AN: Well this chapter didn't want to come. I wrote it as a straight battle chapter several times, threw it out, rewrote it, and threw it out again and nausea. Well, in the end I decided nothing but battle chapters were boring, so this one has a slightly different plotline. Still rather blood soaked, 40k being 40k, but soldiers won't be the perspective holders for this one. No, instead it will be the civilians, PDF, and other poor victims we rarely get a good look at in these kinds of stories. As you may have guessed, this won't be going well for them. It's not the longest, but this felt like the appropriate endpoint for part one and I have made you guys wait far too long anyways. Anyways, onto the chapter.

Balamak, 20 days post convergence

"Incredible." The blue Rodian breathed, crouching lower to better peer out the cockpit of his YL-2200 light freighter. In front on him was a behemoth of metal, spurts of white bonelike substances, and what looked worryingly like flesh. It the only way he could think of describing the ships was as if some giant had taken countless massive warships and mashed them together like clay, somehow getting them to flow around and into each other. "How big is it?' Beside him, sitting in the pilot seat, a gran in brown robes hummed as his three eyes examined the vessel's sensory equipment. "Big."

If it had been anyone else, the Rodian would have been insulted, but the pair had known each other for a very long time now and he had come to expect such an answer. Grek, the Rodian, had known Asekak ever since the Gran had decided that farming was more his thing and moved to the relative backwater planet of Balamak. Grek had come from Coruscant as a technician for the planets only real measure of Galactic importance, a supposedly vital holonet node, and had spent many a lonely year tending to it with a small group of other underpaid technicians. His megacity dwelling sensibilities had clashed horribly with the insular farming culture that the agriworld most preeminently featured, and he had never felt more isolated and miserable than before he had landed on Balamak. Even the other technicians were mostly locals, and he had spent many a lonely night craving any kind of friendship.

Then came Asekak. He had never gotten the full story on the Gran's retreat from core life, but they had first met when the increasing tensions leading up to the clone wars had led the movers and shakers of the world to call a small meeting to discuss creating a small self defense force in case of the worst. He had been invited to contribute technical knowledge, and the Gran had come as he was the only one on the planet to actually own a ship with a gun on it. Many hours later he had been assigned "senior communications expert" by the committee (or in basic, the person in charge of making sure people actually responded to their messages, if they even had something with which to receive them) and had been assigned to the planets only vessel. The force protecting the planet had grown since then, and they even boasted a trio of light cruisers and a smattering of star fighters, but the flagship of both the comms department and the fleet remained the freighter the Balamak self-defense force (or BSDF as it was usually called) had started in.

They had spent many a lonely night off from work doing volunteer patrols at the behest of worried farmers and commerce officials "patrolling" the outer reaches of the system, if it could be called that, and with their only other companion the occasional asteroid or very rarely smuggler trying to avoid customs they had little to do beyond talk. And talk they did. It had been hard at first, as the Gran was not the talkative sort. One-word answers and grunts had at first been something Grek had taken as sign of unfriendliness but had later been discovered to be simply the Gran's socially awkward nature at work. The more the talked, the more the Gran began to say. He had never become truly talkative, but Grek had come to be able to interpret the half answers of his now friend and extrapolate far more meaning from them than he had ever initially thought he could.

Weeks turned into months, and then years, and more and more they had exchanged cultural understanding. He had come to understand the ways of the more simplistic agricultural people that inhabited the lands he now called home, which began thawing the relationship on his side towards them as the respect that came from his new volunteer position did the same for them. Then one day after a long patrol to his surprise his coworkers invited him to come watch a game of Nuna-ball and he came to the sudden realization that he didn't feel lonely anymore. It was something he would always owe his friend for and made him cherish the taciturn Gran even more.

It had been years since that day, and he had never felt happier. In the year since the start of the war with the Confederacy the supreme chancellor, showing the same good judgement that had gained Grek's support long ago, had given incentives and payments to agriworlds to keep them in the republic and all worlds a small amount of funding to create small defense forces of their own. This allowed Grek and Asekak to quit their jobs and become fulltime BSDF employees. While the pay wasn't that good, even with his higher rank, Grek found his job as captain of the communications department well worth it and quite fulfilling. There had never really been any danger to dampen that feeling, until now that was.

