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IPV-2C Corvette, Emerald Shark, Greejatus Minor orbit, Gallivanter Run
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We can dance if we want to
We can leave your friends behind
'Cause your friends don't dance
And if they don't dance
Well, they're no friends of mine
The upbeat lyrics and beat were pumped throughout the ninety-nine meters of the corvette. The sailors at their stations bopped their heads in unison with the song. Some of them even sang along, having heard it several times since they had left Nal Kuat on their second war time cruise.
The Emerald Shark was painted in what they called Vader Black with only a plain, white Imperial insignia stenciled just behind her forward bridge. Her name was only known to the enigmatic and tight-lipped officers and crew of the Cloaked Service. Like every other corvette of her class, IPV-2C-3 was named for a fish, in her case a nasty predator from the planet Dubrillion, thus making her the only Emerald Shark in the entire Milky Way as far as her skipper knew.
Every corvette sailor was a volunteer. The Cloaked Service did not want sailors who did not directly aspire to wear the Specter Insignia. In most circumstances, any officer or sailor who wanted out was granted a proper transfer back to the main fleet.
Lieutenant Commander Jab couldn't imagine returning to service aboard a Star Destroyer. Too many beings looking over his shoulder for his liking. The lavender-shaded Twi'lek was the second commander of the corvette since the First Order's cowardly attack on Nal Kuat. Jab was a sailor's sailor, only graduating from the Academy on Mars three years before the war. He was a big, broad-shouldered Twi'lek with large hands and a powerful handshake. He was gregarious and high-spirited, with a contagious grin and a tendency to roar with laughter. He liked to rough house with his crew and took on any challengers, regardless of rank, in friendly wrestling matches. An oddity in the tight confines of the Cloaked Service, he was built like a Herglic and as playful as an Ewok.
Born on Ryloth, only five months before the 'big jump', he had no memories of the Home Galaxy. He played limmie and wrestled at the Academy. He loved high jinks and rough, physical horseplay, even while on patrol. Out in the Void, on his first command, he was none too exacting about his uniform nor that of his sailors, often walking around the corvette in a blue bathrobe. Whenever he wasn't on watch he could usually be found playing and often losing at sabacc with even the lowest members of his crew. He was just a big, overgrown Twi'lek who had never been told adults weren't supposed to smile. A complete contradiction from their previous commander.
Commander Pangie had been a tall, slender Chandrilan. He had been a hard-driving taskmaster and a bit of a pedant, but an efficient administrator. In their few brushes with combat on their first cruise, the Commander had been slightly high-strung and socially awkward when dealing with the enlisted sailors.
Pangie had been a part of, what in the current navy, was being called the 'Yutu Navy'. Indoctrinated and promoted during the near uneventful orbital bombardment of Earth during the last war or the peacetime that followed, many older officers were being found to not be up to the task of dealing with a more active naval war. Caution and acquiescence to organizational politics had been qualities that marked an officer for promotion. Peacetime exercises, mattering greatly for career prospects of every officer, had penalized adventurous tactics. The new 'Gentis Navy' was quickly realizing it had a skipper problem. Cautious commanders had to be identified and relieved so that younger and bolder men could assume command. Pangie and Jab were merely two officers caught up in opposite sides of the process.
Pangie had taken the Emerald Shark out on her first war time cruise. At the start of the war, she was one of three corvettes with cloaking capabilities. A pre-war discovery of stygium on Nal Kessel had proved to be a timely Navy windfall and a well-kept secret by the very top members of the Imperial military. Commander Galalloy had proven himself commanding the Ryclclopper as it valiantly shadowed Admiral Akfar's 1st Fleet, proving the corvettes were masterful scouts and spies. Commander Strobestack had penetrated all the way to Earth and retrieved the survivors of the Roblin Raid with the Pierceskimmer. The HoloNews made him the first hero of the Cloaked Service and there was already scuttlebutt that he was going to be promoted to Captain and given command over all the corvettes by Fleet Admiral Gentis. But the Emerald Shark had so far failed to live up to the illustrious careers of her sisters.
