Hey, everybody. Back with another chapter.
Let's get to it.
Rico: I am still wrestling with the idea of whether or not to do a Yuuzhan Vong story. If I do, it'll be its own, major story, but I'm unsure if I'll do it. I am thinking about doing a main story set after the sequel trilogy story, and I'm trying to decide whether to do the Yuuzhan Vong or Darth Krayt.
Chapter 17- Exegol
(September 27, 2041)
On the bridge of the Hood, Admiral Pellaeon is watching the holotable intently as it shows the progress of the Hood. After the ship had left R727 after they had harvested some material and fully marked and mapped the system, the ship had resumed its mission to find Exegol.
Now, the ship has almost reached Exegol. They had managed to map a route almost to the planet, and now the ship is about to finish a hyperspace jump taking it to the final obstacle on the path to Exegol.
Data and maps retrieved from the Malevolence after it crashed had revealed that on the route to Exegol that the Malevolence had used was a large nebula. Because of the nature of the nebula, it was very difficult to navigate, especially for a ship of this size. The ship would have to travel through the nebula at extremely low sublight speeds. Once through the nebula, they would emerge into the Exegol system.
"Time to target point?" Pellaeon calls out.
"Sir, 20 seconds," the navigation officer calls out.
Pellaeon stands up and turns to the viewport. Sure enough, 20 seconds later, then blue of hyperspace lengthens out, and then the ship drops out of hyperspace. Up ahead, Pellaeon can see the vast nebula in their path.
"Reduce engine power to 50 percent. Prepare to enter the nebula," Pellaeon calls out.
On the bridge, the atmosphere is tense. The Hood, or any Terran warship, has never attempted navigation of something like this. While warships have navigated nebulae before, mostly as tests, only once has a ship of this size navigated a nebula, and it was a far simpler navigation than this one will be.
"Time to enter the nebula?" Pellaeon calls out.
"Sir, sixty seconds to entry interface," the navigation officer calls out. Despite the fact that the navigation officer is now 60 years old, he's still as sharp and good at his job as ever.
The bridge crew watches intently as the nebula approaches. As the Hood enters the nebula, there is a slight vibration in the ship, but it is almost imperceptible.
Pellaeon is by now on full alert, as is the rest of the bridge crew. They have to be ready to react to any unexpected surprises in the nebula and avoid taking the ship into any dangerous sections of the nebula.
"Alright. Engines down to 40 percent power, alter course 0.9 degrees to starboard," Pellaeon orders. The helmsman follows his orders immediately, adjusting course and engine power. All the while, Pellaeon is running calculations and trajectories through his mind. This travel through the nebula will require dozens of such course corrections and changes in engine speed, as well as occasional evasive maneuvers to avoid damaging the ship. At the speeds the battlecruiser will be traveling, the trip through the nebula will take a little over an hour. It reminds him a little bit of a movie he's seen during his time aboard the Hood.
The Hood maintains its present course for about 5 minutes until Pellaeon sees the clouds of gas and debris thickening ahead. "Engines down to 35 percent power, alter course 4 degrees to port," he orders. The helmsman follows his orders immediately.
As Pellaeon carefully watches, the ship alters course to port to maintain the path through the nebula. As finishes its turn, Pellaeon orders, "Increase engine power to 48 percent."
"Aye, aye, sir," the helmsman calls out as he advances the engine power up to 48 percent, the ship slowly increasing in speed.
For the next hour, the Hood continues its complicated journey through the nebula. About half an hour into the journey, the Hood reaches the most complicated part of the trip. At this point, the gas cloud and debris are so thick and convoluted that the ship has to decrease engine power to a mere 30 percent of rated performance and the helmsman has to make constant course changes. The Hood does crash through a few thick clouds of gas and debris, but thankfully with no damage to the ship and just a few disruptions in the electrical systems in the bow.
Finally, about 67 minutes into the journey, the navigation officer calls out, "Admiral, reaching Navigation Point Echo!"
Navigation Point Echo was a particular point in the path through the nebula. Point Echo signifies the end of the turbulent, difficult part of the nebula, with only a short distance left before the edge of the nebula. Upon passing Point Echo, the Hood will make an extremely brief lightspeed jump to exit the nebula. The jump will last only seconds, but will take the Hood out of the nebula and into a distant orbit over Exegol.
