LordDarthYoda - That's an interesting idea. The Arrow isn't quite a Hammerhead class ship though - think much smaller (and the Reprisal is huge!). The book's theme really is family and I'm glad you caught it, as it's something I've tried to work into this book (especially the later chapters). And re: Millenium Falcon, I actually thought about adding it in, but it added basically nothing and the next chapters have enough stuff going on I didn't want to write a Millenium Falcon cameo too!

Mr. Insane - It's going to be wayyy more than 2 chapters. Probably four. There's a lot to get through and many characters that need to be checked in with. I like that there are competing theories with the Arrow. It might end up being totally useless too!

Son of Dorn - It's not that its necessarily a bad chapter, I just think it breaks up the momentum of the story a bit too much. If you haven't noticed the main theme of this book has been family, and how it can affect lives, for good (Ravar and Pravin) and bad (Nara's attachment to her old family.)

SpeechBubbleMe - Thanks. Yeah, I'm bringing a bit of the first book back here. Nothing too much, but its a nice callback, I thought.

A/N - The battle for Ubrora begins! Yes it took 56 chapters to get here, but it's finally here. Thanks to everyone who continues to read this little (or not so little) exploration into the Star Wars Universe. Amazingly the readership numbers have probably never been better, which I find be almost too good to be true. So thank you all.

Oh, and in case you missed my hints in the previous chapter, the ship that Ravar is renting? It's a prototype Star Destroyer (or Jedi Cruiser as they'd be known in the clone wars).

Anyways, all reviews, follows, and favourites are deeply appreciated as always.

Please enjoy the next chapter.

Chapter 56: The Battle for Ubrora, Part One

"May the Force be with us."

- Message from General Pravin Ecalt transmitted to troops upon commencement of the Battle for Ubrora.

The first action in the battle for Ubrora was Aurine Brynar igniting her lightsaber. Sure, some historian in twenty years would probably argue differently, but for Aurine Brynar, there was no doubt in her mind that she had started this battle.

The droid army was an imposing sight, there was no doubt about that. Thousands upon thousands of merciless killing machines, machines that would be unaffected by the weather, the sounds of battle or their companions being destroyed by the hundreds. But the droids were focused on another target at the moment, pounding the well-entrenched positions behind the Aqir river. Aurine hoped that their fortifications would hold out, because they were taking a beating from the droids – especially from the battle tanks and their powerful main armament.

"Forward!" she shouted, thrusting her lightsaber forward in a dramatic pose, urging her troops out of their concealment in the forest and towards the droid army. A mass of onrushing Ubrorans tried to shove her out of the way, so Aurine did the obvious thing and led the charge herself. The Ubrorans weren't going to charge into melee range, of course, but to get the ten thousand plus Ubrorans into a proper firing arc, they had to get forward, and quickly.

Aurine realized the flaw in that plan almost immediately. As the troops behind started firing, she found herself dodging out of the way of some of the wayward shots from the Ubrorans behind her. And as the droid army reacted to the incoming threat, blaster fire started incoming from her front. As it turned out, getting shot at from two polar opposite directions, either intentionally or unintentionally was not a great situation to be in. Furthermore it prevented her from moving forward with any sort of alacrity. And she needed to be quick because her lightsaber had well, limited range.

Aurine spared a quick moment to look around and found a person sized crater that had just been created by the fire from a battle tank. Deciding that she needed to get into something resembling cover, she lept up and landed in the crater. Less than a minute after the battle began, Aurine was happy to be out of the fray. She peaked her head up over the ridge and looked at the chaos.

Laser fire was intensifying between the two sides as the Ubrorans sought to bring all their arms to bear and the droid army reacted to this new threat on it's flank. For now, the Ubrorans seemed to have the advantage in fire, but it was only a matter of time until Coren Vox got his army turned around to bring the big guns forward. Coren's army still had a lot of battle tanks and droidekas and those were dangerous machines of war. Except, because they had been arrayed to fight the forces that were defending the river, they were all in the wrong position. The droidekas needed to be in front to make up for their limited range and to make best best use of their shields, but the vast majority of them were facing the river. That meant the droideka's had to be redirected to push through their own army to get to the actual front and that would take time. The battle tanks were slightly more mobile and most had already turned towards the new threat, but some were already down, victim to the fact that they had been flanked and vulnerable to the incoming fire.

