Tarkin's Fist IV: Blood and Durasteel

by AshlaTi

A generation has passed since the devastation of the Empire-Earth War. Now a new conflict rages, this time the battles are fought among the stars themselves. A new enemy rises to threaten both the Empire and Earth's very existence. New characters and old raise arms against one another for the very fate of the Milky Way

37. The Battle of Fiji

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800 kilometers southeast of New Caledonia, Border of South Pacific Defense Zone and NMMEZ

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"Beskar Golem, your emergency clearance checks out. You're clear to land in Port Hangar 1. Over."

"Thank you, Fool. Tell the Captain we need to see him ASAP. Over." Captain Jane Jade peered ahead through breaks in the cyclone. The Golem's windshield was awash in driving rain. Bitee Cyu-Bee, the Talpini pilot, pulled hard on the controls to keep the gunship level in the high winds.

"Copy that Beskar Golem. He's expecting you. Fool, out."

Jade peered down at the water below. They were only a few hundred meters above the rolling sea. Other craft fluttered around them. Jade recognized them as LAATs, the old work horses of the last war; many of which had found service in the New Mandalore Defense Forces to phase out old Commonwealth helicopters and VTOLs. Now they fluttered across the turbulent ocean dropping strange round buoys into the waves where they bobbed up and down while emitting a dull green light from their readiness indicators.

"You see her yet, Bitee?" The co-pilot Mason Singh asked the diminutive alien. "I've got nothing on my scopes."

"You won't either." Jade said. "We're over the most heavily jammed region on the planet. Looks like Captain Cody is dropping hundreds of more floating jammer buoys all over the place too."

"Both sides are going to wander into this fight like they're blind and punch drunk." Singh replied. He was right, a fight was brewing, and when it came it would be like two prize fighters kickboxing in the dark.

"There she is." Bitee reported, nodding to the grey shape emerging from a cloud bank ahead of them. The pilot had found the New Mandalorian fleet on dead reckoning alone.

The Fool, an ex-Imperial Clone Wars veteran, emerged from the morning cyclone; its armored hulls lit by a dim sun and flashes of lightning from the storm. Several kilometers away another Acclamator appeared. The second ship was flying alongside a GR-75, the Kalevala, which the small fleet had converted into a fueler. Evidently, the Fleet Commander thought topping off their tanks before battle was a wise decision. He wasn't wrong. Another smaller ship, a Lianna class corvette, the Inferno, had been caught in New Mandalore when the war broke out. The Imperial-crewed vessel now served as an escort for its allied fleet since it couldn't return to the Empire.

"They've brought up the Empress from down south. The entire fleet is here." Singh pointed out. Tensions had been high ever since the Roblin Raid the week before. The raid had been an embarrassment to the CEN. Most of the bombers which had partook in the raid had landed in New Mandalore. Their crews had escaped Confederate retribution and had been spirited back to the Empire aboard a cloaked ship. Matters weren't helped when a mere two days later, super commandos on Mars had freed Moff Hinter from captivity and smuggled her out to Imperial-controlled Shilia where she had made a public speech deriding the Confederacy's efforts to defeat the Empire. Now the bulk of the First Order's fleet had vanished from Titan and signal interception had suggested that the Confederate 2nd Fleet had departed New Ryloth. Things were certainly in motion.

"It's good to see the Royal couple back together again." Jade said, referring to the kiwi joke about how the two ships, the Fool and the Empress, were nicknamed the Roblin and the Phasma after the first family of the Empire.

The Beskar Golem headed straight for the Fool. The Acclamator was cruising low over the water in an effort to mask its sensor profile. The gunship cruised over the upper hull and then dropped into the central launch bay before turning and landing in the port-side hangar. A crewman, dressed in the blue armor of the Navy, guided them into their assigned spot with flashing orange landing cones.

As soon as they touched down more crewmen rushed forward manning a freshwater hose which they immediately used to rinse off the Beskar Golem. Singh watched their efforts. "God only knows how much acid rain we just flew through."

"Well, you can blame the Confeds for that. Fucking idiots didn't care that they burned the whole planet last year to make that Space Force of theirs." Jade said, her voice full of disdain for the society she had left behind. "Singh, what's the air quality index?"

"358, this cyclone is really stirring up the garbage."

"Everyone make sure your helmets are on. I don't need anyone getting sick this far from home. Regulators, dismount." Jade ordered her crew.

The Regulators did just that. By the time she climbed out of the cockpit Hargrave, Barrage and Lata were already standing on the deck forming a protective escort for their passenger.

The passenger, Corporal Noobkiller, and there was no way Jade believed that was his real name, stood in his light, cyber-gear armor with the markings of Clan Neyo. His helmet carried long range transceivers that gave him the appearance of some kind of techno-rabbit. Home Galaxy meets Fortnight chic, Jade mused.

Singh left Bitee to care for the Beskar Golem and joined the rest of them on the flight deck. The whole area was a bustle of activity as Kom'rk fighters, better known as Guardians, were stuffed into every corner of the Acclamator. Armorers, fuel teams, pilots and various other deck crews rushed about in a wild, yet coordinated, ballet to prepare the fighters for battle.

"Corporal, the Captain is waiting for our report." Jade told Noobkiller, who carried a small case of data sticks with him. She turned to the Regulators. "Singh you're with me. The rest of you check in with the deck officers. We've been reassigned duty aboard the Fool until the crisis is over." The rest of the Regulators grumbled but accepted the directive. There wasn't a lot of opportunity for bounty hunting on a day like this, when the fate of your country hung by a string.

The entire ship was on high alert and despite the helmets and stiff armor of the crew it was painfully obvious that every Kiwi, Māori and clone aboard the warship was on edge. Flight deck crews checked and rechecked weapon loadouts on the Guardians, gunners ate their lunches while sitting in their heavy turbolaser control seats and officers and NCOs of every stripe stalked the ship inspecting every sailor and airman for readiness.

Jade, Singh and Noobkiller made their way up to the bridge. More sailors and marines manned telescopic rangefinders and electrotelescopes trained on the horizon. Their thermal imaging bored through the cyclone's cloud coverage.

As Jade stepped onto the bridge someone grabbed her by the elbow. "Where do you think you're going, American?"

Only one person in all of New Mandalore called her that and could still get away with it. Americans, while no longer having a country of their own, were normally seen by Mandalorians as the most Confederate of Confederates. The enemy's capital lay in their territory and much of its former territory was reserved for those Confederate Center deemed 1st and 2nd class citizens. The whole class system enraged Jade, who turned her back on it twenty years ago when a Mandalorian helped her gain asylum in New Mandalore.

And not just any Mandalorian but perhaps the Alpha Mandalorian herself. Nichole Felk, ex-bounty hunter and current Beskar armorer for Clan Cody, squared off in front of Jade. Her blue and grey armor, forged on lost Mandalore itself, was immaculate. Though streaks of grey now ran through the long red hair that emerged from the back of her helmet, the warrior didn't appear to have lost anything to her step since Jade had first encountered her on the bloody decks of the Ares.

Jade couldn't hold back the smile. The war had kept the two friends apart for nearly half a year. "Su cuy'gar, Buir."

"Bic cuyir jate at haa'taylir gar, ad Jade." Felk clasped forearms in the traditional Mandalorian manner. They did not hug nor exchange clan handshakes for they were in different clans. A matter that still simmered between them as years ago Felk had offered membership in Clan Cody but Jade had another path to walk and had chosen Clan Bly over Felk's offer.

"So, the time has come. The Confeds are really going to try to push us off Earth once and for all?" Jade inquired.

"We think so. They've brought their 9th, 10th and 16th military districts to full alert. Our spies have spotted troops embarkations in all three zones, especially in Brisbane and Valparaiso. Jamming is insane but we're guessing hundreds, maybe thousands, of enemy transport and bomber airspeeders on standby for whatever's coming." Felk reported. "I hope they brought enough body bags for all of them."

It was a matter of general acceptance that New Mandalorians were the best warriors in the Milky Way. They had kept the Confederacy at bay for over twenty years and when they had broken with the Empire, the Empress had made them allies instead of throwing away her Stormtroopers trying to get them back. They hadn't been truly tested by the First Order yet, but that time was coming, everyone felt it. There were signs the CEN and the First Order were leading each other by the nose and if there was one thing President Harris wanted it was to wipe New Mandalore from the face of the Earth. And he'd need the First Order's ships to do it.

Yet, the big test for New Mandalore was in the air. Their very existence could change in the next few hours.

"They'll need them." Jade felt a little guilty about being flippant regarding her former countrymen's deaths. But so far, the NMDF had parried everything the CEN had thrown at them. Sure, the Confederacy had thrown their best at the Empire but that didn't mean they didn't have plenty left for the country they saw as a personal blight on their home world.

"You're looking fit, ad, but your armor is looking a little rough for wear. Maybe I can whip you up some new greaves? When was the last time you had a refit?" Felk asked.

"No time, buir. We've been sent on urgent business by Marshal Bly. The Marshal is informing Prime Minister Taumata of it as we speak." Jade reported and pointed at the datapad handcuffed to Noobkiller's wrist.

"Aye, that looks kriffing important. Bly wouldn't send one of his best teams out here if it wasn't a matter of state security." Jade motioned for the Regulators to follow her. The Mandalorian pushed her way through the runners and sailors at the back of the bridge to the central catwalk above the sunken crewpits. Several officers stood at the forward windows peering out into the storm. The majority of them all bore the same face.

"Captain, we have a courier from Clan Bly." Nichole Felk announced. The first to turn was unsurprisingly Captain Cody, Nichole Felk's husband, who had taken command of the Fool when war had broken out. His duties as Foreign Minister were no longer required when all contact with their allies had been cut off by Confederate and First Order jamming efforts. He was joined by Marshal Doom, the country's Air Force and Space commander, and the Commodore of New Mandalore's small fleet.

Temuera Morrison stood on the deck in the full pre-big jump Commodore's uniform of New Zealand with NMDF rank and insignias sewn onto it. An older version of the two clone commanders who stood next to him, he was broad shouldered and deep-chested. Alert, intelligent eyes reflected a personality candid yet reserved, aggressive yet sensitive. A prominent nose topped mobile lips and powerfully angled lines from jaw to chin. It might have been the face of one of the great Elizabeth's sea captains; sailor and poet, buccaneer and politician, Mandalorian patriot and man of affairs.

