Legend of the Harp
By Hemaccabe
Episode III: The Crucible
Chapter 17: Eye of the Tiger
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
*** Jedi Knight Jors Zaemon, above Baetar Prime ***
I texted Chief of Staff Mal Basyah, "What can we do to help?"
A bit surprisingly, we got a fast response, "An alpha strike has been launched against the Mitzri flagship. You could join them?"
"What's an 'alpha strike,'" I texted back.
A quick response came back, more polite than I would expect and quicker, implying that I had been dumped to a subordinate, "An alpha strike is a large group of fighters, assembled for a single attack in the hopes of swamping the target's defenses. We have never had to deal with a fighter screen before. We have added additional fighters as a screen of our own to protect the fighters armed with anti-ship weapons, in an effort to try and insure we will still be able to penetrate the screen."
"Let your alpha strike know were joining them." I texted back.
I gave the orders and Bearer was joining a counter attack with a large flight of Baetari fighters attempting to strike an enemy fleet and pierce her defenses. Our four Vultures had been deployed as I leapt into my preferred gunner's seat, forehead, and began to fire.
We approached what looked like the Mitzri flagship, it was an odd shape, but roughly as large as a Corellian Progress class cruiser, maybe a bit bigger.
We ran into a cloud of TIE fighters. Based on intelligence reports Furry had assembled, I recognized that they were clearly the TIE fighter version the Mining Guild had been allowed to purchase. This made sense considering all of Baetar's enemies had close ties to and were part of the Mining Guild.
The Mining Guild TIEs were cheaper than standard TIEs as they only had six of the big grav plates, rather than the eight typical Imperial TIEs carried in their side wings. I quickly realized the Mining Guild TIEs still could maneuver ridiculously fast and the missing two plates probably improved pilot visibility while reducing the craft's targetable cross section.
The Baetar alpha strike hit the cloud hard. The small Kfirs and larger Lavis started punching a hole in Mitzri fighter cover. The Kfirs and Lavis inflicted a terrible toll on the Mitzri TIEs. The Baetari fighters tried to punch a hole for the larger fighter/bomber Neshers, but they were just overwhelmed by the vast numbers of Mitzri TIEs.
We slammed into the Mitzri TIEs a second later with our Vultures around us forming a screen. We took a toll on the TIEs as well, but it seemed like for every one we shot down, they had two more to fill the space. If there was one saving grace, it was that their pilots were clearly not that good. I don't know how many TIEs I blasted that just seemed to be going slowly in a straight line.
That changed when a clearly expertly piloted TIE flew through our formation blasting one of our Vultures out of space.
"Follow that one!" I ordered.
We immediately dove after him. He was a nasty piece of work. We'd chase. He'd loop around and punish us some more, then we'd chase again. If Bearer was a standard Gozanti, he would have blown us from the sky. As it was, he had us hard pressed. Finally, on the fourth go round, I closed my eyes, I felt my thumb trigger the cannon once and it was over.
When I opened my eyes, I saw that I had just blasted the Mitzri ace. If that was a Mitzri. I could also tell that the Neshers had hit the cloud of TIEs. The Neshers had inflicted a terrible toll on the TIEs as well, proving the 'fighter' component of their 'fighter/bomber' designation. Still the Neshers had not been able to break through and use their load out of anti-ship torpedoes. The Mitzri capital ships remained safe behind their TIE fighter screens while they poured out fire into the Baetari fighters.
I heard the recall code, the Baetari were taking too many casualties and weren't breaking through.
"Captain, take us on a polar orbit of this system's star, out of this system's ecliptic plane. Maximum speed." I ordered.
I could feel my order being followed as Bearer heeled over hard and raced away from the battle.
The TIEs that chose to follow us were blasted or quickly left behind.
I sent a text back to Chief of Staff Basyah, "Most of the TIE pilots aren't very good, but a handful seem to be very competent. Pass the word. I will try and bring in some reinforcements."
A minute later my text was acknowledged. I knew she would have her hands full.
