THE FIRST BATTLE OF DAC
Oh how we cried for those who gave their lives in the cold, heartless void.
—From The Journal of the Whills
Dac Orbit, Outer Rim, 0 ABY
The Imperial Navy's Fourth Oversector Group dropped out of hyperspace with what even William Sheplin could admit had been first-rate astrogation. The entire flotilla was nearly two light-seconds wide, and coordinating a precise hyperspace translation for thousands of warships must have been a nightmare.
According to the Imperial operational timetables, the Fourth was exactly on time, dropping out of hyperspace within ten seconds of their execution date. From the Alliance's perspective, however, only the Devil could have managed to arrange for worse timing.
Hornet and Crimson Groups were on return orbital trajectories, returning to their respective home hangars after their second, and last, live training op. Any surprise they might have had, had they been in their intended positions, was gone, stolen by depressingly accurate sensors mounted on thousands of Imperial warships.
"Skrag," Sheplin swore softly, cursing the fickle nature of Fate. Taking a deep breath, he touched the side of his headset, activating a comlink. "Hornet Leader, this is Crimson Leader, over."
"Hornet Lead here," Wedge Antilles' voice came over the headset with a crackling pop of static. "I assume you've seen our visitors, sir?"
"Seen, registered, and skragged my pants," Sheplin replied, eliciting a dry chuckle from the other side of the comlink. "Turn Hornet Group around, Commander. Keep your heading parallel to my course. . . . I think we've lost our chance to surprise them."
"Acknowledged, Crimson Lead," Wedge responded. "We still might have a surprise or two left for the Imps, sir. Hornet Lead, out."
Sheplin manipulated his tactical plot, inputting a new course change that would have them flip end-for-end and accelerate away from the planet. Finishing plotting his course, he turned to the pilot. "Execute course change," he ordered, simultaneously sending the new course to the rest of Crimson Group via the Group's tac-net.
The auburn-haired pilot with jade-green eyes nodded, her hands caressing the controls of the freighter that had been modified to launch thirty-eight capital-grade torpedoes. Had Sheplin's mind not been preoccupied with the terrible arithmetic of the coming battle, he might have registered that the pilot wasn't overly surprised by the sudden appearance of the Imperial fleet.
The light freighter Arcadia flipped end-for-end, as both Alliance groups matching the maneuver, her compensator groaning from the torment being inflicted on it.
"Sir," a staffer said, saluting Grant. Unlike the majority of staffers on the bridge of the Sword of Anaxes, he was standing on the command deck like Grant. Also unlike any of the staffers, he wore the uniform of the Imperial Stormtrooper Corps. "Lord Vader's compliments, Grand Admiral. My Lord has . . . noticed that you weren't answering his comm hails. He requests that he be immediately informed when the orbital defenses have been swept aside. He is impatient to begin the invasion."
"Is he?" Grant asked. "Why, thank you, Lieutenant. I spend my waking moments wondering what tests Lord Vader's patience."
The Stormtrooper Corps staffer paled. Obviously, he was someone who worked in close proximity of the Dark Lord, and had seen more than a few officers 'permanently' removed for such remarks.
"All ships are reporting cleared for action, sir," a staffer from down in the crew-pit said.
"Very well," Grant said, nodding quickly. Dismissing the Stormtrooper Corps staffer with a gesture, he strode to the tactical plot. The vast field of icons representing warships of His Imperial Majesty's Navy were slowly shifting from green to blue, one-by-one, as ships reported cleared for action.
Two groups of Rebel icons were accelerating from in-system, their relative velocity pitifully low but slowly rising. CIC had marked the larger group as strike-craft, though their acceleration rates were quite low for fighters. The smaller group had been marked as sublight tugs, light freighters, and orbital defense craft. Their acceleration rates were low, as well, though that might have just been from low-grade inertial compensators.
The acceleration rates of the larger Rebel group were low enough that Grant had a sneaking suspicion that they were loaded down with capital-grade torpedoes. Thrawn's strike-craft torpedo platforms had taken Commodore Donnelly and Admiral Fletcher by surprise, but Grant was well-aware of the starfighters' new-found ability, and wouldn't be caught flat-footed like his fellow Naval officers.
Clouds of blips were launching from the blue icons, as thousands of TIE Fighters took to space. But none of them charged for the inbound Rebel groups. Instead, they took up positions among the Fourth's forward picket, tying their tac-nets in with the fleet's missile defense nets.
