Author's Note: Sorry for the slight delay with this one! Hopefully all the action will make up for it. Enjoy!
Aboard the Marauder, 2.21 AVY:
"Twenty contacts, my lord," said the lieutenant at the augur station. He glanced at his screen again. "More. They've launched fighters."
Commodore Niran Lepidus looked out through the armorcrys viewport at these new arrivals—white and grey ships, wedge-shaped, with wide control towers and bristling turrets firing a hail of green bolts—and scowled. Graval Prime was supposed to be a rest stop. His ships were undermanned, and the press gangs sent planetside hadn't yet managed to make up the difference.
"Not any kind of vessel I've ever seen before," said the commissar, Grissom, standing with the commodore on the command platform. Behind them, a raised level held more bridge officers, and ahead was Captain Percival's throne, from which he ruled the whole ship. "Not ours. Not Chaos. Not Eldar, Tyranid, or even T'au."
Grissom was an ancient man, visibly sixty with a lifetime extended far beyond that by juvenat treatments. Rumor had it his father had been a veteran of the Macharian Crusade, more than four hundred years in the past, but Lepidus doubted that story—even the Imperium's best medicine could only go so far.
"Yes, commissar, I'm sure you've seen quite a few, in your day," Lepidus said. Then, to the captain: "Bring us broadside. I want macro-cannons firing and fighters in the air. The escorts are to screen against their fighter craft and fire broadsides, but have Furious and Undying Resolve bring their lances to bear. Let's go!"
His fleet—one Exorcist-class grand cruiser, the Marauder, escorted by two Firestorm lance frigates and two Claymore corvettes—was a far cry from the pinnacle of Imperial power, but still a respectable fighting force in its own right, capable of beating back the Chaos raiders and rebel militias that occasionally made trouble around this part of the galaxy. Whether it could take on these twenty strange ships was yet to be determined.
The Marauder made a hard turn to starboard, forcing him to grab hold of a handrail on the command platform. His flagship rumbled beneath his feet as void shields absorbed incoming fire. A handful of readouts switched from green to yellow or red.
"Shield status?" asked Captain Percival, seated in a throne near the front of the bridge.
"Void shields at seventy-five percent and dropping," a servitor said, its voice monotone. Its organic parts comprised a torso, arms, and some fraction of a head, affixed permanently to its nest-like console. When it stirred it was with quick, jerky motions.
The ship was now oriented straight towards Graval Prime, broadside cannons brought to bear. It was still possible to see the enemy vessels through the bridge's side windows.
"Macro-cannons are ready and loaded, sir," reported an officer. That was fast, especially for an undermanned crew; someone down belowdecks had to be driving the indentured workers hard.
Percival glanced at Lepidus.
"Excellent," the commodore said. "Open fire."
Aboard the Steadfast, 2.21 AVY:
Captain Pryde watched shots dissipate against the shields of the enemy battleship, doing not an iota of visible damage. Even the cruisers appeared unharmed. The hope had been that, despite the great size of these alternate vessels, their weapons and defenses would be so flimsy that they folded immediately once they were pitted against the might of the Galactic Empire. Krennic had come to that conclusion. Pryde had had his doubts, which were now being vindicated.
"Intensify our firepower," Krennic ordered, standing beside Pryde near the front of the bridge. "I want every shot targeted against that battleship. If we bring it down, the rest will follow."
"Relaying, sir," said an officer, running his message back to the communications console. Under normal circumstances there would be an actual admiral leading this operation, not a project director like Krennic, but Krennic had not let any of the Galactic Empire's military commanders within sniffing distance of Operation Falcon, and so he was in charge of this first expedition through the portal. Pryde hoped the man would pull through, even though he hadn't so much as commanded a starship.
His handling of the battle looked promising so far. The Imperial fleet was organized into three wedge formations, arranged in turn into a larger wedge—a classic attack pattern, like a fractal triangle, allowing for overlapping firing arcs..
"Sir, the enemy flagship has opened fire," reported an officer. From the sunken control pit he could only see that through his sensors, while Pryde, up top, watched the event as it happened. Flame erupted from the battleship's row of gun barrels; almost immediately afterwards, detonations occurred against the shields of Krennic's Star Destroyers.
"Sir, Terror, Victorious, and Discipline are reporting heavy damage!" another officer announced.
"Full power to particle shields!" Pryde turned to face Krennic, and spoke quietly—lest he discourage the men. "Sir, these are projectile weapons. Our shields are not designed to handle—"
Krennic cut him off. "It will be all right, captain. Keep returning fire."
