Chapter 16

Location: Orbit of the Planet Commenor

The swarms of starfighters still had their sting, seeing as Separatist attention was firmly fixed upon the Clone fleet of a dozen Venators and a handful of support ships. Their fleet had taken serious losses, and when Lieutenant Sato saw the first battle of his young career he was not disappointed. As part of Task Force 9 he had a position on the left flank of the fleet, and sat within his command chair, ready to commence his first engagement.

"All corvettes, maintain escort formation around the fleet," he heard Commodore Viotec, TF 9's CO, order the fleet of escort ships of his unit, "Engage all enemy craft, focus on the bombers and gunships, don't let any of them board the destroyers."

"Engines, match speed and ahead, all cannons fire at will," Sato quickly ordered his green crew.

"Aye sir, engines to two thirds," his navigator quickly responded, thrusting the ship forward towards the swarm of enemy ships that was getting torn up by the heavy volleys from the larger Republican Guard capital ships and the GAR fleet now pressing into the enemy flank and rear.

"Firing guns," he heard his XO call out and Sato watched the blue laser bolts fly from the Bittersweet. He also saw that the bow guns were trained upon a light destroyer directly to their front.

"Fire bow guns, maximum firepower! Target that light destroyer," Sato quickly called out, wanting to get some hits into the droid ship while they had a shot from far away.

The dual barrel guns opened fire on his order, and the bolts began striking home after the ship, that was quite distant, began to shudder under heavier fire from Republic starfighter bombing runs. He was surprised to see explosions tear away at the ship from the strikes on the ship that trailed down the ship as it moved to Sato's right at a slow pace. Then the Bittersweet's volley smashed into the joining point of the three engines in the large ship's rear and there was a larger series of explosions.

"Critical damage sir! That ship's shields were down," his sensors crewman relayed quickly, excited at having gotten a good hit in.

"We got lucky, continue firing! Maintain formation, we have to keep the escort screen intact."

He could see fighters zooming by in their own formations, steering clear of the corvettes' firing zones. The firing of the other ships like the CR90 in his direct line of sight was constant and effective, and the Separatists were being driven back. Sato kept an eye out for enemy fighters but saw that they were concentrated on the fight in front of the fleet, amongst the Separatists' own ships that were under increasing amounts of fire. One of the battleships began to list as it came under the fire of the Basilisk and the two Imperator-Class Star Destroyers that were the Task Force flagships.

"Sir, looks like the enemy ships are starting to pull away," his sensor station reported, and then a turbolaser bolt, and then two more struck the ship and they all shuddered from the impacts.

"Damage?" Sato asked immediately.

"Shields are at eighty-five percent sir. No structural damage."

"Very well, reroute power to the forward shields," Sato nodded, a bit jumpy at taking fire for the first time.

The Separatist fleet was now visually pulling away and turning away from the Republic fleets. They'd been brutalized, with several of them unable to match speed or even maneuver at all. The numbers game was not on their side, for once the Republic had gained a kind of numerical advantage, or at least, the ships the Republic brought to bear were too much for them to face with their current fleet.

"All ships, let them go, corvettes accelerate and clear a corridor for the dropships. They can still turn and re-engage," Commodore Viotec ordered the task force's corvettes.

"Full speed, blast those droid fighters, nothing threatens the dropships," Sato ordered, intent on following his orders to the letter, as young officers tended to do, "Stay in formation pilot."

"Aye sir, maintaining formation," the man said as the ship moved forward.

Sato kept a careful track on where his guns were trained, making sure his gunners kept their fire restricted to enemy starfighters, the cruisers and capital ships could handle the bigger enemy ships. Their job was to deal with the enemy small craft. Now approaching the planet of Commenor Sato could now see the vast cityscapes of the surface, and then he saw the massive amount of civilian traffic that was usually in orbit, all of it gathered in an uncoiling gathering of ships that the Separatists had tried to seize. Many of them were jumping away as the Republic pulled in, unwilling to be caught up in such a serious battle that a dreadnought and star destroyers were now involved.

