FORTUNATE SUN

"Evil, meet my sword! Sword, meet evil!" - Sector Ranger Moosc

The First Order's initial blitz of the Corellian Sector could hardly have been more successful. Overwhelming the undermanned defenses at Govia, Keral, Phemis, Goorla, and Talfaglio, the First Order's fleets quickly began laying siege to planets all across the Corellian heartland. Despite local efforts to bolster the sector's garrisons throughout the war, the offensive campaigns in the galactic east had left Corellia and her neighbors short on personnel and resources. Corellian Sector military assets were a mixed bag at the start of the campaign. Under-strength veteran units sent home for replenishment found themselves fighting alongside fully manned but green units that had yet to be rotated to the front lines, while experienced but exhausted officers butted heads with untested academy graduates and inexperienced desk warriors. Admiral Tendra Alder, the initial commanding officer of the Corellian Sector's space defenses, had zero experience with leading a sector-scale war effort and had only recently been promoted from a logistics position. She was, however, willing to listen to her more experienced subordinates and delegate the ground war to the seasoned General Hadrian Colton, a protege of the decorated General Bannon.

In contrast, the First Order fleets that attacked the Corellian Sector were almost entirely composed of experienced troops led by veterans of the New Republic campaigns. Despite the defeat at the Battle of Seury, the Shu triplets were still a force to be reckoned with, having won a number of victories in the galactic north and west. Kylo Ren himself would also be lending his sword to the Corellian Campaign. The veteran legions assigned to the invasion were motivated, disciplined, and freshly rotated out of R&R on Coruscant.

In the opening phases of the campaign, the Corellian Sector had little hope of reinforcement. The nearest Corellian Navy reinforcements were weeks away and the forces assigned to the Korriban Campaign were at least a month out. The Duros Navy was tied up trying to break through enemy fleets at New Plympto and Corfai. To tighten up defenses, Alder pulled all available forces back from the outer sector to bunker down at Altawar, Vasar, Aurea, and the Corellian System, ordering Corellian Sector forces to hold just long enough to evacuate civilians and critical materiel before retreating to their assigned fallback positions. Results were mixed. Experienced units like the 2nd Corellian Army Group and Carrier Group 8 were generally able to withdraw in good order. The freshly mustered 9th Army Group had been trained to a lower standard than pre-war formations, receiving a training regimen only 2/3 the length of the original Corellian Expeditionary Force. Such deficiencies in experience and training had disastrous effects, leading half of the 9th to rout in disarray. It took the intervention of Colton's 4th Army Group to successfully save the remaining half of the 9th during the evacuation of Truuzdann.

The initial naval battles of the Corellian Campaign also looked increasingly grim. Corellia's pre-war MCs, all assigned to guarding the home front, were too obsolete to survive a slugging match with the First Order's modern Star Destroyers. While they may have been able to hold their own by playing keep-away with long-range carrier strikes, the defensive nature of the Corellian Campaign and the tightening noose around the sector left them with fewer and fewer places to run. As the sector's defenders fell back to positions around Corellia and adjacent systems, the MCs found themselves with their backs to the proverbial wall, forced to hold a battle line as civilians evacuated behind them. The MCs landed some telling blows on the First Order's capital ships, but even the likes of Thrawn and Ackbar would have deemed the survival of the old Mon Cal ships impossible.