Grant's powered missile envelope was still half an hour short of the Rebel groups, and he folded his hands behind his back in a patient motion, waiting for the range to drop.
Deep Space, Outer Rim, 0 ABY
Admiral Thrawn waited for the hypercomm with carefully enforced patience.
He stood at the fore of the flag bridge, his hands folded lightly behind his back, staring out at the endless darkness, punctuated only sporadically by pinpricks of stars. The Alliance and Hand fleets were in position, with lines of Hudson Boxes being towed astern by tractor mounts, ready to jump to Dac at a command.
There was no trepidation in his heart. For nearly forty years, Thrawn had fought on behalf of his people—whoever they be. He'd faced evil that belonged in the heart of black holes, had reduced star systems to dying memories, and had witnessed the deaths of billions. Any trepidation that might have been in his heart as a young ensign was long gone, replaced by the cold, steely focus of a warrior ready to do battle.
The holo-emitter hummed as it came to life. A holographic rendition of William Sheplin's head grew to life-sized proportions. "Admiral," the young warrior said gravely. "Grant is in position. We are, at the time of recording this, twenty-five minutes from missile launch. We were caught out of position, and I believe whatever surprise we had is gone." The sapphire-eyed man stared straight at the holo-recorder, a grim smile on his lips. "Don't stop for caf." The message ended, and the hologram of Sheplin froze.
"Flash the fleet," Thrawn ordered, switching the holo-emitter off. "Execute jump orders."
The order was repeated back to Thrawn automatically by a staffer down in the crew-pit, his voice wavering slightly from the tension in it.
HIMS Keton was a full generation behind the curb.
The Imperial Navy's continually aggressive modernization was the byproduct of the Republic Navy's do-or-die situation in the Clone Wars, but had borne more fruit during the era of the New Order than that of the Old. Fruit such as the Immobilizer 418-class heavy cruiser.
The Immobilizer was essentially a stripped-down Vindicator-class, with nearly none of the armament of her heavy cruiser cousin. Her only true selling point had been the four experimental—at the time—gravity well generators laid into her hull.
The experimental class hadn't found much success in the line of battle, being too slow to keep up with the normal heavy-cruisers, and too lightly armored and armed to survive being used in a star destroyer line of battle. But whatever success hadn't been found by most line officers had been belied by the success of an alien commodore named Mitth'raw'nuruodo.
Thrawn's usage of the new class had been nothing short of ingenious—or insane, depending upon his audience's mindset. Ingenious and insane enough to warrant the green-lighting of a heavier hyperspace interdictor. One that could survive in the main line of battle with star destroyers.
In the ensuing building spree of the new Interdictor-class star destroyers, the Immobilizer 418 had found herself simultaneously no longer being produced in any serious numbers and outmoded by the new generation of the far more powerful Interdictors.
Which was how HIMS Keton had found herself relegated to the less than glamorous role of guarding the Fourth Oversector's flank along with eleven other hyperspace interdictors and eight-dozen star destroyers.
Lieutenant Commander Pule sat behind his tactical terminal, watching the waves of pulsed energy sweep across his tactical plot. The sensors were hammering away at empty space, while the gravity well generators created an artificial hyper-limit that would pull any ship that happened to skim through it out of hyperspace.
The boredom was killing him, but the fear that hid in the depths of the boredom was far worse. Fear that the most ingenious military commander in the galaxy's recent memory was going to drop on top of the Keton and reduce on Remiah W. Pule to a cloud of rapidly expanding atoms.
Of course, save for direct intervention of Providence or remarkable stupidity on his comrade's parts, it would be Thrawn who would shortly be a cloud of atoms. Not that that thought did much to assuage the fear that was still hiding in the deepest recesses of his mind.
Fear that was realized a moment later, when a wave of pulsed energy suddenly returned to the sensor dishes. "New contacts, bearing zero-three-nine," he heard himself report in a detached voice as his training took over.
As the CIC, buried in the depths of the Keton, labored feverishly to account for all of the unexpected star destroyer-sized contacts—a full extra sixty-odd contacts, in addition to the twenty-odd expected ones—a quiet corner of Lieutenant Commander Pule's mind reflected that at least it had been Providence that had weighed in on Thrawn's side, instead of stupidity on their side.
Dac Orbit, Outer Rim, 0 ABY
"Approaching our launch point, Crimson Lead," Wedge's voice reported over Sheplin's headset. "In . . . one-six-zero seconds."