The Emerald Shark had been the only corvette sent out on a true hunter killer mission in the first months of the war. After delivering a load of mines into the enemy shipping lanes around Ord Uatol, Pangie had silently led her into the Yerada II patrol zone, hoping to sink transports bringing in supplies to the new Confederate garrison there.
Two weeks had passed before the Emerald Shark sighted an enemy starship, a converted Colicoid transport that was now in Confederate service. Pangie had stalked the lone transport and fired a spread of three proton torpedoes at forty kilometers. All missed and the skipper had ordered the corvette to remain cloaked for hours, declining a second attack. The decision had not sat well with the crew.
It had been another week before the Emerald Shark attempted another attack, this time a Spielberg scout carrier that the targeting computers tentatively identified as the Kubrick. The valuable target was apparently unescorted. Pangie made a cautious approach, declining to use full power for fear of being picked up by the enemy's sensors. The Kubrick zigged instead of zagged and quickly went out of position. The missed opportunity was more a case of bad luck than negligence, but it ate away at crew morale.
Five days later, Pangie spotted an even more precious target, a Magnificient Transport, which unbeknownst to them was carrying the bulk of the 19th Legion forward to Kelshan. She had two Revenge Corvettes as escorts, and Pangie chose another conservative approach, holding the Emerald Shark to one-third speed. The target slipped through their grasp.
To his credit, when the Emerald Shark returned to Nal Kuat and he presented his report to Commander Strobestack, Pangie faulted himself for failing to make any good attacks. His approaches lacked aggressiveness and skill as the crew of the Emerald Shark watched the best targets, they could ever hope to find, slip away untouched.
Strobestack accepted Pangie's request for a transfer and gave the Emerald Shark's command over to its executive officer, Lieutenant Commander Jab. When the Commander had told him the news, Strobestack looked up at the big Twi'lek. "Jabby, you come back with over a hundred thousand tons sunk and I will pin Commander's cubes on you so fast it will make your lekku spin."
Jab was up for the job and eager to prove himself. To add pressure, five more IPV-2Cs had completed construction and were just awaiting trained crews to join them. In four months another five more were expected to join the Cloaked Service. The first generation of cloaked corvettes had yet to prove themselves and time was running out before the next generation got a shot at surpassing them.
When the crew gathered on the mooring dock on the Nal Kuat ring driveyard, Jab gave them the news and then added, "The Emerald Shark is expendable."
He let his words sink in before continuing. "We will take every reasonable precaution, but our mission is to sink enemy shipping. Any sailor who does not care to risk their life is invited to speak with the yeoman and ask for a transfer automatically. I'll never say anything about you staying here at Nal Kuat."
Not a single sailor requested a transfer. They wanted those ships just as badly as Jab did.
The Emerald Shark commenced her second war patrol one month to the day after the Roblin Raid. She was expected to be gone for three months on patrol. After stygium tests and practiced torpedo runs on escorts around the Nal Kuat drive yards, she hyperjumped outside the Bloodstripe Run to a safe location near Plympto Blight and then set her course for the occupied colony world of Cendret VII. Jab wanted to get as close to his adopted home world of New Ryloth as he could. Strobestack wanted them to reconnoiter a little-know Confederate base suspected of being set up on Cendret III.
The brown and green planets and moons of the Cendret System slipped by the Emerald Shark. The corvette ran uncloaked for faster speeds as long as her skipper dared. Jab thought the risk of being sighted by a Y-wing scout was worth the added forty million kilometers or so of daily travel. Jab even refused to cloak when one of his sailors on the subspace radar spotted a distant squadron of A-Wings near Cendret V. He chose to wait, a decision that was vindicated when the enemy airspeeders turned away, their pilots apparently having failed to notice the Emerald Shark.
