Incoming transmission...
Welcome back, ladies and gentlebeings to Radio Liberty! I'm your host Jevia Cross and I've got some juicy content for you today! We're launching a new segment discussing businesses working to build the economies of worlds outside Imperial control and how you can turn a profit at the New Order's expense. So get those data-pads ready cause we've got the first segment of the Insurgent Investor coming right up with Molmi Cosk! First off though, we've got these headlines.
The planetary government on Ibaar has released casualty figures following the fall of its capital city to Mandalorian forces after a six month siege.
There are only 11 undamaged buildings left in the capital. The Mandalorians destroyed or deterred most Imperial attempts to evacuate their troops by space. The Mandalorian 11th Army suppressed and destroyed the defenders by firing 46,750 tons of artillery ammunition on them.
Finally, the remaining Imperial forces surrendered and the Mandalorian seized the city. The Imperial Army was annihilated, with 118,000 men killed, wounded or captured in the final assault and 200,481 casualties in the siege as a whole for both it and the Imperial Fleet. Mandalorian losses amount to 35,866 warriors.
The ruler of Mandalore, Bo-Katan Kryze, visited the city, telling her warriors that they can win the war.
—
The wind came out of the west, off the Anilorac coast. That made Lieutenant Rivozhi happy. It meant the Remembrance could steam toward the coast when she launched her bombers and torpedo aircraft at Notselrac harbor. Had the wind blown in the other direction, she would have had to head straight away from land to send her aircraft towards it.
Not that Rivozhi expected to watch much of the fight either way. His battle station was down in the bowels of the carrier. He was assistant damage-control officer, under Lieutenant Commander Hiram Pottinger.
He would rather have had more to do with aviation, but the Navy wanted what it wanted, not what he wanted.
And, in late June off the Notselrac coast, being where he was had its advantages. With fair, fair skin, pale blond hair, and blue eyes, he was this far from being an albino. Even the mild sun of northern latitudes was a torment to him. Down in Mandalorian waters, the sun came closer to torture than torment. He painted himself in zinc-oxide ointment till he was blotchy as a leper, and burned anyhow.
One more fighter roared off the deck. Silence came down. "Now we wait," Pottinger said. He was twenty years younger than Rivozhi, but he'd graduated from the Imperial Academy on Lothal and was on his way through a normal officer's career. Carsten had started as an ordinary seaman. He was a mustang, up through the hawse hole. He'd spent a long time as an ensign, and even longer as a j.g. If he ever made lieutenant, he'd be proud. If he made lieutenant commander, he'd be ecstatic.
Of course, there was a war on. All the naval yards on both coasts would start cranking out ships as fast as they could. They'd need bodies to put into them. And some ships would go to the bottom, too, or suffer battle damage and casualties. They'd need replacements. Rivozhi wasn't thrilled at the idea of getting a promotion on account of something like that, but he knew those things happened. He'd seen it in the last war.
An hour and a half later, the intercom buzzed and squawked. Rivozhi's head swung towards it. One of the sailors in the damage-control party said, "Oh, Palpatine, what the hell's gone wrong now?" Carsten had the same thought. The intercom seldom brought good news.
"Men, this is the captain speaking," came from the squawkbox. Whatever the news was, then, it wasn't small. Captain Stein didn't waste his time on small stuff. He left that to Commodore Cressy, the exec.
After a tiny pause, the skipper went on, "The government of the New Republic has announced that they will not accept our Emperor's generous proposal of peace."
"Aw, shit," somebody said, softly and almost reverently. Again,Rivozhi was inclined to agree. The Republic Navy could play football on anybody's gridiron. Many Imperial admirals who had served the Old Republic during the Clone War had defected as soon as the New Republic was announced. That left the Empire with inexperienced fools in charge of its navy.
"Chancellor Mothma said,, 'We have not journeyed all this way across the years, across space, across the mountains, because we are weak. We know the Galactic Empire is strong. But the destiny of free beings is not decided by material computation. Death and sorrow will be the companions of our journey; hardship our garment; constancy and valor our only shield. We must be united, we must be undaunted, we must be inflexible. Victory at all costs." " Captain Stein paused again, then continued, "Well, she gives a nice speech, doesn't she? But we'll whip her and the rebels anyhow."
"Yeah," several sailors said together. The skipper had gauged their feelings well. No matter how good a speech Mothma gave, Rivozhi wondered how smart she was. She could have accepted the proposal of restoring the Senate and ending lifetime rule of the monarchy. She might have had a pretty good chance of bringing that off, too, and the war would be over.
"Where we are now, we don't have to worry about the Republic Navy right away," Lieutenant Commander Pottinger said. "We have plenty of other things to worry about instead."
The sailors laughed. Rivozhi did, too, not that it was all that funny. Land-based bombers had damaged his battleship off the Nacirema coast during the last war. The state of the art had improved a lot since then.
By attacking Notselrac harbor, the Remembrance was sticking her head in the lion's mouth.
To keep from thinking about that, he thought about something else: "If the one that started in 3 BCE was the Clone War, what are we going to call this one?"
Hiram Pottinger said, "Let's hope we call it the, 'This Was Easy and We All Went Home in a Hurry War." " He got a laugh. Rivozhi joined it and softly clapped his hands. He liked that kind of name just fine.