Rather than attempt the impossible task of stopping the entire First Order fleet dead in its tracks, Alder and Colton focused on delaying the enemy as Treaty reinforcements trickled into the sector, hoping to buy time and bleed the foe as savagely as possible until the fleets sent to hit Korriban returned home. At Altawar, Corragut militias and Corellian Marines held the line amid the ruins of the planet's main spaceport and surface-to-orbit batteries until the last barricade fell, then scattered into the wilderness to continue the fight as guerrillas. On Keral III, the First Order's 410th Legion was abruptly annihilated when local resistance fighters drove a warship-grade proton welcoming package right up to the gates of the legion's base camp. On beautiful Aurea, Treaty personnel enjoying R&R were forced to return to combat ahead of schedule. Luxury resorts became makeshift field hospitals and command posts as gold sands ran red with blood. At Vasar, Alder's fleet was nearly destroyed by the combined might of a Tyrant-class dreadnought and the star dragon Gamaliel. Colton and his 133rd Royal Marine Division held the line at Vasar's largest spaceport to ensure the civilians and remaining elements of the 4th Army Group could board evacuation transports. Facing overwhelming numbers and enemy aerospace supremacy, the 133rd dug in to make its final stand, annihilating wave after wave of enemy armor, destroying so much First Order hardware that Shu Cao was forced to order an orbital strike on his own ground forces' front line. Even as the heavens rained wrath down on his men, Colton continued barking out orders and encouragement until one last blast finally silenced surface-to-orbit comms. But he had held out long enough. Long enough to make sure the rest of his men would live to fight on their home soil. As Star Destroyers began to darken Corellia's skies, her stalwart defenders prepared to mount a desperate stand.

THE GUNS OF THE PATRIOTS

"Making the mother of all omelettes here, Garm! Can't fret over every egg!" - Thrackan Sal-Solo

In the opening phases of the invasion of Corellia, the First Order designated a number of aerospace corridors through which the bulk of the ground forces' supplies and personnel would be funneled. Due to the density of anti-air defenses set up across the planet and the campaign's strict timetable, it would be impossible to fully suppress all of Corellia's anti-air defenses or achieve undisputed air supremacy before Treaty reinforcements arrived. The first enemy forces to land on Corellia did so on Coronet City via Aerospace Corridor Alpha, aiming for a decapitating strike to leave the rest of the planet reeling and leaderless. As FOSF sabotaged Coronet City's shield generators, overwhelming swarms of strike fighters and bombers commenced SEAD operations. Troop transports followed shortly after, fat-bellied hulks depositing companies of troops right at the doorstep of the Governmental Sector. FO vanguard forces also encountered heavy local resistance around the ancient Coronet Space Center heritage site, the First Contact Memorial, upper east Emerald, the Jedi Enclave in lower Gridiron, and the Corellian Naval HQ complex. Accompanying the planetary landings and orbital bombardments were propaganda broadcasts by none other than Thrackan Sal-Solo, who entreated the Corellian people to rise up against the Treaty and help Corellia take her place in the sun as a leading world of the First Order. Long thought missing after the fall of the old Empire, Sal-Solo's return was a shock to many who still remembered the Age of Rebellion. Despite his buckets of charisma, however, Sal-Solo's talk of independence, patriotism, Corellian greatness, and restoring the economy obviously rang hollow this time. After all, his first act upon coming out of hiding was to raze his homeworld at the head of a First Order army. Despite all this, Sal-Solo never did quite grasp the irony of executing captured Corellian personnel and openly serving as an apparatchik of an opposing state. He seemed to genuinely believe he was leading a revolution and those who opposed him were counter-revolutionary traitors. Naturally, the local response was something along the lines of a rifle behind every blade of grass and "Hippity-hoppity, get off my property."

As Coronet's GovSec burned, a First Order airstrike leveled the west wing of the Parliament Building, killing Planetary Governor Thane, numerous Corellian Sector representatives, and a number of senior Corellian Marine Corps officers. With the planet's official commander-in-chief dead and the local chain of command in disarray, Garm Bel Iblis rallied what troops he could and took charge of the situation, attempting to restore order to the defense of the district. He didn't have much to work with: the badly mauled 109th Marine Division, elements of the rookie 37th Armored Division, and various rear-echelon personnel who had been forced to trade their pens for rifles. The First Order had landed two full-strength armored divisions with additional units already making planetfall.