The New Zealander was the perfect choice for commander of the fleet. His forces had nearly checked the clones during the last war and had earned their respect when they sought asylum from the Empire following the Battle of Four Navies. Being a Māori he was already a man of two worlds so it only seemed right that he would be chosen to command a fleet of Home Galaxy vessels whose crews were two-third Kiwi while the remainder were clones who had undergone Clan Neyo's process to reverse their rapid aging process.

Captain Cody was one of the first to undergo the process and ironically had a more youthful appearance than that of his wife. Though Jade knew Felk was actually only a year or two senior to her husband. She wondered how that would work out in their future. She shook off the uncomfortable thought. The problem was not hers to solve.

"Captain Jade." Cody recognized her, probably through his wife's friendship with the American bounty hunter. "You bring word from Auckland."

She turned to Noobkiller who held up the datapad. "Latest signal intercepts. Less than an hour old."

"Have they been decoded?" Morrison inquired.

"No, sir."

"Then why bring them out here?" Doom guffawed. Clan Doom and Clan Bly had a tendency to butt heads on most matters.

Clan Bly and Clan Cody. However, had always been the staunchest of allies. Cody studied at the datapad for a moment and then peered at Jade. "It's them, isn't it? They've come at last."

"Aye, sir. We were intercepting the uptick in Confed signals indicating a new push by the enemy. Three hours ago, local time, Clan Neyo signal warfare units on both North and South Island began intercepting communication signals between a new transmitter and local Earth forces. The signals are consistent with advanced Home Galaxy signals a generation or two beyond what the Imperials currently field." Jade summarized what had been a monumental electronic warfare coup.

"Where were the signals originating from? I know we've been picking up their signatures from Titan ever since they moved into the neighborhood, but both of your clans reported the bulk of the First Order fleet departed two days ago for Kafrene Outpost." Morrison asked.

"They did, sir, but they left two of their strike ships at Titan as well as a smaller Star Destroyer at Luna. All three vessels have sailed here to Earth. Our original intercept plot put them south of Oahu and our last, before we left Auckland, had them over Samoa." Jade explained. "We identified the Star Destroyer as an Imperial I class named the Security. The other two have been verified as two of the six that struck Nal Kuat back in December. Their names are currently unknown."

"Resurgents." Cody turned the name into a curse. Jade could tell he wanted to wash his mouth out after uttering the foul alien ship's names. Monstrously powerful, one of the ships was enough to overpower the NMDF Fleet. So far in the war though, the First Order had only struck from ambush and by surprise. A cowardly tactic. Yet here they were. Finally ready to fight.

"Their battle plan is obvious." Doom interjected. "The Resurgents will engage and destroy us before moving on to batter down our city shields back in New Mandalore. Then Confed forces will land and attempt to invade our home. The Security's role will probably only be as an escort for her two larger sisters."

The other commanders nodded in agreement. It made sense to Jade, as well. If the enemy succeeded, then New Mandalore would come to its end in a few hours.

"We should assume they're already here and operating to our east." Cody recommended.

"I agree, Marshal Doom I need you to scramble every scout plane we have. Put up the squadrons from Auckland and Ohakea as well. Captain Cody, there is no longer a need to refrain from provoking the CEN's forces. If you would be so kind as to deal with Nouméa." Morrison began issuing orders. "Tell the Kalevala to cast off and have the Inferno escort her south. Inform Captain Silver to bring the Empress abreast of our port beam at a range of ten kilometers. Ship-to-ship laser signaling only."

The crew sprang into action to complete their commander's orders. Several dozen Guardians rose from the hangars to form protective air cover over the two Acclamators. There was a series of loud pops as the fueler disconnected from their ship before the two small auxiliaries sailed away to the south using the cyclone as coverage.

Cody stood over the weapon's section of the crew pit issuing his own orders. Anyone who had any experience with the cat-and-mouse game played between the NMDF and the CEN knew of Nouméa. The former French colonial city was home to one of the biggest and most sophisticated jammers in the Confederacy's arsenal. Naturally they had placed the thing as close to New Mandalore as possible. Its presence made communication between New Mandalorian forces difficult out of line-of-sight.

"Launch the Diamond Boron missile." Cody told his weapons officers.

A hatch opened on the forward hull exposing a cruise missile idling in its silo. The weapon roared to life before rising and racing away to the north-west. Three minutes later the projectile slammed into the building housing the Confederate jammer. The resulting explosion atomized the facility's two hundred personnel in a fiery blast that smashed the tropical city to the ground. As thousands of New Caledonians took their last breaths the New Mandalorian fleet turned away from their strike. First blood was theirs, but it would be suicidal to stick around and gloat.

Jade looked over at a nearby sensor monitor and frowned. It was obvious that subspace detection was still degraded into nothingness. Of course, one had to consider, they were sailing over broiling seas filled to the brim with jamming buoys. At least the Fool and Empress could talk to their Guardians once they emerged from the cyclone.

"Captain, I need to dragoon your ship. Your gunship does have an operational sensor package, does it not?" Doom asked Jade.

"Aye, sir." Jade did not want to spend the battle searching empty seas on a fool's errand.

"How many of your crew are checked out on the Kom'rks?" The clone Marshal inquired.

"Just Barrage and me." Jade reported.

"Bitee and I make a decent flight crew for the Golem." Singh interjected. "The other boys can come along as spotters. I'm sure the country needs all hands-on deck right now."

"Indeed. Gather your man and report to the hangar decks. I currently have more airspeeders than qualified pilots." Doom ordered.

"Send your gunship north. We will send you coordinates before you take off." Cody snapped his fingers at officers in the reconnaissance section who immediately started drawing up a flight plan for the Beskar Golem. Singh departed, no doubt excited to get out there and contribute. Jade wondered how long she and Barrage would have to sit in their cockpits waiting for orders to strike.

Whenever the attack came, Jade vowed to make it count.

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Command Bridge, FOS Vulgalizer, 30 kilometers west of Tonga, Earth

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Senior Captain Retimar stared out at the brown fog covering the Earth's ocean in disgust. A large storm to the west was pushing a low-pressure front into his area of operations and it was sucking in thousands of tons of polluted air. He could barely discern the Slayer off his starboard bow through the thick soup.

Captain Bascar of the Security, which currently sailed several kilometers to their rear, had been part of the initial contact team that had made it to Earth just over a year before the war. Bascar swore their ally's home world hadn't been as polluted back then but after the First Order's emissaries had showed them plans to build obsolete CIS capital ships the Confederates had done everything they could to build a fleet in under a year standard, including scorching their own world. That just proved one thing to Retimar; Earthlings were all mad.

"Have we picked up anything, Commander?" Retimar asked his executive officer, Commander Unamo, who stood glaring down at the sailors in the crew pit.

"Nothing, Captain. We've deployed all of our Spider probe droids to the south and west but all we've detected so far are scores of these blasted jammer buoys. Some of them are even submerged quite deeply to avoid our droids." Unamo reported.

"Keep hitting them. And send out our last TIE Buccaneer to scout a line of point two-seven-zero straight for that storm brewing over the horizon." Retimar ordered. We should have brought more scouts, he thought, but the few of them that were in the fleet were needed by Admiral Jethran for Operation Matchstick.

"They won't be able to do much if they run into the Mandalorians." Unamo said, which was the risk ran by every scout who served the Supreme Leader.

"They'll give us some idea where these upstart Mandos are hiding their Acclamators before they die. That is all I require of them." Retimar brushed off concerns for his sailors' lives. He was not as weak-kneed about such matters as General Crisis was. When the war was over, they would have more than enough slaves to make up for the First Order's losses. His concern was to the machines those pilots flew. He had been on Titan for months now overseeing the new workers from Earth. He knew they were incapable of replacing the intricate TIEs and shuttles the First Order flew. Every airspeeder lost was one that wouldn't be replaced for years. Not until they had the mighty drive yards at Nal Kuat under their thumb. Until then he must strive to do whatever he could to preserve his fighters for the day Admiral Jethran really needed them.

"Confederate military command just sent a notification that their landing forces are standing by and awaiting our dismantling of the Mandalorian shields." The Communication officer reported from the crew pit.

"Send a confirmation signal and then cut comms with the CEN. We don't need the local abos jostling our elbows." Retimar told his subordinate.

Unamo smirked. "These Earthlings would just get underfoot. I don't know how the Admiral and General Crisis put up with their Milky Way nonsense."

"Our job is not to decipher the Admiral's intentions. We are here to advance the First Order's cause and grind down those that stand in our way until such a time as the First Order is the dominant power in the Milky Way. Understood?" Retimar eyed his XO. There was too much sniping and backstabbing in the First Order's upper echelons to suit his taste.

"Yes, sir." Unamo bristled under even the slightest rebuke, but wisely changed the subject. "We are being hailed by the Slayer."

"Put it on the main projector."

A life-sized blue hologram of another First Order officer was soon projected onto the deck in front of Retimar and Unamo. Captain Thren, being the junior of the two Resurgent commanders, saluted Retimar. "Captain, my reconnaissance flight to the north-west has just detected a heavy strike on a local Confederate town on an island, called New Caledonia, in their patrol zone. I was just about to order out a squadron of TIE/fb to perform a more advanced sweep of the area."

"An entire flight of bombers flying blind in this sensor muck?" Retimar thought the other Captain was nipping spice.

"We have our Silencer Squadron on stand-by as well as our TIE/fo units." Thren argued.

"I don't need to throw half of my best fighters away chasing an enemy that may have very well already left the area. If I was the enemy commander, I would certainly take my fleet south to place my ships between myself and their little country-state."

"But we are still picking up large amounts of jamming from that storm front to our west. That is the most likely current location of the enemy." Thren opined.

"Perhaps if we were still dealing with the scum that ran the Alliance, but these are Clone Wars veterans, and they will absolutely follow outdated Old Republic Doctrine in regard to deployment." Retimar informed his fellow officer.

"But what if one of these Kiwi we've heard about is leading them?" Thren asked.

Retimar chuckled at the thought. "An Earthling? Well then, we have already won then. Haven't we?"

