The Crimson Republic:

The Battle for Coronet

Three Parts in all

Prologue

The hours seemed to drag on forever. Imperials were coming in by the hundreds from the Starport and shuttle ports. The Rebels fought and fought and tried to hold their own, but it was useless. They battlefield seemed to engulf the whole city. The Rebels gathered around the Med Center, while the Imperials around the Cantina. There was no way the rebels could get even close to the Cantina, not that it would have done any good if they got there. On the way to the Cantina, there was a building that was an easy place for the Imperials to hide. And hide they did. Whenever a Rebel seemed to pass, he would fall to the ground from a shot that had originated from the building.

After about a week of intense fighting, the rebels were ordered to retreat. There was no sense in losing more lives, to a battle they couldn't win. At least not yet.


Part I: Trouble at the Northern Ridge

Three Months Later

A representative of the CR walked to the landing platform just outside of Crimson City. He sat down on the chair near the platform. The seat was made of solid marble and was cold from the lower temps during the night. He sat and waited for a Rebel shuttle to come and take him away. He had been the last person to stay at Crimson City. Maybe it was from a slight strand of hope that something might happen to the Imperials in Coronet. He began to hear a noise from above. He looked up and saw a shuttle making its final approach into the Shuttle Port. When the shuttle landed, the door opened A Bothan came out of the shuttle.

"Thank you for coming on such sort notice." The representative gave the Bothan a bow.

"It is no problem. Besides, you're wanted for meeting tomorrow morning."

The Bothan escorted him into the shuttle and he took a seat toward the front. The representative looked to the front of the shuttle and saw two humans, one male and one female, and a droid controlling the ship. He knew that these must be the best flight crew that was available, considering how important he was. This put him at ease they started to take off. He looked out the window to take a last look at Crimson City, knowing that at these times, he might not make it back alive, or in a raid of Imperials, the city might be destroyed.

Once they were in the air, he began to dose off, as he was very tired, making final preparations before he had left. They flew for about an hour, when the Bothan came up to him and tapped him on the shoulder.

"I'm sorry to wake you, but we'll be reaching our destination shortly." The representative nodded towards the Bothan. He glanced out the window and looked at the pristine mountains that covered the earth. All of them were covered with fresh snow. He looked off into the distance more and saw a couple ships coming towards them. He wondered who they would be but shrugged it off, considering they were so close to the Rebel base, nothing to dangerous would be around. Although, now he couldn't keep his mind off all the stories he had heard of shuttles being shot down on there way to different destinations on Corellia. He was surprised nothing like that had happened.

He looked back out the window and noticed the ships getting larger. It looked like they were coming right towards them. He studied them a little harder and his worst fears came true. It was three Tie Fighters.

He could hear the male and female swearing in the front of the shuttle. They must have figured out who were their followers. He looked out the window some more and looked at the Tie's. They were an amazing piece of work, those fighters. Very maneuverable, but had no shields, a major weakness. The problem was that the shuttle had no weapons. They would be gone in no time.

"Jaron, you there?" the representative checked his communication device.

"Yeah, I'm here. In a little bit of trouble though"

"We thought you could use a little help." Jaron looked out the window and saw a group of X-wings in the distance. Rogue Squadron. There was not a more beautiful sight.

"You couldn't have come at a better time." Jaron said into his comm. Unit.

In a flash, Rogue Leader gave out commands for the squad. "Rogues five, six, and seven, cover the shuttle, and the rest of you, try to distract the ties." The X-wings broke off, 3 of them, protecting the shuttle, and the rest chasing the Ties. All of a sudden, one of the X-wings took a tie down. And then another, and finally, the last Tie went down. "All Rogues, cover the shuttle. You okay in there Jaron?"

"I'm fine. I owe you big time. Thank you very much."

"No problem. It's what we do."

They got to the Rebel base and landed safely on the landing platform. There were already a large number of CR members, Taser, Til, Teleck, Quisanu, Pakkaccor, Morril, Yohan, Yil, Yan, Imik, Gotep, Dakk, and Korlic, to name a few, waiting there at the platform. They all greeted Jarel with a salute.

"What happened?" Taser asked Jaron as he got off the shuttle.

"I'll tell you all what happened at the CR meeting at 900 hours in the main conference room. You are all dismissed until then."

The group then went over to Rogue Squadron and everyone thanked them for saving their High Councilor. The group then slowly dispersed and all of the members went to their quarters to get some sleep before the meeting tomorrow morning.


BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP. The alarm buzzed loudly and quite annoyingly in Taser's quarters. He looked at the clock and saw that he had about an hour before the meeting. He got up and walked over to his closet. He fingered through his limited number of clothing choices and picked out his nice all black meeting, robe. He went out of his quarters and headed towards the strategy room.