The Gran had joined his silent staring at the…whatever it was, both trying to figure out where to even begin. No one had bothered the system since the beginning of the war, so maybe they had let their guard down a little bit. And maybe they had been celebrating favored teams nuna-ball win a bit too hard the day before this thing had appeared. Thusly, it had been the most frequently seen individual among the small number of smugglers to notice it instead of the ones who should have been actively looking.

X, as he liked to call himself, had never been a real problem. He was a "thing getter" as the locals so creatively called him, and relatively harmless. He had never caused any problems, charged fair prices, and besides his silly insistence on spy-vid like code names and meetings, going so far as to actively choose the most dingey and irritatingly remote establishments he knew for each meeting, was quite likeable. The locals usually looked the other way for him, and so had the BSDF after getting to know him. It was lucky they did, because if anything he said was true leaving this thing's arrival would be disastrous. Then again, he thought, glancing over the gun ports haphazardly sticking out of the monstrosity, some looking like they could fire rounds the size of his vessel, he likely would have figured that out sooner rather than later.

The way X told it; the vessels entrance had not been subtle. The smuggler had been lurking around the systems edges, for secrecy was vital he had insisted, earning three eye rolls from Asekak, when a massive portal made of "flashing lights and impossible colors" as he had described it had suddenly appeared and disappeared. There was no sign of it now besides the thing it had deposited. The smuggler claimed it was for his own security he had investigated the vessel without telling anyone, though Grek thought it was probably so he could loot anything he found without anyone noticing. What he found was much more dangerous than any amount of illicit substance he could have scavenged.

There hadn't been much time to interview him, so it was unlikely he had gotten the full picture. He had been roused from his slumber by a panicked looking militia trooper early in the morning, saying that X was demanding to see him. Doubting it was important, he had taken his time pulling on his uniform, freshening up, and meandering over to his "office" (a repurposed storehouse) where he answered the smugglers com request at last. When he did, he felt his heart fall through the floor.

Terrible didn't even begin to describe how the smuggler looked. The heavy robes the smuggler favored were torn to shreds, exposing the pale blue flesh of a Twilek. He had never actually seen X's face before, and he could barely do so now despite the situation due to the layers of fresh scars that now layered it. An eye was gone and so was his left arm. Not even his throat was spared, though the wound there looked more like some kind of large needle wound then the more animalistic wounds that covered the rest of him. A few looked like they were made by incredibly sharp claws, but most looked like they were made by either a jagged primitive blade or a blunt object. He had been a hunter in his youth, and even a mercenary for a couple foolish years, but never had he seen such a badly mauled person before. Keeping the previous days meals down, already difficult due to what he suspected was a hangover, suddenly became a challenge.

It was hard to get the story from X or even to understand his panicked babbling. From what he could decipher, when exploring the Twilek had come upon a sentient ball of teeth and subsequently had been attacked by it. When he had fought back with his blaster, a green brute had descended upon him, one that just wouldn't die. He had heard many, many others drawn to his stumbling fight and then panicked, fleeing into the hulk and getting lost. His memories got jumbled after that, but he had somehow given them the slip and made it back to his craft. When asked about how, his eyes seemed to get misty and he mumbled indistinctly and unsurely, before eventually coming back to into focus.

Despite repeated pleas to stay, X insisted he head for Coruscant. He wasn't scared, the smuggler insisted, he just needed to get help. Before he could get another word in the feed dropped, and a few minute later his few subordinates told him the orbiting vessels could no longer detect the smuggler's ship. He had sent a formal report and request for reinforcement himself, as was a technical duty of his office, before heading out to meet his friend at the spaceport. Asekak, having been made admiral of their small fleet, insisted it was his personal duty to investigate the ship of monsters, and unwilling to let him go alone their few warships and Grek himself had come with him.

While he could hear a soft background chatter over the comms trying to figure out what exactly they should do with the misshapen monster ship, Grek's mind was on other things. He had been spending much of their patrol time over the last month on the holonet, justifying it as his duty as Information Captain to keep up to date on all rumors and possible threat. Many terrible rumors had popped up since the sky had changed twenty days ago, and this sounded suspiciously like one of them.