A shell struck the Steadfast. Unlike ray shields, particle shields were embedded within the hull, and it was usually not easy to see them do their work. Nevertheless, it was clear that this time the shields were overwhelmed; the shot blasted away a section of the ship's dorsal side, roughly above the hangar and just ahead of the superstructure. White panels, sections of pulverized deck, and a cloud of finer debris erupted like a plume of lava from a volcano, some pieces flying swiftly towards the command tower, others scattering into deep space. When the dust cleared there was a ragged crater left behind.
This was his ship, and the alternate humans had the audacity to touch it. Never in Pryde's whole career had he seen such damage dealt with one shot. The Rebels certainly hadn't possessed that kind of firepower, back when they were still a threat.
The command deck trembled underfoot, the vibrations muffled by millions of tons of metal between here and the impact site, and grim reports did not take long to arrive.
"Breaches on twelve decks, sir!"
"Dorsal particle shields are compromised in sections A and C!"
There were another two hits, one after the other at the Steadfast's prow. These blasted off the tip of the Star Destroyer, everything up to a hundred meters, turning the tractor beam and the auxiliary reactor and the forward turbolasers into so much mutilated durasteel.
"Tractor beam projector is disabled, sir!" someone shouted.
"You don't say," muttered Krennic.
Pryde had no time for sarcasm. "Fire all main batteries at that battleship, maximum rate! Take it down before it gets out another volley!"
The hail of shells from the enemy flagship had stopped, though two of the cruisers were still firing smaller broadsides, and two other cruisers maneuvered straight towards the Imperial fleet, apparently intending to use the forward-facing weapons jutting from their prows. Moments later, a beam of light erupted from one of the cruisers and struck a Star Destroyer outside Pryde's field of view.
"What the hell was that?" Krennic asked, glancing around the bridge. "Did any of our ships take damage?"
"Some sort of laser, sir," an officer reported from down below. "Ray shields on the Merciless have blocked it."
Another one fired.
"Heavy damage on the Torment, sir. Its shields are depleted and its reactor is fluctuating."
Krennic folded his arms. "What do you make of this, captain?"
"If we stick around long enough for them to reload, sir, we're going to start losing ships," Pryde said. "I'm surprised we haven't already."
"I'm not sure I'm so pessimistic. Our numbers are superior, and our firepower is still considerable." He raised his voice, signalling to the comms officers that he wanted his next orders broadcast to the whole fleet. "Have all ships close the distance and swarm the enemy! I want us to focus fire on the smaller ships, especially the two with the laser cannons—they'll make easier targets than the battleship."
One of the weapons officers glanced up at Pryde, looking for confirmation.
"You heard the director," the captain said. "Attack the ship that hit Torment."
Fire control crews, sequestered in vast halls elsewhere in the Star Destroyer, would take a few seconds to make the necessary changes. The green turbolaser bolts streaking from either side of the superstructure changed direction well within that time, faster than Pryde had expected. They crashed against the shields of the smaller vessels, just as they had against the battleship's, but already they seemed to be making more headway, the splashes of dissipating energy growing brighter and brighter with each shot.
Then, they were through. The combination of the Steadfast's fire and that of the other Star Destroyers finally overloaded the cruiser's shields, and the turbolaser bolts began detonating against the armored prow, blasting out chunks of metal just as an enemy shell had blasted out a chunk of Pryde's ship. An eye for an eye.
"See, captain?" Krennic said. "We'll wipe them out of the sky soon enough."
Pryde wasn't so sure.
Orbit around Graval Prime, 2.21 AVY:
Luke had his wish: hostile starfighters, dead ahead. There must have been hundreds. He thought he could take them—it would be like hunting womp rats back home at Beggar's Canyon, just line them up and shoot.
"Contacts incoming," Sal radioed. "Prepare to engage."
"Look at the size of those things!" Mara said.
"Radio discipline, Delta One."
Mara was right. It was hard to tell how large they were, without anything to compare them to, but Luke estimated at least thirty meters, which was about three times as long as a TIE Interceptor. They weren't thin and spindly, either; each had a wide, solid fuselage with four stubby wings, the aft pair larger than the forward pair. Guns sprouted from them. He imagined the sort of firepower they could bring to bear, and did not want to bear the brunt of it.
Sal broadcast further instructions: "Squadron Five, engage at will. I want flights to stick together, and attack as packs—looks like we'll need the firepower. Let's go!"
Red laser beams streaked out from the barrels of the lead starfighters' cannons, catching a handful of line TIEs and instantly blasting them to pieces. Squadron Five was unharmed, however. Luke turned the yoke of his craft back and forth, weaving in a sinuous path that would hopefully make him harder to hit. He fired back.