A few minutes afterwards, the intercom came to life again. "This is Commander Cressy." As usual, the executive officer sounded cool, calm, and collected. "Our wireless ranging gear shows a group in jetpacks not our own approaching the ship from the west. It is a wee bit unlikely that those paratroops will be friendly. I know you'll give them the warm reception they deserve."
"Happy days," Rivozhi said. The lion was trying to bite.
"Better this news than a surprise," Pottinger said, and Rivozhi could only nod. The wireless ranging gear had gone into the Remembrance just the year before. She'd made a special trip to the Notsob Navy Yard for the installation. Without it, she would have been blind to the approaching menace, maybe till too late.
Rivozhi wondered whether the Mandalorians also had wireless ranging gear-Y- range, people were calling it.
They'd figured out where the Remembrance was pretty damn quick. Nobody'd said anything about their having it. But then, how much of war was finding out the hard way what the other fellow had that you didn't know about ahead of time?
Put that way, it sounded quietly philosophical. Put another way, it meant Rivozhi was likely to get killed because some dimbulb in Corusaunt was asleep at the switch.
"They're going to throw up a lot of warriors all around us," said one of the sailors in the damage-control party. Maybe he'd had the same nasty thought Rivozhi had, and was trying to reassure himself.
And maybe whoever'd given the order for this raid hadn't stopped to figure out the likely consequences of sending a fighter carrier within range of land-based rockets. Hardly anybody had had to worry about land-based attacks on ships during the Clone War. Rivozhi was a rare exception. If an admiral hadn't had a new thought since 0 BCE, he'd figure everything would go fine. And maybe he'd turn out to be right, and maybe he wouldn't. And the Remembrance was going to find out which.
If the Mandalorians happened to have a submarine in the neighborhood, too . . . Well, that was another reason destroyers and cruisers ringed the carrier. They were supposed to carry better antisubmersible gear than they'd had in the Clone War, better even than they'd had against the CIS .
And then, without warning, all hell broke loose. The Remembrance's dual- purpose five-inch guns and all her smaller quick-firing antiaircraft weapons let go at once. Rivozhi could sure as hell hear that. The engines started working harder. The ship heeled to the left, then to the right. Captain Stein was handling her as if she were a destroyer, dodging and twisting on the open sea like a halfback faking his way past lumbering defensive linemen.
Trouble was, Mandalorians didn't lumber. By comparison, the Remembrance was the one that was slow.
A rocket burst in the water close by the ship. That felt almost like being inside a bell when it was rung.
Two more went off in quick succession, a little farther away. Fragments would cause casualties up on deck. The blasts might spring seams, too. Nobody was screaming for damage control, though, so maybe not.
Then, up near the starboard bow, a rocket burst on the Remembrance.
The ship staggered, as if she'd taken one right on the chin-and she had. Lights flickered, but they stayed on. The reassuring deep throb of the engines went on. So did the antiaircraft fire. Not a mortal wound, then-not right away, anyhow. But it could be.
"Rivozhi, take a party and deal with that!" Pottinger rapped out.
"Aye aye, sir!" Rivozhi turned to the sailors. "Come on, boys. We've got work to do. Sections one and two, with me."
The ship was buttoned up tight. They had to open and close a slew of watertight doors to get where they were going. Carsten wished there were something to be done about that. It slowed aid. But it also helped keep the ship afloat, which counted for more.
He'd been out on deck under air attack during the Clone War. It was just as much fun as he remembered. A Mandalorian corpse went into the sea almost without a splash. Another flew by nearly low enough to land, spraying blaster bolts down the flight deck. Men dove for cover, not that there was much. Screams rose when plasma struck home.
Rivozhi sprinted up the deck toward the rocket hit. He skidded to a stop at the smoking edge of the damage. The explosion had torn off a corner of the flight deck, exposing one of the five-inch gun positions just below. The gun seemed intact. Red smears and spatters said the gunners were anything but.
Rivozhi turned to a petty officer-one of the flight-deck crew-beside him. "Can you still take off and land with the deck like this?"
"Hell, yes, sir," the man answered. "No problem. It was a glancing hit- should have been a miss, I think, but we zigged instead o' zagging." He didn't seem very worried.
"All right." Carsten gave orders to most of the men he commanded to help set things right.
Then he said, "Doheny, Eisen, Bengough-follow me. We can still fight that gun, God damn it." He hadn't been in charge of a five-inch for years, but he knew how.
He scrambled down through the wreckage to the gun. He cut his hands a couple of times, but he wouldn't notice till later. A fighter from the carrier's combat air patrol, flame licking back from the engine cartwheeled into the ocean . Another flying Mandalorian shot up the Remembrance.
"Doheny, jerk shells. Bengough, you load and shoot. Eisen, handle azimuth! Can you do that?" Rivozhi waited for a nod, then grabbed the elevation screw. "Come on, you bastards! Like the skipper said, we've got company!"
At his orders, the gun started banging away. Black puffs of smoke dotted the sky. A Mandalorian, hit square in the chest, blew into pieces. Burning chunks went into the drink. Carsten and his makeshift crew cheered like maniacs.
Even as he yelled, though, he was looking for a new target. How many waves of attackers would the Mandalorians send at the Remembrance? And how long till her own bombers and TIE fighters came home and she could get the hell out of range? It already seemed like forever.