Chapter 1: Fires of Gravity
At the heart of the Deep Core, where the stars swirled together in battle at minute distances, darkness was a fleeting, swiftly forgotten thing. In every direction space glowed blue and red and yellow. The rare gaps slipped away swiftly as the stars screamed through their tight orbits surrounding the heart of darkness at the center of the galaxy. The constant light unnerved many; its feral power dwarfed everything they accepted. Most ships daring this region traveled by sensors alone, blanking their windows to hide the brightness.
Except here.
The backdrop of the Beshqek system was no different than any other in the Deep Core. Countless stars surrounded it at tiny distances, folded about this little pocket of solace in a teetering array, always threatening to drop down and snuff it out. A glance out any viewport readily revealed those mighty globes.
But no watcher would bask in their luminence.
Blue and eerie, glowing with colors no man could name, this barrier ensconced the star system fully within its mantle. Here there was darkness, for that glow was a pale and wan thing. It begged for the dispersive solace of greater light. All the system bowed beneath this strangely luminous shadow, a shade born not of any star, but emerging from within the depths of the fifth planet.
All who entered the system experienced that strange illumination, but none spoke of it. A taboo kept without words, it was instead realized through the unconscious foreboding of all who came to this dread place.
Such was Byss, seat of the Emperor in his second life.
Beneath the watchful eye of the Imperial Citadel, a baleful gaze extending to the far reaches of the star system, billions labored to provide their overlord with the tools of conquest. Millions more toiled in the space-based shipyards and docks to build warcraft and stations for the fleet. Finally there were the myriad thousands in fleet itself, the largest conglomeration of military might in any one star system of the whole galaxy.
Hidden in the heart of the maze of fire that was the Deep Core the fleet seemed excessive to most commanders; ten times the size and more of any force that could possibly be transported to this planet of shadow within light. Yet all served with a nervous edge, for the presence of the Emperor suffused the system, hovering behind the eyes, ominous and overwhelming. The fleet would keep watch, always fearful. No matter the terrors it presently defended.
"Admiral, we have an update from Fleet Command," the communications officer, Lieutenant Jeretts, announced from the crew pit.
"And what do they have for us now?" Admiral Priam1 stood at the front of the bridge, staring out into the paleness of Byss, a space cluttered by the many objects festooned about the swirl-color world.
"Strategic Artillery Command reports that repairs to the Galaxy Gun have been completed," Jeretts summarized. His tone was steady, calm, and rapid, the hallmarks of a veteran officer. "They are powering the weapon up now."
"So, the pause is over," Priam stared out at the vast needle-shaped machine. Her stomach roiled looking upon it; the greatest power in the galaxy, or so it seemed, a planet-destroyer hidden and protected at the Empire's center. The Rebellion was collapsing in the face of those missiles, but the Admiral could not help but feel cheated by the device. Her career, and the possibility of grand battles, reduced to riding heard on a giant cannon. "Order the squadron to yellow alert," she told the lieutenant. "If the rebels have forces to send, they'll do it now, while the Eclipse II is absent." She suspected that their starfighter attack on the Emperor's flagship had been launched for precisely that purpose, to draw supporting forces further from Byss in the hopes of one final suicide run against the Galaxy Gun.
Priam willed them to come. Let there be one last true engagement.
Yellow alert sounded, and auxiliary crew moved into position, bringing the Night Shark up to combat readiness. In the nearby surrounding space other vessels, star destroyers and support ships, did the same.
"On Yellow Alert Standby Admiral," Captain Kelsen2 updated from the rear of the bridge.
"Very good," Priam clocked the speed of response on her wrist chrono. They were getting better. They weren't Death Squadron, not yet, but her ships had matured into a real fighting force.
"Admiral, the Galaxy Gun is repositioning," this was the high, snap-quick voice of Lieutenant Calthame, the young sensors lead.
"What's their trajectory?" Priam mused aloud. High Command would never tell her, of course. That wouldn't serve the ego of Umak Leth. He treated the world-smashing superweapon like his private toy.
"Protecting their barrel direction against the star map, admiral," Calthame reported. "It appears they are aiming for the Japrael Sector."
"Onderon," Priam whispered. Turning towards the stars she smirked slightly. Leth planned to destroy the Emperor's attackers in a play for favor. Such ploys were dangerous gambles, and in this case surely unnecessary. The rebels didn't have anything capable of bringing down the Eclipse II.
"Admiral!" Calthame's voice rose to a fever pitch, and her military decorum collapsed. She was simply screaming across the deck. "Unauthorized realspace reversion! It's...the Eclipse II!"