Thren, however, did not look convinced. Hadn't the Slayer been one of the Resurgents that had smashed the Imperial Fleet at Nal Kuat? Since that day, the twenty-three warships of the 7th Fleet of Conquest had remained unchallenged in this new galaxy. Who could challenge them? Two suspected fifty-year old Acclamators from a bygone age? Retimar thought not.

"Fine, Captain Thren. I will address your concern, but I'm not risking our pilots to that storm." He turned to Unamo. "Commander, send orders to Captain Bascus. Tell him to take the Security over to this New Caledonia place and search for signs of the enemy. The Slayer will accompany the Vulgalizer south towards the nearest city-shield. We will advance slowly in order to draw the enemy fleet out of their concealment and then destroy them."

"Aye, aye, sir." Unamo and Thren stated together. Unamo stepped away to carry out Retimar's instructions and within minutes the smallest of the three warships, the Imperial class Star Destroyer, was moving away from the rest of the flotilla and vanishing into the polluted fog.

"I'd rather be at Kafrene Outpost with the rest of the 7th than staying back here in the Sol, cleaning up the Earthlings' mess." Thren said as their ships turned towards their first target, a city named Auckland on their charts.

"I fear that is where the glory will lay." Retimar agreed. "Especially if they manage to draw out the Ares."

"The Fatalizer and Mizery should be enough to handle her. Once Nal Kuat is in our hands, we won't be so beholden to these Earther scum anymore." Thren replied. Retimar couldn't agree more. Indoctrinating the handful of Earthlings that had been handed over to Titan was a drop in the bucket. The First Order would need the hundreds of thousands of captured workers on those Kuat Drive Yards if they were really going to be a powerhouse in the Milky Way.

"One day at a time, Captain. Let's squash this New Mandalore farce like the insect they are. Then Admiral Jethran can squash the Empire next week." Retimar offered.

"And after that we will come back here and squash the Confederacy of Earth Nations." Both men laughed in anticipation.

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Port Side Hangar Bay, NMDFS Fool

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Barrage leaned over the side of the Kom'rk's cockpit until he was nearly in Jade's lap. The clone did not seem to notice their near proximity as he gave her a refresher on the Guardian's various controls. Neither of them had flown the airpseeders in over a year and then only a few familiarity flights as part of Clan Bly's readiness and fitness protocols. Jade envied the clones, for whenever they learned to operate a vehicle of any type it seemed to stick with them for the rest of their lives. Something to do with their training on Kamino, she figured.

Kom'rks were unique snub-nosed fighters. Unlike the airspeeders fighting for various other forces in this galaxy spanning conflict the Kom'rks were not crafted for specific jobs. There were no torpedo or bomber variants in the Guardian line. A Guardian could be a fighter, land and have an energy bomb placed in its weapon hard-points and be either a high-altitude, dive-bomber or orbital suppressor on its very next flight.

The hottest clone and kiwi pilots were assigned into the fighter squadrons. They were mostly pilots in the NMDF already and the majority of them hailed from Clan Doom. Several of them were already airborne, braving the cyclonic storm to protect the Acclamators and keep an eye out for an incoming attack. The second-tier pilots were reservists called up when war broke out. They had been training non-stop in Kom'rks for months and came from nearly every clan in New Mandalore. Their Guardians were crawling with flight deck crews who were busy attaching the heaviest proton torpedoes the fleet carried to their airspeeders. The last class of pilots were the ones that included Barrage and Jade. Pilots that were familiar with other craft and thrown into the extra Guardians kept in storage to replace losses. Every Kom'rk would be needed to face the First Order and these ones were being fitted with dumb and laser-guided energy bombs.

"You know I'd rather be with the rest of the boys on the Golem, just as much as you, ma'am." Barrage said when he noticed not all of her attention was on his review. "But everyone has got to pull their weight if New Mandalore is going to survive the day."

The Beskar Golem, commanded by Singh and piloted by Bitee had departed to the north for a patrol sweep twenty minutes ago. Commodore Morrison needed every ship he could lay his hands on if he was going to find the First Order Fleet before the enemy found them. "I know. Just feeling a little out of my element here." Jade pointed back at another control to make Barrage feel like she was paying attention to his instructions. "What does this do?"

"Those are the comms. We have short-wave, long-range and hyperwave." The clone Regulator reminded her.

"They don't appear to be jammed."

"That's because the enemy doesn't know where we are, and they don't want us to find out where they are either. In this sort of game, you want to jam their radars and subspace sensors to avoid detection, but you want to lay down a passive commscan to triangulate enemy signals. You can't do that if you're jamming everything out of existence."

"So, we can talk to each other?" Jade asked.

"Not on the long range or hyperwave unless you want to broadcast your address to every First Order sleemo from here to Luna. But our squadrons can operate pretty smoothly on the short wave and the ships use a sort of laser-transmitted network when they within sight of one another." Barrage explained.

"Where is the flight channel?"

"It should already be programmed in." Barrage reached across and activated the cabin comlink. Instantly, several voices emerged from the device indicating they were coming from several patrols of Guardians flying coverage above the Acclamators. "That's Oddball, Clone War vet like me."

"I've heard of him. One of Doom's best pilots and commander of the Fool's entire wing." Jade admitted.

"Aye, and you've got Major Mahuta and Kerekere off the Empress commanding the torpedo and bomber squadrons. Kerekere goes by Kumi Lizard, but our boss Mahuta's call sign is Maui. Oddball just goes by Oddball."

Oddball chose just that moment to cut across the comm channel. "I've got a weird TIE fighter out here. Don't recognize the type but he's got extra sensors like a scout. He's above the cloud ceiling about thirteen kilometers ahead of you."

The Fool's Flight Director came on the channel next. "Where is the TIE? We can't see anything in this storm down here."

Oddball replied in the distinctively cocky-laconic drawl of a fighter jock, "Wait a minute, and I'll show him to you."

Less than a minute actually passed, and the blazing remains of a long-range TIE fighter fell spinning out of the cloud cover to the northeast, trailing a ribbon of smoke behind it. It hit the sea and exploded, plainly visible from the decks of the Fool.

Another voice came across the radio, this one plainly an excited Kiwi. "That one nearly fell on top of me, Oddball. I was climbing up through those clouds and when that ball of fire swept past me, I couldn't make out for a second what it was."

"That will teach you not to fly underneath me." Oddball replied.

Jade chuckled at the distant pilot banter. Soon she'd be up there with them sharing the experience of holding the line for their fragile country. If they failed, well, she didn't want to think about what would become of them if that happened.

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Beskar Golem, 20 Kilometers west of Kadavu Island

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The gunship raced ahead of the cyclone into a low-pressure system filled with great brown cumulus clouds stretching beyond the horizon. The Pacific spread out as far as the eye could see in every direction. Its waves were much more subdued than they had been just a mere fifty kilometers to the west.

Bitee kept the Beskar Golem close to the cloud cover. There was evidence of enemy patrols and strange probe droids in the area, and it wouldn't do to be spotted by either one. Every few moments, whenever he felt it was safe, he would rotate between diving below or above the cloud cover. As soon as he did so Lata and Hargrave manned the gunship's viewports armed with their macrobinoculars in an effort to uncover the location of the First Order's fleet.

"There, over that big island." Hargrave shouted.

"That's Fiji." Singh stated as Bitee turned the gunship in the direction the other Regulator had indicated. Sure enough a distant dagger shape slowly glided over the archipelago.

"Star Destroyer. Imperial class." Lata identified the target. "Definitely not one of the Empire's."

"I heard the First Order had a few. Smallest ships in their fleet." Bitee informed the others. Jade had told him that tidbit a few weeks ago and it had stuck in the back of his mind for some reason.

"I'm calling in a spotting report. They'll know we're up here as soon as I start broadcasting though, Bitee." Singh warned.

"On it." Bitee turned the Beskar Golem away from the distant Star Destroyer and activated the afterburners. In the forward weapon's bubble Singh transmitted a series of coded signals back to the fleet.

Strange, the Talpini thought as he heard the encrypted message go out. It was much longer than one would expect for a single ship sighting.

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Launch corridor, The Fool

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"This is Captain Cody, a Full Monty attack has been ordered. All strike aircraft are to converge on sighting location."

Jade revved the Guardian's two rear-facing turbojets and watched the deck officer standing ahead and to the right of her Kom'rk. The moment he dropped his flag the grav-locks disengaged from her bomber and she was propelled through the launch tunnel and out the front of the Fool. A few seconds later, Barrage's Guardian was launched after hers.

From both the Empress and the Fool Kom'rks emerged in a steady stream. Both Acclamators had pulled slightly ahead of the cyclone to launch the strike. Now the Guardians climbed in a steady stream for altitude where their various squadron commanders howled and screamed at them to wrangle them into attack formations.

"All flights, this is Oddball. Enemy fleet has been located over Fiji. Listen for attack instructions from Wing Commanders and may the Force be with you." The clone signaled from the lead Kom'rk in the battle formation.

"God hoping." Jade whispered to herself as the attack bore on to the northeast.

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Starboard Hangar Bay, the Fool

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It had been twenty minutes since the last Kom'rk had been launched for the assault on the First Order ships. Deck crew were busy storing refueling hoses and weapon payloads in readily available locations for when the Guardians returned.

The Beskar Golem drifted into the shuttle landing zone, guided by deck crew with glowing orange cones. They had returned just in time as the two Acclamators were hurrying back inside the cyclone to hide from enemy patrols while their air assault bore into the enemy fleet. They did not have the firepower to go toe-to-toe with the enemy's battlewagons. In what would be a first for both the Kiwis and the clones, they would have to rely on the firepower carried by their Guardian fighters alone.

A personage no greater than Captain Cody himself met them as Bitee set the gunship down. The clone commander called up to them as Bitee cut the engines and Hargraves opened the exit hatch. "Great job, boys. I came down to congratulate you for locating the First Order's armada."

The Regulators each looked at each other in confusion. Hargrave spoke first. "Excuse me, Captain, but we only sighted a single ship."

"Yeah, and it was merely a single Imperial class. Not like those bigger lads you warned us to be on the lookout for." Bitee added.

Cody looked down at the little Talpini in confusion. "But your message. It said three ships."

"That might have been my fault, sir." Singh stepped forward. He blushed slightly in embarrassment. "I'm not as hot with the new codes as I should be."