Sheplin activated his comlink. "Copy, Hornet Leader." He glanced at his own readouts. The slight differences in their vectors wouldn't be enough to make the launch geometry much more complicated.
If both groups salvoed their torpedoes at the same moment, Hornet Group's salvo would land twelve seconds ahead of Crimson Group's, and while staggering their impacts by twelve seconds didn't sound like that much of a bother, it would be the relative difference between a pair of blaster bolts and a single plasma cannon bolt.
As such, Sheplin had coordinated the launches with what amounted to obsessive care over the last fifteen minutes. Geometry hadn't ever been his favorite subject in secondary school, but the Imperial Naval Academy at Anaxes had drilled the skill into his impressionable sixteen-year-old mind with ruthless energy.
"All right," Sheplin said over Crimson Group's channel, touching the side of his headset to activate the boom-mic. "This is it, boys and girls. Stand by for launch in . . ." he glanced down at the twin timers ticking down, "one-nine-zero seconds."
The improvised squadron leaders began responding with crackling acknowledgments, when the EWO sitting at an improvised electronic warfare station suddenly swore explosively in Huttese. "Bonph kark henaa see Sea!" Switching back to Basic, he reported quickly, "Missile launch! The Imps are firing on us!"
Sheplin very carefully controlled his voice when he responded, exceedingly grateful that the EWO wasn't on either of the Group-wide channels. "Thank you, Lieutenant," he said coolly. "Please refrain from peeling the paint off of the hull when you report, if you would be so kind."
Realizing what he'd done, the EWO nodded. He might have reddened slightly, but the pale pallor of his complexion—understandable, given that something close to five thousand missiles were accelerating on collision courses with both Alliance groups—balanced it out, and Sheplin couldn't tell for certain.
He was slightly surprised that the Imperials had waited as long as they had, and he silently tipped his proverbial cap to the officer who'd ordered the missile launch. The temptation—made all the more tempting from the massive force imbalance—for the Imperial commander would have simply been to fire at the extreme edge of the powered missile envelope, using their greater number of launch tubes to utterly saturate whatever pitiful defenses the two Alliance groups could put up. Instead, the Imperial commander had waited until the Alliance groups had entered his effective missile envelope, and had carefully restrained his follow-up launches, so as not to empty his magazines and overload his fire-control links.
Of course, that restraint also meant that the majority of the Fourth Oversector Group's star destroyers were well within the Alliance's effective missile envelope.
The number of inbound torpedoes obviously meant Grant understood just how dangerous strike-craft and orbital tugs laden with missiles could be. Survival against the five thousand-odd inbound torpedoes was a likelihood that could be measured in single percentages, but Sheplin felt nothing but familiar icy determination taking hold of his mind as they rocketed closer.
He glanced at his readouts again, then touched the side of his headset. "Standby for launch in four-zero seconds."
"Not much time," the auburn-haired pilot commented.
Sheplin turned to his left, to look at the woman who'd just spoken. Something in her voice . . .
He saw the regulation blaster in her hand only a splint instant before plasma flared from its muzzle. Detached panic rippled through his mind, followed by intense, searing pain. Then there was nothing.
Grant's eyes widened perceptibly as the CIC struggled to number the incoming torpedoes. Despite understanding intellectually the capabilities of a strike-fighter as a missile platform, his mind hadn't truly been prepared to accept the idea of just how capable they truly were. Nearly nineteen thousand torpedoes were streaking toward the Fourth Oversector Group, launched by nothing larger than light freighters and strike-craft.
There was no need for orders. Every ship's gunnery compliment had been briefed about the capabilities of the Alliance missile-strike-craft, and orders from a Grand Admiral would only have distracted them from the mission before them.
Instead, he turned to look at the signal officer down in the crew-pit. "Signal from the rearguard?" he questioned. If the strike-craft had launched their birds, he had no doubt that Thrawn was on his way to mousetrap Grant between two walls of missiles.
The staffer shook his head.
The missiles streaking to kill Crimson Group passed the missiles streaking to kill the core ships of the Fourth. They passed within eighty thousand kilometers at their closest approach, and passed by each other in the blink of an eye, their relative velocities beyond sentient comprehension.
The missiles streaking to kill Hornet and Crimson Group passed by those that had been launched by their targets, and came screaming in at the group of frantically evading strike-craft. Decoys, chaff, and signal jamming lit up the void, as the strike-craft, tugs, and light freighters desperately tried to lure their killers away.