"Beta Two, Beta Three," he told Wes and Murkel, "Do you see that closest group of starfighters? We're going to get on their tails and engage. Stay out of their line of fire!"
"Roger that, Beta One," Murkel said. Wes acknowledged a second later.
They didn't look like they had gun turrets; that was good. If he could only behind the enemy pilots, he could fire on them unopposed, and they surely couldn't be maneuverable enough to escape.
The line of Imperial craft closed the distance. This fight was between roughly eight hundred TIEs and a hundred, maybe a hundred and fifty enemy fighters, though Luke thought he spotted the glimmer of a second wave emerging from the battleship.
Several of the hostiles launched missiles. One sped straight towards Luke, its rocket engine leaving a trail of smoke, but he swerved out of the way just in time—an example of his preternatural foresight, he supposed. Another craft in his squadron wasn't so lucky.
"We've lost Delta Three!" Mara announced over the squadron net. That meant she was now flying alone—Javier had been in Delta Flight, too, and he'd been shot down over Ophidia.
"Beta Three, go cover Delta One," he told Wes. "I'll do alright with one wingman."
"Copy that." Wes banked his spacecraft to the left, out of sight. Luke continued forward, into a torrent of laser and missile fire—the glaring red beams of the enemy cut through space towards him, and it was only by dodging and weaving his TIE that he could steer clear.
He zeroed in on his target, a specific starfighter pinpointed simply because it was closest. It approached at breathtaking speed. When he passed it, he saw a symbol like a double-headed eagle painted on the wings, and thought he could spot a pilot in the cockpit, too. Some poor bastard ready to die for his government, like Luke was. The difference, of course, was that the Empire brought order and peace to the galaxy—despite its brutality, despite its iron authoritarianism—and this Imperium of theirs was mired in backwards superstition.
He looped around, almost blacking out from the g-forces. When he checked his radar display he saw that Murkel had matched the maneuver and was following close behind him. Ahead, the hostile starfighter thundered through the void, larger than most Imperial small craft, and ponderously slow to match its size. Luke had to decelerate to keep from hurtling past it.
"All right, I'm lined up," he radioed. "Let's blast him!"
He and Murkel opened fire, spears of green energy shooting from each wingtip of each TIE. The shots splashed harmlessly against an invisible ellipsoid.
"Damn thing's shielded!" Murkel said.
"Nothing to do but keep shooting. Shields are bound to come down eventually."
The hostile tried to turn. Luke turned with it, matching its movements exactly. He'd been right, his ship was vastly more maneuverable. The enemy's fighters flew like bombers and their bombers probably flew like frigates.
He squeezed the two triggers on the control yoke, firing off another burst. This time, the shields failed—an Interceptor packed twice as much firepower as an ordinary TIE, so he wasn't surprised—and bolts impacted against the hull itself, blasting holes in the metal that glowed for a little while afterwards. Murkel got off a few shots as well, though his aim wasn't quite as good.
Then he scored a hit on the engine. The enemy fighter flared up, veered off to the side, and then disintegrated outright into a ball of flame, sending a loose cone of debris flying forward.
Kill number one. Counting the three Hammura drone-ships he had shot down during his only prior combat mission, over Euripidus, that made four—he needed one more to become an ace. He allowed himself a smile beneath his helmet.
"Nice shooting!" Murkel said.
"Yeah, but there's still hundreds of 'em." He glanced at his radar display. "Including one closing in behind us. Watch out!"
He turned to the right, narrowly avoiding a laser beam that passed meters from his left wing, but Murkel wasn't so lucky. Luke never saw his friend die. He just heard an explosion, and watched debris fly past his ship, and saw that the radar display no longer showed Beta Two.
That just about wiped the smile off his face.
"Bastards," he said, cutting the throttle for a split second. The enemy starfighter, predictably, rushed out in front of him, and he blasted it just as he had the first one. Its shields didn't take as long to fail this time. They'd probably taken a few hits from pieces of Murkel's ship.
He hit the engine, a natural vulnerable spot, but in the process of shooting it Luke also damaged the wing, and that was enough to make it tumble out of control. Nevertheless, it was still flying.
His TIE was going too fast; he overshot the enemy starfighter, and had to circle back around. As he turned he saw a vast dogfight, hundreds and hundreds of fighters engaged in a vicious melee, passing over and around each other like swirling locusts—though he was engaged in a fight of his own, and couldn't fully take everything in.