As we flew, we started trying to contact back to Dandoran space.
*** Imperial Admiral Scharn, aboard his flagship, the Star Destroyer Relentless ***
"The opening moments of the battle seem to be going well, though they do seem to be taking some terrible casualties." General Borgia remarked looking over the same situation table as the other senior officers.
"True, but they have plenty of casualties they can take, and it wouldn't suit Imperial policy for them to have much left once the job is done. Mission Instructions remain the same." Admiral Scharn replied calmly.
Admiral Scharn's tone belied what he felt in his gut. Admiral Scharn was a typical product of his homeworld Kaiserliche. Kaiserliche was an old core world member of the Republic and Senate, now a core supporter of the Emperor. Kaiserliche had been strongly in support of an Order political agenda even before the Clone Wars. Kaiserliche had contributed a large number of personnel to the Republic military and had continued as it became the Imperial Military. While Kaiserliche was better known for her ground forces, quite a few products of her well regarded naval school, Marinschule Keel, like Admiral Scharn, had joined the Imperial Navy as well.
Admiral Scharn had joined the Imperial Navy just after it had been formed in the wake of the Empire being declared. On the basis of his education, Scharn had been accepted immediately as a Lieutenant. As the Imperial Fleet had mushroomed in size, constantly desperately in need of skilled personnel, Scharn had risen quickly, riding the crest of the lack of personnel wave with relentless competence and loyalty. He now found himself an Admiral.
Not only an Admiral, but in command of a flotilla of three Star Destroyers, a number of cruisers, corvettes and other lesser ships.
Admiral Scharn had earned with his competence and victories the reputation of the favorite hatchet of Moff Tarkin, who was known to be a favorite of the Emperor.
Admiral Scharn found he got along well with Moff Tarkin. They both came from military families, a Captain Scharn had been among the original settlers of Kaiserliche, and they both valued professionalism, competence and, when necessary, ruthlessness.
Admiral Scharn had found General Borgia's statement of the obvious a bit annoying but was grateful to have him present. General Borgia was nominally his subordinate, but really, they were in different chains of command. This meant Admiral Scharn had found he could confide in General Borgia.
Having a confidant with whom one could candidly share one's problems had been enormously helpful for Scharn. After all, as commanding officer of the fleet, it would look bad and be bad for discipline if he shared his concerns with a subordinate. Any equal in another part of the fleet had to be considered a rival and it would hardly be a good idea to look weak before his superiors.
However, since Borgia was in a different chain of command, Scharn found he could speak openly. Scharn and Borgia had come up the ranks together, looking out for each other's career when possible and had provided each other with the invaluable service of just being a sounding board. They had both benefited from having two heads examine their problems instead of one and, sometimes, just commiserating over a regulation breaking bottle of schnapps.
They had fought together in several battles now including Die Tze and Emberlene. The victory on Die Tze had really been more to, then, Colonel Borgia's credit. Rather than taking the simple line of "kill anyone who resists," Borgia had sought out and taken prisoners who had become invaluable sources of intelligence.
The superior intelligence had allowed Admiral Scharn to flex his forces between stopping the resupply runs from getting through while also being able to commit them to surface support, maximizing their efficiency.
Breaking the resistance on Die Tze had resulted in Borgia's promotion to General. Both Scharn and Borgia enjoyed the credit for the success.
Bombing Emberlene had been distasteful work, but Borgia's carefully prepared ground defense schematics were key to planning out the attack. Having a clear plan of the best ways to break Emberlene's not inconsiderable defensive positions had been invaluable again. It may have been distasteful work, but Emberlene had been rebellious and all traces of rebellious behavior had to be rooted out.
Now they had a new task, which was even more distasteful.
Baetar was clearly disloyal to the Emperor, and thus, had to be destroyed. Still, unlike the remote Emberlene, Baetar was a member of the Senate, and if an Imperial fleet showed up and bombed them out of existence, it would be politically awkward.