As the distance closed, panicked spacers fired plasma cannons at the incoming missiles, as if their shots were even capable of hitting missiles closing at a quarter of the speed of light.
Valentine's Walker stomach lurched as the first of the detonations began rippling around Hornet Group in a never-ending blanket working its way toward her position. She redlined her inertial compensators as she responded to Commander Antilles' shouted order to break, creating as much acceleration as she could on her new vector.
The proton warhead of a capital-grade torpedo exploded less than two thousand meters off of her port S-Foil, lashing at her shields with nuclear fury. They strained to contain the force of the multi-megaton warhead for a brief moment, the shields turning opaque with the strain.
The last thing that Valentine thought about, before the fiery strength of the proton warhead vaporized her shield generator, was the way her brother's eyes had crinkled when he laughed. Then there was nothing.
Eighteen thousand and eighty torpedoes launched from both Crimson and Hornet Groups entered the extreme point-defense range of the Fourth Oversector Group's pickets.
Anti-missile missiles and turbolaser batteries mounted on the picket ships, firing kinetic fragmentation rounds, spoke suddenly. Hundreds of fragmentation rounds, being chased and then passed by the hard-accelerating AMMs, rocketed out of the mouths of their batteries. Hundreds of fragmentation rounds became thousands, as the turbolaser batteries of star destroyers began opening up.
AMMs collided with torpedoes in flashes of light, as the torpedoes—coming in at a relative velocity of .3 c—were turned into rapidly expanding spheres of debris. Stray proton warheads went off as the torpedoes they'd been mounted in were destroyed. Kinetic rounds exploded in carpets of fiery blossoms, peppering the incoming torpedoes with shrapnel, either destroying them outright or simply battering their casings.
Decoys were launched from the pickets and star destroyers, pulling hundreds of missiles away from their targets. EW scramblers on both sides snarled, blinding the sensors of thousands of missiles and ships, overloading them with pulses of energy; heat, radio, light . . .
As the torpedoes began their final approach, the close-in point-defense blaster cannons spoke, lacing the storm of torpedoes with plasma.
Of the original eighteen thousand and eighty torpedoes that had been launched, nearly half were outright destroyed by point-defense fire. Another two-thirds of the survivors were either blinded by EW scramblers, or lured away from their original targets by decoys.
The Imperial Navy's Fourth Oversector Group killed eighty-five percent of the incoming fire . . . but two thousand six hundred and nine torpedoes made it through.
Grant swayed on his feet as over two hundred proton warheads bombarded the shielding of the Sword of Anaxes, the internal artificial gravity flickering dangerously. A moment later, the engines were cut, to preempt a lucky hit on their inertial compensators. If the compensators even flickered for a heartbeat while the ship was under acceleration, the entire crew would be instantly splattered against the bulkheads in a thin, red paste.
Shields strained and armor plating buckled as the proud dreadnought strained to hold herself together under the bombardment. An explosion of light through the bridge's view-ports was the only indicator that their closest consort, Executor, wasn't faring as well.
But through the pounding of two hundred proton warheads, the dreadnought lumbered on. Her port engines were gone, reduced to slag, and her entire dorsal hull was a mass of glowing durasteel, warped and twisted. Atmosphere poured from the gaping holes in her skin like blood from a giant. But still, she lived.
"Report," Grant demanded, knowing that in the bowels of the ship, the captain of the Anaxes was likely demanding the exact same thing. Though Grant's demand was for the condition of the fleet, not of the ship he was on.
There was absolute silence for a moment from the crew-pits. "Dreadnought Divisions One through Three have been effectively destroyed or disabled, sir. Four hundred pickets have been destroyed or disabled, along with one hundred and sixty star destroyers." The staffer who'd reported listened to an earpiece for a moment. "CIC reports that the groups that have fired on us have been destroyed or scattered, sir."
Grant nodded, and wondered if the trap had been sprung, or if this was just the opening move to the deadly dance. His personal comlink chimed, and he dug it out. The bridge lighting flickered for a moment, along with the holographic tactical plot.
He pressed a stud on the comlink. "Grant, go ahead."
"Grand Admiral," a deep, baritone voice said, mechanical breathing heavy in the other comlink's pickup. "Are the planetary defenses destroyed?"
Deep Space, Outer Rim, 0 ABY
Thrawn watched the turbolaser bolts flash through the empty void, crashing into deflector shields with enough pent-up energy to slag cities.
They were taking too long.