"What?" Shocked through to her boots Priam rounded on the command chair. "Project it! Now!" she ordered.
A holo-model of the system sprang to life before her.
The massive black dagger-form of the Eclipse II, fifteen thousand kilometers of death-dealing star dreadnaught, had emerged shockingly close to Byss. Unsafe and out of control, the vessel was charging at full speed.
It was heading straight for the long spindle-form of the Galaxy Gun.
"By the Empire! No!" Priam couldn't hold the emotions in.
Everyone on the bridge turned in horror, watching as, over a space of mere seconds the two superweapons converged.
The Galaxy Gun attempted to turn, but it was a giant barrel, not a ship, and had no capability to maneuver rapidly. With utter inevitability the two machines smashed together.
The reinforced prow of the Eclipse II cleaved clean through the Galaxy Gun, causing the missile-thrower to fracture and break in many places. Catastrophic failures blew apart the seams of the device, and it crumbled to pieces almost instantly.
Cries of shock and awe exploded across the bridge.
Priam, in front of it all, stood in stony silence, unable to believe what had just happened. Before her eyes inertia pulled the great dreadnaught into a careening whirl, spinning and rolling madly.
Decades in the fleet reasserted themselves in only moments, as the cacophony before her became intolerable.
"Silence!" Priam bellowed, demonstrating lungs that had retained power into middle age. "Sensors! Report!"
"Eclipse II is spinning on its axis," Calthame's voice jumped and shuddered, but she managed something close to coherency. "The ship reports it is out of control. Galaxy Gun is...silent."
The bridge of the Night Shark fell deathly quiet.
Something blinked on the sensor display.
Priam's eyes went to it at the same time as Calthame's.
"What?-"
"Admiral...the Galaxy Gun...it was armed during the collision," the young woman's face was a white sheet. "And now it's fired."
Eyes wide, Priam turned to scan her bridge. Such madness required an immediate response. "Someone tell me what that means...now!"
The explanation came, unexpectedly, from the helm. "Admiral, without guidance the missile will follow the basic laws of the universe, it will be governed by...by...gravity."
Priam was not a scientist, but no one served as an officer aboard a starship without some understanding of the nature of physics. Her head whipsawed around, staring out the viewport again, and realizing what the dominion of that oh-so-basic physical force implied.
The projectile would circle in upon Byss itself.
Missiles from the Galaxy Gun could not be stopped; they would tear through any opposition until they struck their target.
But this missile had no target.
"Helm," Priam made a desperate decision. "I want a microjump now. Put us in front of that missile."
"Admiral, the target's too close to Byss, we'd slam flat against the planet's atmosphere!" the helmsman protested.
"Stang!" Priam smashed her fist into the command chair. "Are there any ships in position to intercept?" she thought desperately. "Or one of the Hunter-Killers?" The massive droids might just be big enough to trigger a premature detonation.
"There are no ships in position," Calthame shook her head.
"The Hunter-Killers are too slow," someone in the crew pit, in the near-panic Priam could not tell who it was, shouted.
Several more frantic suggestions were offered, each more desperate than the last, but none had any chance of working. The reality of what was about to happen settled over Priam, a crushing mountain upon her.
Byss was lost.
"Lieutenant, get a connection with High Command, now," Priam demanded of Jaretts. "And open a main channel to the entire defense fleet."
"High Command's channels are scrambled, but I've got the fleet."
"Open it all the way, make sure everyone hears this," Priam wasn't the ranking officer in the system, far from it, but Night Shark was standing the command flag for this shift3. She had emergency authority. "This is Night Shark to all ships," she spoke forcefully into the command chair. "Byss is lost, repeat, Byss is lost, this is not a drill. This is not an error. All ships are to execute emergency evacuation orders immediately. Repeat, all ships to evacuate immediately. Rendezvous at Point Besh. This is an emergency evacuation order to all fleet and civilian vessels, execute immediately." Details came to her as she spoke, and they rambled into her command even as veteran captains were already jumping to lightspeed in the distance. "All ships docked on Byss, emergency launch now. Do not wait, do not stop, you must launch now, the planet is lost."
Priam killed the transmission and turned to Jaretts. "High Command?"
"Coming through now."
"This is fleet command," the voice on the other end was stretched by nerves beyond the point of recognition. Staring down the certainty of death and breaking apart. "Confirm orders from the Night Shark. All ships are to evacuate immediately. Night Shark is confirmed in emergency command under Contingency Rule 1.51. All ships evacuate immediately..."
"Engines, prepare for mircojump and hold us there, but I'm not leaving until the last second," Priam ordered the rest of her ship.