Despite the massive numerical disparity, the 109th and 37th remained determined to defend their homeland. Assisting them was a ragtag assortment of civilian militias united under the banner of Aeron Malo, a local construction foreman and retired Marine. With personal firearms, battlefield salvage, and repurposed civilian demolitions equipment, Malo's Minutemen proved to be invaluable in fortifying GovSec against the incoming tide. Marines and Minutemen manned improvised barricades and hastily reinforced key buildings to serve as strongpoints while the 37th's crews concealed their vehicles in the rubble. With their knowledge of the streets, Corellian tank-hunter teams hammered the First Order's 900th Armored, leaving the outer GovSec strewn with the ruins of dozens of walkers. A group of Minutemen managed to lure multiple stormtrooper platoons into the wrecked Diamond Park Shopping Center before collapsing the building right on top of them. The Corellians made good use of their home-field advantage, but their limited supply of anti-air weaponry and lack of artillery support ultimately forced them to slowly pull back towards Parliament as FO CAS and artillery bombarded their positions with near-impunity over the following week. A few squadrons of NJO pilots attempted to hold off the First Order's air support to help evacuate civilians to the nearest evacuation site but heavy casualties and the loss of local fuel supplies quickly left the Jedi grounded. On the seventh day of the siege, Thrackan Sal-Solo led the main push towards Parliament from the command deck of his personal AT-MC.

Against the First Order's superheavy assets, even the 37th couldn't do much, especially with their depleted ammo and fuel supplies. Sal-Solo was not a particularly gifted tactician. Indeed, most of his time in military service had been spent at desk positions. But with sheer numbers on his side, he didn't need tactical acumen to push the Corellians all the way back to the roof of the Parliament Building. Unfortunately for Thrackan Sal-Solo, he had fucked with the wrong senator. Despite his age, Garm Bel Iblis was still spry enough to throw a few punches. He'd played college ball in his youth and could have gone pro if he hadn't joined the military. He wasn't one of those new-age Gatalentan pansies. He was a pioneer, an explorer, a throwback. A Rebel. As Sal-Solo's Death Trooper bodyguard fought it out with the Corellians, Bel Iblis tackled Sal-Solo off the Parliament roof onto a lower balcony. Two relics of the last war prepared to duke it out to decide the fate of their homeworld in this new war. Neither was willing to back down. But even with his advantages over the ex-Imperial bureaucrat, Bel Iblis was feeling his age. He was nowhere near as fit as he had been during the Rebellion era, and even back then, he had already been a bit long in the tooth. What began as an animated contest of liberty devolved into a messy, desperate slobberknocker between two old men long past their prime, injecting combat stims and trading clumsy, drunken punches, each one prepared to give every last drop of blood and sweat he had to prevail. Bones broke, blood spilled, muscles tore, but still they fought on. These sons of liberty would give their lives, not for honor, but for Corellia. But eventually, blinded in one eye and bleeding from a scalp wound, Bel Iblis ended the fight with a shot heard 'round the world, putting Thrackan Sal-Solo down one last time by kicking him off the balcony to the streets below.

Initially, it seemed as if Sal-Solo would die with the last laugh as more FO troops poured into the government district. Then Bel Iblis' commlink flared to life with new voices. Horton Salm, Edor Crespin, Jean-Victor Serrat, and other familiar New Republic voices called out to the Corellian ground forces. From the ashes of the New Republic heartland, Cursus Honorum and her fleet had arrived. Just when additional stormtrooper reinforcements threatened to overwhelm the last Marines and Minutemen on the Parliament rooftop, dropships arrived carrying fresh troops from the Aradian Phalangites, Coruscant's Cohortes Urbanae, and the Voltigeurs d'Avoir. For the first time since the secession, Corellian and New Republic starfighters flew side by side past Coronet's Statue of Victory. By itself, the New Republic fleet wouldn't be enough to turn the tide across the Corellian System, but it had nevertheless turned certain doom into a stalemate.

