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Waypoint 16, Mid-route Hypermatter Refueling Depot, between Zeptooine and Erestal, Gallivanter Run
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For three weeks, the resilient little garrison on Waypoint 16 had held out against relentless Confederate space and air attacks. The large asteroid was one of the most remote places along the Bloodstripe Run, a V-shaped lump of iron, nickel and cobalt, 230 Light Years rimward from the Kuat Spur and a little under 2,000 light years from Earth, situated in between and about an equal light year out from both Zeptooine and Erestal. It was from these overrun colony worlds that the daily bombing raids of Waypoint 16 had come.
Waypoint 16 was a five billion year old rock that had been created when the planet it had been part of had been struck by another asteroid that had blown it into a million jagged pieces on the other side of the Milky Way. Located and plotted on Imperial charts by hyperspace scouts of the Ministry of Space early in the Empire's march down the Bloodstripe, the asteroid had been purchased from the Imperial Bureau of Surveys by the Arcona Mineral Harvesting Corporation. The mining company had originally planned to refine the entire asteroid into heavy building material but had realized the location of Waypoint 16 had been an optimal spot for a lucrative refueling depot for smaller vessels traveling the hyper-route. Three years ago they had started to gut the interior of the rock for space for hypermatter storage tanks but due to conflict in their board of directors work had sputtered along until the project was only half complete. The Board of Admirals, however, recognized the strategic importance of the depot if it was ever completed and stationed a small contingent of four hundred Naval Gunners and eighty Stormtroopers to man six large turbolaser batteries assigned to guard the depot and threaten pirate travel along the Bloodstripe. The troopers assigned there were mostly bored out of the skulls with nothing more to do than guard the six hundred civilian workers and stare out at the stars from pressurized surface bunkers every day.
The entire air defense of the asteroid consisted of ten anti-airspeeder batteries and twelve TIE/Ln Starfighters of Chiru Squadron, which had been flown in by the Star Destroyer Flood five days before the war started.
Thirteen days after the raid on Nal Kuat, Waypoint 16 was attacked by thirty-four B-Wing bombers operating out from captured Zeptooine. They made their approach using a small, passing comet for cover. No one on Waypoint 16 saw or heard them until less than a minute before the first magnetic smart bombs fell. Four of the TIEs had been patrolling twelve thousand kilometers away on the opposing side of the depot, and never spotted the incoming bombers. Two more TIEs had been ordered into the Void but had not yet taken off. Eight new steel-blue TIE/Lns, two-thirds of Waypoint 16's entire air strength were racked in a surface hangar almost panel to panel directly in the sights of the incoming bombers.
The B-Wings roared overhead in a tight Vee-of-vee formation and dropped their sticks of sixty fragmentation and bunker busting bombs with lethal accuracy. They fell directly atop the TIE hangar and adjoining machine shops. At the same time the Confederate gunners strafed pilots and ground crew who had quickly donned evo-suits, fled the hangar by bounding across the asteroid's surface and were now caught out in the open. Dozens of troopers wearing jetpacks were cut down in their tracks as they flew across the asteroid. The attack unfolded very quickly with the bombers there one minute and gone the next. They banked left and attacked Access Point 2 and the Arcona Mineral Harvesting terminal, wiping out several of the surface structures and facilities in that area, killing sixteen AMHC employees. Then they banked left again and raced away over the south pole of the asteroid. Neither the naval anti-airspeeder gunners nor the four TIEs out in the Void were able to react in time, and the attackers made a clean escape.
Waypoint 16's senior officer, Lieutenant Commander Tobix Kanchar, learned of the attack when a line of rail gun projectiles flashed across the ceiling of his office and threatened to depressurize the asteroid's headquarters. He leapt into his personal ITT and raced toward the TIE hangar. There, through a haze of slowly settling asteroid dust, he saw the charred hulks of eight precious TIE/Ln. Two aviation fuel gravtrucks had taken direct hits and detonated, and drums of fuel in still pressurized sections were ablaze. Oily black smoke boiled from the fires and was rapidly being vented out into the Void by the depot's emergency environmental systems. The aerial gunners had missed nothing. Strewn across the surface of the asteroid were broken bodies and bits of what had once been several troopers.
Kanchar balled his hands into fists as they involuntarily trembled from impotent anger. He turned to the sergeant who acted as his aide. "It looks like a stanged carnival blasting gallery."