"Standby!" Pellaeon shouts loud enough for everyone to hear him clearly. Everyone makes ready for the jump.
Pellaeon then looks at Captain Moorhouse. "Captain, sound general quarters," he orders. Knowing that there will be hostile forces at Exegol, he wants the ship ready for battle as soon as it arrives.
Moorhouse nods once before moving over to a control panel. He flips a switch before leaning over to speak into a microphone.
As soon as the switch is flipped, general quarters alarms begin to sound throughout the ship as Moorhouse's voice is broadcast through speakers, calling out, "General quarters! General quarters! All hands, man your battlestations! All families to designated safe zones."
Immediately, the crew as well as family members who have volunteered to assist during battle start racing to get to their battlestations while the rest of the families congregate within the center of the ship, as far away from the outer hull as possible. With luck, this will be the safest place for them.
Pellaeon waits patiently for the call to come in that the crew has manned battlestations. After a few minutes, Moorhouse calls out, "Admiral, master at arms reports battlestations manned and ready."
"Understood," Pellaeon says. He pauses, then orders loudly, "Make the jump!"
"Aye, aye, sir," the helmsman and the hyperdrive officer respond in sync. They exchange a quick glance before they begin working their controls. In seconds, everyone in the bridge feels the feeling of acceleration and watch as the familiar blue streaks of hyperspace begin to appear out of the viewport. A second later, the ship enters hyperspace.
However, only seconds later, the hyperdrive officer pulls back on the throttle, and the ship drops out of hyperspace.
Almost immediately, the sight before them makes most mouths on the bridge drop open in shock. Even Pellaeon finds himself shocked at what he's witnessing.
Lying before them, at long last, is Exegol itself. The planet is large, and looks as if it's a little bit bigger than Earth. The atmosphere seems to be in almost a red hue, and multitudes of red clouds hang in the atmosphere. Although the clouds and mist obscure large portions of the planet's surface. From what they can see, Exegol seems to be a desert planet. The bridge crew can see vast desert plains and plateaus, along with mountains stretching out across the landscape. They can also see frequent flashes of lightning down in the clouds.
However, that's not the biggest shock to those on the bridge. What is a far bigger shock than the sight of Exegol is the massive fleet in orbit above it. Thousands of Star Destroyers and several hundred battlecruisers and dreadnoughts are in orbit above Exegol, arranged in a series of formations at different orbits over the planet. A handful look fairly old and not in the best physical shape, but most still look to be in good shape and still as deadly as they've always been. Most of the fleet over Exegol are Imperial I and II class Star Destroyers, but Pellaeon can also instantly identify Bellator, Allegiance and Vengeance class dreadnoughts and hundreds of Dreadnaught class heavy cruisers. He can also see at least 1 Onager in the fleet.
"Holy shit," Moorhouse says almost under his breath.
"What the f***? Where did this fleet come from?" one of the lookouts mutters.
Iden Versio is also on the bridge. As she gazes out the viewport at the massive fleet above Exegol, she mutters loudly, "Well, this explains why so much of the Empire's fleet disappeared in the months before Jakku."
Pellaeon is stunned at the sight too, but quickly recovers. Especially once he sees one of the closest Star Destroyers turning to get into a better position to engage the Hood.
"Engines ahead full! Right full rudder! Concentrate all fire on the three nearest targets! Navigation, program the navicomputer and get us out of here!" Pellaeon shouts, raising his voice louder than he has in many years.
The bridge crew reacts immediately. Everyone in earshot knows that for Pellaeon to be raising his voice like this, the situation is bad. Not that they necessarily need the admiral to tell them that. They are literally outnumbered about 4,000 to 1.
The Hood's engines immediately throttle up to full power, the engineers pushing the engines as hard as they can. At the same time, the helmsman throws the wheel as hard as he can to starboard. The Hood quickly begins increasing in speed as it heaves hard to starboard.
As the Hood begins its turn, at the bow of the ship, several gun crews are the quickest to react to Pellaeon's orders. Already manning their weapons, the gun crews are able to quickly train their weapons on the closest Star Destroyers and press the fire buttons. Several dozen turbolaser batteries on the forward part of the ship open fire, sending bolts flying towards the two nearest Star Destroyers.