He found one of the enemy fighters, trailing smoke from the left wing. It was probably the one he'd just damaged, though he couldn't be sure, and he dove towards it and opened fire, trying to target the cockpit.
Its damaged wing came off entirely. The fighter, now completely out of control, promptly slammed into another craft from its side, destroying both in a livid fireball—as Luke skirted the flames, he wondered if that counted as one kill, or two. Either way, he was an ace.
"Beta Three, how's it going over there?" Luke asked, mid-turn and searching for another target. For the moment he could afford to worry about Wes.
"We're doing just fine!" Wes radioed back. "We just shot down one and damaged another. These things are tough, but they fly like bricks."
"Yeah, that's about the truth of it."
"How are you and Murkel doing?"
Luke didn't really want to answer that, but he did. "Murkel's dead."
Wes did not respond, at least not for a few seconds. "He was a good man. Died serving the Empire."
Luke spotted another fighter, diving straight towards him. It launched missiles and he evaded. "Yeah."
Luke didn't care about serving the Empire, at least not beyond a vague sense of duty to law and order. He just wanted to fly. The best part about the job was the friends he made, and the worst part was watching those friends get killed.
He swerved around until he was on the tail of the fighter that had just attacked him. These ships were all too easy to outmaneuver, though TIEs certainly couldn't match their durability or armament. Agility defined the thin line between life and death.
The first few bursts from his laser cannons took out the enemy starfighter's deflector shield, and the next scored holes in the fuselage as it tried to break away from him. Still, it flew, and Luke had to circle around again and make another pass before the fighter finally disintegrated.
Just like hunting womp rats back home. Deadly, heavily armored womp rats.
Aboard the Marauder, 2.21 AVY:
"The void shields of Undying Resolve have failed, sir," reported an officer from the raised deck behind the command throne. He leaned over the railing, garbed in a blue double-breasted tunic, the golden Aquila on his chest gleaming under the bridge lumens. "It is sustaining heavy damage to the hull, and most weapons are offline."
"Have it mount a fighting retreat," Commodore Lepidus ordered. He glanced up at the orderly, then fixed his gaze again on the line of enemy warships thrusting steadily towards him.
"Yes, sir."
He watched the Undying Resolve, his stricken ship. It was almost two kilometers long, larger than any of the newcomers, but their combined fire was about to destroy it regardless. Explosions wracked the hull as it absorbed shot after shot. Flames puffed out in great billowing cumuli, and pieces of titanium and ceramite trailed smoke.
"What do you think they are?" he asked Commissar Grissom. "Xenos? Heretics?"
"They're nothing that's been seen in this segmentum before, I can tell you that," the old man said. "Whatever they are, they have made quite the entrance."
The macro-cannons fired again, sending a rumbling through the ship. Shells tore through the hulls and superstructures of the enemy vessels. It was a scene of carnage, altogether satisfying to watch—the lances hadn't had much of an impact, but kinetics went through their void shields as if they weren't even there.
"Sir! We've taken two of them out!"
Lepidus smiled. He could see that for himself; one of the enemy's wedge-shaped starships was drifting away from the fleet, rendered unrecognizable by the merciless pounding of macro-cannon shells, and another had exploded outright, showering its neighbors with a hail of debris.
"Very good. Captain Percival, keep your cannons firing—we're doing very well against them."
"Aye, sir," Percival replied.
A vast dogfight raged between the two fleets, Imperial Fury-class interceptors engaging their far more numerous opponents, red laser beams and green bolts of light flying freely through space.
"How many fighters do we still have?" Lepidus asked.
"290 fighters launched, 106 in reserve," answered the flight control officer on the elevated deck behind him. "Shall we begin launching Starhawk bombers, too?
"No." He looked over his shoulder." We don't have space superiority yet, they're just going to get shot down. Keep sending up fighters."
"Sir!" said Captain Percival, and he had a feeling it wasn't about the fighters. "The Undying Resolve!"
Lepidus glanced through the armorcrys again, just in time to see the ship detonate.
Aboard the Steadfast, 2.21 AVY:
"Finally," Krennic said, watching as an explosion ripped the enemy cruiser in half. Its prow and stern angled upwards, contorting the ship in the shape of a shallow V. "Let's keep whittling them down. Fire on the remaining frigates!"
An officer relayed his message back to the communications console, some distance aft, while Pryde wondered how to phrase his next words.
"Sir…"
"What?" Krennic regarded him coolly.