Aurine looked around. The cacophony of battle was in full swing now, complete with the sounds of blaster fire, battle cries and the wails of the wounded. Finally Aurine truly understood the phrase, 'the horrors of war.' She had been in many fights in her life, but there was nothing in her life that compared to this. It was just chaos everywhere. It was so increadibly hard to hear yourself think let alone act. She wasn't even sure what she could do to help. She could try to rush the front lines with her lightsaber and get shot at by both sides. If she made it through she could do some work with her lightsaber, but she didn't necessarily think she could get there.

Aurine grimaced at her own recalcitrance. If she couldn't be brave and charge into harm's way, how could she expect any of the Ubrorans behind her to stand and fight?

Aurine jumped out of the crater and charged, lightsaber held high.

Tiplee tapped her fingers against the dashboard of her speeder impatiently. The open-topped speeder, which housed her and 3 other Ubrorans was going to be one of the first unleashed into the developing battle. However, the cavalry, such as they were needed to be unleashed at the right time to maximize their effectiveness. And Tiplee wasn't in charge of that. She looked at her comlink, as if she could simply will the person on the other side to give her the order to go.

Another minute passed with no order to go. "Pravin, you there still?" she spoke into her comlink.

"Yes. It's still a hold on the speeders," Pravin replied calmly.

Tiplee, from her vantage point could only see some of the battle, but she could definitely sense what was happening not far from her. It was hard to explain the assault on her senses that was occurring. It was like being battered by wave after wave of emotion, each coming faster and more powerful than the last. Tiplee was experienced enough to know how to combat it, muting her presence in the Force and staying focused on just herself.

It was hard though. She wanted to be a part of this battle, she knew that she could be a massive help to the Ubrorans, even if just as a symbol. But she and Aurine had agreed to give Pravin Ecalt overall command, so she would follow his orders, even if she would hugely prefer to be in the middle of the action instead of just waiting for the right moment to strike.

After another agonizing few minutes of waiting, Pravin's voice came through her comlink, "Implacable team you are good to go. May the Force be with you."

Tiplee turned to the driver of the speeder, a young Ubroran named Geonic Narik "Go! And don't worry if I jump out of the speeder. Just keep going until there are no droids left to shoot."

Geonic smiled tightly and gunned the engine, making sure that this former luxury speeder was the first of the 'cavalry' to emerge from its hiding spot opposite to where Aurine's flanking force had emerged from. Tiplee wouldn't have had it any other way.

The speeder lept out of their hiding place and bounced through the partial clearing that had been hastily cut through the forest. Even the luxury speeder's advanced repulsorlifts were having trouble with the terrain and Tiplee was jolted around in her seat as the speeder moved. "Hang on!" said Geonic.

Tiplee was not headstrong enough to ignore the advice. She clung on to the side of the speeder as if her life depended on it. Because it did. When the speeder stopped shaking, Tiplee released her hold on the side of the speeder and looked up to see the battle in all of it's 'grandeur.' The Ubroran army had been divided into two. One part had been tasked with defending the river, and it had taken the brunt of the fire at the start of the battle. The Ubrorans had dug in, using improvised shield generators and the like, but just judging by the damage that the land itself had taken, losses had been fairly heavy.

But that had been allayed by the relative success of Aurine's flanking force. With the droid army of Coren Vox (who she could see zipping around on his jetpack) ill prepared to fight Aurine's flankers, the Ubrorans were making headway. But Coren was getting his army positioned properly and now the fight was swinging back in the other direction.