"Sir," the chief engineer's voice intruded over the intercom, distraught and worried. "That'll put considerable strain on the engines, we might not make the jump when-"
"Noted and overridden, hold us at the edge," Priam refused to leave until she was sure she'd done all she could. Byss was dying. There must be something she could save.
"Acknowledged."
"Status of the Eclipse II?" the admiral questioned. That ship was a fleet in and of itself. If only it could be preserved...
"Rotating on its axis, and its heavily damaged, the engines will never regain control in time," a tech officer answered from her left.
"Stang," Priam hissed. "Order the crew to abandon ship, perhaps some will manage to outrun the shockwave."
Her eyes were glued to the sensor projection as the errant missile began its ever-quickening descent into the atmosphere of Byss. Nearby a handful of ships, the lucky ones primed on their launch pads, dashed desperately for space. She wondered if any of them would survive.
"Admiral, I have an incoming priority transmission from Monarch Yard," Jaretts announced, pulling Priam's attention back to the present.
Monarch Yard was the largest of the many shipyards surrounding Byss, shipyards Priam suddenly realized were all doomed to be shredded in the shockwave to come. It was one more blow among many. "Put them through," she ordered as her mind struggled to keep pace. That mighty shipyard had been the birthplace of the Eclipse II, had completed the Eclipse, and now hosted four grand star dreadnaughts, all incomplete.
"Night Shark, this is Colonel Garvus, commanding the Yard," the voice was remarkably composed, thick and scratchy with age. "We have released Autarch and Heseriarch, but the Despot is not equipped with a hyperdrive at this stage, and the Sovereign's is locked down for repairs."
The Sovereign-class4, ships only marginally less powerful than the Eclipse-class, were star dreadnaughts built for the promise of an Empire stronger than ever. Priam knew she had to save the two ships, if at all possible.
"Do Sovereign's shields function?" she asked the distant Colonel desperately.
"Yes ma'am, they are fully operational," the cagey veteran on the other end replied.
"Divert all power to shields immediately prior to shockwave impact," she recalled the old tactics the academy still taught for enduring a pulse cannon blast. "Ignore the limiters, burn out the shields, the reactor, whatever it takes; you just have to hold through the wave."
"Understood admiral," the colonel agreed, though he sounded no more confident than Priam felt. "And the Despot?"
"Do its shields function?"
"No."
"Then tell the crew to lock the ship down and take shelter," she offered, knowing how hopeless it sounded. "Perhaps the bulk of the vessel will endure," the Sovereign's were massive, it might be possible. "We shall send rescue teams as soon as possible."
"Understood."
"Admiral, Galaxy Gun missile has impacted the surface!" Calthame's voice rode over all other sounds.
"What's our evacuation status?" she demanded of Lieutenant Jarrets.
"Sixty percent of the fleet has jumped clear," the man swallowed. "The number is rising as we speak. Sixty-two...sixty-four..."
In the window beyond Byss began to crackle and boil.
Impossibly fast the planet shifted to red. Then it blasted apart.
"Shockwave incoming!"
"Hyperspace, now!"
Priam stared at the oncoming blast until the stars shifted to starlines and everything faded to blue.
What happened to the Empire now?
Chapter Notes
Priam is a canonical character, as are the majority of the significant roles in this piece. I made the choice to invent characters only when an existing person could not reasonably be place to fill a necessary role. However, most of these characters are drawn from obscure sources and are based on very limited information, so the overwhelming majority of the resulting characterization is my own. Priam is one such character, appearing in a single canon source: the comic Boba Fett: Overkill, for a handful of panels, in which she was identified only by rank.
Captain Kelsen, Lieutenant Jaretts, and Lieutenant Calthame, and generally all other lesser bridge officers identified in the work are original characters. I have chosen to use family name identification as the primary means for all such characters, fitting with common military protocol.
I have invented the concept of 'standing the flag' based on a limited understanding of how Imperial fleets are commanded at this level. Canon establishes that in many circumstances it was common for the captain of a flagship to take command when the admiral of a fleet was indisposed. The Byss Defense Fleet is large enough, however, that it contains many admirals who would be superseded by such an arrangement Moreover the flagship, Eclipse II, being subject to Palpatine's whims, would often be absent. The resultant mechanism I have invented is that the flag rotates through a series of admirals depending on who is on duty at the time.
The Sovereign-class dreadnaughts, introduced in the story here, are canonical, though much information about the ships is rather vague in note. The names are taken from the Dark Empire Sourcebook, but the status of the individual vessels and other information is my invention.