Entry 12: Commander CC-4242 (171 Days ABG)

The final battle of Doan was an intense firefight which culminated in a gigantic conflagration.

Recognizing that the people of Doan were turning against him, Daleshan made a bold, desperate maneuver: He diverted almost all of his remaining forces towards our camp, to destroy our troops. We anticipated he'd locate our hideout and send forces to besiege us, but we never suspected he'd send anything of this size.

After Wait made his report, Kali'sto's first instinct was to protect the civilians in our care. Our camp was full to bursting with them, and we didn't have the time to evacuate them all before the Separatists arrived.

With the intel supplied by the Burrowrats, we understood the terrain, and with the wreckage of our cruiser reactivated, we had 3 turbolaser batteries to provide cover fire. With Splinter's company attacking the Destroyer, we had approximately 240 clones and 300 Burrowrats on hand, alongside 50 civilian volunteers we could arm with spare munitions.

Still, that would not be enough to hold off the enemy. A full battalion of Battle Droid infantry, supplemented by multiple squadrons of assault tanks and even a unit of hailfires. Things did not look great. The one advantage was that Daleshann had left the Royal Palace vulnerable. However, any strike team we sent there wouldn't arrive before the Separatist army was upon us.

However, after analyzing Gala's map of the area again, I did find one possibility: this part of the caverns in which our cruiser had crashed was incredibly weak and susceptible to collapse if struck with anything significant. Such as orbital bombardment.

If Splinter could capture the Destroyer, he would be able to save us.

We had our plan: we would hold off the enemy a few clicks away and buy additional time for Splinter to capture the Destroyer and the civilians to flee. We would slowly retreat back to our camp until the civilians were evacuated, then have Splinter shoot down our enemy.

We took up position around the edge of a caldera three clicks away from base, just inside the range of the salvaged turbolasers from the cruiser. They would be able to give us some meager form of artillery. Even as we arrived, we could hear the heavy clanking of the droid's marching and the hum of their repulsor tanks echoing off the cave walls. Soon the enemy reached us, and the cave was filled with the chaos of the mad firefight.

Thankfully, our turbolasers managed to weaken the enemy tank formations by continuously targeting the lead tanks as they entered the caldera. The wreckage created a temporary roadblock for the larger tanks. While the battle droids could still make their way through the wreckage, the delay of the tanks prevented the fighting from turning to outright slaughter. For the first hour, it was largely infantry against infantry, a battle of attrition as both sides whittled away at each other slowly. The tide constantly shifted between us and the enemy with every blaster bolt, every second. Thanks to the advantage of our terrain and our deployment pattern, we held, but barely.

Then the turbolasers overheated. The two minutes it took to repair them allowed the tanks to break through. Casualties began to mount, and I ordered a retreat, as I knew we couldn't survive this state.

It was then, as the rest of us pulled back, that Kali'sto stepped up. I'll never forget was what he did. As I ordered the rest of my troops to fall back, he closed his eyes and extended his hand.

At Kali'sto's will, the tank in the lead suddenly halted in its tracks. Then its main cannon barrel swung around, and it began to levitate off the ground. As I watched, it was thrown back towards the other tanks, smashing against two others and once again blocking the caldera to the rest of the tanks, slowing the enemy's advance.

We'd all heard stories of the Jedi's supposed mystical powers, of this energy called the Force which allowed them to carry out incredible feats. But until the war started, none of us believed them. Even during Geonosis, I never saw anything like this. All that talk of life energies and being connected to the universe, turns out there might be some truth to it. Kali'sto and the Jedi have great abilities, they live in a world beings like me don't understand, and I want to learn more about it.

However, the Separatist field commander seemed to realize what he was doing. I saw one of the tanks aim towards our position, and I had to tackle Kali'sto to the ground to save him from its blasts as they impacted the cavern wall around us, scattering rocks and singing us both. Still, we survived, and we mounted a fighting retreat to the cruiser.

As we herded the rest of the civilians into the tunnels, Splinter contacted us, letting us know he had the cruiser. We instructed him to move into position as we retreated back into the tunnels.

Casualties were high, but no one living was left behind. Once the last trooper made it into the tunnels, I gave Splinter the order to open fire. We all watched as the droid army was entombed in the collapse of the cavern.