The cries of Ubroran and droid alike created a cacophony the likes of which Tiplee had never heard before in her life. The grassy area on which they had chosen to fight on had looked like the opening shot of a nature documentary before the battle. Now it looked like someone had chosen to strip mine the entire place. And the battle was not even close to being over yet.

Yet there was little time to consider the scope of the battle. It was time for the cavalry to come and even the odds. Pravin's plan was to use these speeders as half-distraction, half-raiding force. But Tiplee saw them more as a way of getting her right into the thick of battle. "Head for the center of the droid army, she said, as she hopped up onto the front of the speeder. The wind buffeted her terribly, but she used the Force to keep herself from falling. She never heard the response from Geonic, whatever he tried to say, the wind simply carried away. All that mattered is that he drove the speeder at the thickest concentration of droids.

Tiplee ignited her lightsaber and waited. Waited to strike. Waited to bring justice and freedom back to Ubrora.

Aurine Brynar was losing herself to the Force. In a good way. In simple terms, the battle was so chaotic that doing anything but listening to the Force was an invitation to be hurt. Even though Aurine was one of the strongest warriors in this battle, she was having trouble making an impact. The only weapon she had on hand was her lightsaber, which was a great weapon...but one not designed for large scale battles where the laserfire was coming in thick and hot. How she hadn't been hit by a laser bolt seemed to defy any laws of probability.

But her tenacity was about to pay off, because she was about to reach the first lines of battle droids, and her true target, the Mandalorians that were flitting around, causing death and mayhem wherever they went. The droids would have to go first, but if Aurine had her way, she'd be bringing those Mandalorians to some Jedi justice soon.

With a cry, she lept into the air and swung her lightsaber around, decapitating the first battle droid she saw before spinning and cutting her way through a second, then a third, and finally a fourth. Finally, she was unleashed into the battle and she intended to make the most of it.

Aurine cut the head off of one battle droid then twirled and lowered her lightsaber, separating the next beige droid into two separate, useless halves. Then she deflected an incoming blaster bolt towards another droid, which missed its intended target, but not by much. The droid that had just managed to avoid the deflected bolt got a lightsaber jammed through it's chest for having the audacity of making her miss.

Then she was buffeted backwards slightly by two far more powerful laser bolts. She knew what that meant. Droideka.

If a designer sat down and wanted to build a droid that could take on a Jedi, they'd probably come up with something similar to a droideka. The small shield that was built into the hull of the insect like droid was strong enough to redirect her lightsaber and to deflect blaster fire. But she had learned a few things about how to deal with droidekas from Tiplee...

Aurine twirled agilely out of the way of the droideka's next volley of fire, gathered the Force around her and unleashed a Force push towards the droid. It caught the advancing droideka square and knocked it flat on it's back. Then, as the droid righted itself, Aurine reached out with the Force again and used the Force to, not so gently, realign the droideka's two 'arms.' Nothing too dramatic - she just changed the angle of their blaster arms just slightly. The droideka righted itself and fired at Aurine...except the lasers that the droideka emitted didn't get past it's own shield. The blaster bolt bounced off the shield and buried itself right into the droideka's 'head.' The droideka dropped to the ground and rolled to the side, smoking. Dead.

Aurine smirked. She had turned the droideka's biggest strength into its weakness. The way that the droideka was able to fire and still be protected by its own shield was that the computer that controlled the shield opened it for fractions of a second to allow laser fire through. Aurine had simply re-aligned the droid's arms, throwing off that calculation. Which meant that the fire simply bounced off its own shield and right back at it, essentially destroying itself. With a little assist from her, of course.

Aurine got a temporary reprieve from the battle, as there was no one in her immediate vicinity. She looked skyward and brushed her hair out of her eyes. Where was the Emerald Dream? Where were the Padawans? The next phase of the battle relied on them and they were in deep trouble if they did not arrive.

"Let's go, Sascha!" said Nara's voice in his earpiece.

"I'm trying, I'm trying," he protested. "I'm getting some weird readings from the power reactor and I wanted to see if they would settle down before taking off."