As ex-NR reinforcements made planetfall, Coronet City's defenders rallied, holding firm and even occasionally pushing back the tide. At the Jedi Enclave, a stubborn defense led by the freshly knighted Sir Giles Gamoran held off multiple assaults by the Knights of Ren over the following week with the assistance of airstrikes from Horton Salm's Champion, Guardian, and Warden Squadrons. Using the lessons passed on by Katarn and the NJO's senior frontliners, Gamoran and the NJO's graduating padawan class bled the Knights of Ren and their Sith allies heavily by retreating into the labyrinthine streets of the Gridiron district, forcing the enemy to scatter then destroying those forces piecemeal by hammering them with every single piece of ordnance they had on hand or on call. Val Valac, one of Kylo Ren's chosen Oathbreakers, put together a headhunter force to try and assassinate Gamoran, only to meet a messy end when a padawan running forward air control duties called a squadron's worth of proton torpedoes directly on Valac's team as it passed the old planetary stock exchange building. And then, as vanguard elements from other Treaty forces began to trickle in, the stalemate at Corellia slowly began to tilt against the First Order. Destroyers and light cruisers from the Duros Home Fleet were the first to punch through into the Corellian System, followed three days later by the Alaris Prime Expeditionary Fleet and five days later by the Hapans' 9th Fleet and the Givin 3rd Polynomial. Eight days after Cursus Honorum's arrival, the first of the Sith Worlds task force returned home, arriving first at Nubla then steamrolling through the lighter task forces along the First Order's flank. The First Order's invasion fleet had run out of time.

MEN OF WEALTH AND TASTE

"Career criminals, my ass!" - CorSec Sgt. "Bulldozer" Castigon

If anyone in the criminal underworld wanted a wild card, everyone would immediately point to the immortal Hondo Ohnaka. Infamous for his constant backstabbing, double-dealing, and team-switching, Ohnaka was probably the least trustworthy person in the galaxy besides the Hutts and Bothans. It was unsurprising, then, that the Ohnaka Gang profited greatly from selling its services to both sides of the war despite publicly claiming to be part of the Smugglers' Alliance, an organization that otherwise staunchly opposed the First Order. Initially, the leaders of the Smugglers' Alliance were willing to tolerate Ohnaka's double-dealing as long as he offered better deals to the First Order's enemies and kept his FO transactions small-scale. Unfortunately for them, Ohnaka was never the type to make small-time deals.

At some point during the Corellian Campaign, the First Order approached Ohnaka with a deal he wouldn't refuse: in exchange for the priceless Lost Stars of Nallastia, all he had to do was steal a set of Corellian Treaty code books and cipher devices, thereby compromising the communications of the Corellian Navy. With his charisma and skills, the theft was a simple affair. Drug a colonel here, bribe an MP there, "gently persuade" some lieutenants who owed him some hefty gambling debts. Things went smoothly for Hondo Ohnaka, as things always did. All he had to do now was hand the goods off to a Zann Consortium contact on Soronia.

Unfortunately for Ohnaka, the whole operation turned out to be a setup. What he found on Soronia was a squad of heavily armed sector rangers disguised as Consortium soldati. The ensuing shootout was fierce. Nobody ever expected the Ohnaka Gang to go quietly into that good night. But this time, he wasn't dealing with the average sting operation. As the Ohnaka Gang powered up its starships to make a hasty escape, the second phase of the trap was sprung. A flotilla of CorSec destroyers and patrol boats entered the system backed up by Wild Karrde, Errant Venture, Youthful Arcadia, Lady Luck, and a pair of old CorSec CC-7700 frigates. With their gravity well projectors active, the CC-7700s made hyperspace escapes impossible.