Cody blew his fuse. "Young man, do you know what you have done? You've just cost New Mandalore its only two Acclamators."

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Command Bridge, the Vulgalizer

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"We are getting more signs that the enemy is to the southwest, Captain." Unamo reported, "But this scout sighting from the Security over Fiji was troubling. You don't suppose they've spotted us before we sighted them?"

Retimar shrugged. The battle would hardly be solved with sighting reports. As soon as the Acclamators were under his turbolasers they'd be blasted from the sky. "Keep the Security on location. Those islands are in CEN hands, so they probably just spotted one of our allies infuriatingly pathetic airspeeders."

"Aye, sir." Unamo replied. If nothing else the Security could always be used as bait to draw out the enemy's Acclamators if they tried to use that large storm as cover to slip around his Resurgents. He had to admit it was a plausible strategy as it would leave him bracketed between them and land-based bombers around this Auckland place.

"Have we received word about that hyperwave contact we intercepted an hour ago?" Retimar asked.

"One of our Buccaneers is nearly at the spot. One of our junior officers was ordered to have a look over the area. But, sir, it's in an area much too far south for the enemy to be operating in if they wanted to engage us." Unamo warned. In a way he was right. The enemy would be far more effective using the storm for cover. The weak signal had come from a relatively high-pressure area west of Auckland and on the periphery of the battle zone.

"Captain, sighting report coming in from scout TIE Esk." A sailor announced down in the crew pit.

"Put it on the audicaster." Retimar ordered.

"I have sighted, one Acclamator and one unidentified cruiser escort at location Grek-9. Fighter cover is unknown. I'm low on fuel and returning to base." The distant scout reported.

"Ha! I knew it. The enemy left one of their Acclamators to the south of their country. We are merely dealing with a single Acclamator." Retimar wanted to pump his fist in victory. He had sighted the enemy fleet first.

"Captain, should we send out another scout to verify?" Unamo inquired.

"No time. If they know we are on the way, they will retreat behind the Auckland shield or pull up the other Acclamator from the far south."

"But, sir, standard operating . . ." Unamo started.

"I don't give a stang about standard operation procedures." Retimar cut off his subordinate. "Notify Thren to launch his Whisper and TIE/fb squadrons. His fighters can provide escort and we will hold the Vulgalizer's back for fighter cover."

"Aye, aye, sir." Unamo turned and started barking orders to the crew pit. Soon the Resurgent's decks vibrated as her TIEs launched. It had been nearly half a year standard since the First Order had gone to war. They were riled up. Blood was in the air.

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On approach to enemy sighting, thirty kilometers southwest of Fiji

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"I see one dagger-shaped bastard." Maui called across the Kom'rk's attack channel.

It was a cloudy day over Fiji, and despite the filthy brown cloud-cover the island was a vibrant green against the sparkling blue-gray ocean below. A single Star Destroyer meandered about sixty kilometers from the island group. Jade was surprised to see only the single warship. Chatter among the leaders in the flight groups had indicated they believed they were assaulting the entire enemy fleet which had been rumored to consist of three ships. And this Imperial I was probably the smallest of their attack group.

But what was it doing out here all alone, and why had their commanders back in the flotilla sent the entire attack group out to engage it?

The Star Destroyer's lookouts spotted the large flights of Guardians approaching on their starboard bow and the starship immediately began a hard turn to port. The enemy ship only had three TIE fighters aloft, a pittance when compared to the huge air armada that was preparing to ruin the Star Destroyer's day. What was more, two of those weren't even Silencers but TIE/fo space superiority fighters which were known to be rather slow in atmospheres.

Oddball was the first to attack. His command group of two wingmen each carried a 2000 kilo energy bomb, pushed over and dived on the Star Destroyer from above. Her hard port turn spoiled their aim and the two bombs fell past the warship and performed a long drop into the sea, missing narrowly.

A minute later Maui led the ten bombers from the Empress in another diving attack. They were pursued by the two TIE/fo fighters, which followed the bombers down but flew past them when the Mandalorians popped their airbrakes to line up their shots. The Star Destroyer continued her hard port turn, exposing her shields to reflect the bombers' laser-guidance systems. As it came full circle, the one Silencer in the air attacked on the tails of the Empress bombers and threw off their approach, and half of the bombs dropped by the squadron missed even at close range. The other half slammed into the Star Destroyer's starboard shield generator overloading the defense in a crackling display of electricity and smoke.

The Star Destroyer had been lucky so far, dodging seven bombs with the loss of only half her shields. Her trio of defenders had done well to frustrate the attacks. As the Mandalorians attempted to line up for their next attack the First Order seized the moment to launch three more TIE/fo.

The bombers from the Fool had been left leaderless while Maui took in the Empress's bombers. Almost as one the rookies decided to press an attack of their own. Jade and Barrage raced to the front of the formation eager to hit the enemy. Just as Maui's flight dropped their bombs the fifteen bombers from the Fool, each armed with a 5000-kilo energy bomb, rolled into their dives.

They disabled their targeting computers after the failure of Maui's first attack. They would eyeball it. The Star Destroyer was downwind, simplifying the matter. Jade hit the release switch on her weapon panel causing her Guardian to shudder violently as the weight of the bomb fell away from her aircraft.

She was certain her bomb was the first to hit, striking at the base of the superstructure above the main gunnery controls. Her Guardian sped away and as she looked back the entire after-portion surrounding the superstructure was ablaze and pouring forth heavy black smoke. As she recovered her dive, she saw a thunderclap of an explosion and a ball of fire mushrooming to four hundred meters.

"Echuta, ma'am. Well done!" Barrage congratulated her as he came alongside her left wing. Behind them another bomb hit centerline-aft and pierced deep enough to reach the hangars touching off secondary explosions among the warship's parked TIEs. The Star Destroyer was a flaming wreckage, rent by tremendous explosions, slowed to near stopping in a spectacular and convincing pageant of destruction.

The Star Destroyer's fate was probably sealed by those bomb hits, but the Mandalorians were not yet finished with her. Kumi Lizard, leading the Fool's torpedo squadrons approached from the southwest, broad on to the burning Star Destroyer's beam. The lumbering Guardians spread out to set up an 'anvil' attack from above and below the warship's bow, so that the Star Destroyer could not maneuver to avoid both. The attackers were concealed by the curtain of smoke that blocked the bridge, and though they were dogged by the enemy fighters they made excellent drops. The torpedoes separated from the Guardians' bellies at a distance of three kilometers and ran true into the Star Destroyer, where they detonated and tore great holes in her thrusters and repulsars, causing her to dip towards the ocean below. Five torpedoes apparently struck the warship, two on the starboard and three on the port. As the torpedo Guardians retreated it was obvious the Star Destroyer was slowly falling from the sky. Amazingly, not a single Kom'rk had been lost in the attack or the withdrawal.

Several squadrons had been left out of the attack so far, and despite the obvious crippling of their enemy they all wanted to get in on the kill. Seventeen more bombers from the Empress were the next to press their attack and added another five or six 5000 kilo bomb hits to the Star Destroyer's misery. Three minutes later the Empress's torpedo squadrons went in and put another two torpedoes into her hull, silencing the few anti-airspeeder batteries the Star Destroyer still fielded. The coup de grace was entirely superfluous. With too many bomb strikes to count raining down along her whole length and too many torpedoes to count tearing into her bowels, the Star Destroyer simply blew apart and fell into the Pacific.

"A successful attack." Barrage commed Jade again. "Except I think we had a bit of an overkill on that Destroyer."

"We were definitely beating a dead horse at the end, buddy." Jade replied. It was the first First Order ship destroyed by anyone in the war so far and everyone wanted to be a part of it. Unfortunately, the entire strike force was out of weapons and needed to return to the Acclamators to rearm. If those other two larger ships were out here somewhere the Mandalorians were out of luck.

Oddball cut them off as the Guardians turned back. The fighter leader was notifying Commodore Morrison of their success. "Scratch one Star Destroyer!"

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200 kilometers south of the Fool and Empress

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The First Order flight leaders were dumbfounded. They had expected a solo Acclamator accompanied by a cruiser escort. The scout sighting had even been confirmed by a Spider probe droid shortly after the first. How had a scout and a droid gotten the report so wrong?

Below the First Order squadrons sailed two starships, the GR-75 Kalevala and a Lianna class corvette, the Inferno. The smaller escorts that Commodore Morrison had dispatched to safety in the south on the eve of battle.

The First Order had duplicated Morrison's error of launching an all-out attack on a secondary target based on a flawed sighting report. Now just over a hundred advanced TIEs circled over pointless targets. Shortly after sighting the tanker and corvette a report came in from the Security that it was under attack near Fiji. Which meant that the Acclamators were likely a couple of hundred kilometers to their north at the least. Most likely hiding inside that huge Terran storm front.

The Kalevala and Inferno were marked ships. Their officers and crewmen apparently did not realize how dire the situation was until the huge First Order airstrike came over the horizon. The fueler and escort were entirely without air cover, and their anti-airspeeder defenses were pitiful in comparison to the number of TIEs circling overhead.

But the First Order did not attack immediately. Visibility in the last hour had cleared remarkably since the scout had sighted the two ships and the strike leaders knew at once they had been led astray. To send the whole strike down on those two puny starships would be a waste, and the squadron leaders directed some of their TIEs to disperse in a search pattern to look for any other good targets. Finding none, the torpedo carrying Whispers and Silencers broke away without attacking and returned to the Slayer and Vulgalizer. The TIE/fb bombers and TIE/fo fighters remained to take care of the Kalevala and the Inferno.

They attacked at their leisure, rolling into their dives from near orbit as if they were performing at a flying circus, and sent a rain of bombs down on the two star-crossed starships. The Kalevala was pulverized with seven 1000 kilo bomb hits. The Inferno, hit with three bombs, broke in half and fell out of the sky taking her entire crew of two hundred Imperial sailors with her. The burning, crippled Kalevala appeared to be finished as it slowly drifted downwards towards the ocean's surface. The TIEs flew away to the north. They would search that storm for the enemy fleet even if it took the last of their fuel.