Seven of the eight TIE/Ln at the hangar were destroyed, the eighth was badly shot up but overnight ground crew and the base's two astromechs performed a heroic patch-up job to make it space-worthy again. That left just five fighters to contest the ensuing waves of airstrikes. The strafing and bombing had taken a terrible toll on both the space and ground crews. Of Chiru Squadron's forty-five men on the ground, twenty-three had been killed and another eleven badly wounded. Not a single airspeeder mechanic escaped injury. The squadron had suffered more than sixty percent casualties in the first few minutes of combat.
"They came from Zeptooine." Kanchar assumed. They had watched large Confederate convoys sail coreward towards Erestal on the depot's long range sensors for days now and both planets were just barely within airstriking range. Rumors from other Imperial forces falling back had included claims that the Confederate bombers and fighters had longer sublight ranges than their Imperial counterparts. Knowing it would take the bombers several hours just to return to Zeptooine, refuel and rearm and then several more hours to return again, Kanchar quickly calculated the logical timing of their next attack on his outpost as sometime the next morning. His troopers and gunners would be better prepared the next time around. Pilots and mechanics, including several walking wounded, worked on repairing damage to the serviceable TIEs. Repulsar-dozers borrowed from AMHC dug crude revetments in which to park those survivors apart from one another.
The remaining fuel tanks were dispersed far away from the TIEs and the storage tanks of hypermatter, meant for future refueling of trade craft, was burned off slowly through outsourcing to prevent its future possible capture by the enemy. The Arcona Mineral Harvesting Corporation's Curich shuttle had been hit several times but luckily none of its vital systems had been beyond repair. The company asked for and received Kanchar's permission to send the shuttle to Nal Kuat with as many employees as it could carry. The depot held six younglings with their parents who worked for the company, along with the youth. The ones selected for the evacuation were all married or had younglings of their own elsewhere in the Empire. Single beings would stay and help the Stormtroopers fight for Waypoint 16.
As Kanchar anticipated, the next attack arrived when he had calculated, but this time the thirty-seven attacking B-Wings stood off at a distance and launched concussion missiles at the asteroid depot. Again the attack was alarmingly accurate, leaving many of the pressurized surface buildings on the rimward side of the asteroid in smoking ruins. An anti-airspeeder battery next to the hypermatter fueling pumps was knocked out, and the fire control equipment for one of the 5cm orbital-defense turbolasers was damaged.
All of the surviving TIEs were in the Void to receive the enemy, and managed to send two of the Confederate bombers flaming away into space. The Naval Gunners manning the anti-airspeeder batteries also opened up and shot down one of the attacking B-Wings. Kanchar observed another one trailing smoke as it fled rimward towards Zeptooine.
The TIE revetments suffered no further damage but Kanchar was shocked by the damage on the rimward side of the asteroid. Barracks building, both civilian and military, were riddled, machine shops and warehouses flattened and depressurized. The most devastating aspect of the second raid, however, was the damage done to the depot's small hospital. All of the wounded from the first attack were there when the missiles roared in. The medical bays took at least three direct hits, instantly destroying their repulsars and defenestrating a fountain of dead and wounded into orbit.
Kanchar ordered his besieged garrison to dig in for a long campaign, with grim hope the Navy would come to the rescue in time. He placed his own command station in a bunker next to Battery Aurek that could communicate with the three surviving orbital defense turrets. Airstrikes continued every ten to twelve hours from Zeptooine and eventually Erestal. The pilots and mechanics, lacking spare parts, tools and having only the manuals stored in their two astromechs, did their best to keep their handful of TIEs flying by cannibalizing parts from the wrecked TIEs at the hangar. When an attack was likely, three or four of the fighters patrolled the Void around the asteroid.
On the third straight day of attacks, they blasted apart two enemy bombers, and the anti-airspeeder gunners put up plenty of flak that appeared to damage three more. But the B-Wings dropped a bomb directly on a storage bunker that held over sixty tons of tibanna along with their shell charges. The colossal blast dismounted one of the anti-airspeeder turbolasers, destroyed Kanchar's ITT a half kilometer away and detonated all the Stormtrooper ammunition within four hundred meters. Range finding equipment for the nearest heavy turbolaser was destroyed. Casualties, surprisingly, were limited to one AMHC employee killed and four wounded Naval Gunners, but the garrison was so small that it could hardly afford to lose one trooper.