"We're taking a pummeling, sir." The captain gestured towards the crew pits on either side, where officers scrambled to attend to the damage the Steadfast had already sustained. "We've lost two Star Destroyers. Six more are critically damaged, including the one we're standing on."
"We might still pull through."
The rumble of an explosion sounded on the left. Another Star Destroyer, taken out of action. Pryde looked that way and saw the ship—probably the Imperial Thunder, but it wasn't as if the Empire painted names on the hulls—veer towards the planet, drawn in by the force of gravity now that its engines were out of operation. Its bridge was shot off entirely and most of the superstructure was gone with it.
"Sir, the Steadfast might be the next ship to go down. We've already lost the entire prow."
Krennic clasped his hands behind him, then looked to the window, then looked to Pryde. He sighed. The enemy ships were close, now; their battleship took up half the window. It had to be at least seven kilometers long, almost half the length of a Super Star Destroyer. Maybe when the Imperial Navy brought a ship like the Executor through the portal, they would have the advantage, but until then they were outmatched.
"All right, captain. We will withdraw." Krennic shouted over his shoulder at the communications officers: "Order the fleet to disengage, and prepare to make the jump to hyperspace!"
Orbit around Graval Prime, 2.21 AVY:
The order to withdraw came just as Luke was pouring laser fire into another enemy fighter.
"Squadron Five, disengage and return to base," said one of the Steadfast's flight controllers. "Repeat, disengage and return to base."
The command frequency had already rerouted to his helmet—Sal was dead, shot down by point defense on the enemy battleship, and that left him, Beta One, as the next in line. He informed the rest of what was left of the squadron, one the fighter he was tailing had exploded into a ball of technicolor fire. Seven kills.
"Listen up, everybody!" he radioed. "I've just been told that we're packing up and returning home. Follow me back to the ship."
"Affirmative, Beta One," said Mara.
"Affirmative," said the other flight lieutenant, Vri Cambran, flying in Gamma One.
It was not too hard to break away from the dogfight. Even regular TIEs were faster and more maneuverable than their opposite numbers, so there was only so much the Imperium could do to pursue them. Luke swung his craft around, checking nearby space for hostile fighters, and then found the Steadfast, at the very tip of the Imperial formation. The ship had taken a real beating; the prow was gone entirely, and even though he was looking from below, a stream of debris and venting gases showed that it had taken a hit to the dorsal side, too.
This battle was a disaster. Squadron Five had lost four Interceptors, with seven remaining, and Luke was now their de facto leader. The loss was only partly mitigated by the fact that they had collectively shot down at least sixteen spacecraft. He didn't know what casualties had been like for the regular TIEs, but he could guess. The clouds of fighters returning to the Star Destroyers looked distinctly thinner than they had setting out.
Aboard the Marauder, 2.21 AVY:
The enemy was running away. Seventeen ships, many of them riddled with holes, pivoted around in front of Lepidus' fleet and left their stricken comrades behind. Blue thrusters flared against the stars.
"I recommend pursuit, commodore," Commissar Grissom said. "Let none escape the Emperor's wrath."
Lepidus nodded. "They have at least a day's journey to reach the Mandeville Point and transit into the Warp. Let's see if we can outrun them. Full speed ahead, Captain Percival!"
"Aye, sir," Percival said. "Navigation, bring us to face the enemy, and engage full thrust. I want chasers firing."
Flashes of laser fire and explosions erupted in the space between fleets, as Fury interceptors caught a handful of the enemy's strange dumbbell-shaped craft. On the whole, though, the hostile starfighters were faster than the interceptors pursuing them, and they made it back to their fleeing motherships. Over on the Imperial side the three remaining escorts matched pace with the Grand Cruiser. Their forward-facing weapons were minimal—just a handful of small macro-cannon turrets—but they kept the pressure on, lobbing enough shells to wear down the enemy's void shields.
Then the ships started disappearing. The first one streaked into the distance at an impossible speed, and vanished without a trace—followed by a second, and a third, until all of them were gone. Each made a muffled thump as it tore through realspace, in a Warp transit like none he had ever seen. All that remained were the three burning vessels, shattered and broken by macrocannon fire, which drifted aimlessly through orbital space.
"That's impossible," he said, glancing at Grissom. "The Mandeville Point…"
The commissar did not reply. Lepidus stepped forward towards the edge of the command platform, gripped the railing, and gazed uncomprehendingly at the emptiness where a fleet had been.
Author's Note: Tune in next time, for the Sisters of Battle and Emperor Palpatine! Note that Chapter 9 might be two weeks out, as I'm pretty busy with homework and other writing projects this weekend. I'll have it posted as soon as I can.