The Kalevala splashed into the Pacific but miraculously began to float upon the surface. Some of the crew panicked and though no abandon ship order had been given freed several life pods from the stricken fueler. When it became evident that the Kalevala wasn't sinking, they reboarded her and retrieved water and food supplies before returning to their life pods. They kept station with her as she drifted, luckily towards the east where New Mandalore awaited them nearly eight hundred kilometers over the horizon.

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The Fool

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Night had fallen as the Kom'rks landed back aboard the Acclamators. Cody watched from the bridge as armorers and fuel teams swarmed the returning airspeeders in herculean efforts to get them ready for the next strike the moment the First Order's other two warships were located.

In the end three Guardians had succumbed to either damage incurred in the strike on the Imperial class Star Destroyer, or their pilots had been too wounded to fly back to the flotilla. Either way it would probably never be known. The Pacific had a way of keeping secrets.

The aircrews filed into wardrooms for protein-rich dinners, their merriment at having destroyed an enemy Star Destroyer mixed with sorrow for fallen comrades. Many of them fell asleep in their chairs from exhaustion. That was alright as they would need all the rest they could get before the Commodore sent them out again.

Several of the Kom'rks had been badly blasted up, and the Fool's deck hands clustered around the machines and gaped at the damage. Here was dramatic proof of the value of Mandalorian construction. Now if only he could slap some of his wife's beskar on his airspeeders, he wished.

An hour after landing all of the Guardians were refueled and rearmed. But Commodore Morrison elected to hold them in reserve. He wanted to give his scouting crews a rest and wait until morning. To Cody that was a Terran way of thinking. Night or day made no difference to his pilots in their advanced machines. Their flight helmet HUDs turned night into day, but he wouldn't contradict his commander in the middle of a battle. Instead, the Fool and the Empress, the so-called Royal Couple, kept a strong force of fighters flying cover, but the second-string pilots in their torpedo and bomber Guardians would remain deck bound.

The First Order were bolder that night, pressing in from their attack on the Kalevala and Inferno down south. They searched the towering clouds of the cyclone in conditions that ranged from dubious to no visibility. They were among some of the best pilots the First Order had in the 7th Fleet of Conquest and though many of them knew the chance of being lost was high they were game to try. If they found and attacked the Acclamators they might win the battle outright and return in time for a celebratory breakfast.

Near midnight the outbound flight of First Order TIEs apparently flew over the Acclamators who were staying low over the sea to prevent torpedo strikes on their bellies. The bombers, along with their escorts, failed to spot them. At 0200, the strike leaders, talking by shortwave, decided to turn back. They would eat, drop some stims and get new orders. They jettisoned their bombs and torpedoes and reversed course, hoping to pick up their Resurgents' homing beacons through the Mandalorian jamming efforts. A lone flight of two Kom'rks spotted a handful of them flying through the cloud cover and a squadron of Guardian fighters led by Oddball were vectored out to intercept them on their return flight. The Mandalorian fighters emerged out of the lower cloud cover on the tails of several of the TIEs. In the ensuing melee, the First Order got the worst of it, losing nine TIEs, eight of which were the ship-killing Whispers and a single Silencer to four lost Guardians.

Back down at the Acclamators a new formation of airspeeders arrived over the task force. First, the whine of their engines could be heard above the cloud cover, then they slipped into view at about the height of the Empress's superstructure. That's a textbook formation, Cody thought when he spotted the black shapes in the distance. They had their navigation lights on, indicating that they intended to land. But many observers on both Acclamators noted that something was awry. Cody quickly counted thirteen airspeeders, more than were currently aloft not counting Oddball's flight that were engaged at higher altitude. They were flying down the Empress's port side, a counterclockwise approach, the reverse of the Mandalorian landing routine. They were flashing their blinker lights, but none of the New Mandalorians could decipher the signal. Cody thought the airspeeder exhausts were a strange shape and color. The running lights were a peculiar shade of red and blue.

The shortwave holo came alive with Captain Silver's image from the Empress's bridge. His clone peer quickly asked. "Have any of our airspeeders have vertical solar panels?"

"Stanged if those are our kriffing Guardians." Cody snapped.

When the first of the strangers made his final turn, he was too low and the Fool's landing signal officer frantically signaled him to throttle up. In the last second, when the pilot was about to plow into the stern under the flight hangars, he poured coaxium to his engine and pulled up and off to port. The hangar lamps flickered briefly on a dark black TIE fighter with a giant red stripe down the side of its panel.

The Empress opened fire and red tracers reached up towards the lead TIE. Cody turned to Silver's hologram. "Hold your blasts. We have friendly Guardians out there."

"I know TIEs when I see them." Silver threw back.

Anti-airspeeder gunners on both ships opened blast and suddenly the night sky lit up as if it were Empire Day. Out on the catwalks and open hangar bays sailors got caught up in the excitement and drew their sidearms and blazed away into the sky. Their offensive gestures were about as effective as throwing rocks. The intruders and the Mandalorians all doused their lamps and zoomed back into the cloud cover. None were shot down.

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Search Pattern Delta-5, 520 Kilometers from the NMDF Fleet

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They were bone tired. The Beskar Golem had been launched shortly after dark to relieve other scouting flights. Dawn was still a few hours off.

This far east of the cyclone thousands of stars twinkled between gaps in the cloud coverage. Bitee looked away from the shimmering waves far below and studied the distant stars. He doubted he'd ever be able to see Tal Pi again from Earth but perhaps one of those tiny specks of lights was the Home Galaxy.

It was unfortunate Barrage had been pulled away from their bounty hunting team tonight. It was at times like this that it was nice to talk with another castaway from the Old Empire. Kiwis and Māori were wonderful beings, but Earth was their home world. They got to enjoy it every day.

Perhaps that's why some of them found easy sleep in their current predicament. Bitee could hear soft snoring coming across the crew comms which he recognized as Singh's. The Regulator's second-in-command had nodded off in the weapon's bubble forward of the pilot cockpit. Bitee didn't say anything. If it hadn't been for the stims he had taken shortly after takeoff he'd be out like a lamp as well.

There was a sudden tug on Bitee's pant leg causing the pilot to look down the side of his jump seat. He peered down in time to see a hand pulling back through the labyrinth of machinery that separated the cockpit from the crew cabin. Bitee looked over his shoulder and maneuvered himself until he could just barely make out Lata down below and behind him.

The Kiwi sniper held a hand over his comlink mic, indicating he wanted to stay off the crew channel. "Hargrave and I think we spotted something. About ten klicks north."

"That's out of our patrol zone." Bitee replied.

"I know. But we saw something big over that way. Two of them."

"Two? Alright let's take a peek." The Talpini banked the gunship away to the area indicated by the sniper.

It didn't take long to spot them, despite the low moonlight of the night. Large grey warships cut quietly through the upper cloud layers. Their lamps were blocked out but their size was unmistakable. They were half again larger than any Star Destroyer Bitee had ever seen, except the Ares but she was of a different class all together. Clan Bly intelligence had already provided their names; Resurgents.

"Get on the blasters. I'm going to make a broadcast and there's no way the enemy is going to miss it at this distance." Bitee told Lata who passed on the word to Hargrave.

"Want to wake up Singh first?" Lata asked.

Bitee thought about it for a moment. If Singh woke up he'd make the sighting report and he had already botched the earlier coded report back to the fleet which had resulted in a full attack on the weakest part of the First Order strike force. "I will tell him in a minute."

The pilot watched his controls as he made sure he had the correct coding sequence for his report. Then he keyed the hyperwave. It was the most powerful channel they had and the one most guaranteed to cut through First Order jamming. "Two Star Destroyers. Resurgent class, steering 120 degrees, 20 knots at 12,000 meters."

The flash of a large turbolaser raced past the front of the gunship. The nearest Resurgent had detected their signal and whipped off a quick bolt in their direction. The crack of the weapon woke Singh up in the forward bubble. "What the hell?"

"We found the schuttas." Bitee shouted as he put the Beskar Golem in a tight dive. The g-forces pushed them all back into their jump seats. He hit the afterburners ten meters off the deck and raced away to the west

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10 kilometers to the east of the NMDF Fleet

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XE06-CR8 bobbed along the surface of the Pacific. The Spider probe droid, the descendant of the Vipers the Empire used, had tried to maintain altitude against the high winds and towering waves for hours. Finally after being dunked by a dozen rogue waves one after another, it had decided its best course of action was to float on the surface of the ocean and wait out the storm.

Nearby three buoys blinked red indicator lights at the droid. They were effective jammers. The droid had done full spectrum scans of the devices but had chosen not to engage them until its mission dictated that it had to do so.

A wave washed over him. Oddly the droid calculated. Waves had been steady at twenty-six seconds standard out of the west. This one had been off schedule and from the north. The anomaly must be explored, it reasoned and raised its sensors for a passive visual sweep of the surrounding area.

A massive shape sailed very low over the surface less than a kilometer away. It was moving quickly to the east to get ahead of the storm. Several airspeeders the spider droid identified as New Mandalorian Guardians flew escort around the starship. Preliminary analysis identified it as an Acclamator-class Assault Ship, currently under suspected command by enemy forces.

Another Acclamator could be identified several kilometers to the northeast moving in the same direction as the first. Primary mission called for notification of local First Order Theater Commander.

The Spider droid fired its jets and propelled itself out of the salty water. Its head spun rapidly around as its blaster cannon lined up three neat shots on the three nearest jammer buoys. Each of which exploded on contact and sunk into the depths.

"Have sighted Mandalorian Acclamator class warship times two. Multiple escorts present. Location of enemy Acclamators 170 degrees and 435 kilometers from your position. Course 49 degrees. Speed 44 knots."

The Spider was transmitting real-time visual confirmation when the bolt struck it from behind. The heavy turbolaser drilled its way straight through the droid's main body and cleaved it nearly in two. Shattered, the droid fell into the Pacific to slowly join the buoys it had destroyed.

"What the kriff was that?" Oddball's wingman commed.

"A droid of some sort." Oddball commed back as his Guardian circled the area where the droid went down. "We better get on the horn and tell the Commodore to get his attack on the way. It's a good bet the First Order knows we are coming."

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The Fool

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The Beskar Golem's latest sighting report had the same effect on the NMDF Fleet as kicking a beehive. A deck crewman paused at the door of the wardroom and stared at all the sleeping pilots. Most of them had fallen asleep in their chairs, slumped over the armrests or resting their heads on their desks. He'd been sent to get them to their Kom'rks as fast as he could.