At 0300 on the fourth day, long distance sensors detected the approach of something far bigger than the raids they had so far endured. Stormtrooper lookouts with powerful electrotelescopes spotted faint shapes moving in the inky blackness rimward of the depot. The only indication of their presence was when their hulls blocked out the light of distant stars with their passing.
"They're like black ghosts slowly moving out there in the Void, sir." Kanchar's sergeant observed. Kanchar couldn't have put it better himself.
"Get everyone to their stations. Wounded too. Prepare to repel landings, but do not open blast until I give the order." Kanchar told his few officers and NCOs. Studying the shapes by distant star light he had quickly concluded they were a column of starships.
"Yes, sir." They would all obey. Their lives depended on it.
Some hoped they would be friendly ships, a relief from Nal Kuat or Next-1 perhaps, and a few of the civilian contractors donned evo-suits and actually ran to the surface landing bays with bags in hand, hoping to be among the first to be taken aboard.
Kanchar decided to keep the search lamps dark and held blast until the ships had approached within close range. If the column contained Narutos or Eiffels their blasters would probably be of heavier caliber and longer range than Waypoint 16's 5cm turbolasers. If so, the enemy could elect for a long-range artillery duel in which the Imperials would be gravely disadvantaged. Kanchar spoke into his comlink connected to all of his orbital-defense batteries, "Stand quiet till I give the word to do anything."
As the ships advanced, anxiety grew among the Naval Gunners. The Confederates took their time deploying their ships into an assault formation. The suspenseful minutes before the attack were harder on the Stormtroopers' nerves than actual contact. Kanchar's sergeant spoke more to himself than to his commander, who let the man voice his fears. "I'm scared to death. I can see what is going to happen to us. We're surrounded. We're about to get it."
Kanchar swallowed a lump in his throat. His sergeant had voiced his concerns where no trooper could hear them but they all had to be feeling the same as the NCO. Instead of answering, he got a count of the enemy ships in the Confederate task force; six Revenge corvettes, three Naruto light cruisers and four Magnificent transports easily capable of carrying two legions, though he doubted they would waste more than a pair of regiments capturing his depot. He sent a spotting report back to Nal Kuat that he was expecting an attack by five thousand Earth troopers by his best appreciation.
About 0500 the enemy cruisers charged ahead of the rest of their flotilla. At about fourteen kilometers they turned to port and ran parallel to Kanchar's own position. A few minutes later the light cruisers opened blast on the asteroid. From that range they couldn't miss the asteroid itself, but before the battle Kanchar had his troopers light heat and smoke pots all around the depot and the Confederates seemed focused on concentrating their fire on the distractions. No direct hits were scored on any of the orbital defense turbolasers, still hidden beneath camouflage netting and decimeters of heavy turret armor, while the Stormtroopers remained snug in their bunkers, all but the last two fuel tanks in the vicinity of the TIE revetments were set ablaze. The Confederate transports hung back and began transferring landing parties into their shuttles.
After nearly an hour of wildly aimed bombardment, evidence of the lack of reconnaissance on the Confederate's part, Lieutenant Commander Kanchar gave the word to open blast and the 5cm turbolasers came to life. Battery Aurek opened up on the Code Geass, the lead light cruiser, at a range of ten kilometers. Smoke boiled out of ugly holes torn from the Confederate flagship's starboard side, but it was soon evident she wouldn't blow as she limped away at a diminished speed. She turned rimward and fled for safety. Battery Leth, on the far side of the depot, had a clear shot on almost the entire Confederate column, but aimed its first salvo at the first and closest of the Revenge corvettes advancing at a range of seven kilometers. That was the Red Cliffs, according to the latest targeting data, and she was soon to be no more.
The battery's targeting equipment had been ruined in the previous day's bombing run. The young naval commander of the battery, nineteen year old Ensign Boon from New Ryloth, had to find the range by the time-honored technique of blasting and spotting carbon scores made by impacting bolts. With help from another position connected by comlink, Battery Leth walked its missed shots toward the target. The Red Cliffs charged into the teeth of those hostile salvos and turned to port to bring her entire broadside to bear. The spirited approach only exposed the brave corvette to the full brunt of Battery Leth's next salvo, which struck home amidships and touched off her magazine. A jolt, a white flash and the Red Cliffs was torn apart. Her bow spun one way, her stern the other, each section spiraling pitifully away into the Void before disintegrating taking two hundred Earthlings along with her.