There wasn't a lot of information on the groups that had popped up and started attacking people in the wake of the event publicly available, most what had been discovered supposedly being classified, but there had been a persistent rumor backed by shaky footage of a species of green savages attacking worlds across the galaxy. Said footage was usually quickly taken down with the justification of "not creating any confusion before the official explanation of events" according to the rich lot on the capitol, but Grek was pretty sure it was to stop people from panicking. Not something to be derided for sure, but it deprived the public of information they desperately needed sometimes, such as now.

He was almost certain those green brutes were the ones that had attacked X, and he had no idea how to handle the situation. Looking at the instruments, the monstrous vessel was well over twenty kilometers long and four across. It was almost like an elongated sphere, but far to uneven and studded with outcroppings to be called that. Whatever it was, there was no way they could destroy it in any reasonable amount of time, and as he met his friends' eyes, he could tell neither of them wanted to send anyone inside to try and find a solution there either. At the same time, he really didn't feel safe letting the monsters run around doing what they pleased near his home, especially with such a big ship.

The ship shuddered ever so slightly as the Gran guided it around the patchwork vessel's massive hull as the pair sought some form or solution to their looming crisis. Despite the seeming haphazard nature of the…ship's, if it could be called that, construction, there didn't seem to be any obvious vulnerabilities. The whole thing was a mass of armor and patchwork guns, most of which from their positioning and Grek's rudimentary architectural knowledge lead his to believe were likely more decorative than not given how hard resupplying them looked and shooting one spot seemed just as pointless as another. There were even jumbled masses of engines all over the place, though most seemed to have congregated in one particular spot, which Grek tentatively marked in his head as the ship's rear.

This was where the fleet had moved to, and where their freighter flagship was joining them. No one was sure if the engines were even capable of activation, let alone coordinated motion, but it was the only obvious outcropping. Thus, it was decided that the best way to disable the ship was to ensure that the ship couldn't come within range of their home. The Arcquitens lined up, drifting several kilometers from each other, not exactly a wide formation but the massive scrap ship was still moving and none of them were confident in their rudimentary training now that push had finally come to shove.

Grek checked his messages again. He had a time now for the arrival of reinforcements, straight from a .mil address, but that didn't encourage him as much as he really wished it did in the face of this metal behemoth. Either way though, it was time. Asekak gave him a nod and thus Grek activated the comms, took a deep breath, and began.

"To all personnel, this is the chief communications officer. By the admiral's command and as priorly discussed, begin bombardment on the objects engines on my mark." He took a deep breath, looked at his friends worried eyes on last time, and breathed out. "Mark."

All across the small flotilla of ships weapons began to pound into the mess of engines at full power. With the sheer size disparity, they weren't doing much damage per shot, but before Grek's hopeful eyes the engines one by one began to come apart. Some exploded, some had the couplings break and began to drift off, and some warped and bent under the deluge of shots. Just as Grek began to feel hope and believe that this might yet be a disaster averted, the first engine began to come to life. As did the point defense grid.

Calling it a point defense grid was a misnomer. There wasn't anything grid like about it, and most of the cannons weren't even meant for void operation. Indeed, the guns were salvaged tank pieces, sowed on artillery weapons, makeshift tubes without void tight hatches, and even a few flamethrowers. The range finders were terrible, and the shots flew very wide off into the void, the gunners seemingly doing it for the sheer joy of firing the weapons. A military man would have called the efforts ineffectual, laughable, and incredibly unlikely to actually hit anything. Grek however was not a military man, and neither were their colleagues.

"KRIFF KRIFF KRIFF KRIFF- "the Rodian howled as the ship shuddered its way through the sharpest series of turns it could muster. Asekak's face had was paler than he had ever seen it as he desperately navigated his way through the field of munitions the backside of the ship had begun to spew towards them. The Arquitens he could see also scattering through the lethal cloud as the massive hulk began to accelerate away, towards the distant planet. Towards home.