He hit the lights and then started kicking the door. "All flight crew to your planes! We've spotted the assholes."

That got most of the pilots moving. Jane Jade was still groggy as she lifted her head and looked around. Suddenly, there was a sharp stab to her arm. She looked over to see a corpsman withdrawing a needle from her arm. "What the hell was that?"

"Stims, pilot. You weren't moving fast enough."

"I didn't ask for any stims, jerk."

"Captain's orders, ma'am. Everyone needs their wits about them. We think it's the First Order's main fleet this time." The corpsman moved away to inject several other pilots, most of which were asking for medicinal boosters. They'd be wide awake for six hours, but they'd crash hard when the junk wore off.

The deck vibrated under their feet as the Fool and Empress raced towards the front of the easterly moving cyclone. The Acclamators were trying to close the distance and launch their Guardians from the clear skies ahead of the storm.

Aircrews took pictures of all the last-minute navigational data on the TVs in the wardroom with their IPhones. They filed out of the rooms towards the hangars chomping down protein bars handed out by sailors. Festooned with gear, their flight visors and HUDs pushed up on their flight helmets, they ducked and weaved through a maze of parked Kom'rks, guided by deck crews with their multi-colored hoods.

Both Acclamators went into condition 'BLUE' when interior doors and hatches were slammed closed and dogged down, a measure to seal the hull off into vacuum tight compartments. Unneeded gear was stowed out of the way, the fuel hoses were drained, and the firefighting equipment brought out and readied.

Unlike the Empire and Confederacy, New Mandalore brought a distrust of droids with its forces. It was probably a hold-over belief left over from the Clone War, but as such their crews were entirely made up of sentients. The sentient crew put on their life vests over their vacuum sealed evo-suits. They donned Mandalorian style armor and helmets and went to their battle stations. On the bridge, Captain Cody had the transparisteel viewports retracted into their sills, leaving the interior exposed to the calm, open air ahead of the cyclone.

The two Acclamators turned into the wind, and the first Guardians lifted off into the night sky. Within fifteen minutes, a massive ninety-six Kom'rk strike was on its way towards the First Order fleet; forty-six bombers, twenty-two proton torpedo carriers and twenty-five fighters.

The air armada flew northeast, but not in good order. The Fool and Empress groups drifted apart, eventually losing sight of one another. The different ordinance each carried didn't help out either. Bombers, torpedo carriers and fighters flew at different speeds and altitudes, and drifted further apart as they put the kilometers behind them. Jade's group, the Fool's bomber squadrons, had to climb to high altitude, above 15,000 meters to be in position to drop their bombs from above. The torpedo carriers, lugging their heavy proton torpedoes, could not spare the fuel to climb so high, and they had no need to do so as they would approach the enemy at 12,000 where the Beskar Golem had reported them. Oddball's fighters had to throttle back to maximize fuel economy, which left them vulnerable to diving attacks.

Flying into the frontal area, the pilots craned their necks to find gaps in the wet, brown murk. They quickly lost sight of flight leaders and bore on to the target based only on their last headings.

The Empress's bombers and fighter escorts were the first to spot the First Order Resurgents. The warships were about nine kilometers apart, heading due south at about thirty-five knots. The Empress's Wing Commander held the bombers in a circling pattern while awaiting the arrival of his torpedo carriers so they could make a coordinated attack. The extra time allowed him to match the two Resurgents with known First Order ships from captured intelligence. The Slayer and Vulgalizer opposed the NMDF today, ready to beat down the city-shields to the south.

The Resurgents took the opportunity to launch more TIE/fo for air defense, and the Vulgalizer slipped away to the southeast and found cover inside a black squall line. The loss of initiative for the sake of coordination had been a costly mistake. When the Empress's torpedo Guardians came lumbering on the scene, they fanned out to make an anvil approach on the Slayer.

Lacking any fighter escort, they made awkward torpedo drops at ranges of three or four kilometers and scored no hits. High above, the Empress's bombers rolled into their dives. As they rapidly descended their bombsights and viewscreens became fogged over. They were obliged to bomb from memory. As the Slayer turned violently to starboard all of their bombs grazed past the mighty ship and fell away into the Pacific.

A second squadron of bombers from the Empress had circled around to take up an initial diving position, followed about forty seconds later. Plummeting towards the Slayer at a 70-degree angle, they were harassed by TIEs and their viewscreens fogged over. Yet they somehow managed to plant two 5000 kilogram bombs directly into the Weapon Targeting Center and the Forward Sensor Station. One fore and one aft of the main hull.

The first bomb was dropped by Ensign Hillary, son of the famous Empire-Earth War hero, who held his dive to below five hundred meters before releasing. The low drop guaranteed that he would not survive the explosion of his own bomb. The blast, on the front of the Slayer's superstructure engulfed his Guardian. It was virtually a suicide attack. Hillary had traded his life to remove the possibility of missing the target.

The Fool's air group had a much more frustrating day. The outbound flight had been confused and disjointed, and most of the Fool's Guardians arrived in small groups a few minutes apart. Fifteen of their Guardians, including an entire bomber squadron, failed to find the Resurgents altogether and returned to the Acclamators empty handed.

Oddball caught sight of both Resurgents through a break in the fog and rain, but he could only muster four bombers, including Jade and Barrages, eleven torpedo carriers and seven fighters. Jade realized it was a confusing mess. Big towering columns of acid rain clouds like pillars marked the battlefield. She and Barrage flew around one pillar and spotted a Resurgent. Here he was and then he was gone. It was an incredibly confusing, mixed-up, screwed up situation. Poor visibility mixed with pilots screaming over their comlinks. The ubiquitous TIEs poured in from every direction. Oddball's fighters fought them off while the sluggish torpedo carriers sought cover in the mists.

Jade dropped her bomb turning her Guardian into a fighter. There seemed to always be another TIE making a run on her. She avoided the attack of one and then jumped on his tail. He immediately went into the old TIE trick of climbing for orbit. TIEs were speedy in a climb, able to do three thousand meters in a minute. They just love to have you on their tail and trying to follow them up. As soon as they were far enough in the lead they'd flop over backward and suddenly she had him diving back at her. His aim must have been off as he punched a dozen holes in her left wing as he zoomed off. Jade didn't think she'd get lucky twice and dove into a nearby cloud to hide.

Before they could reorganize the overcast moved in and concealed the enemy fleet from view. Nearby, Maui began a quartering box search and soon found the wounded Slayer about ten kilometers west of where she had been originally hit. He attacked immediately with three wingmen. The four bombers dove and scored one additional hit that nearly pierced down to the Slayer's flight hangars. But once down there it failed to detonate, leaving a marked opinion of the final assault of the night on the two Resurgents.

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Command Bridge, Vulgalizer

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Captain Retimar listened as damage reports came in from the stricken Slayer, which lay burning several kilometers away. It had already dropped two kilometers from its normal flight path, testifying to the damage it had taken in the enemy air assault.

Two massive bomb hits had pierced her shields and tore gaping holes in her upper armor. If left in an atmosphere the fires that raged in her upper decks would surely spread throughout the stricken Resurgent.

"Captain Thren is hailing us, sir. Says his imagecaster is offline." Commander Unamo reported.

"Never mind that. Hand me the comlink." Retimar held out his hand for the device. As soon as Unamo gave it to him he addressed his fellow Captain. "Thren, what is your status?"

"Estimating nearly six hundred dead and maybe half that again wounded. My main machine shop has been gutted. We've got an undetonated energy bomb embedded in my main hangar deck plates . . ." Thren surely had a whole list of issues his ship was dealing with, but Retimar only had one question.

"Can you conduct flight operations?"

"I'm afraid not. Not with the damage we've suffered and the location of that unexploded ordinance. We need a port to facilitate repairs and I'm obliged to request my air group lands aboard the Vulgalizer when they return." Thren asked. At the moment only their escorts could be seen outside. Both Resurgents had launched their strike TIEs as soon as they had received the report from the Spider droid. Perhaps, both sides' airspeeders had passed each other unseen in the dark.

"Is your damage mortal?" Retimar asked. He didn't want to lose the Slayer. He needed her if they were going to batter down the city-shields together. Her absence would make the Vulgalizer's job twice as hard.

"We might get these fires under control eventually. Be easier in a vacuum. Our hull is intact, and we can make way at thirty percent power, but we are going to need to put back in for some major repairs before we are battle ready again. Request permission to return to Titan?" Thren stated.

Retimar hated to see his sister ship leave, but it'd be even worse to have her stick around like a sick Gungan. Unamo interrupted his train of thought. "It will be a tight squeeze to bring them all aboard one ship after the strike."

"We'll make do, Commander. Those TIEs are essential for Admiral Jethran's future plans." What Retimar didn't mention was the odds of every TIE returning was slim. Surely some would be blasted down. These Kom'rk fighters the Mandalorians used were proving quite formidable. Obviously, every one of the enemy fighters would be orphaned when his bombers easily destroyed their Acclamators.

"It's a strange battle, sir. It doesn't look like we will even come within sight of the Mando ships." Unamo said.

"If I wanted to see Clone War relics, I'd visit a museum. Our TIEs will dispatch them and then return here to provide cover for our bombardment of the first city-shield." Retimar spoke as if it had already occurred. But then again, against such a weak opponent what could go wrong?

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NMDF Fleet, southeast of the cyclone

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Spread out on a sparkling gray sea under a moonlit sky, NMDF Task Force 1 was like a worm writhing on a hook. The officers and crew of the Mandalorian Acclamators knew they would come under heavy air attack within the next hour, probably within minutes.

So, it came as no surprise when the Fool's CommScan station had picked up the transmission from the nearby Spider droid. It had happened moments after the Beskar Golem's sighting report of the Resurgents. Morrison had kept that from his aviators as they sailed away to attack the First Order ships. Their minds needed to be on their own attack, not the peril of their own ships.

Captain Cody smiled at his wife. He wasn't used to putting her in danger. Though to be fair it was an even argument whose life had been the more adventurous, the Marshal Commander of the 212th Attack Legion or the bounty hunter who had once captured the First Lady of the CEN. She could see he was worried, though he hid it from his sailors well.