The battery's crew let out a full-throated cheer. Ensign Boon bellowed at her troopers. "Knock it off, you scum, and get back on the blasters! What do you think this is, a limmie match?"
Boon trained her turbolasers onto the Zama, the next Revenge corvette in the column, already turning rimward to flee. She laid down a smoke and chaff screen to conceal her retreat, but Battery Leth managed to land two hits that pierced her shields and struck near her bridge killing several of her crew. Boon took a chance and blasted several bolts at the distant Magnificents, hanging back from their warship escorts. Though the range was nearly two hundred kilometers, she scored one hit on one of the Magnificents. Finally, Boon trained her weapon on one of the light cruisers and struck her after-turret, she ran for safety, smoke trailing behind her.
Lieutenant Commander Kanchar had watched the entire action from his command post. He turned to his aide. "Nothing can bother Battery Leth this morning."
His sergeant agreed. "Leth is looking red hot, sir."
Across the asteroid, Battery Besh, the last of the three heavy turbolasers under Kanchar's command, took aim at another column of Revenges running across the asteroid's y-axis to flank Batteries Aurek and Leth. She immediately scored a hit on the Kharkov topside near her sublight drives. The Confederate gunners responded quickly and with great accuracy, landing bolts and rail gun slugs close to the battery on every side. Their bolts burst with green-yellow blobs in front of the armored turret. They then went over and impacted several empty buildings behind the turret. Then the Confederate ship split the straddle and put Battery Besh in the middle of their pattern. An entire fusillade from each of the Kharkov's weapons struck the turret, while her durasteel held it did sever her connection with her neighboring spotting bunker. Taking manual control of the cannon, the crew fired several more salvos scoring two more hits on the Kharkov and perhaps one on the Nordwind. The Revenges turned rimward, blowing smoke and countermeasures as they went. Now the entire Confederate task force was on the run.
Soon the retreating Space-Force ships were out of range of Waypoint 16's turbolasers, but Kanchar wasn't done with them. The five remaining TIE/Ln Starfighters had been circling nearby in case the Confederates brought their X-wings along, which they hadn't. The lead TIE pilot radioed his men, "Well it looks like the Solars forgot their youngling-sitters. Let's go down and join the party."
The TIEs streaked rimward in chase. Being fighters, and not bombers, they were not designed to sink ships, but they had been jury rigged with two small 150 kg bombs each, and they could strafe the enemy hulls with their chin cannons. Those five TIEs flew three consecutive sorties, attacking the retreating task force and then returning to Waypoint 16 over the gradually widening range for fresh bombs and tibanna bolts. Chiru Squadron's attacks knocked out the proton torpedo tubes on the light cruiser Mushi-Shi, wiped out the hyperwave radio antennae on the light cruiser Inuyasha, strafed each of the Magnificent transports causing dozens of casualties, and blew up a second Revenge corvette, the Marathon, by lighting up a rack of sonic mines in her aft launchers.
The TIEs were hit by energy flak and rail gun slugs, and although none were destroyed, all were shot up. One TIE's slug-riddled ion engine lost so much hydraulic pressure on its return leg that the pilot was forced to crash land outside the empty depot near to Battery Leth. He walked away, but his TIE would never fly again.
Lieutenant Commander Kanchar watched as the Space Force warships retreated from view. His gun crews and pilots had damaged nine of the thirteen ships in the Confederate invasion force, sinking two. He couldn't think of the last time orbital defense towers had turned back a space-borne invasion. It certainly hadn't occurred in the Empire-Earth War, perhaps sometime during the Clone War? No they always had Jedi knocking towers out back then. Maybe during the Stark-Hyperspace War, but that was well back in Kanchar's grand-sire's time.
The Stormtroopers and Naval Gunners were exultant. His sergeant aide removed his helmet and ran his hand through his hair. He offered his commander a much relieved smile and nodded to the Stormtroopers giving high-fives to the gunners at Battery Aurek. "The way they're going at it, you'd think we just won the war."
Kancher laughed at the sergeant's observation. The NCO was right, it seemed every trooper suddenly grew three centimeters taller as they strutted around the depot. It felt good to be a trooper, if only for a minute or two. Kanchar could read a stellar map of the Bloodstripe Run just as well as anyone. The Confederates would be back. In their eyes Waypoint 16 had to go.