Sighing in relief now that his turrets had fallen silent Sato watched for the waves of dropships to start their descent into the planet's atmosphere and start the process of destroying the droid forces on the ground. He saw them after a few moments, the red boxy craft dropping in long lines with their stubby wings fitted with rockets and their twin chin mounted laser turrets flew right by. He counted several hundred, with their fighter escorts, flying by at full speed as the Separatist fleet now poured into hyperspace, and left their droid army to die. Yet even as a junior naval lieutenant Sato knew full well that battle droids don't surrender.

Location: Atmosphere of Commenor

Flak rocked Captain Challis' F6 Infantry Dropship. It was a close call, one that he was none too comfortable with and so were the pilots. The sounds of the guns and several rockets being fired clearly proved this fact. His company was packed into a dozen F6 Dropships, and all were headed down to their objective, a tall commercial office building well-known to many in his company. The intelligence that they had was only the government schematics and the holographic images of the interior from security scanners that Guard Intelligence had somehow obtained.

But droid opposition was quite unknown to Challis, and he didn't like that. To not know something was a bad way to start the mission and he was certain he'd have to be quick on his feet and fast on the draw on this day. And more than that he'd have to be even quicker with his mind, over a hundred men and women under his command depended on that. The shaking and thuds of explosions from enemy flak guns and possibly the destruction of friendly dropships made this deadly fact all too clear. But he would soon find out what he and his men were made of, his dropship was going to be the first to touch down, and he himself would be the first to step out into combat.

"Captain, we're ten seconds out, pad is cleared of hostiles, but you have no cover," the co-pilot/gunner informed Challis over the comm.

"Copy that, just get us on the deck in one piece," Challis responded, then turned to the squad in the dropship bay with him, "Remember, get into the building and fan out, we don't want to be boxed in here!"

"Yes sir!"

The dropship slowed down drastically and then Challis saw the light go green and the back door opened and he jumped out and onto the durasteel platform and into a nighttime battlefield. The glow of the city was punctuated with the red and blue of laser bolts and the yellow of explosions. Republican Guard Dropships descended into the cityscape alongside a smaller number of LAAT Gunships from the Clone forces. Challis paid that no mind after the initial view and turned towards the building, A280 raised and ready. He saw a tangled mess that was the remnant of a pair of Dwarf Spider Droids and some B1's.

As his men dropped down and joined him Challis led the way towards the door down the short platform to a wide set of double doors. A couple speeders were parked here, and he checked to be sure no droids were taking cover there. Then he saw movement in the windows, and saw the form of the hook-shaped heads of battle droids rushing to the door through the opaque glass. Aiming his blaster he waited for the door to open and sure enough they came charging out.

A dozen of them surged forward and tried to spread out, but they got caught in the funnel of the door and Challis laid into them alongside his troopers. The first six fell easily, and then the other droids stopped to return fire, but were inaccurate enough that Challis got away with being caught in the open. The final droid fell as Challis got up to the door and a private moved directly inside with several others right behind him, rifles leveled as they'd been trained to do. Both checked their corners and were clear as more troopers rushed forwards.

"Take the hall to the right!" Challis ordered rapidly, walking a few steps to the platform as the second squad of his weapons platoon was deposited, "Your squad, take the left route," he said, pointing it out with his hand as the platoon leader rushed up to him.

"We setting up our cannons sir?"

"Not yet, wait until we move a bit further down and secure the top floors. I want a buffer zone for your cannons to cover a retreat just in case," Challis said calmly. He did this as the next squad, now under much less danger, was dropped off and began the process of offloading the parts to their E-Web Blaster Cannons, "If you find any of their dual repeaters stockpile and stage them in dominating points, they're good weapons, put them to use."

"Roger that Captain."

Now Kelrein ran up, "Sir, all squads have landed, we're starting to clear the top floors."

"Very well, we need to move fast and link up the platoons before they counterattack. Once we've linked up I want a Casualty Collection Point and a Company HQ set up side-by-side," Challis responded, barking out the orders as he'd remembered how to do them, "In the meantime-," he continued but then was stopped by a red string of laser fire zipping past their heads from an adjacent building.