To Hondo Ohnaka, the events of this fateful day would have seemed like a 24-carat run of bad luck. But the truth is that the game was rigged from the start. As it turns out, when you play sabacc with Talon Karrde, you're playing against a stacked deck. From the moment he'd signed on with the Smugglers' Alliance, Ohnaka had been under constant observation, his comms wire-tapped, his transactions constantly recorded, and his gang infiltrated by agents employed by Karrde and Calrissian. And all the while, every bit of evidence was passed along to CorSec and Corellia's Office of Naval Intelligence. And of course, Ohnaka's contacts in this deal had been intercepted and replaced by Sector Rangers en route to the rendezvous. Now, with nowhere left to run and his gang dead or in custody, there was one last loose end. Under the light of a blue moon, Lando Calrissian faced off against Hondo Ohnaka in a quick-draw showdown. Ohnaka had fast hands, but Calrissian was quicker by two pulls of the trigger. Hondo Ohnaka fell that day, shot twice through the heart. Then, just to be absolutely sure, Booster Terrik double-tapped Ohnaka again. And that was that, or so the legends say.

ANGEL ZERO

The first elements of the Sith Worlds task force to reach the Corellian System were the Topgunners and other squadrons stationed aboard the supercarrier Constitution. Assigned to hit Aerospace Corridor Gamma, Constitution's squadrons joined the air war for Corellia's southern continent, taking the First Order's fighter screens head-on, with Jedi Knight Valin Horn leading the charge in the Angel Zero prototype. In the thickest part of the fighting, the Topgunners wiped out the newly rebuilt Titan Squadron, leading to the deaths of infamous aces "Ohm," "Highmoon," "Messer," "Gable," "Pharaoh," "Sirocco," and Baron Ash Shimar himself, albeit at the cost of nine pilots and severe damage to the Angel Zero.

In low orbit above the city of Bela Vistal, the Tyrant-class dreadnought Morningstar protected Corridor Gamma. From its secure command deck, General Shu Fei oversaw the 6th Army Group's attempt to take the Malal Mountains, which where the Corellians had dug in to protect a number of missile bases, several satellite arrays, and a key aerospace command center complex. Carrying state-of-the-art superheavy guns and modern fire control systems, the Morningstar blasted ship after ship out of the void, its monstrously powerful shields proof against nearly everything the Treaty and New Republic could throw at it. Remembering an old Rogue Squadron trick from the Galactic Civil War, Horn hastily formulated a plan, calling on every warship and starfighter attacking Corridor Gamma to link to his targeting computer. Fighting through the mental agony of his starfighter's overburdened COFFIN System, Horn had the combined Treaty and NR fleets hit the Morningstar with a coordinated time-on-target alpha strike, overloading the beast's shields and giving allied strike fighter wings an opening to follow up with another torpedo volley. The dreadnought's withering anti-air fire slaughtered the Corellian and NR fighters, but enough torpedoes made it through the gunfire to breach the Morningstar's port-side armor and cause severe internal damage. But still the dreadnought continued to fight, gutting the Duros battleship Rrudobar. As the Morningstar's shields began to flicker back to life, Horn pushed through, hoping to end the fight with one last gambit.

Even heavily damaged and falling to pieces, the Angel Zero prototype still had all of its weapons. Horn kept the starfighter's turbolasers firing on overcharge, even as the craft overheated and shook itself apart around him, planting shot after shot into the Tyrant. Pushing the Angel Zero's experimental reactor into critical, Horn sent one final blast into a hull breach near Morningstar's engines before ejecting. Both ships detonated simultaneously in a brilliant explosion. For a few moments, a pair of binary stars blazed with blinding light in the skies above Corellia's northern hemisphere, each one a miniaturized, white reflection of the Fortunate Sun. Injured from the air battle and an ejection under fire, Horn would be incapacitated for the rest of the Corellian Campaign. Nevertheless, he left a lasting impression. By destroying the flagship defending Aerospace Corridor Gamma, Horn had given allied naval assets the opportunity they needed to land reinforcements and bombard the 6th Army Group into dust.