Kanchar sighed. He knew Waypoint 16 couldn't hold out much longer. Only two TIEs remained in service due to the damage they'd taken strafing the enemy column. The asteroid was short of critical equipment, tibanna and manpower. It needed to be reinforced, rearmed, and resupplied, or failing that, evacuated and abandoned to the enemy. Kanchar had no illusions about the Confederate Space Force. They'd be back and in greater numbers.
"The Admiralty has got to send ships to pick us up now. Right, sir?" The sergeant inquired.
"Yeah. The Navy's coming." Kanchar replied. He hoped he sounded convincing.
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Bridge of the ISD Flood, Between Kafrene Outpost and Protivos
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Captain Banjeer 'Tusken' kept one wary eye on the stars ahead and another one on the task force's commander standing near the bridge's hyperwave radio station. He wondered who was more dangerous, the advancing Confederates or the Admiral whose career was slowly going down in flames and wanted to do whatever it took to save himself.
Admiral Cabbel, who was a part of the Admiralty, one of the four officers who ran the Imperial military, represented the TIE Corps, the branch Banjeer had started out in as a TIE/sa pilot way back before the 'big jump' here to the Milky Way. Cabbel had been one of two of the leaders who had been asleep at the switch at Nal Kuat three weeks ago. Unlike, the late Admiral Doza, Cabbel hadn't had the good graces to die during the nefarious raid. Instead, over twenty thousand sailors and Stormtroopers had died in his place. Shortly thereafter, both Marshall Windrider and Admiral Commander Traal had both quietly resigned their positions and taken early retirements to avoid the ignominy of impending court-martials. They had left the high command in shambles, with only Admiral Cabbel determined to go down swinging.
In the past few days, a situation had developed along the Gallivanter Run half of the Bloodstripe Run. A hypermatter refueling depot which was currently under construction had actually repulsed a small contingent of the Confederate Space Force. A feat that had so far gone un-repeated anywhere the invaders had struck within Imperial territory.
Maybe as a break from the doom and gloom of colony after colony falling to the Confederates, the slow strangulation of Moff Hinter's forces on Mars and the sheer amount of dead that had resulted from the raid on Nal Kuat the HoloNews had glammed onto the story of tiny Waypoint 16.
In a sense, the whole Empire was watching. The stubborn defense of Waypoint 16 had been a bacta balm to the wounded spirits of the 2nd Galactic Empire, who seized upon every new shred of ISB censored-approved news from the embattled asteroid. Prime Chancellor Runnerz had hailed their actions. The HoloNews's broadcasts had relished reporting, and embellishing, the gallant stand of the Bloodstripe's own "Deathstar". Asked by Naval Command at the Rhombus on Palpatine Prime for a list of needed supplies, Lieutenant Commander Kanchar was said to have replied: "Send more Solars." He had said nothing of the kind, the quote was a deliberate misreading of the padding CommScan used to throw enemy codebreakers off the scent. When the HoloNews story broke through the Confederate jamming to the defenders of Waypoint 16, the defenders were not amused. Banjeer had heard that Kanchar had replied, "More Solars were absolutely the last thing they needed."
Banjeer thought the tone taken inside the Empire was all wrong. It adapted a holodrama swagger that belied the asteroid's dire predicament. He thought of those brave troopers on Waypoint 16. They were doing their best and Banjeer was proud of them, but one's best seldom included the disregard for sanity that marked the romantic versions of the thin red line of heroes that the HoloNews prescribed to. No, Kanchar and his men, as Banjeer understood it, just wanted to live.
As Banjeer saw it, his newly arrived task force commander, Admiral Cabbel, was less confident than Captain Banjeer in the prospect of success of the Waypoint 16 relief mission, and far more blaster-shy of the Confederacy of Earth Nations' advancing Space Force. Cabbel listened with one ear to the advice given by his Star Destroyer commanders and tried to rely on advice he sought from the rest of the Admiralty, but they weren't returning his calls at the moment.
Moreover, Cabbel was being urgently reminded by the Senate and Moff Farnmir that the Kuat System itself was exposed. When he eventually joined Captain Banjeer at the helm, he told the commander, "What business does the fleet have in supporting a distant outpost with little military value, when the main Imperial stronghold might be vulnerable."
"Sir? Those are Her Majesty's troopers. They're giving their lives to buy us time. The least we can do is send help." Banjeer replied.
Cabbel rolled his eyes at the younger Captain. "Ah, you're one of those. Might as well have sent Admiral Gentis and the Ares out there and give the whole war away."