A simple solution presented itself though, Baetar was surrounded by enemies who would like nothing better than to destroy her. All that needed to be done was to have someone give them a dose of basic competence.
That someone had been Admiral Scharn.
The leaders of Baetar's enemies had been brought together and Admiral Scharn had reviewed their strategy with them.
The first thing Admiral Scharn had noticed was they had no fighters.
"Why don't you have snub fighters?" He'd asked.
The answer was long and complicated, but could be quickly summed up to, "If the Baetari like snub fighters, they must be bad."
Admiral Scharn found much of his time with his erstwhile allies would be spent being patient with their unnecessarily long-winded answers and emotional, child-like thinking.
The absence of snub fighters? Admiral Scharn quickly fixed that. He had done the simplest thing, have them order large numbers of Mining Guild-type TIEs. Then they had begun training.
After that, Admiral Scharn had also reviewed their fleet tactics. They were abysmal. They would bring in all their ships on a single vector, making sure Baetar only had to defend along one axis.
Admiral Scharn had created new plans using multiple vectors. This would spread out Baetar's defenses and leave holes.
After all the plans had been created, equipment purchased, and training begun, Admiral Scharn had a quiet conversation with General Borgia in his quarters over some illicit amaretto.
"I feel uncomfortable about this mission." Admiral Scharn began.
"Why?" General Borgia replied.
"I have been asked to do a great many distasteful things as an Imperial officer and I have done my duty, but I didn't join the Imperial Navy to help aliens murder humans." Admiral Scharn answered.
It was a common feeling on predominantly human Kaiserliche, and many other predominantly human worlds that humans consistently got the short end of the stick in the Republic. The Republic seemed to slavishly devote itself to ideas like, "Diversity and Tolerance."
While these ideas sounded so pretty in the pointy towers of politics and academia, in practice it always seemed to work against humans.
A civilization of a few thousand aliens being jumped up in line for record speed recognition and a seat in the Senate when human civilizations with billions, even trillions of citizens waited decade after decade.
Government contracts always being handed out to help develop poor, disadvantaged alien species, when the contracts could be filled more cheaply and efficiently on human worlds which also desperately needed the jobs. Particularly when it seemed the major barrier the alien species had to development was that they were completely lazy because they had gotten used to the Republic government giving them everything.
Under the Republic, pro-alien admission quotas at important, major pan-galactic universities were common. Somehow no one seemed to notice pro-alien meant anti-human discrimination.
The list was endless. The Empire had promised to work on merit, and if merit meant pro-human, so be it.
It had been bad enough what had been done to human worlds like Die Tze and Emberlene.
"To help non-humans, particularly those non-humans, murder humans is not what I signed up for." Admiral Scharn finally said.
"True, but once they have exhausted themselves ridding the galaxy of a planet disloyal to the Emperor, we will be able to divest them easily from the mineral assets they currently control. No doubt those resources didn't truly belong to them anyway. Without their Mining Guild revenues, they will be weak and easily controlled." General Borgia consoled.
"I have explained the Mission Instructions? Have I not?" Admiral Scharn asked.
"Of course." General Borgia replied.
The Mission Instructions were complicated, but clear. Admiral Scharn had them from newly promoted Grand Moff Tarkin himself.
"You will collect Baetar's traditional enemies. You will then prepare them, discreetly, as best you can. It is important that this conflict appears to have emerged organically. It cannot appear as if it was instigated by the Emperor.
"Once, hostilities have commenced, you are to watch and analyze. Should our clients be able to complete the job," and it was left unsaid but clear that meant exterminating the entire population of Baetar, "you will not intervene.
"If our allies are not capable, but close, you should intervene. It should be possible under these circumstances to be discreet. I trust your judgment in this matter.
"Lastly, if they fail suddenly and badly, do not intervene. It is critical that the Emperor not be embarrassed by appearing to be instigating this situation. Do you understand?" Tarkin concluded.
Admiral Scharn had simply saluted and been dismissed.
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