THE LION AND THE DRAGON

The battle for Aerospace Corridor Beta was particularly hard-fought. While most Knights of Ren had been sent to Corridor Alpha, their captain and most of his chosen retinue deployed here alongside the black wyrm Gamaliel to raze the southern continent's heartlands and industrial centers. Wealth, glory, and plunder from the New Republic's fall had changed Kylo Ren, imbuing him with monstrous gifts and garbing him in the hardy mail of old Sith princes. A silver crown and gleaming death mask marked his ascension from the ranks of mere Dark Jedi and his coming lordship, while his blade burned ever more fiercely with the light of dying stars. Kylo Ren was no normal man, but a storm approaching. Around him gathered Oathbreakers, fallen kings, and sorcerers who had themselves become swollen by the unnatural might of their dark masters, a black company of horsemen who brought death, strife, and plague in their wake.

Under Kylo Ren, the First Order's battle-hardened 66th and 67th Armies smashed into Corellia's green 13th Army and half-strength 15th Army. The 13th put up a spirited defense at the Whitcomb metropolitan zone and Caranthus Plains, but were routed when the Mandalorians of Clan Malthus and Clan Pryde dropped into combat with heavy war droid assets. The 15th Army set up its command post in the city of Belle Mira and dug in along the banks of the Green River, covering the 13th's retreat and destroying critical bridges to delay Kylo Ren's advance. The Mandalorian droidwarriors ignored orders to wait for reinforcements and resupply, choosing to assault the Corellians' positions on their own in pursuit of battlefield glory. Much to the Corellians' confusion, the honor-obsessed Mandalorian clanners then squandered the advantages of their superior training and advanced technology by treating war like ritualized combat. They issued battle challenges on open comms, attempted to engage Corellian armored forces in duels, and staunchly refused to retreat for fear of dishonor. Naturally, the Corellians dared refuse these batchalls and instead burned down the Mandalorian war droids with focused anti-vehicle fire, airstrikes, mines, and artillery, throwing the clan warriors' alien honor code out the proverbial window. This pragmatic approach to warfare did manage to inflict disproportionately high casualties on the First Order's Mandalorian allies, but it was nowhere near enough to hold back the tide or completely overcome the Mandalorian elites' overwhelmingly powerful armor and weaponry.

As the front line buckled at the Green River crossing, salvation came from on high. As the returning Korriban invasion fleets dispersed throughout the Corellian System, transports bearing the elite Corellian 1st Army Group and Kashyyyk 13th Army Group descended with vital reinforcements. While most of these troops made their landings at the Belle Mira Aerospace Command Hub, the bulk of the NJO and Jensaarai assets would drop right into the thick of the action alongside the 25th Royal Highlanders Division and the 99th Kashyyyk Shock Division. The First Order troops were fanatics, but even they could break when their flank and rear were hit by a sudden drop assault force of Jedi, Jensaarai, Highlanders, Ordo clanners, and Wookiees.