Cabbel wasn't exactly wrong, though Banjeer didn't want to get into an argument with a superior in front of his men. Banjeer could concede that Waypoint 16 was a liability. Sooner or later the Confederacy was going to seize it. Though the original aim of the expedition was to reinforce the garrison and TIE group, Banjeer could also support the fallback plan to evacuate the asteroid completely and perhaps inflict some more punishment on the Confederate invasion force.
Cabbel chose to educate Banjeer to influence him to his side. "Our surviving Star Destroyers are most important. We have both the Slash and your own Flood in this flotilla and I intend to lose neither, even if we have to abandon the thousand beings on Waypoint 16 to the enemy. That's my bottom line, Captain. Understood?"
"Understood, sir." Banjeer replied. He could see the logic, but the coldness of the reasoning gave him chills.
Cabbel's plan was solid, Banjeer had to admit. It should be, since it was written on pre-war battle plans written by Admiral Gentis based off advice originally scribed by none other than Grand Admiral Yutu. The Flood and the Slash led the smaller Victory Star Destroyers Charger and Spitfire, along with the Demolisher class Star Destroyer Implosion from their anchorage at Judicar. A detachment of the 501st Legion, with ammunition, weapons and supplies had embarked on the Star Galleon Spinnaker, stripped of her balsters and converted into a heavy transport vessel. The initial plan didn't call for the abandonment of Waypoint 16 but if it was necessary, Spinnaker could carry off the asteroid's entire population. She'd be extremely crowded but she could do it. With the various cruisers, frigates and auxiliaries attached to the Star Destroyers, the expedition involved substantially all of the naval power available to Cabbel outside of what had gathered with Gentis at Jastawui and what had been damaged during the calamity at Nal Kuat.
From the start, the rescue mission was plagued by an almost unbelievable series of delays, variously blamed on stellar weather such as patches of meteor showers and radioactive gas fields floating across various hyper-routes at this time of year, refueling mishaps, and First Order sighting scares that twice scattered Cabbel's fleet. Nobody knew who the mysterious attackers of Nal Kuat were, but their name and confirmation of collusion with the CEN had come from New Mandalore in the past few days. The hard truth was that the Imperial Star Destroyer groups were not accustomed to operating in the Void in wartime conditions, and were climbing a steep learning curve.
Cabbel had sent Spinnaker and a hypermatter tanker, the Carbon, and a division of Lupus missile frigates ahead, with the intention of overtaking them when the Flood was fueled up at Judicar. The Star Destroyer put to space and quickly hyperjumped the next afternoon. She quickly caught up to her slower counterparts and soon the entire task force was moving rimward at the regal pace of sublight thirteen, the top speed of the Carbon. Cabbel ordered them to refuel again at Protivos so that they were topped off for their final run into Waypoint 16, but at the assigned location they ran into an uncharted stellar gas cloud of argon gas that was running nearly six hundred degrees standard, hot enough to scorch refueling hoses and ignite hypermatter fumes. The underway refueling process was long and painstaking, with all the profanity-laden pratfalls of near collisions and broken fuel lines, particularly when the small Lupus frigates came alongside the red hot decks of the Carbon. Admiral Cabbel ignored the hard work of his sailors, leaving it to Banjeer to supervise and concentrated on political events back on Nal Kuat and Palpatine Prime, sequestering himself in his quarters. Banjeer learned quickly not to bother the Admiral with details he had no concern for. Twenty hours had passed and the task force made barely any rimward progress at all, and by that time the battle for Waypoint 16 was near its end.
"We are blind out here." Admiral Cabbel declared upon returning to the bridge at the end of the refueling process.
"Sir, we have TIE patrols in every direction at the moment and TIE/WAC Besh is standing on alert in our hangar." Banjeer reminded his commander.
"They won't be enough to stop that big force of enemy ships that hit us at Nal Kuat. And we know the Confederates have planet-based bombers on Erestal as well as Zeptooine now. Plus do we really know if your ship can defend against an air attack? Bombardment Squadron 1 certainly couldn't several weeks ago."
Banjeer wanted to bite his own lip to prevent saying what he really wanted to his superior. "Sir, anti-airsppeder drills by my sailors have been improving every day. And may I remind you Bombardment Squadron 1 was caught in port with two-thirds of their crews ashore at the time of the raid. Thank the Lightside."