"Down!" Kelrein ordered all of them instantly, grabbing Kelrein and pulling him to the deck, "You mustn't stand out in the open like that cap'n, you make yourself and the lads too tempting a target."

"Thank you sergeant. Return fire!" Challis nodded but returned to the situation at hand.

He lifted himself up and firing down slightly at the source of the fire, a group of battle droids on an open veranda on a building next to theirs. The other Commenor troopers obliged as well, firing down at the source, forcing the droids to take cover as the Guard troopers zeroed in on them. But Kelrein had the wiser course of action. Instead of firing at the droids he grabbed Challis and pulled him back from the edge into defilade.

"What'd you do that for?" Challis demanded.

"You'll thank me for this later. Crawl to the door boys, we've got no cover here."

Challis looked at the older man and was going to say something about being the superior officer but remembered that Kelrein had the experience he didn't. So he kept his mouth shut and motioned for the others to crawl to the door to the building. They made it with no problems and Challis stood up and saw the hall was mostly clear of his troopers who he could hear moving and yelling through the gray and white hallways. Firing wasn't coming as thick as he'd expected, and so he checked his company roster for any casualties. Seeing three men wounded he knew that they hadn't made it out unscathed so far, and still had a long ways to go.

"Where are we at?" he asked the squad leader of a group of troopers stacked up outside a large office.

"Group of droids in here sir, one's a droideka we think, we heard something rolling on the tile earlier," the sergeant responded.

"Move," Kelrein ordered and pulled out a small mirror from his pack that was attached to a stick, he poked it around and then saw a glimpse of two long-barreled Droideka Snipers pointing their blasters at the door. But when he saw them they saw his mirror and fired, putting a hole through the middle and took a chunk out of one of the corners, "You're lucky lads just snipers, roll a popper in and put a hole in each one's head afterwards and move on."

"Yes first sergeant."

The squad leader directed the man in the front to roll in one droid popper, which was done after a bit of fiddling with the device. As the trooper leaned over to toss the grenade into the room a blaster bolt met his hand when the weapon left it, burning a hole right through it. The young private screamed in pain as he grabbed the hand and leaned back away from the door, the smoke rising from the clean hole that had been burned through the palm. But the weapon still went off and Kelrein had to usher the group forward to finish off the droids. Blue flashes from blaster rifles signaled an end to the droids inside.

Challis looked inside to see a big room where the two sniper droidekas were keeled over on their sides with holes on their frontal shields. A single trooper walked over a put his blaster to one's head and fired and switched to the second one and did the same again. This time though a rocket fired from another building somewhere nearby slammed into the floor, and blew the window and part of the floor out. The trooper was thrown ten feet forward to land on the ground amongst a heap of glass and bits of rubble. Challis immediately saw he wasn't hurt, but he was most definitely shaken as he crawled away from the window. Once he was behind cover one of his comrades with a DLT-18 rushed over to the desk and popped out his bipod and opened fire along with a couple other troopers as red laser fire poured back at them but at a lesser rate from the left.

"I stand corrected sir, those lads are very lucky," Kelrein laughed.

"I see that," Challis nodded, and moved on past a couple of lightly wounded troopers, "You alright boys?"

"We're fine sir," one nodded, his voice not betraying pain or weakness.

Then he heard a yelling from around the corner where a rack of turbolifts were located. Running over he saw the three lifts beeping as their cargoes of enemy droids rose towards them. A pair of fireteams were located here, with a few desks kicked over to act as cover. The two repeating blasters were in a good crossfire on either side of the large opening that stretched downwards as an open space that went up another floor and down for at least another dozen. A third fireteam from the same squad was directly opposite from the turbolifts and had been taking potshots down at any exposed droid they saw, covering another couple squads working their way down a spiraling staircase that was on the rounded out walls away from the edge.

"The turbolifts, shift your aim!" Challis ordered the squad leader immediately as he saw the squad not noticing that they had incoming.