The 993rd Legion was the first to fall, routed in mere hours as Kyle Katarn and Wookiee chieftain Gortharr Silverback smashed them in hand-to-hand combat alongside a speartip of armored Wookiee berserkers, all armed to the teeth with power hammers, Ryyk blades, repulsor fists, and disruptors. With the 993rd in retreat, Kylo Ren ordered his cosmo-barbarian auxilia to push back and fill the gap. The Serpent Kings of Thrand were the first into the fray, racing far ahead of the pack in the hopes of earning the lion's share of the kills, only to be blasted off their reptilian mounts and cut to pieces by the Jensaarai and Corellian artillery support. Down went the Red Riders of Zarle the next day, their jeweled breastplates and feathered helms sundered by the Highlanders' punishing gunfire. The last remnants of the Clan Malthus and Clan Hazen toumans entered the fray a kilometer east of the Riders of Zarle, challenging the hated Clan Ordo droidwarriors, but the Ordo forces were fresh and still fully loaded with ammunition, which they proceeded to share until the Malthus and Hazen droidwarriors were reduced to ash. When a coven of Night Sisters attempted to engage the NJO, Kyle Katarn quickly reminded them that bringing an energy bow to an assault cannon fight was a terrible idea. Duchess Solazzi and her household Serennian bodyguards, the Compagnia del Serpente, charged the NJO, eager to take revenge for the death of Duke Solazzi at Korriban, only to find themselves cut off from support as the other First Order auxiliaries were routed or destroyed. The Duchess made one final, desperate charge to try and claim Skywalker's head, only to be shot down by a Wraith Squadron sniper. Then Kylo Ren ordered Gamaliel to take to the field as a last-ditch effort to salvage the crumbling 67th Army front line. The black dragon tore into the Wookiees, Wraiths, and Highlanders, carving great bloody trenches with its claws and breath. Even as the defenders of Belle Mira surged forward to support the orbital speartip, Gamaliel's control over the Force and Sith alchemy rendered most of their blows meaningless as durasteel transmuted to bronze and blaster bolts became harmless puffs of noble gases. However, Gamaliel was not the same threat that it had been during the battle for the Saint's Trail. The wounds that Skywalker and Korr had inflicted upon the beast refused to heal, bleeding the great dragon of much of its strength. It had slowed considerably, its breathing had become labored, and its strikes had become far more sluggish. Skywalker and Korr led the way, Excalibur burning through the monster's scales as Korr used Failnaught to land shot after shot into every opening Skywalker made. As Gamaliel poured more of its focus and energy into staying alive, more of the Corellian Treaty forces' attacks punched through. Tank cannons blasted its wings, vibroblades penetrated its scales, snipers shot out its eyes, and Jedi and Jensaarai lightsabers tore into it from every angle. To the First Order's horror, their fleet-killing monster was ground down until at last, Skywalker held Excalibur high and split Gamaliel in two. The dark dragon of ancient myth roared once more and then fell silent.

Even as Kylo Ren and his Oathbreakers tried to enter the battle and restore order, the sheer press of retreating bodies pushed them back as the psychic backlash of Gamaliel's death washed over the First Order forces. Primal terror gripped the 66th and 67th Armies' frontline troops. The few who could retain some semblance of self-control could do little but attempt a fighting retreat as their lesser comrades and support elements lost their nerve. No amount of field executions could salvage the disaster at Green River. And so, with the last major ground battle for Corellia lost, Kylo Ren quit the field, apocalyptically enraged at being denied the chance to spill more Jedi blood on foot.

MIGHTY WINGS

"Yeehaw! Great balls of fire!" - Lt. Myri Antilles, Wraith Squadron

What had once been seen as a swift, surefire victory by the First Order brass had quickly turned into a very expensive slog. The failure of the opening blitz and the subsequent tide of Treaty support had saved the Corellian Sector from total annihilation. The invasion fleet by this point was dangerously low on both supplies and political favor from the First Order brass back home. The Qliphoth-class battle station Keter was built to support a multi-system blitzkrieg offensive, but even it had its limits, and First Order brass were not exactly eager to leave such an expensive asset in close proximity to the Corellian Treaty's inevitable and rapidly approaching counter-push. When the ground forces' next supply shipment came in, the message was clear. Supreme Leader Snoke had authorized the Keter to send a crate of medals and just enough fuel, ammunition, and spare parts to either prepare one last grand battle on the surface or make a fighting retreat, not both. When Smugglers' Alliance spies decrypted this information and passed it on to allied forces, the battered Corellian Navy home fleets scraped together whatever scant resources they had left to destroy that supply convoy. What followed was one of the most spectacular dogfights in the entire war.