The Navy lacked decent charts for several of the Cendret planets. Before the war they had only settled a human colony on Cendret VII despite several of the other worlds being habitable. The Confederacy set troops down everywhere they could. And ever since then, their big Magnificent transports had been bringing more and more Earthlings forward to settle the areas their troops had over run. The only limitation to their plan had been the amount of hypermatter their plant at Earth 2 could produce. Jab, like many in the Imperial military, suspected the Confederacy was taxing its supply chain to the breaking point. And now was the time to test that hypothesis.
They completed nearly a dozen cloaked orbits of Cendret III before their passive sensors located what they suspected was a new Confederate docking facility erected atop a plateau on one of the world's mountain ranges.
Jab surprised his crew by announcing that he intended on taking the Emerald Shark into the planet's lower atmosphere. His orders had directed the corvette to merely make a day light reconnaissance of a possible forward enemy base. Jab chose to interpret 'daylight reconnaissance' as 'enter and attack shipping'.
As dawn broke over this hemisphere on Cendret III, the Emerald Shark crept through high cloud cover towards what was rapidly revealing itself to be a rather active and large airbase. Jab spotted a large cylindrical shape parked in a landing bay along with a dozen Y-Wings that might belong to an enemy warship. But the corvette could not get any closer due to a circling Sheathipede shuttle over the base. Jab probed the mountains around the base for an approach that would allow him to close without being detected.
After several minutes of cautious probing, the cloaked corvette entered a valley that ran nine kilometers up to the plateau hosing the air base. Jab took several passive sensor sweeps to satisfy the mission objective and then told the helmsman to take her in. Jab made out the bridge structure of a large ship, which he first took to be a freighter. Upon closer inspection it proved to be a Revenge class corvette. Jab turned down the music he kept continuously pumped into the corvette's audicasters. "We're going to make a surprise attack on the parked Revenge."
The Emerald Shark's crew sucked in a collective nervous breath. The base was brimming with orbital and air defenses. If they were detected here, they were dead.
The Emerald Shark went to battle stations and continued advancing on the base at three knots. The forward torpedo tubes were opened in preparations for blasting. The intended range was three kilometers. The sailor at the helm turned to the skipper and whispered urgently, "Commander, she's gotten under way. Lifting off. Angle on the bow port at 10 degrees. She's at a hundred meters and rising fast."
A 10-degree angle on the bow meant that the Revenge had already turned and was bearing down on the invisible Emerald Shark. Jab altered his plan immediately. "Right full thruster."
He would maneuver over the Revenge and turn for a shot with the corvette's stern tubes. He took another glimpse at the enemy ship and noticed she had zigged and the angle on the bow opened up to 40 degrees starboard. Jab didn't have time to estimate her speed, so he guessed as forty-five knots. The sailor at the weapon station entered the numbers into the targeting computer, which provided an automatic gyro angle.
The Emerald Shark shuddered as two torpedoes were blasted out of her bow tubes. Like a flash of lightning her cloaking flickered as she fired, revealing herself for a split second to the enemy at the airbase and aboard the Revenge. Both of the projectiles ran hot, straight and normal, but when Jab took another quick sighting, he saw that both had missed astern. They had underestimated the Revenge's speed.
A speed of fifty knots was entered into the targeting computer and a third torpedo was fired. But the Confederate lookouts had evidently spotted the torpedo's exhaust. Fully alerted, the Revenge turned sharply away and evaded the third shot. She held the turn through 270 degrees and bore down on the spot where they had spotted the Emerald Shark for that split second.
Taking his eyes away from the sensor scopes and turning towards the forward viewport, Jab now beheld the most dreaded of all images; a rounded, towering bow that was rapidly growing larger as it closed with them. She looked as if she were making to ram them. The large Twi'lek smiled to his crew. "That's all right. Keep the aiming reticle up and we'll shoot the son of a bantha down the throat."