He deduced the First Order Resurgents had launched their TIEs at about the same time as the Mandalorians and the two air groups had probably passed one another en route, and that they'd probably fall on the Fool in the next few minutes. Cody wondered if it was possible that both air strikes would destroy each other's mother ships, leaving all surviving airspeeders marooned in the air.

Returning escorts were landed and quickly refueled and sent back up. Which put them in the path of the First Order's first arrivals; a squadron of TIE Whispers. The Fool's engine room raised power as the Acclamator surged ahead to sixty knots. High-speed evasive maneuvering, not the shields or the armor, that was the ship's best defense against air attack.

Mandalorian sensors picked through the enemy jamming and detected the attack thirty kilometers away. Cody vectored in his seventeen Guardians that he had in his fighter cover.

Five Empress Guardians made first contact with the enemy at a distance of eighteen kilometers, and found them in layered formations from two to eight kilometers in height. The Guardians climbed to altitude, but lost speed in the effort and had to turn into the TIEs' tails to chase them.

The First Order's attack was finely choreographed, and the contrast with the discombobulated Mandalorian air groups was stark. With fifteen kilometers to go, they fanned out into two groups of Whispers and one large group of TIE/fb bombers. The Guardians caught up to them at just that moment. The lead Kom'rk dove on the lead Silencer. The Mandalorian blasted on the down slant while the Silencer leader blasted upwards at the Kiwi. Almost immediately the Silencer snap-rolled, then spiraled downwards, out of control.

The Fool's lookouts first saw the enemy when the first one flamed out of the night sky. They activated their night vision and spotted clusters of black dots on the northeast horizon, hardly moving at all. Gradually, each dot resolved into a recognizable shape; a ball cockpit flanked by twin vertical solar panels. The Whispers fanned out and approached from two directions, while the TIE/fb soared overhead and rolled over for their dives.

"Here they come!" Cody shouted to his sailors.

The Fool's engines surged as the Acclamator accelerated, and her deck sloped to port as Cody ordered the repulsars to fire a sharp starboard turn. Anti-airspeeder turbolasers and rapid-fire slugthrowers on both Acclamators opened blast. The sky filled with dirty, black flak bursts and countless streams of green blaster bolts. Vertical plumes of smoke marked the spots where TIEs and Guardians had been shot out of the sky.

When the various TIEs attacked they ran into a virtual wall of anti-airspeeder fire. The Acclamators blackened the moonlit sky with exploding shells and blaster tracers. All of it manned and aimed by veterans of every battle of the Clone Wars. It seemed impossible that the First Order pilots could survive their torpedo and bombing runs through such an incredible defense.

The TIE/fo fighters, Silencers and Kom'rks spun, dove and climbed through the Whisper and TIE/fb formations. Burning and shattered airspeeders of both sides plunged from the skies.

From Cody's perspective, a swarm of malevolent TIEs seemed to attack suddenly and from every single angle and direction.

A squadron of Whispers approached the Fool's port beam. Six broke away to circle around the Acclamator's starboard bow in a classic anvil pattern, leaving Cody with few viable options. To port, the other Whispers flew low across the bow of the Empress, and her sister Acclamator's fusillade of anti-airspeeder fire blew the first two out of the sky, but the others flew on towards the Fool seemingly unfazed. When they drew within a thousand meters, they leveled out and released their proton torpedoes. Each weapon streaked away from its carrier and raced towards the Fool under its own internal propulsion, running straight and true at nearly a hundred knots.

The TIE Whispers continued on the same track, climbing to the height of the Fool's command bridge. Cody, Morrison, Doom and Felk all stared wide-eyed as they went past. Anti-airspeeder gunners claimed one at point blank range. The explosion was so close that fragments of flaming titanium skittered across the bridge's viewports.

Torpedoes were in the air to port and starboard and TIE/fb bombers were hurtling down from overhead. Cody focused on the defense of his ship. To his sailors he looked completely unperturbed, as if the Fool fought off such an attack every day of the week. There was nothing he could do about the bombers other than climb directly into their attack, but there was something he could do about the torpedoes.

In an even tone he called his helmsman. "Hard a starboard."

The long axis of the Fool was agonizingly slow to respond, even with more than fifty knots of speed. Cody thought she turned majestically and ponderously as the moment stretched into an eternity.

A trail of fire and vapor marked the track of each torpedo as it closed the range to his ship. Cody realized the Fool wasn't going to dodge them all. Their wicked noses looked like death incarnate as they closed.

The ascending whine if ion engines served notice that energy bombs were about to fall from above. The TIE/fb were streaking down in near-vertical dives, spaced out at regular intervals. They released one by one at about seven hundred meters. Each energy bomb, a glowing blue dot, separated from the bomb bays and took a divergent trajectory as the TIE began to pull out of its dive. The first several fell astern, into the Fool's baffles, and several more fell close abeam. Each near miss was followed by a deep rumbling explosion from the ocean that seemed to come from hell itself. Each blast threw up a waterspout that towered nearly a kilometer in height and soaked sailors stationed on the perimeter catwalks.

A one-thousand-kilogram bomb struck forward, near the port forward heavy turbolaser battery. A blinding reddish flash reached a height of fifty meters. The entire crew of the turbolaser was wiped out, and firefighting teams hurried over to extinguish the flames. Another projectile came within a few meters of the superstructure itself but missed and fell into the sea. A third hit the Fool's main thruster, killing several of the engineers stationed on the aft deck. A near miss had cut the wire that operated the emergency klaxon, jamming it in place so that it screamed without interruption for the next several minutes while the battle continued.

A second wave of Whispers approached on a shallow glide on the Fool's port quarter, through an intense barrage of anti-airspeeder fire. A missile battery on the port quarter took down two of them with a dozen ion pulse missiles. The rest of them dropped their torpedoes a kilometer out and continued over the ship, strafing the Acclamator's central hangar decks as they flew over her. The Fool twisted and turned on a violent serpentine path.

With a dozen First Order proton torpedoes converging on his Acclamator, Captain Cody realized her powerless to avoid them all. But not all of the weapons were functioning correctly; two that seemed certain to strike the Fool apparently dived right under her keel and were seen to emerge on the other side.

Another pair ran parallel, one on either side of the warship about fifty meters away. Nichole yelled out to her husband. "Don't change course, riduur! There's a torpedo on each side of us running parallel."

Cody held the course until they passed ahead and disappeared. But seconds later the Fool's luck ran out. She was struck by two proton torpedoes in quick succession, on her port side, forward and amidships. Unlike the bomb blasts, these explosions against the lower hull were muffled. The Acclamator's entire hull lurched upwards and shuddered with enough violence to throw armored men from their feet. Bits of old paint and dust of thirty-five years back to the Clone Wars was jarred from the starship's cracks and crannies.

The first blast punctured the port hypermatter annihilator and released hypermatter vapor that began to creep through the lower decks and engine compartments. The second severed a water main, which had the doubly destructive effect of cutting water to firehoses and to several engine reactors. The Fool listed 7-degrees to port and immediately began leaking liquid fuel into the Pacific less than a kilometer below. A heavy fuel slick trailed in her wake.

The last of the First Order TIEs were escaping low over the Fool's bow, chased by the deadly anti-airspeeder fire. Blaster bolts chased the last of the Whispers and TIE/fb bombers away, many of them trailing heavy smoke. Several TIE/fo fighters raked the stricken ship with their chin cannons as they flew over. Then they were gone, shrinking into black specks on the horizon and the anti-airspeeder blasters fell silent. The entire action lasted less than fifteen minutes.

The sea below and around the Fool was littered with burning debris and downed airspeeders. Two kilometers away a thick smokescreen engulfed the Empress allowing her to walk away from the strike with only a pair of energy bomb hits that had merely carbon-scored her upper armor plates.

The Fool's damage control parties appeared to have the situation well in hand. Though it was soon evident that the Acclamator's great repulsars weren't keeping up with her list and she was slowly sinking towards the ocean's surface. Over the next half hour Cody received a series of upbeat reports from his damage control officers. Two First Order proton torpedoes had struck the Fool on her lower hull and disabled nearly half the thrusters and repulsers on her port side. They were working on converting power from the starboard systems to correct the list before she splashed down. Medical corpsmen were collecting the wounded and transferring them down to the hospital bay on repulsar stretchers. Firefighting crews were smothering the fires with foam and within fifty minutes no more smoke could be seen emerging from the hangar deck, but the launch corridor was still able to launch and recover Kom'rks. The Fool's engines were in good working condition and even with the wounds in her hull, she could still make twenty-five knots and maneuver briskly.

The Empress came up alongside her, accepting the transfer of Doom and Morrison so that Cody could focus on saving his ship. By all signs the Fool would be able to make it back to New Mandalore. But no one could explain why she was still slowly sinking towards the great expanse of the Pacific, now only a couple of hundred meters below.

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Hangar Deck, The Fool

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Jade climbed down from her Guardian and looked around the hangar. The Fool had appeared alright from the air. As she looked around she noticed that some of the faces of the flight deck crews seemed sort of strange. Then she saw the flecks of firefighting foam all over the decks and she knew the Fool had been hit and hit hard.

Jade checked on Barrage after he parked his Guardian next to hers. The clone had good reason to believe the Fool could stand up to two proton torpedo hits and two topside energy bomb strikes. "Rothana Heavy Engineering designed them to absorb that much and more. You should have seen what the Seppers threw at us back in the old days."

"Here's hoping you're right. Let's find the other Regulators and see what we can do to help." Jade suggested.

"Sounds good, boss." Barrage followed along and soon they were pitching in to help the other Mandalorians save their ship.

The damage control squads had been trained long and hard by Clan Bacara, and they were well equipped and well led. Perhaps no other force in the Milky Way cared more for the lives of its sailors than New Mandalore. An hour after the attack, it appeared the Fool was nearly squared away. She seemed capable of fighting off another enemy air attack, should one come.

The Acclamator's hypermatter annihilators had been ruptured by the two proton torpedo blows. There was no visible hypermatter leak, but the crisp, electrified smell of hypermatter fumes was unmistakable throughout the compartments adjoining the Engineering Section. Highly combustible vapors were spreading through the lower regions of the ship like a malignant vine, and because the exact location of the leak could not be pinpointed, there was no obvious way to contain the problem.