If Sheplin had adhered to his launch schedule as he was bound to have done, Thrawn was already ten minutes late. Missile volleys had likely already been exchanged, and Sheplin's lightly-armored command was doubtlessly a collection of broken, dying ships.
Thrawn's ships had rough parity with their current Imperial counterparts, but held their hopefully devastating Hudson Boxes in reserve. They couldn't afford to waste the one-shot missile pods against a rear-guard force.
Patience is the trait of a warrior.
Thrawn turned to the flag bridge's signal officer, down in the crew-pit. "Signal all ships to expedite their actions—we're behind schedule."
Dac Orbit, Outer Rim, 0 ABY
Grant glanced at the tactical plot. "They are, Lord Vader, but I would recommend—"
"Hypercomm from Salamander Force," a signal staffer reported, immediately catching Grant's attention. "They have engaged Thrawn, and have him pinned in position."
"I'm afraid I still have work to do," Grant said dryly into the comlink. "I would recommend against landing right now, Lord Vader. Thrawn's still loose." He cut the channel without waiting for a response.
The hypercomm from the rear-guard Salamander Force was sparse on tactical details, given the bandwidth limitations on FTL communications, but Grant's tactical plot had been updated with the tactical situation the rear-guard was facing.
Grant had detached over five times the number of star destroyers to his rear-guard as should have been required to, theoretically, wipe Thrawn's force from the face of the universe. As it had turned out, Salamander Force had only one-fifth again as many ships as Thrawn.
Damn NavInt, Grant thought bitterly. Always so damned certain that they know what the kark they're talking about.
It wasn't like Thrawn's force strength jumping from twenty star destroyers to around eighty would have much of an effect on the course of the battle. Even if Thrawn had quadrupled his line of battle, he was still outnumbered ten-to-one in star destroyers. Nine-to-one, he reminded himself bitterly. The defenders of Dac had cut the odds down quite a bit, even if they were still stacked heavily against the Chiss admiral.
Still, it was damned annoying that NavInt couldn't find its own winba if it used both hands and a sensor platform.
"Signal to all ships," Grant said, his voice calm and collected, once he'd managed to get his thoughts under control. "Emergency hyperspace jump to Salamander Force's position." His smile became almost hungry.
The Sword of Anaxes turned over on her axis like the lumbering, half-maimed giant she was. The thrust imbalance from her engines forced the helm officers to kill the starboard engines, cutting her acceleration by two-thirds. Still, she'd never been built for speed, and the loss of acceleration was almost inconsequential.
Dac's hyper-limit was larger than most habitable worlds', given its slightly higher-than-average surface gravity, but as large as it was, it hadn't yet caught the massive Fourth Oversector Group like the Alliance's operational plans had hoped it would. As such, there was nothing to stop the Fourth from making a short jump forty light minutes away . . . to where Salamander Force was fighting for its life.
So this is how a good man dies, Grant thought, a touch of painful melancholy in his heart as the Sword of Anaxes rocketed through hyperspace.
Vader seethed with irritation while he stood on the aft port hangar deck, watching Stormtroopers and Army personnel twiddle their thumbs in boredom. They should have been landing by now, damn it, but Grant was still running around like a headless dewback trying to find Thrawn.
But even as the thoughts seared through him, he felt something he had not felt in years. The Dark Side of the Force, ever his servant, suddenly screamed in outrage at the future it was being presented with. Outrage and sudden fear.
Signaling the Death troopers flanking him, Vader strode toward the TIE/AD X1 that looked startlingly out of place among the more primitive TIE/LN Fighters. Once they came out of hyperspace, he would deal with whatever had made the Darkness suddenly recoil in surprise.
Deep Space, Outer Rim, 0 ABY
The ship shuddered underfoot as it emerged from hyperspace, followed closely by nearly six thousand ships. Streaks of light collapsed into stars, stunningly bright as stars are when viewed from deep space.
The tactical plot flickered as it updated, the friendly holographic yellow sphere that had been Dac replaced by a void. Painfully few blue icons were all that was left of the rear-guard force. A small sea of red icons floated beside the remaining blue icons, while smaller red icons marked the missiles rocketing toward the remaining Imperial vessels.
"Sir . . ." a tactical staffer began, confusion in his voice, "something isn't right."
"This is Thrawn, Lieutenant. If something doesn't look right, it's probably because he's got a spare pazaak deck up his sleeve." Grant's voice was appropriately pithy, though he felt his insides tighten in trepidation.