A 'down the throat' shot was the boldest and most desperate tactic available for a cloaked corvette. It had been discussed in theory but never attempted in practice. It was a desperation shot.
Jab watched the enemy warship come on. He could see the faces of the Confederate sailors looking straight back at him from the bridge of the Revenge corvette. He shifted the aiming reticle to a lower power so that the view was much less disturbing.
The Emerald Shark did not have a torpedo to waste. If she fired too soon, the target would have time to turn away and evade, blasting away at the area the Emerald Shark reappeared in when she fired. If she fired too late, the blast from the torpedo contact on the Revenge might destroy them too. The effective fire window was near 1,000 meters. The Revenge would travel that distance in about thirty seconds.
As the range closed to 1,250 yards, Jab announced. "Might as well have a go. Blast away!" Looking over at the weapon station tracking monitor, Jab watched the torpedoes stretch away. The Revenge turned and evaded. Jab felt calm with a cool certainty that they were going to die.
Jab fired his fifth and last loaded torpedo at a range of 800 meters. As the cloak dropped and then reengaged, he ordered a crash climb for orbit. The crew braced for seismic charges, but another sound filled the corvette instead; an immense tearing sound, almost like a bolt of thunder. The older sailors recognized the sound. The Revenge's hypermatter reactors were cracking and then exploding, sending the fatally wounded Revenge crashing down to the surface of Cenrdet III. From bow to stern, the Emerald Shark's crew erupted in cheers.
Jab turned the Emerald Shark away from the airbase which had erupted in a stream of unaimed blaster, slugthrower and errant missile flak as the defenders groped about in their fruitless attempt to locate the cloaked corvette. Instead, he hovered over the wreckage of the Revenge. The Revenge's bridge had been torn off and then crushed by the fuselage of the ship as it crashed into the ground outside of the base. She was burning rapidly. Enemy Space Force sailors were climbing out of the wreckage and running in every direction. Several holos were taken by the Emerald Shark's holocam for Naval Intelligence.
Jab turned to his crew. "There must be dozens of those abo scum in the wreck. Anybody not on watch wanting a look, get up here to the forward sensor scope on the double." Several Imperial sailors crowded into the little space of the bridge and took turns at the forward scope, and a few even brought their own holocams for souvenir snapshots.
Say, we can go where we want to
A place where they will never find
And we can act like we come
From out of this world
Leave the real one far behind
Now Jab was willing to beat a hasty retreat from Cendret III. The air base was scrambling Y-Wings to hunt them down. As long as they creeped along, they could maintain their cloaking while entering orbit. Their subspace radar technician watched the Earthlings fruitlessly search for the intruder.
It took twelve hours standard to escape orbit with the enemy planet. At midnight standard, Jab dropped the cloak for a full spectrum sensor scan of their surroundings. There was nothing to see but the red and blues of Cendret III and its four local moons. The skipper allowed the pharmacist mate to dispense a ration of 'torpedo juice', that is, a shot of Ithorian Mist whiskey for all thirty-three members of the Emerald Shark's crew.
Jab put the corvette on a rimward course, into space that offered the likely prospect of spotting Confederate starships headed coreward out of the chokepoint on the Bloodstripe Run at New Ryloth. While the Emerald Shark crisscrossed her base course and lookouts scanned the space lanes for energy readings and life signs, the Lieutenant Commander tinkered with drafts of his report on the Cendret III engagement. It was radioed back to Nal Kuat for Commander Strobestack who would pass it on to Admiral Murp's office before it found its way to the desk of Fleet Admiral Gentis himself.