"Get down sir, things are likely to be messy," Kelrein advised, kneeling down and aiming at the turbolift that was closest to them.

The first one arrived as the Republic troopers aimed at the door, and when it opened they were immediately caught off guard by the terrifying sight of a Droideka with shield deployed, standing with dual blaster cannons aimed and ready to fire. Flanking it to the sides was a pair of B2 Super Battle Droids and behind it were six B1's. The Droideka immediately waddled out, being peppered by blaster fire from all angles as it turned and fired at the fireteam to Challis's right. The first blaster bolts struck the fireteam leader directly in the chest, sending him flat against the wall with two holes in his upper chest. The B2's opened fire to the left, and the first was hit in the chest and almost had its chest plate torn off by the combined fire but the second got several shots off that hit the DLT-18 gunner in the chest and he just bent back and dropped backwards onto the ground. The B1's poured out, and the fire from their direct front caught their attention as three of their number fell almost instantly.

"Take out that destroyer!" Kelrein roared at the men facing it from behind cover as they were quickly pinned down, firing at the last super as another bell rang and a dozen B1's with a single B2 marched out of the second turbolift.

The fireteam to the right took another pair of casualties to these new arrivals as a droid popper was lobbed at the gaggle of droids by the squad leader, dropping all but the Droideka and a group of ten more B1's that marched out of the newly arrived third turbolift with two shielding B2's. They opened fire on the left-hand side, killing another of their number and wounding the third member as he grabbed for his comrade. Thankfully though another squad from second platoon arrived on the scene from above Challis's own position and tore into the droids below. But the Droideka was still advancing. However the last trooper left on her fireteam took her chance shoved the desk she was behind over onto the droid. The heavy wooden desk slammed into the top of the droid and it shuffled towards the metal wall as the desk slid off and the young trooper quickly ran over and shoved her A280 against the very center of the droid and fired a fully automatic burst. The powerful bolts tore it apart as she screamed in fury at it until the droid's legs gave out and its shield dropped. The frightened girl however didn't stop, and kept firing at it as she stood over it. Challis ran over, Kelrein behind him, knowing she needed to stop and breathe.

"Trooper!" he yelled at her, grabbing the rifle and causing her to immediately stop. He could hear the girl's panting over the helmet's speaker and knew that behind her broad T-shaped visor she had wild eyes, "It's dead, help your fireteam."

"It killed them…this piece of shit killed them!" she roared, kicking at the fractured, and burning metal corpse.

"One's alive trooper, help the medic, get your mate to the CCP," Kelrein ordered firmly, "Come on then."

He ushered her towards the wounded man, a blaster bolt having hit his arm which he held, quietly groaning with his helmet against the wall looking up and shaking his head in pain. The shaken trooper rushed over as a medic made it over, checking the other two, but her squad leader and their grenadier were both dead. Challis made way for another pair of medics who rushed past him to the other troopers from the second brutalized fireteam and began seeing to the two wounded that they had. Challis checked on them as well, both were in bad shape, one was panting, trying not to cry as the medic tried prying his hands away from his abdomen, the other was weakly writhing with his almost shattered helmet on the ground. His face was badly burned as a medic tried cleaning the blackened pieces from it as blood poured from the cracked wounds and onto the floor. The captain kneeled down to the dead repeating blaster gunner, seeing that he was on his back, arms at his side and his left leg folded up underneath him and right one bent out and towards the desk. Challis saw the clear heartshot in his white and red armor chest piece, still smoking with only a dull glow just barely visible.

He'd just lost three of his men in one firefight with another three wounded. This was the first time he'd seen a dead body before in person. It was unsettling, and it was especially painful that this was one of his own men. Challis felt a need to see the man's face, hoping that the sensors were wrong, that he was still alive somehow beneath that helmet. But when he reached down he felt a hand on his shoulder. Challis looked up and saw Kelrein there. The squad older NCO shook his head, knowing that the man was dead and looking into his face would do Challis no good.

"The boy's gone sir. And he won't be the last," he said to him quietly.