Needless to say, the ships over Exegol have been caught very off guard, and most do not have their shields up, as they had not expected a ship to suddenly materialize over the planet. Aboard the ships, the crews are racing to action stations as they try to react to the appearance of the Hood.
Within a minute, about half of the Hood's weapons batteries have opened fire, concentrating their fire on the three closest Star Destroyers. Two of those Star Destroyers are being badly battered, while the third is withstanding the fire a little bit better.
On the bridge, Pellaeons is gripping a control panel tightly as the Hood completes its turn. All he has to do now is to wait for the navigation officers to finish programming the navicomputer to allow them to make a hyperspace jump to leave the system. Then, he feels the ship rock a bit as one of the nearby Star Destroyers finally manages to get its weapons fully online and begins to return fire at the Hood.
"How much longer until we can make the jump to light speed?!" Pellaeons shouts over the chaotic sound of combat.
"Admiral, I'm still trying to program the navicomputer! I need at least 20 seconds!" the head navigation officer responds.
"I need it sooner than that! We can't stay broadside like this for long!" Pellaeon shouts. Being broadside to the enemy makes the ship a much bigger and easier target.
Pellaeon watches out of the viewport as a volley of turbolaser bolts and a series of Starhawk cruise missiles impacts one of the Star Destroyers that has already been damaged, and finally set off a chain of explosions that tear the ship apart. The other Star Destroyer that has been badly hit is also on the verge of succumbing the Hood's fire. However, many of the ships of the fleet have begun turning/moving towards the Hood, and Pellaeon can see some of them starting to open fire. Soon enough, there will be several hundred ships firing on the Hood. This could end even worse than the fight with the Eclipse
Suddenly, the navigation officer calls out, "Admiral! Navicomputer is set!"
"Get us out of here!" Pellaeon shouts. The hyperdrive officers shoves the throttles full forward. The stars ahead lengthen out, and a second later, the Hood jumps to hyperspace, leaving behind a destroyed Star Destroyer, another that will have to be scrapped, and two more damaged.
On the bridge of the Hood, Pellaeon is breathing heavily. That had been some of the most intense minutes of his career. Now, as the Hood moves away through hyperspace, Pellaeon's mind is racing through what just happened. At last, he had found Exegol as his original orders mandated, but he had found far more than he bargained for. The secret of the so-called Sith Eternal and this massive fleet over Exegol looms over him, as well as what to do next.
And, I'll end the chapter there.
I hope this was an exciting chapter, and gave some ideas of what direction I'm taking the sequel and the whole Exegol/Sith Eternal storyline. In this, the Sith Eternal, and Palpatine, has at their disposal a large portion of the formal Imperial fleet. We know in canon that several thousand ships of the Imperial Navy disappeared strangely in the year between the battles of Endor and Jakku. It's disappointing we don't really get an idea of what happened to them in canon, so in this, those ships were all secretly squirreled away to Exegol. Now, that's not to mean there won't be a secret, powerful fleet being built on Exegol that will be a counterpart to the Final Order we saw in the films. There will still be one. However, in this series, it will be vastly different and make more sense, as well as do away with the whole notion of the entire fleet being mini Death Stars with a number of different types of shipes being included in this fleet. I'll explain all the Imperial ships in the first fleet, as well as the designs of the ships in the Final Order fleet, in the sequel trilogy story and on the wiki, so just wait for that.
Now, to address Exegol's appearance. You'll notice I described it a lot differently than what we saw in The Rise of Skywalker. There's a reason for that. Although I initially liked Exegol's design, over time, I've come to think that their could have been better designs to make it seem more evil and hell-like. One of my favorite Star Wars youtubers, EckhartsLadder, made a video on this same topic, and I agree with a lot of his points, and am designing my version of Exegol accordingly. It will seem more like a scene out of hell than a dark blue plain like we saw in the movies. I think it fits the Sith better.
Also, for those nerds who may have seen the movie or read the book, yes, that part of the chapter where the Hood was navigating the nebula was meant to resemble the Red Route One scene from The Hunt for Red October, and yes, I did include a reference to Pellaeon having seen said film.
Next chapter will show the aftermath of this chapter and show the crew deciding what to do next. It'll be up soon. Until it's up, please leave a review, and stay tuned!