"You've read the reports about Commodore Blastman's flotilla at Plympto Blight. We can't continue to underestimate the Earthlings as it's clear to me they've developed some new type of superweapon to take out our ships." Cabbel reminded everyone on the Flood's command staff.
Banjeer had in fact read the after action reports of the few survivors of Commodore Blastman's rear guard debacle at Plympto Blight. The Commodore had died when the Selene exploded. Banjeer wouldn't categorize what the Space Force vessels were armed with as super weapons, as they didn't seem any more powerful than normal proton torpedoes, but they certainly had been tweaked with so that they achieved previously unheard of range. Now that they had been revealed, countermeasures would surely be developed. Banjeer had thought of several himself which he had wanted to forward to Admiral Gentis but had no way of currently doing so without alerting the panicky Admiral Cabbel.
"I've given considerable consideration to ordering this task force back to Nal Kuat. The First Order is certainly waiting for us at Zeptooine and my first responsibility must be in returning these ships back to Her Majesty's service." Cabbel declared. Banjeer noticed the grimaces and not a few glares from his officers and sailors in the crew pits at the Admiral's declaration.
"Sir, Naval Intelligence has not reported anything beyond the Confederate invasion fleets at Zeptooine and Erestal. I have no doubt we can slip between them and relieve our garrison on Waypoint 16 before we are discovered."
"Bah, Naval Intelligence. Captain Murp and his cronies missed detecting the strike on Nal Kuat. Surely there's whole First Order armadas out in the Void he's overlooked." Banjeer took a second to realize the source of Cabbel's vitriol. Captain Murp was jealously seen by the Admiralty as one of Admiral Gentis's men and as their stars fell it was rapidly becoming obvious whose star was on the rise.
"May, I suggest we use the Spitfire and the two Yutu frigates in our vanguard to perform a feint at Erestal to keep the Earthling's eyes focused when we make our run to Waypoint 16?" Banjeer would not give up on the lives of troopers doing everything they could to defend the Empress and the Empire.
Cabbel crossed his arms and looked around the room. "I see you will not give up on this foolish notion of rescue. Fine, we will continue on. Minimum speed, with maximum sweep of our long range sensors. I do not want to stumble into the enemy. And no, do not dispatch the Spitfire. I need to consolidate all my command in one place."
Fifteen hours later the Flood was ordered by the Admiral to drop into the Erestal System and race at full speed towards Waypoint 16 and launch their TIEs at a range of twenty thousand kilometers. Five minutes later, Admiral Cabbel countermanded his own order, and told Banjeer to send the Spinnaker at peak speed to embark the garrison and bring them to safety. Ten minutes later that order was also revoked.
As the order to send in the Spinnaker was cancelled an update arrived from Lieutenant Commander Kanchar. The situation on Waypoint 16 was growing desperate. The asteroid's remaining two TIEs were full of bolt and slug holes and it would be a miracle if they ever flew again. The depot was short of critical equipment and supplies, from subspace radar sets to blaster control instruments to ammunition for heavy blasters of every caliber. Airstrikes from Zeptooine now arrived every five hours and casualties were slowly mounting. Kanchar's troopers and gunners worked twenty-five hours a day improving the asteroid's defenses; digging new bunkers and trenches, filling sandbags with blasted out rock, camouflaging blaster emplacements and treating the wounded.
Banjeer had taken the updated situation report to the Admiral's quarters to deliver them to Cabbel when his communication officer caught up to him. He handed Banjeer a datapad with a new message written across its screen. "Captain, Kanchar just sent an Alert All Commands."
Banjeer took it with a sigh. A Lieutenant Commander didn't have the authority to send an AAC. Kanchar must be desperate or just failed to care any longer for military protocol when the further existence of his command was in such jeopardy. Banjeer quickly read the message and felt his own heart lurch into his throat. Dire straits indeed, he thought.
Banjeer took the messages and knocked on the Admiral's door. "Come in."
Banjeer entered and saluted. "New messages from Waypoint 16, sir."
Admiral Cabbel had been eating his dinner when Banjeer had entered his quarters. His fingers were covered with the sauce from the tip-yips he was eating. He held up his fingers and indicated for Banjeer to read them to him. "What now?"
"Waypoint 16 reports a second CEN invasion convoy has arrived at their station. Confirmed sighting of at least four Eiffels. The cruisers are remaining out of the range of his orbital defense batteries. Landing shuttles are en route though. Kanchar estimates nearly nine thousand infantry, most likely their elite Legionnaires."