Challis felt like his lunch was coming back up from the way it had gone down. He needed to find a place to puke without the men seeing him. To see him like that would shake their confidence, and right now that was the last thing they needed. As their company commander he needed to be the rock on which they leaned upon. Weakness from him would damage the confidence they had in him to keep them alive with his decisions. So ducking into a nearby refresher Challis ripped off his helmet and without making a move to open the door smashed his way to the nearest toilet and coughed out what little he'd eaten beforehand. He hacked and coughed until he heard the door open behind him and he gathered himself and turned and picked up his helmet. There he saw First Sergeant Kelrein, leaning against the sinks, his own helmet off.

Kelrein was an older man, in his thirties, with a thin beard and his hair wasn't perfectly uniform length, but he was the most experienced man in the company and Challis knew that didn't matter so long as Kelrein kept him alive and his company alive.

"You look awful Cap'n," Kelrein noted, beating around the bush.

"If you have something to say First Sergeant say it," Challis said as he went to a sink and turned it on, and washed his mouth out.

"It's a terrible business we're in sir. The business of killing is the harshest of all, sure we get nice shiny medals for a job well done, but we tend to lose our own along the way. Such is the nature of things, can't blame yourself, do that and you'll tear yourself apart, far worse than any blaster or shrapnel," Kelrein explained.

"How, how do I not blame myself? I'm their commander, it's my job to get them home safe."

"Aye it is, and blaming yourself does nothing. You want to blame someone blame fate, death's got all our names written down for some time at some place. When our time comes it comes. But we can still choose how we meet it. We've all chosen to face death with a blaster in our hands, I can't think of many other ways for a real man to leave this world."

"And when it's your time?" Challis inquired.

"Oh I intend on going to death's door with a smile on my face, for the first time since I was eighteen I'll be able to sleep in," the old NCO smiled.

"I suppose so."

Location: Edusa, Headquarters and Training Center for Confederate Patriot Forces

The lush temperate world was a nice place to set up their headquarters, Dooku had at least seen fit to grant them that kind of comfort. The planet was a lot like Corellia, Carida, and Alderaan, green and full of life and a decently large population thriving upon the advanced farming communities and ranches that fed many Confederate worlds in the sector. The cities were clean and modern, with blocky and simple white metal and glass buildings amongst grass verandas and tree-lined boardwalks. The spaceports were a busy hub of honest trade, with loaded merchantmen traveling peacefully back and forth, all under the watchful eye of Separatist battle droids.

Its two billion inhabitants had no problem living under the Separatist flag, and welcomed the newly minted Fleet Admiral Korra Der and her assembled staff in an elaborate and well-documented event. It was all war propaganda of course and she did her duty, making sure her dark blue uniform and the gold padding on her shoulders and upper bicep were crisp and clean, her rank symbol well-polished on her chest. Her dark hair never came undone from its bun, and she was happy that her combination cover hadn't come off. It was a dark blue and golden affair with shiny black leather and golden embroidery on the brim and the Confederate Hexagon in the center of the central band and on the back it had a cloth cover that dropped down to her collar and covered her ears and tapered back. Her gloves were the same yellowish gold as her shoulders and arms had and went to the middle of her forearms over her shirt.

Now she was in her normal duty uniform, which was similar to her dress uniform, minus the hat and the elaborate embroidery. Within her secure headquarters she was designing her new command to become a prime example of military precision and symbol of Separatist might. To help her she had ship designs that no one else had access to, stolen and modified KDY designs. Der was more than aware of how dangerous Kuat's ship designs could be when used right. But she had an additional ace up her sleeve, a pair of automated warship designs, one the size of a fifty meter long gunship and the other a one hundred and fifty meter frigate. So to have designs of that kind of efficiency coupled with massive industrial power meant that Der's job was much more attainable.

"Well here we are, the headquarters of the Confederate Patriot Forces," she said as she entered the command center, a square room with a pair of large holotables and control screens and stations along the walls in trenches below the main command deck, "Best get started."

"How exactly do we start?" one of her staff asked.