Jab's third officer, a 2nd Lieutenant fresh from the Academy's last graduating class before the fall of Mars, while standing watch in the middle of the night, spotted an engine flare on the long-range tachyon scanner near the moon of Kogo orbiting the frozen world of Cendret XII. She awoke Jab who came up to have a look and then immediately put the Emerald Shark on a course to intercept. Gradually she drew into a profitable attack position, ahead of a slowly approaching convoy. Jab kept the cloaking system active but dropped the shields and idled the engines to avoid detection. He identified the first two ships in the staggered line as cheap Earth knock-offs of Action IV transports, capable of carrying eighty-thousand tonnes of cargo and a few passengers. They were small prizes but every bit helped the war effort. The convoy was sailing at .3 sublight, and there was no sign of an escort. It was an excellent setup. The attack angles and speeds were carefully entered into the targeting computer this time as the range closed to thirteen thousand kilometers. As soon as Jab felt he couldn't miss he loosed a spread of four proton torpedoes from her stern tubes at the nearest two starships. All of them ran hot, straight and true before three of them struck home, hitting both targets.
Jab brought the Emerald Shark around to align her bow tubes with a third ship, significantly larger than the two wounded freighters. She turned directly toward the Emerald Shark, apparently with the intention of ramming. That's when he identified the big brute as a Magnificient transport. Modelled on the Munificent frigates of the Clone Wars the big freighters were rumored to have carried a Confederate Legion apiece when they invaded Mars. Others of their class carried enough supplies to equip said Legion.
"We'll shoot that bishwag down the throat." Jab declared. He had hoped to never utter those words, much less twice in three days.
The next torpedo missed badly, but the Magnificent yawed and presented her broadside. Emerald Shark blasted two more torpedoes and then tried to put as much distance as they could between them and the transport while remaining cloaked. As they turned two flashes filled the Void, indicating two hits.
Turning the corvette about, revealed the Magnificent was a dead stick floating in the Void. The other nearby transports were fleeing away as fast as they could before jumping into hyperspace to make their escape. Jab let them go. There wasn't anything he could do about them anyway. He ordered another torpedo, fired at leisure, which hit between the Magnificent's reactor and main thruster, ripping a gaping hole in her main fuselage. The tremendous explosion blew the structures on the aft of the ship off the hull of the doomed vessel. Troops and sailors started abandoning the ships, either in small and medium sized life pods or in many cases wearing nothing more than evo-suits, as the transport continued to break apart.
Jab took the corvette in for a closer inspection of their prize. Many of the floundering space-suited refugees and bodies free-floating around the wreckage didn't look like troops after all. They appeared in civilian garb and the dead included younglings as well as adults. Jab estimated they were civilian colonists or perhaps administrators being sent coreward to govern someplace the Confederacy had over run. The 2nd Lieutenant who had woken him earlier handed him a life-scans reading taken just before they fired their torpedoes. The ship had contained just over nineteen thousand sentients. Many of whom had taken to the life pods in the general vicinity.
Jab ordered the Emerald Shark to decloak. There was little danger. The other two transports had finally succumbed to their wounds and imploded or broke apart. Jab crept the Emerald Shark into the wreckage of the shredded Magnificent. About two thousand life pod survivors watched them from close by.
Jab ordered in an even voice. "Battle stations, man both turbolasers."
This brought a quizzical look from his crew, and Jab solemnly justified what he was about to do. "Men, the Army bombards strategic areas and the TIE Corps uses defol and area-bombing so the ground forces can advance. Both bring civilian casualties. Now without other casualties, I will prevent these Earthlings from getting planetside, for everyone that does can mean another boot on an Imperial's neck."
The sailors accepted this reasoning, and the Emerald Shark moved in to complete the ghastly business.
"Chase them out of their pods." Jab ordered his gunners. In other words, the life pods were to be destroyed, but anyone in an evo-suit was welcome to escape and await rescue, if they survived that long. But no free-floating refugees were to be deliberately blasted unless they fired back at the Emerald Shark.
For several nightmarish minutes the forward lookouts could see hundreds of Earthlings outside the forward viewport. Some were propelling themselves about with small thrusters in their suits, some were in life pods and others were hanging onto drifting wreckage. They all stared through their helmets without expression at the Emerald Shark's hull. The turbolaser gunner's blasts were methodical, sweeping from abeam forward like fire hoses cleaning a roadway. The gunners blasted at the life pods until their fire was returned by several Confederate Marines with small caliber blasters. They then opened up with everything they had and cut everything down.