"Well if we don't take off now we are going to miss the whole battle!" Nara protested from her seat in the gunner's station of the Emerald Dream's top mounted turret.

"And if we crash on takeoff, we aren't going to BE a part of the battle. But you are right. We gotta go now." He grasped the controls with his clammy hands "Here goes nothing," he muttered. He activated the repulsorlifts and immediately felt the ship protest at trying to escape all the rubble that was buried on top of it. "Come on, come on," he said, as his hands flew over the control panel, trying to find a way to get more power to the repulsorlifts.

He could feel the hull of the ship straining against the rubble piled on top of that. But more than that he could hear the ship as it groaned against both gravity and against the weight bearing down it. Sascha glanced nervously at the ceiling. He didn't think that the ship's hull would give way, but he hadn't heard a noise quite like this before. It sounded like the ship was fighting against a choir of screaming banshees. And losing.

Sascha bit his lip and put more power into the repulsorlifts, siphoning power away from the engine. It was risky, because the engine might refuse to cold-fire. But the engine wasn't going to matter if they crashed back to the ground, so he took that risk.

The grumbling noise that surrounded the ship seemed to increase in volume, and Sascha wished desperately that he could cover his ears to protect them from the loud, annoying noise. The hardest thing for him at the moment was he couldn't really tell what kind of progress they were making. All he could see out his viewport were pebbles and small rocks falling to the wayside, but due to the lack of light he was having trouble determining if they were making progress at all. For all he knew they had just been holding position five feet off the ground since takeoff.

Then suddenly there was light in front of his viewport. Then he could see the sky. And then Ubrora's sun.

Sascha emitted a whoop of excitement and watched in amazement as the Emerald Dream shucked off its shackles and rose above the rubble that was the spaceport. Like a phoenix, the Emerald Dream rose to fight again.

Carefully, Sascha transferred power from the repulsorlifts and to the engines, making sure that the remaining rocks on top of his ship didn't topple off the ship and cause devastation to the nearby structures, some of which were still (mostly) in tact. When he was pretty sure that most of the remaining debris was off his ship, he engaged the thrusters and let the ship fly.

And amazingly, it did.

"Nara we are on our way. Get ready for battle."

"Gotcha. How's the ship?"

Sascha was trying to put it through its paces while at the same time making sure that they were going to get to the site of the battle before it was too late. "Well, shields are still nonexistent. Engines are at about fifty percent and fading ever so slightly as we go...probably a leak somewhere. I'd say we are sluggish and vulnerable but we have a huge element of surprise. And we have the big guns."

"Okay. Tell me how long before we arrive."

Sascha did some quick estimation, "Two minutes or so."

"And can you tell what's going on...anywhere?"

Sascha looked down at his instruments. The scanners had taken a beating but were fairly functional. He hadn't bothered to power them up because they wouldn't help the ship emerge from the rubble, but now they might actually want to see what was going on with the battle. He booted up the scanners and was greeted by a wail of static, but after that cleared it appeared that the sensors were working...reasonably well.

"Looks like there's fighting in orbit. There's sensor readings for a capital ship that I don't recognize. The Ubroran fighters are also engaging the Reprisal."

"Who is winning?"

"No idea. We are too far away to get a good reading, but at least Reprisal will be distracted."

"And the land battle?"

Sascha stared at the readings on his scanner for a moment, "Too hectic to tell anything," he admitted.

"Okay."

Sascha felt a thrill of dread as he sensed that they were approaching the battle. He steeled himself against the onslaught of emotions but he still felt a shiver go up his spine as they approached the site of the battle. Stay focused, he told himself. Just an hour of focus. That might be all he had left to give, so he would give it.

He looked out the viewport and saw the start of the Janit forest, which meant that they were very close.

And then, without warning, they were a part of the battle.

The front of the battle almost stretched as far as his eye could see. And what he saw the most was laserfire, fire so thick it seemed to blot out the very ground that the two armies were fighting over. He was so awed by the spectacle of the battle, both the sheer scale and the ferocity of it, that he didn't fire the Emerald Dream's armament during their first pass.

