„Commander Shan we have conformation from rendelli. They have the capabilities to repair our ship within a few weeks." Bastila nodded thoughtfully, they still had no clue how and why their cloak had failed. She felt bad, even though she knew it probably wasn't her fault she still felt bad about the ship being damaged under her command. At least the cloak of the other MC destroyers hadn't failed and they were able to escape unscathed. "Leaving hyperspace now" the navigations officer reported as they jumped right into a debris field. Bastila had flashbacks from dantoine, this time however the battle wasn't yet over and turbo lasers lit up the space above the planet. A gigantic Sith fleet engaged the crumbling forces of the rendelli defense force. With the Sith advancing across the whole galaxy the republic had had no choice but to weaken some of their essential defense forces, to account for the dozens of new fronts and attack runs the Sith opened every day. This however left essential shipyards like rendelli less defended then would have been necessary. "Commander Shan" she was contacted by Admiral Scaruf, who was leading the defense fleet. "You need to get your ship out of here it is uncloaked and will be slaughtered within minutes if its being targeted." Bastila thought through her options but she had to realize the admiral was right. The MC destroyers' biggest advantage was its cloaking capability, for that reason it wasn't adequately armed to fight without. Additionally, only five of her torpedo tubes and one of the laser cannons worked. "Fire all working torpedo tubes and then jump to hyperspace again" she ordered, "we can't do anything else here. Have the MC three and seven stay here however. They are to inflict as much damage as possible but they need to retreat, when being engaged or damaged otherwise. We can't have an MC class destroyer fall into the hands of the enemy." She finished as the vibrations of the five torpedo launches finished. They still witnessed the torpedoes destroying a corvette and another one damaging a destroyer before they jumped to hyperspace again.
Aboard his flagship Admiral Garet was notified of the arrival and then the escape of the MC four. "There will still be at least two other cloaked ships. Have the gunner fire a pattern at the location the damaged ship entered and left. 400 meters by 400 meters a shot at every corner and at the middle, in a radius of 200 kilometers. The admiral was surprised himself when one of the turbo laser salvos connected with something. "All turbo laser batteries fire at that location and have green and blue squadron break off their attack run on that cruiser to assist in hunting the cloaked ships." Now having an idea of where their enemy was the gunners mercilessly sprayed at his suspected location. Several of the shots connected finally rendering the cloaking device useless as its energy had to be converted to the shields to make sure the ship wasn't torn apart. The crew aboard the imperial ship cheered now focusing every turbo laser to make short work of the enemy that had destroyed two of their ships over Yavin.
The commander of the MC seven pleaded with his colleague of the MC four to stay in the system and assist them but the other ship jumped to avoid being captured and examined by imperial engineers. The shields failed within minutes of the ship being uncloaked since they weren't meant to block such brutal fire power. The first hits only impacted on the hull and even after penetrating it they only hit the crew quarters at first, not causing many problems to the ship itself. Until one marauder fighter shot launched an anti-ship missile that hit the nose of the ship right on. The explosive charge did what it was supposed to do and ripped a huge hole into the front of the ship, destroying the torpedo tubes and killing all gunner including the ones operating the laser cannons. The commander of the ship used the comm, which was one of the last working systems luckily" to transmit his defeat not wanting to sacrifice his remaining soldiers for a battle already lost. His ship was only the first one to surrender but many realized the futility of their struggled and tried to retreat or admitted defeat as well shutting down their weapon system, glad they had been allowed to surrender. No soldier was to keen on dying a heroic death in a system that was lost anyways.
The situation wasn't far less chaotic then on rendelli but here they weren't attacked. The senate and the jedi council had conversed for hours contemplating what to do now that rendelli had been lost. Bastila joined them via hologram since she was still several days away from coruscant. "Revan will probably press negotiations, now that he has two important victories secured his position is much stronger than before." Said one senator, his opinion was approved of with several nods from all sides. "We should enter negotiations anyways" the new grand master Lonna Vash claimed. "We not only promised this to knight Shan after her return to the republic but its also the best moment. We need to hope on the publics support to at least negotiate seize fires and non-combat zones to protect the citizens of the republic and empire alike." "We could extend the offer for negotiations first if we wanted to, it would make us look better in the eyes of the public." One senator argued but he was immediately shut down by several of his colleagues. "We can't do that; it will look like we have taken a serious beating and are backing down now." Which they had Bastila thought to herself but she didn't say it out loud because it was true that offering negotiations so shortly after a defeat would compromise their political position.
The emperor was informed the next day that he had been taken up on his offer for negotiation just as he had expected. His offer to host the negotiations aboard the devastator was of cause not accepted. The senate was even more enraged when he publicly proposed to hold them aboard the star forge, not only conforming its existence but ensuring further uncertainty in the republic forces and outright panic in many parts of the civilian population who didn't under what exactly the star forge was. This led to even greater speculations about its power than it actually had, which wasn't easy in the first place as it indeed could pump out a laughable amount of ships within days. It was finally decided that the empire as well as republic would send a request to the hapans to hold negotiations on their neutral ground.
"I don't like this" said Bastila to the council, still on board the battered MC 4 which had now been redirected to Hapan space "the hapans wouldn't be able to stop an imperial invasion of their space if they wanted to and the Hapan-cluster is located far within the empire. It would take days for any republic reinforcements to fight themselves through to us if Revan decides he doesn't like our faces. Master Vash laughed firstly I do think he doesn't dislike your face since he requested your presence and I don't believe he allows another armed jedi and her warship at the negotiations out of generosity." Bastila blushed but quickly hid it as the grand Master continued, "also Revan wouldn't invade Hapan space even though he definitely could. He would want to waste the resources for a full-scale attack on them, especially since they are his business partners as much as ours." She finished practically ending the discussion and the conversation itself a few minutes later. Bastila still didn't like this she decided. The MC four was still badly damaged and uncloaked on top of everything and the imperials could take all day taking holo vids and pictures of the outside of the ship. A complete nightmare, even after they managed to capture on of the destroyers at rendelli they didn't need to show them every last part of the ship for free. But these decisions were out of her reach so she went back to the bridge to watch over what little reparations they could make.