We can go when we want to
Night is young and so am I
And we can dress real neat
From our hats to our feet
And surprise 'em with the victory cry
The Emerald Shark was out of torpedoes and backed away from the lifeless wreckage. Surely, Space Force would eventually send warships to investigate the area and the corvette didn't want to be around when they arrived. Jab didn't want to head straight back to Nal Kuat. They had never heard of a cloaked corvette running out of torpedoes before arriving in her assigned patrol zone and having to return months early. With the extra time available, Jab wanted to perform a descent reconnaissance of Cendret VII, the site of the occupied Imperial colony. Despite Confederate presences on almost every planet and moon in the system, the Imperial colony still showed the highest amount of activity.
The scouting orbit of Cendret VII should have been uneventful as long as they stayed cloaked, but as soon as they approached the world, they crossed paths with yet another small convoy leaving the town of Ackmena. Jab changed course to intercept. The long-range subspace had shown a small freighter trailing behind the other ships, and so far, Space Force had yet to grasp the concept of assigning warships as convoy escorts. Jab conceived a plan which he told his bridge crew, "We're the only ones who don't know we don't have any torpedoes, the enemy doesn't know that. Suppose we drop our cloak and make a run at them. Wouldn't they likely scatter leaving the small freighter for our turbolasers?"
Not having seen any blasters or rail guns mounted on the trailing freighter, the crew agreed that it was worth a try.
The Emerald Shark decloaked and took off after the convoy. The Confederate starships rang up more speed and began a radical zigzag pattern which prevented them from locking in hyperspace coordinates for escape jumps. Just beyond a fueler, the middle ship in the convoy, another fuselage started to appear. The previously unseen ship was soon identified as another Revenge, and she was beating down directly on the Emerald Shark.
Jab ordered an uncloaked retreat since they could move faster at sublight without the cloaking device engaged and she gradually opened the range to a hundred and forty kilometers. Jab assumed the Revenge would promptly give up the chase, not wanting to leave her convoy far behind. That supposition turned out to be wrong. The sensor technicians watched the Revenge on their monitors. Her bridge was starting to fill in with details on their scopes, to grow perceptibly deeper, the lookouts knew she was gaining. Then the Revenge turned her broadside towards the Emerald Shark and fired. Jab expected the slugs and bolts to pass by and miss wildly, but about three seconds later there was a mighty explosion on both sides of the Emerald Shark as the slugs' proximity fuses detonated, just fifty meters away. Too close.
The cloaking was the Emerald Shark's fastest yet, and as soon as they were invisible Jab ordered a reverse engine charge directly back along the path they had just traveled. Jab warned the crew. "Now we're going to catch it."
The Revenge's thrusters shook the hidden corvette as they passed overhead. She dropped six seismic mines in the spot where they had watched the Emerald Shark vanish. They were tooth crackers that violently shook and rattled the invisible corvette when they exploded. It felt as if the Emerald Shark was being struck by thousands of bolts at once, but miraculously they were just far enough away for the ship to survive with its cloaking shield intact.
The Revenge did not stay for long. She had to get back to her flock of transports, freighters and fuelers, now nearly four hundred thousand kilometers away. Jab ordered another round of medicinal whiskey poured out for the entire crew.
Decloaking two hours later, Jab pointed the nose coreward. The helmsmen punched in the coordinates for Nal Kuat into the navicomp and they engaged the hyperdrive.
Jab commed the Cloaked Service's headquarters on the Ring. "Another running blaster battle today . . . Emerald Shark runnin' Revenge blasting."
Say, we can act if we want to
If we don't, nobody will
And you can act real rude and totally removed
And I can act like an imbecile
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Up Next: Striking the Match