"Sascha, hello? If you'd like me to shoot something, give me angle to do so!"

Nara's voice in his ear startled him into realizing that he was not just an observer in this battle, but an active participant. "I'll bring her around for another pass."

As Sascha fought against his damaged ship, willing it to turn around, he realized something that he should have a while ago. With the Emerald Dream's turret (and the Togruta inside) at the top of the ship, to give Nara something to shoot at he'd have to fly in at a downward angle. Or fly the ship upside down, he mused. That seemed...ill advised, so he decided that he'd bring the ship towards the battle at a downwards angle.

As the Slussi designed ship came back around to the battlefield, he took care to line Nara up with shots against the most important targets – the battle tanks. Though their numbers had been gradually whittled down from the nearly one hundred that had started the invasion, there were still more than fifty battle tanks in the main battle. Armored enough to withstand several hits from standard weaponry, the Ubrorans had no counter to the tanks.

But the droid army had not been expecting the Emerald Dream.

During their second pass Sascha lined up a row of five battle tanks, and Nara hit each and every one with several hits from the topside turret, causing several to explode, with the rest clearly damaged beyond repair. Sascha did what he could with the front mounted lasers, firing into the mass of battle droids that were supporting the battle tanks but probably not being all that effective.

Sascha banked the Emerald Dream away from the battle, not wanting to get too close to the battle itself. With no shields, one good hit from just about anything above a standard blaster might bring down the ship, or at least cause it significant damage. But there was no other choice but to fly as close to the battle as possible. Not if they wanted to help out.

He brought the Emerald Dream back towards the battle and immediately had to take evasive maneuvers as which looked like a small missile shot right past the ship. Sascha's eyes raked the battlefield, trying to find out what was shooting at him. As he dived to avoid another incoming missile, he saw who was attacking him. It was one of the Mandalorians, shooting what appeared to be a shoulder mounted missile launcher.

Sascha gritted his teeth. He had no idea if the Emerald Dream could take any sort of hit from a missile launcher in it's current state. With it's shields running it probably wouldn't have been a problem. Without them if a missile hit the ship in a vulnerable area, that might be enough to send the ship spiraling down to the ground. Or worse.

Sascha aimed the ship towards the largest concentration of battle tanks he could find and lined three of them up for Nara. Sascha felt the topside turret open up and saw red lasers streaking towards the battle tanks. The first few shots missed, but Nara quickly found the range and the Emerald Dream's lasers started tearing chunks out of the battle tanks. The first tank simply appeared to lose power and wilted to the ground. The second battle tank exploded, sending fiery shrapnel wildly across the battlefield and further damaging the tanks beside it. Sascha never really got to see what happened to the third tank, first because he was distracted by the sight of his Master's green lightsaber on the battlefield, and second because another missile whizzed right by the side of the ship. That time he hadn't even seen the missile coming.

This was going to end badly, Sascha could already tell. Whichever Mandalorian was firing at him was going to hit, eventually. The Dream just wasn't agile enough in its current state, and he needed to be close to the battle to allow Nara to be effective from the topside turret. So that meant the Mandalorian knew approximately where he was going to be aiming – and that made the ship vulnerable.

He twirled the ship away from the battle in an evasive maneuver that would give him a free moment to speak to Nara, "Hey...Nara."

"Yeah. I see it Sascha. What do you want to do?"

"I don't think we have a choice," he said resignedly. "We have to keep going back, doing these strafing runs, otherwise the Ubroran army's going to get wrecked."

Nara paused for a long moment as he brought the ship into a long turn that would bring them back around. The chaos of the battle was lessening at the moment, and clearly lines had been drawn. And it didn't look good for the Ubrorans. Though the droid army was surrounded, it was pushing forward and the Ubroran army was starting the long process of failing.

"We gotta keep doing this. It was good doing this with you, Sascha," her voice breaking ever so slightly.

"It was my pleasure, Nara."

The Emerald Dream headed into battle once more, lasers blazing away.