"Basics, organization. We need to create a force that is capable of spreading itself thin and still being capable of matching Republic forces one on one. The RVC's task forces, two of them had engaged our probing forces at Commenor, it looks like they've upgraded, we need a force to challenge that basic unit," she said, tapping a control and pulled up the list of ships and the number of them that the Republican Guard had.

"It looks like they are based around their Imperator, with their corvettes and cruisers providing a forward screen and their starfighters being their strike arm," her Chief of Operations pointed out.

"Correct, so we'll need to base our own basic unit around the only ship we have in numbers that can take on an Imperator," Der said, and pulled up another section of the holotable, this one with a list of ship classes that the CIS used, and tapped the ring-shaped battleship, "A Lucrehulk should serve this purpose."

She pulled up another design, this one being one of the stolen KDY designs, the nine hundred meter long star destroyer. This class and the cruiser design it was stolen with were being built already alongside an original design for the Separatists, a wedge-shaped light escort cruiser, two hundred and forty meters long and a hundred meters wide armed with anti-starfighter laser turrets. She pulled up these designs, toying with the numbers in her head as she got input from her staff on the logistics and of it all. However she soon had the right balance.

The basic layout they created was well-balanced and quite powerful, they decided on the name Patriot Squadron for this, as per CIS organizational precedent. It was based around a single Lucrehulk-Class Battleship, with four of the Type-1 Class Star Destroyers as its main striking arm along with eight Type-2 Class Cruisers, and twelve Type-3 Escort Cruisers as their actual manned warships. What made up the bulk of their Squadrons' numbers would be the Type-4 Class Automated Frigates and the Type-5 Class Automated Gunships. Each one had twenty frigates and thirty-two gunships, giving them eighteen small automated warships, each with a dangerous ship-to-ship proton torpedo tube and no sense of danger.

"So, we've got a force I think can take a Republic Task Force one on one, this'll give Drexel a wake-up call," Der nodded as she looked at her work, and was satisfied, "Now, up the ante, increase the size to the next unit class, Task Force."

"A pair of Squadrons working in concert would allow for tactical flexibility and with this many ships we can easily cover a larger front," her operations chief responded.

"Agreed, then…I don't think a Task Group-sized unit is needed let's go to Fleet, four of five Task Forces you think?"

A smattering a 'five' came from the assembled officers and she nodded, knowing that was probably for the best. This type of thing continued, the basic organization and training on tactics of this new force being discussed broadly. Then came the hard part, training for the average soldier and crewman. This was the problem that the Confederate Patriot Forces had. Training took time, and they had no standardized curriculum for which to work their personnel. This would take time, and time was not their ally, the Republic was growing in strength and boldness. They needed something quick, and the answer to that came in the form of the Republic's volunteer forces themselves.

The Republican Guard's training regimen was well-documented, they only needed to copy and condense it, modifying basics like operating with their own vehicles and weapons and folding in a new type of tactic, fighting alongside battle droids. They had plenty of volunteers for serving the cause of freedom from the Republic's oppression. Over a million had been pledged from across the CIS's worlds. There were weapons available to them as well, advanced variants of the E-5, the E-5C, a faster firing, safer, and more accurate weapon originally meant as a market competitor to the A280. Now, that weapon, as well as others, would be facing their marketplace competitors.

Der looked her ground component's weapons list, vehicle list, organizational charts, and she was certainly glad she was not having to specifically deal with the outfitting and training of her ground forces. Their plan for creating them was simple however, but still rather complex in the details. The CPF ground forces were comprised of two branches, a biological branch and a droid branch that had biological commanders at the battalion level and at every level leading up to the army level. These droids were identically equipped and armed as their brethren elsewhere in the CIS's military. But the elite shock force was the biological component. Each Army Group had a division of ten thousand biological troops, slated to act as heavy mobile infantry, just like the Republican Guard.