"Give me the daily update" Taser said to one of the officers.

"We are still being engaged by Imperials from the air in Bela Vista and Kor Vela. The forces in those two cities have gone down to 60. Sir, we are also seeing, on radar, some interesting things. Just north of Coronet, the Imperial presence has weakened to 50 due to constant attacks from rogue factions, such as smugglers, meatlumps, and terrorists. I've gone over all of our battle plans and I have found that none would be successful, but then I got to thinking. Our forces might not be enough to take on the Imperials but if we get help from these rogue factions, we might be able to pull it off. So, I entered that in and the computer gave us the edge."

"We can't ally with them. They are still enemies to us and all that the Republic stands for." Taser was disgusted that he had even heard this from a Rebel.

"I can't agree with you more. The thing is, they want the Imperials out and so do we. I feel that this is the only option we have at this time. We might never get another opportunity like this again. I feel we should act now."

Taser looked at his watch and saw that the meeting would be starting soon. "I will bring it up with our high councilor at the meeting, which I must be getting too." They both saluted each other and Taser walked down the hall to the conference room where the meeting would be held.

Taser walked through the double doors and entered the room. Most of the members that were there were looking at a map of Coronet and talking about different battle plans. It looked like that they had already talked to the officer down the hall since they were fighting over whether or not to ally with our enemy to take down both of our enemies. When the members saw that Taser was there, they gave him a military salute. Taser gave them all a military salute.

As soon as the saluting was over, Quisanu approached Taser He looked furious.

"Taser, we can't ally ourselves with the enemy! That goes against everything we have set as our goals!" Quisanu exclaimed.

"Quisanu, I couldn't agree with you more, but it is not necessarily my decision to make. Also, sometimes desperate times demand desperate measures. Now everyone should take their seats because the meeting will be starting soon."

Taser walked over to his seat to the left of the seat that was the head of the table and were Jaron would be sitting. Til was sitting to the right of Jaron's seat.

Jaron walked into the room at about 0855 hours and took his seat. As soon as Jaron had sat down, everyone fell dead silent.

At 0900 the meeting began.

Jaron stood up and pushed his chair a little backwards to address the whole room. "I would like to first talk about the status of our forces; then I will move onto a new opportunity that has popped up and then finally, my shuttle ride here. Before we start, are there any questions?" Jaron looked around the room. No one raised there hand. "No, ok, let's start. Taser, would you please tell us the status of the military."

"I would be glad." Jaron took his seat and Taser got up. He grabbed a remote and pushed a button. The holo-map in the middle of the table flickered and switched views to a map of Corellia. Our military is down to about 85. Right now our forces are spread thin through the mountain regions. We have also spread our forces thin in the other cities of Corellia, such as Kor Vela, Bela Vista and Doaba. Although, these forces in the cities are in hiding and wouldn't be much use in an assault."

"Thank you, Taser. Til, would you like to inform the group on this new opportunity that I was alluding to earlier?"

Taser took his seat and Til stood up. "As a lot of you know, on the Northern edge of Coronet, The Imperial Forces have weakened significantly. Although this will not be for long because we have intercepted a transmission that has asked the Empire for reinforcements to completely hold the planet. While we wouldn't be able to take on what forces are left on the northern ridge, we have noticed that the rogue factions have taken a large interest in taking out the Imperials, so we, the High Council members, are talking about possibly allying ourselves with these rogue factions."

As soon as Til said this, there were mixed reactions. People began whispering to the person next to each other on this. Some agreed with the idea and some disagreed with the idea. Taser raised his hand for it to be silent.


Yohan sat, listening to this proposal that lay in front of the Rebels at this time. He saw Taser's hand and the rest of the room fell silent. While he no clear cut stance on the whole issue, he felt that it would be good to ally with these rogue factions just for the sake of getting these Imperials off of the planet.

He raised his hand to ask a question, "Have we tried to make contact with these Rogue factions yet?"

"I can take this question, if you don't mind Jaron."

"Go right ahead Teleck."

Yohan turned around and saw Teleck get up from his chair.

"We have tried contacting them several times this morning but without much success. As I speak though, we are still trying and I will get a direct page when we have contacted them."

"Thank You Teleck. I would also like you to send for me and the rest of the councilors right away when you get that page."

"No Problem sir."

Teleck sat down and Jaron stood up. He began to talk about his ride the day before. They were all glad that he made it here safely. It would have been a hard blow for the CR if our leader had been killed.

Jaron finished talking about his ride in somewhere around ten minutes. Yohan wasn't paying much attention to it anyway. After he was done talking, they were all released from the meeting and were told to go about on our daily routines. They were all going to be contacted when they were patched through with the Rogue Factions.

So Yohan got up, and went on to his duties.