The final battle for Corellia began in crisp, blue, cloudless skies. As a flotilla of Maru-class bulk freighters entered Aerospace Corridor Delta, the Corellian Navy attempted to intercept with its closest assets, a fighter wing from the Constitution. The First Order sent its own interceptors to back up the supply convoy's meager fighter escorts. Then additional carriers on both sides sent in their own fighter wings to reinforce the battle, and before long, a simple convoy raid became one of the biggest starfighter furballs the war had seen yet. Initially, the First Order and Corellian Treaty forces appeared equally matched, trading evenly as starfighter killed starfighter in a back-and-forth furball. The odds tilted in the First Order's favor when nine black riders descended from the stars, slaughtering the Corellian fighter squadrons with experimental weaponry and Force-enhanced prototype systems. Kylo Ren had returned, a dark lord-to-be upon his dark steed, claiming a fearsome tally at the head of the First Order's Nightmare Squadron. In his TIE Suzerain, the Son of Solo seemed untouchable. No sensor could track him, no man could chase him, and no bolt could touch him. The Force bent to his will, clouding his foes' minds and filling them with unnatural fear. An ace like Kylo Ren was beyond the reach of normal pilots. For a moment, it seemed as if the Corellian Treaty would break and retreat.

All that changed with the arrival of a fighter wing from the Corellian carrier Endeavor. The Silver Specter carried in her hangars some of the greatest pilots in the Corellian Treaty: the peerless Rogue Squadron elite, the legendary heroes of Red Flight, the reborn Tierfon Yellow Aces, the unerring eyes of the Spyglasses. But the honor of leading the charge was given to the newly formed Chevalier Squadron. Born from the last space-worthy remnants of Wraith Squadron, the Topgunners, and the last NJO pilots in the sector, thirteen fighters comprised the speartip of Endeavor's carrier wing. Twelve T-90 Raptors formed up behind the newly unveiled T-93v King Raptor. Twelve peers and their king dove into the fireworks, ready to build their kingdom in those shattered skies.

Contrails and energy bolts streaked across the heavens as aces from across the galaxy engaged in a beautiful, seemingly endless waltz above the northern seas. It was a spectacle of terrible, macabre wonder as wreckage and munitions cascaded from the heavens. Two bands of knights tilted in those shattered skies, some flying in defense of their borders and freedom and the others for a galaxy without borders, united under one empire, one vision, one purpose, one Sith. Afterburners redlined, maneuver safeties off, Endeavor's fighter wings tore into the First Order's formations, and as the King Raptor spread its alabaster wings, the tide began to turn. Kylo Ren's defense of the transports began to falter, so hell-bent was he on chasing down Skywalker, even as the latter drew him further and further away from the main objective. More and more First Order craft were ordered to Kylo Ren's side, and fewer and fewer craft remained to protect the Maru freighters bearing their crucial cargo. Rogue Squadron, Red Flight, and the Yellow Aces wasted no time punishing the First Order for Kylo Ren's mistakes, sending thousands of tons of precious war materiel into the waters below. But even as orders came down the line to retreat, even as FOSF and Nightmare Squadron perished around him, Kylo Ren shut out their calls, focused entirely on killing his one final tie to the past. But it was not to be. As Skywalker turned for a head-to-head joust, the two knights loosed an alpha strike at one another, pulling the trigger on every single weapon system they had before desperately pulling into evasive maneuvers. The King Raptor took its punches and kept on flying, even bereft of its port-side wings. The Suzerain came out the worse for wear, losing its shield generator, hyperdrive, and ordnance launchers. Even then, Kylo Ren would have continued the dogfight if not for the late arrival of additional reinforcements from the Royal Hapan Navy and Barpotomous Drebble's mercenary armada. Only then did Kylo Ren see sense and retreat, barely making it into the hangar of the First Order's last surviving carrier as it limped out of the system, moments before the Hapan Queen's flagship could launch its own fighters.

The battle was over. Hundreds of millions were dead, countless billions of credits of infrastructure and materiel had been destroyed, and the ringleaders of the First Order lived to fight another day. A glorious "victory" for the ruins of the once-proud Corellian Sector. But there was no time to mourn or rebuild. The fleets of the Corellian Treaty and New Republic in Exile licked their wounds as best they could and prepared for the next battle. Now, before the First Order could exploit its economic and industrial advantage to replenish its lost fleets, the two nations and their allies had to strike. Cut the head of the beast before it could win a battle of endurance. And so it was that the exhausted survivors of the Corellian Campaign looked coreward and prepared to march for Coruscant.