It wasn't just the E-5C Blaster Rifle that was unique to the CPF troopers, it was their vehicles, specialist variants of existing models were being produced. The Platoon Assault Craft was the mainstay of their force, and had been heavily modified. The vehicle, normally used as a light auxiliary droid deployer of the MTT was now a formidable vehicle in its own right. An enclosed cockpit was added with a driver a gunner manning a fully rotating heavy laser turret above him with two doors on the armored cabin for the troops to man two Dual-Barrel Repeating Blaster Cannons. The cabin itself had enough space for the whole platoon to ride comfortably within and could deploy from the rear hatch, two side hatches, or through the bottom. There were four of these to a company and were supported by a stolen design, the WLO-5 Speeder Tank, a venerable, simple fighting vehicle that would provide all the support that the infantry needed. The heavy hitter, the AAT, had been modified to only need three crewmen, and had a Dual-Barrel Repeater on the commander's turret ring for anti-infantry duty and they'd been organized into squadrons of twenty-four tanks at the commanded at the battalion level. Also at the battalion level were newly redesigned Ground Armored Tanks, a nearly obsolete design shown to be next to worthless in the early stages of the war. These light recon tanks had themselves a new crew compartment for a single scout to control the vehicle on long range reconnaissance missions and had a bit of additional armor tacked on. This came as a result of the refusal of the use of the STAP, and seeing as there were a lot of GAT's just lying about the choice was a simple one.

There were other additional modified designs, like the MTT being the base chassis for two artillery pieces, a multi-purpose platform holding a proton cannon, and a rocket artillery piece using four of the same missile launchers as the Hailfire Droid Tank, which was itself phased out and its components and ammunition easily available. The MTT was also the basic supply and medical transport vehicle for the SPF as well, with lower levels of command having a command and control variant at their disposal. For the higher levels of command the Multi-Utility Transport was the go-to vehicle of choice, with a large platform mounted around the top holding enclosed turrets and walkways with the necessary communications gear it was a fully equipped command vehicle. There would be one key difference in addition to CPF vehicles and droids from their regular comrades, they'd be camouflaged with matching paints beforehand, more as a way of identification than anything.

Der's ground forces were built for mobility, just the same as the Republican Guard was, the only thing that they didn't have was a fully equipped suit of armor for their soldiers. Each man would have a camouflage uniform with soft semi-resistant padding on his shoulders, chest, and thighs. They had black ammunition vests and camouflaged uniform pants with a rigid backpack. They did have a newly designed helmet, the ACH-14 Combat Helmet with the CIS Hexagon on the front of the medal ring. This had been paired with a set of targeting goggles and a smooth-faced gas mask that could provide a night vision view in the dark. To be fair they were well-equipped, and with the E-5C each man was quite well-armed with a rapid firing rifle with decent range and a basic scope mounted on it. Of course they would have rocket launchers for dealing with enemy armor, and a weapons platoon per company with mortars and heavier blaster cannons to round out their arsenal.

And it was this arsenal that was being rounded out in this meeting with Der's signature of approval. Her new command was shaping up quickly. She could look onto a viewscreen that looked outside to see the large training camps that her forces were setting up to see that. Training was beginning here and on a couple other worlds deep in CIS space. And most important to her were the new ships being built for their forces in shipyards on the outer fringes of the galaxy, mapped into open space by the CIS's droid exploration probes to create a secret massing point for the thousands of ships being built out there. When those ships and troops and crews were ready, she'd strike the Republic, and maybe, just maybe, Grand Admiral Drexel would come out to meet her fleet. If that happened, she intended on him being the one surrendering to her.

Wow, what a data dump huh? But I had to get this information down somewhere right? It took me forever to create a worthy force to combat the Republican Guard, and trust me, this will be a helluva match-up between the two. And I actually think I'm going to go AU with this one, bit by bit. The power of both the RVC and the CPF is just way ahead of what could be expected to exist in canon.

So yeah, the battle on Commenor was also pretty gritty, and will continue to be that way. Urban warfare is a bit of a bitch. If you have any ideas on what kind of scene or tactics you'd like to suggest let me know, be glad to hear new ideas.

As always, leave me your impressions on the chapter and how you think the story is progressing.

Next Chapter Preview: Fighting down the tower, and the Separatist offensive kicks into gear around Kashyyyk.