Fifteen minutes after Jade had landed, she had finally located Bitee, Singh and the other Regulators napping inside the Beskar Golem, when a tremendous explosion rocked the ship.

Almost at once, oily black smoke boiled up around the edges of the turboshafts leading to other sections of the ship. Internal comlinks were cut, so damage control runners had to pass word up to Cody on the bridge by foot. Sailors descended the durasteel ladders into a Stygian warren lit by battle lamps, choked with smoke and crowded with grievously injured Clone, Kiwi and Māori wounded who were crying out for help. The damage control party working on the annihilators had been completely wiped out with the loss of fifty-five lives and the compartments were a raging inferno. Blast doors had been ripped from their hinges all along a hundred-meter length of corridor leading to the hospital bay in the bow.

Firefighting gangs shoved themselves past the gaping Regulators and descended into that hellish world, dragging long hoses behind them. They wore heavy oxygen tanks that connected with their Mandalorian helmets. The helmets had special lights attached to pierce the darkness and smoke. The heat was intense. The flames were between cherry red and white and fired sparks of crimson in every direction. The firefighters sprayed foam in every direction, as sweat ran into their eyes and they became lightheaded from the intense heat. They dragged the burned and wounded men to the ladders and carried them up to the waiting Regulators who carried them to the hangar deck, where medical corpsmen had commandeered Kom'rk handling dollies to transport stretchers aft.

The Fool entered a viscous spiral that the helm was unable to correct. Within minutes of the explosion the Acclamator splashed into the Pacific with such force that it knocked most of the crew off their feet.

New explosions rippled through the ship every five to ten minutes. Hypermatter and rhydonium tanks were further damaged, bleeding their combustible fuels into the inferno. Water mains were crushed or cracked, causing the pressure in the firehoses to diminish and then fail entirely. Electrical mains fell to the advancing flames, cutting out power and leaving the lower decks in darkness. The chemical extinguishers and oxygen tanks began to run low. Firefighters fell wounded and had to be evacuated by their mates. Even in areas where the blast doors were shut and sealed, the fire heated the bulkheads to such a degree that the paint on the opposite sides ignited, allowing the flames to penetrate through durasteel walls. A second devastating explosion cut through more firefighting gangs like a scythe. By the time the third explosion occurred it was clear the fires were unmanageable.

Even after the first big explosion the Fool continued to launch and recover Guardians. As soon as she splashed down, Captain Doom aboard the Empress ordered every flyable Guardian still on the Fool to relocate to her sister ship. Jade ignored the order and stayed with the Regulators. Other pilots took Barrage and hers Guardians over to the other Acclamator.

Wounded sailors were brought up from the hangar deck as the last Guardians departed. Singh brought the Beskar Golem up to the top hull where it was loaded with wounded who they speedily transported over to the Empress. Other shuttles circled overhead, swooping down to pick up more wounded for medivac.

Jade heard explosions from the hangars that sounded like a crashing freight train. A rushing wall of flame erupted from the edge of the launch corridor. As dense smoke and searing heat drove the damage control parties further aft, they took increasingly desperate actions to get hoses on the fire. A hose was snaked down one of the tibanna hoists to the forward batteries in hopes of dousing the fires below by flooding the burning compartments. But nothing could arrest the advancing conflagration.

The ship's internal communications were failing fast, and Captain Cody found it increasingly difficult to get accurate reports of the situation in the lower regions of the crippled ship. Holograms of his damage control leaders vanished one by one as they were cut off from the bridge.

The Acclamator never had many water pumps to start off with. Why, when she was meant for vacuum, not liquid environments? Her list returned as light waves rippled over her port side and she started to settle further into the water.

One last hologram to the engine room flickered on and off. Cody realized that if he did not order the engineers to evacuate, the last remaining communication link would be cut, and the sailors stationed there would remain at their posts consumed by their flames. He activated the ship-wide audicasters to order the evacuation of the lower decks. "Execute Order Five!"

As the sailors evacuated, they released the excess power converters setting free built-up power for the engines. Within minutes, the Fool slowly lumbered to a halt until she was completely dead in the water. The loyal Empress drew in close to the dying ship and awaited instructions.

Jade, Hargrave and Lata joined the damage control party that was ordered back below to bring everyone up to the top hull. The hunt through the lower decks was a dangerous job, but it had to be done. Many of the audicasters were down and every sailor needed to know they had been ordered top side. Injured sailors were being brought up to the upper hull in a steady stream, many suffering from severe burns or smoke inhalation. But there was never a shortage of volunteers who were willing to go below and help retrieve other members of the crew. It didn't matter which Clan you called your own. That day everyone was a New Mandalorian first, and everyone was a clan-mate.

Time was short. Every officer and sailor knew the bombs and torpedoes in the hangar were roasting slowly as the fires proceeded. The temperature of the metal casings surrounding the torpedo warheads was measured by one intrepid sailor at 60 Celsius. Eventually, they would reach a detonation point and blow the ship to kingdom come.

Three hours after the attack, when it was clear that no hope remained, and preparations to abandon ship were well underway, Captain Cody still had yet to give the order. He must have waited longer than the Commodore thought prudent as Morrison appeared on the bridge of the Empress with a megaphone. "Hey, let's get the lads off the ship!"

Cody and his wife had abandoned the bridge when power failed and moved down among the sailors on the top hull. He cupped his hands together and shouted. "Execute Order Six!"

The sun was just starting to rise into the sky in the east when the evacuation order was given. Knotted lines were secured to the sides of the ship as life pods were jettisoned into the water where they were lashed together by swimming sailors. Mandalorians began going down the lines, some descending directly into the rafts, some into the life pods and some directly into the water. The Empress had become too crammed with Guardians to allow more than one shuttle craft to evacuate the seriously wounded and the Beskar Golem was eventually grounded as well. It was a calm morning, with the cyclone having passed to the north. The abandonment was oddly leisurely. There was no rush, no panic and many seemed in no hurry to leave. Sailors stood in orderly lines behind each rope and peeled off their armor in exchange for life vests which they piled in neat rows along the starboard turbolaser batteries. They gave three cheers for the Captain. Then three more for the Commodore.

Barrage dived from the upper hull and swam out about a hundred meters, then swam back and climbed back up one of the ropes to the upper deck. Jade gave him a strange look. "Why'd you come back?"

"Oh, I got a bit lonely out there. I didn't know any of those guys. When are you fellows going to come?" Barrage's answer got laughs out of the rest of the Regulators.

By 0800, only a handful of officers remained on the Fool. The upper armored hull was painfully hot underfoot even through beskar boots. Cody noticed the bow was slowly starting to lift as the aft slipped quietly backwards into the waves.

Cody and Nichole Felk were the last to go. They had paced the hull one last time, looking for stragglers. Finding none, they stood above one of the knotted lines on the Fool's stern for a moment, both apparently unwilling to take the final step. Cody winked at his wife, "I was just thinking, wouldn't it look silly if I left the ship and the fires went out?"

"She's run her race. Let her rest. The Empress will have to suffice to keep Harris's scum at bay." Nichole Felk reassured him. They both went down the line and dropped into the warm, dark water of the Pacific.

The sailors and officers were plucked from the water by NMDF rescue helicopters as shuttles with the severely wounded were sent on to New Mandalore allowing enough room to be freed up for flight operations once again. The burning Acclamator made a beautiful and terrible sight. Every aperture in her hangars and blaster ports revealed the maelstrom of red and orange flames within, and parts of her hull glowed like molten lead. She began to list heavily and burned with dirty red flames that blossomed from time to time as bombs in the abandoned Kom'rks exploded in her engulfed hangar bays.

The torpedo warheads and energy bombs in the hangar deck went up in a vast, rippling explosion. A pair of Guardians were thrown up through the launch corridor and into the sea like a child's toys. Jade watched from the deck of the Empress as bits and particles, Kom'rks, armor plates, blast doors, pieces large and small all went up into the air in the midst of a blinding white flame.

Commodore Morrison ordered the Fool sunk, both to prevent her from falling into CEN hands and to eliminate the danger that she might serve as a beacon for First Order TIEs.. The Empress moved into a range of two kilometers to carry out the dreadful task. Cody, choked up, stood next to Captain Silver as he issued the order to fire. The Empress fired a spread of eight proton torpedoes into the Fool's starboard side.

The stricken Fool started getting deeper in the water, slowly going down, as if she too, were reluctant to give up the battle. She finally went down in a cloud of hissing steam, taking with her the bodies of nearly six hundred of her crew. About a minute later, a tremendous explosion was felt and heard for kilometers around.

It was the Fool's last defiant roar. The Clone Wars veteran was on her way into the abyss.

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The Vulgalizer

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The First Order was in headlong retreat.

When Retimar had recovered his returning TIEs from the strike on the two Acclamators he concluded that he had no other choice. He looked to Unamo. "Send a message to Admiral Jethran. New Mandalore attack will be postponed to a later date. Your approval is requested."

He waved away the Commander to do his bidding. Retimar had a good motive for his decision. He didn't want to run the risk of a devastating air attack on his lone Resurgent Star Destroyer while he battered the first city-shield at Auckland. Even if both Acclamators had been sunk, as his TIE pilots claimed, there would still be large amounts of land based Kom'rks as they neared the enemy's homeland.

Unlike the wounded Slayer and the destroyed Security, the Vulgalizer was still in one piece. However, the First Order TIE Corps had been decimated in the air battle overnight. By the end of two days of straight battle his total air strength had been reduced to forty-four TIEs, twenty four TIE/fo and Silencers, fourteen TIE/fo and a mere six Whispers. Between the three air groups they had originally brought nearly three hundred TIEs into the battle. Many of the best and most seasoned aircrews had been shot down or lost at sea. They hadn't brought any search and rescue airspeeders with them and every one of the TIE crews lost was gone for good.

The survivors would be needed elsewhere. New Mandalore was not a First Order concern. Let the Confederacy take care of its own problems Retimar mused.

He wondered who would replace his pilots and TIEs. The First Order could supply neither. By the Black Nebula, he hoped the Supreme Leader didn't suggest replacing them with Confederates and their kriffing X-Wings.

Hadn't the First Order suffered enough today?

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