"Excellent. Keep me updated, Captain." Cabbel was more focused on his meal than the lives of Kanchar's command.
Captain Banjeer went back to the bridge where he closely monitored the situation on Waypoint 16. His officers and sailors did so as well. They huddled around the hyperwave and the encryption gear even if they were off duty as the fate of Waypoint 16 unfolded. They all knew they were within striking distance of lending a hand if the Admiral so ordered.
Over the next two hours the invading Earthlings landed on Waypoint 16 and quickly swarmed over the surface of the asteroid, cutting the defenders into isolated pockets. The Stormtroopers put up a gallant defense, and from the snippets of unencrypted transmissions Banjeer estimated they must have inflicted seven to nine hundred casualties on the attackers, but still their positions were slowly overrun.
Cabbel never stepped onto the bridge to monitor the situation. Instead Banjeer sent him several runners to keep him abreast of the crumbling situation. "Enemy apparently landed." And "The enemy is on the asteroid. The issue is in doubt." Did little to rouse the Admiral to lend a hand.
Kanchar and the rest of Waypoint 16 went deathly quiet. Banjeer waited for thirty minutes next to the hyperwave hoping against hope that another message would be sent. Suddenly, Cabbel strolled onto the bridge as if he were enjoying a lovely day in the park. He didn't appear concerned about the plight of Waypoint 16 in the slightest.
"It is too late to save Waypoint 16, either by reinforcement or evacuation. Captain, set a return course to the KDY Ring at Nal Kuat." Cabbel ordered.
"Admiral, we still have an opportunity to attack the enemy fleet. We can jump near Waypoint 16 and launch our TIEs in forty minutes. With the Charger and the Spitfire, the Flood and Slash are more powerful than suspected Confederate forces in the vicinity. Withdrawing without offering battle would be unduly cautious." Banjeer tried his best not to call the Admiral a coward to his face.
"I do not know the whereabouts of the First Order nor its composition. Nor do I know what the Confederates have massing at Zeptooine to follow up their attack. I do not accept those odds for a possible counterstrike." Cabbel glared at Banjeer, challenging the junior officer to back down.
Banjeer kept his face a passive as if he were lining up a bombing run in his old TIE/sa. "The enemy cannot have superior forces in all directions. To retreat now would destroy service and public confidence in the Navy."
Banjeer's executive officer jumped in due to his own eagerness for battle. "This opportunity is unlikely to come again soon."
Banjeer looked to his aide to stop him from throwing away his career. He turned back to Cabbel. "We are in great need of a victory."
"The Empress is in great need of her ships. My duty is to save this flotilla not a solitary fuel depot. I cannot accept a major engagement, at this distance from our main base, with an uncertainty in the fuel situation. The general situation dictates caution; extreme caution." Cabbel snapped.
Cabbel had heard enough. He spun around and returned to his quarters. Within moments he sent a messenger to relay his orders to return to Nal Kuat.
The order was received with heavy resentment on the bridge. Sailors in the crew pit sobbed openly. Banjeer's XO spoke quietly to the Captain, out of fear for their careers. "The Admiral has had a scare. He sees the First Order all up and down the Bloodstripe when they haven't been sighted coreward of MotherGarden."
Banjeer was simmering but he didn't let it show. "To lose to an enemy that fought you, and fought you well, was one thing. But to lose because your Admiral was a . . . what was that Earth term again?"
"A Nervous Nellie."
"That's the one. To lose for that reason, was another matter altogether." Banjeer admitted.
"Our Squadron Commanders are sending their pilots to the TIEs, sir." A FlightOps officer in the crew pit announced. "They say they're going to help Waypoint 16, whether the Admiral likes it or not."
"Lock down the launch racks and secure the ship for lightspeed. We shall have no such mutinies aboard my ship." Banjeer announced.
"You heard him. We have our orders. We don't have to like them but I'll be stanged if we don't follow them." The XO barked at the sailors below.
Banjeer shook his head and spoke aside to the XO. "By Aveo's grace, they used to say a man had to be both a fighter and know how to fight. Now all I want is a man who fights."
"Well, if the Admiralty won't do it, I hope the Empress finds someone who will."
Banjeer nodded. "She better do it quick. If we don't find them soon, the Empire won't be around a year from now."
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Up Next- A Man Who Fights