire itself is a Hammerhead cruiser. Together, they field 24 fighters, 8 shuttles, and a decent amount of ship-based firepower. The Sith have two Star Forge-built clones of the Leviathan (the technical marvel of its time) and two Centurion-class battlecruisers; their total possible capacity would be nearly 300 fighters, various support craft, eight gravity generators, and a hell of a lot of firepower, which seems in keeping with Malak's "crush them with overwhelming force" approach to strategy. I'm pretty sure that boarding craft like the ones I've described did not exist in this era, if at all (they may have shown up in one of the Kyle Katarn games, and I know there were something like them in Force Unleashed II), but I had to get the commandos on the ship somehow, and the Sith have the Star Forge, so. . .Yeah. I may be overplanning this just a bit.
As for the rest, I'll try to put explanations within the story.
Other notes: kretch are a type on insect, first mentioned (I think) in Children of the Jedi. Imagine bullet ants with scorpion stingers. Shipsong is a somewhat poetic term I'm sure I've read in other SW works that describes the background noise of a starship. I really like it.
Beta-read by Dylan, the friend who introduced me to KOTOR in the first place. Don't blame him for what I'm doing to it.