"Aye, sir. But . . . it looks like they're trailing a skrag-ton of debris, sir. CIC thinks they're damaged."
"They've obviously just fought a battle," Grant said, his voice more reproving than dismissive.
"Aye, sir," the staffer acknowledged. "But, sir, every ship class is trailing the exact same amount of debris."
Admiral Thrawn stood on the deck of the Knight, hands clasped behind his back. His mouth was compressed into a flat, merciless line while his eyes blazed. He'd seen the icons on his plot, and he knew that the Fourth Oversector Group had come calling.
He glanced at his own tactical plot again. The Imperial fleet was launching a steady stream of torpedoes, though not enough to concern him overly. Imperial naval doctrine had never been based around accurate long-range missile fire, and, even outnumbering him ten-to-one in capital ships, their fire wasn't going to kill many of his ships.
"Now," he ordered simply, the one, cold syllable cutting through the nervous murmur of staffers.
Grant felt as if his heart had stopped beating for a moment, as he held his breath in. His eyes were wide, as he stared disbelievingly at the tactical plot. Just over one hundred and twenty-five thousand torpedoes were streaking toward the Four Oversector Group.
Have to hand it to him, a very quiet corner of his mind told him, awed by the firepower on display, when Thrawn sets a trap, he sets a karking trap.
There was no way a star destroyer could fire that many torpedoes. No way. The Victory I-class was the only dedicated capital ship-sized torpedo platform the Imperial Navy had that could keep up with a modern fleet, but she only had eighty tubes laid into her hull, and could only cycle fresh torpedoes every forty seconds. And even the Victory I-class had the significant drawback that it would launch every torpedo in its magazine in just fifteen minutes. Even if every ship, including escorts, in Thrawn's force was a Victory I, and had somehow launched all of their torpedoes at once, that would have still left them short compared to the firepower Thrawn had just put into space.
They must have emptied their magazines to do this, he thought, still awed by the sheer amount of firepower entering extreme defensive range. Hell, they probably empty the magazines of a few planets to do this. . . . But it's working, isn't it? he silently added, watching as the point-defense fire from the entire Fourth Oversector Group began eating ineffectually into the massive tide about to crash against them.
"Signal all ships," Grant said, his voice suddenly coming out thick and hoarse. "Emergency jump. Jump now. Jump anywhere. Just jump."
Star destroyers, cruisers, the few remaining dreadnoughts, and all manner of escort ships began vanishing one-by-one into streaks of light as they made unplanned and uncharted hyperspace jumps to escape the onrushing tide of proton warheads. The fighter screen was left behind to face their doom, though a single experimental TIE model made the jump.
Against the first volley, fired by Dac's defenders, the Fourth Oversector Group's torpedo kill rate had been eighty-five percent. Against the second volley, as the Group's ranks continually thinned in a panic-ridden escape, the kill rate was barely even ten percent.
One of the largest battles in the history of the galaxy ended forty-six minutes and twelve seconds after it officially began. The original defenders lost two hundred and six strike-craft, shuttles, orbital tugs, and light freighters; four hundred and twenty-four men and women. Thrawn's force lost four star destroyers, four cruisers, five destroyers, and nine point-defense frigates to the Imperial's opening missile barrage; one hundred and thirty thousand and ninety-eight men and women.
Only a hundred Imperial star destroyers, two dreadnoughts, and their escorts managed to escape the slaughter.
The attackers' losses took twenty-nine hours to tally accurately.
THE END OF PART TWO
A/N
Howdy, folks
I've never left one of these author's notes on this site, and, in retrospect, that's something that I regret. Author's notes are a direct line to the readers, and I regret not talking directly to everyone who's read this story and Crossroads. . . . Cumulatively, Crossroads and The Killing Grounds have been viewed over 32,000 times, and that just blows my mind, so thank you to everyone who's read this story.
I managed to talk my coauthor from Crossroads, Joshua Wolff, into being a part of this, and we're working on Part Three now. I've also talked another author friend into helping with it, since he's interested in this story as well. I hope that the three of us working on the story will increase output, but I won't make any promises that we can't keep.
If you want to help us with this story, as a beta reader, an editor, or if you have any ideas about the story please either leave a review or PM me. I'll try to respond to PMs in a timely manner, but life gets a bit crazy sometimes. Even if you just want to leave a snarky review about how the prose sucks, please do that as well. We need all the help we can get, and every review with useful feedback is golden to us.
Thank you all for reading this long, and thank you all for 32,000 views!
—Joseph