"After it!" Grek yelled at his friend, and for a moment the Gran hesitated. Then the ship turned to pursue, and one by one the Arcquitens followed.

OOO

Hour after hour the followed the metal behemoth, darting in and out of the range of its guns to deliver a turbolaser shot or two as close as they dared before darting away again. The metal ship had activated its shields at some point and was now mostly ignoring their small fleet, save the numerous potshots it took at them on their attack runs. One Arcquitens had been hit near head on and badly damaged, its civilian crew taking it to safety and staying there in the moments thereafter. Another had taken a glancing hit its old and resold components could not take, crippling power generation for the time being and making its impossible for the resold vessel to fight. That just left two ships, the final cruiser and the freighter, and neither was doing any visible damage.

Grek, for the tenth time in the last five minutes, checked his mail. He had been sending increasingly panicked updates to the GAR representative assigned to his sector, but no matter how many he sent, how desperately he pleaded that estimated time of arrival was not going down.

He knew it couldn't, that was just how hyperspace worked. He had seen this happen before, both in his youth and in the research he had done to prepare for what might come when war broke out. But it was something entirely different to know and experience something, as he could now tell. The behemoth was descending to low orbit, and massive sheets of metal were peeling aside on its planet facing side. 'Launch bays' he realized.

He glanced over at his partner and saw him shaking. They both saw the bulky craft begin to stream out of the bottom of the hulk and knew that they must be landing craft and fighters of some kind. Both had sworn to protect their homeworld, but never expected something like this when they had. "Asekak…" the Rodian began, unsure of what to say, what to do when they both had such a high chance of dying, yet they both also had such an important role in home didn't burn. Was this what a soldier feels when he leaves for war, knowing he might never return?

"We have to go." The gran said, shaking all the while. Grek couldn't voice his agreement, voice his fears, voice his…anything, so he just shakily nodded. Asekak breathed in deeply and brought the controls forwards, easing the craft into re-entry. As they descended Grek could see the final light cruiser vanish into a ball of flame, causing his heart to race even faster. There was no going back now.

As they broke the cloud layer the pair could see the first of their opponents amongst a swarm of mismatched parts and cobbled together aircraft. The fighters were massive, with not a single one smaller than half again larger than the freighter he flew and were patchwork messes of wildly varying size that Grek found hard to believe could stay in the skies for any extended period of time, yet here they were. They were dive bombing the town below, the fires being the only thing now illuminating the now dark nighttime skies of his home. He could see blaster fire here and there, but it was infrequent and rapidly disappearing. Grek winced. He couldn't even imagine what it must be like for the ground-based militia.

They had one moment of surprise, and Grek was going to make it count. He opened up with the vessel's twin laser cannons, sending a fighter flaming into a building it could no longer swerve to avoid. He let out a whoop pf joy as Asekak maneuvered to line up above a second one. Another burst sent a bulky lander plunging to the ground, but the fighters had noticed them. They were turning towards them now in a mass of jockeying ramshackle craft, each trying to outpace the other, and that was what let the pair avoid the first massive burst of projectiles from the swarm. They hit a third ship as they clipped the second burst and then they were surrounded. The shields fell almost immediately and seconds later Grek could feel thud after thud rock the vessel until with a massive lurch forwards the freighter began to rapidly tip forwards and approach the ground.

'Oh' Grek realized, his mind starting to feel light. 'They must have blown the engines' Grek turned to Asekak, and the panicking Gran was screaming something but the just couldn't hear what it was. Everything felt so far off for some reason, and he felt very tired. He looked down, following the Gran's gesturing, and saw an arm sized chunk of what was likely hull plating sticking through his seat, and his torso. He stared at it dully for several seconds, before letting out a small 'Oh' of realization again. He looked up at the Gran again just in time to see the freighter collide with the ground.

O0O

The burning hulk turned end over end several times as it smashed through what was once its hanger. As it burned, so too did the city around it. As the flames crackled the sky continued to darken, this time as the dropships of the brutal invaders simply blocked out the light of the stars one by one. As they did, within the burning hulk the chronometer of Grek continued to count down.

8:23:54 Until Republic Reinforcements Arrive