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Phase 11: The long way home

=RK=

Part 1

=RK=

Officer quarters

Eriadu cruiser Peerless

Eriadu

We sat around a small table sharing a bottle of well aged Corellian brandy – the good stuff. It went down smoothly and the taste was simply sublime. To my left, Joanna drained cup after cup, still morose over the loss of her beloved Freedom. She radiated misery as if it was going out of fashion now that there was no immediate danger to distract her. I really had to do something nice about her. Perhaps see if I can swing a nice new Corellian Cruiser for her – thought that was a tall order considering that her home was under in Separatist hands. Persuading the Kuati to give her command of one of their own Star Dreadnoughts might be a tiny bit easier, which wasn't saying much. My own people – well, we would need to kick out the Separatists off Mandalore before we could begin building a proper war-machine that can take on all comers. That was in fact one of the reasons why I went with Tarkin the Edler's insane scheme in the Mid-Rim. While, hanging out here was problematic in the short term for a lot of obvious reasons; the political support not to mention a nice alternative to Core supplied trade and more importantly, everything industrial we would need to turn the whole sector into an economic and industrial powerhouse able to support a vast state of the art military were kinda vital for my future plans. It would be years at best before we could even think about building something like the Freedom and even then we would have to find the capital to import a lot of the know-how.

I took another sip of my drink and brushed through the Dark Side, burying my pangs of conscience and regret deeper than usual. I've been doing a lot of that lately, usually subconsciously, ever since Kamino. The Dark Side allowed me to think about and act in ways that went contrary to my morals and beliefs if doing such was useful. The downside was that after doing so, I had to keep my conscience firmly buried behind the veil of my power – and she was only too eager to "help". The drawback was obvious – it made it easier to not care about things that most other people found important, like the impact wrecking a gas giant's planetary system might have on the civilians in the Republic who heard about it...

Oh, it was military sound – we didn't have the time and resources to do the same in a more conventional manner, which incidentally would have allowed more of the workers stationed there to get away, which wouldn't have been exactly a good thing... Still, it wasn't until I had time to sit down and think until I figured out why exactly people back here on Eriadu were peeved at our actions at Sullust, even when they more or less accepted that we went only after legitimate targets such as military, industry and economy in general. Despite everything that had happened so far, the average person on the street still had trouble wrapping their heads around the fact that there was a real galaxy war going on and how that might mean one of those days some dastardly admiral might show and decided it was a good idea to vaporize them and everything they held dear.

The people running things around here were just a tiny bit more accepting of that reality after the siege of Eriadu we interrupted the first time we got here, though some of them still found what it would take to end this conflict distasteful.

That in part explained why Gideon was deep in his cups too – during the last battle we got uncomfortable close to being kriffed up in a way we most certainly wouldn't have enjoyed and with us Eriadu too.

"We shoulda have kept more of the lightly to moderately damaged ships here until some of those being fixed up came back." Tarkin not quite slurred.

"Hindsight is a beautiful and insidious thing, my friend." I tired to soothe him. "They must have stripped everything they had in the nearby sectors to gather that many ships, especially if what we believe is happening at Naboo is true."

"We should be heading there soon." Joanna pointed out.

"Not before Eriadu's reinforced you ain't!" Gideon spat.

"We aren't leaving for a few days at least. By then some more of the damaged ships we left behind at Gerrenthum should be fixed and one their way here. The same goes for at least a part of the damaged ships from Kamino. Their presence should help secure Eriadu." I paused. Should I? Nah. He knew as well as I did that anything else the CIS would send here would be strong enough to blast through anything we could fix and get operational before the next round of construction was complete and that was about a year away. "Two to three days to fix battle damage, replenish supplies and give the crews a bit of much needed rest after Sullust and the battle here. Then we have to go to Naboo and dissuade the Separatists from messing up with the Mid-Rim Alliance for the time being."

Gideon gave me a disgusted bleary-eyed look. "I blame you and Wilhuff for this whole mess! The three of us know what will happen if this scheme of his doesn't pan out."

"We're buggered long and hard." Joanna mumbled and laid her head on the table.

"What she said." I nodded.

"I hate you all so much." Gideon hissed and drained his cup.

"Aren't we supposed to be making an AAR for our political 'Lords and Masters'?" Joanna's face lit up with a look of comprehension.

"That's the official reason you gave everyone before you dragged us here to get drunk." I nodded at Tarkin.

"Not drunk enough yet." Gideon stated morosely. "All those ships – gone! And here I was thinking that the last time was bad enough!"

"That's the case of war we're fighting. Everyone could recoup their loses fast enough to make most tactical victories of little consequence. Even losing whole systems is usually just a minor setback that gets addressed in another sector." I've seen it before – it was one of the reasons why the Cold War between the Old Republic and the Empire lasted for so long. Both sides were too evenly matched after the initial Imperial blitz that there was no end in sight of the grinding stalemate if hostilities re-commenced for good. After the fall of Corellia the situation here was similar with the added bonus of neither side trusting the other to even negotiate a temporarily cease-fire.

That by itself was amazing clusterfuck in itself when you thought about it.

"We really didn't know what we got ourselves into, did we?" Joanna lifted her head to finish her cup and pour herself another one.

"I'm certain that the records were there, just no one actually believed that the sides were going to be evenly matched. From all I gather, one way or another it was meant to be a short victorious war." I laughed mirthlessly at that thought. What was the last time such an idea didn't backfire!?

"I can see that." Gideon nodded morosely. "Until the Clones came the Republic didn't have an army. The local governments wouldn't have fought to keep the Separatists as a part of the Republic by themselves. After that, well..." He shrugged, picked up his glass and glared at it when he remembered it was empty.

"AAR!" Joanna suddenly declared. "Focus, before we're totally smashed!"

"I think it might be for the better that we spin it as an amazing victory against impossible odds." I offered. "Just let's keep it plausible considering all the sensor logs."

"We did survive against nasty odds!" Gideon pointed out.

"I noticed, thank you very much." I groused.

"You would – the Seppies threw everything they had at your ship the moment they figured out where you were." She smiled brightly. "At least this time I wasn't on board for all that excitement!"

Yep. She still hadn't forgiven me about the Freedom, especially when it dawned to her that the primary reasons the Separatists wanted to take her out wasn't because she was a magnificent and awesomely powerful ship, which she most certainly was, but because I was on board.

"There's propaganda to consider and how to make our lives easier with as Joanna put it, our 'political lords and masters'." I quoted. At least as Mandalore I was my own political lord and master, though once I was back home I wondered how much flack I would get for my prolonged absence despite all the 'honour and glory' in battle I covered myself with ever since leaving to deal with Crimson. There were going to be some political complications and not just the old fashioned and straightforward Mandalorian kind.

Returning to the Republic proper and whatever Obi-Wan and Satine made of it was going to be another headache. The folks here on Eriadu did by our version of events about Kamino. Getting away with it in the Core was going to be more... interesting. The same was true about Eriadu, I was sure of that.

"That's actually a good point." Gideon eventually relented, but only after he finished another glass.

"So, AAR?" Joanna asked.

"AAR." I nodded. Preferably before we got drunk enough to make it one for the history books as an example on how not to write an AAR...

=RK=

Part 2

=RK=

Officer quarters

Eriadu Cruiser Peerless

Eriadu

Came morning, we were back at the same table nursing cups of steaming hot Caf. Someone had cleaned the mess we left last night, because I clearly remember that there were more than a few empty bottles lying around when we finally crawled into our respectable beds. What greeted us was quite different – Caf and breakfast awaited us along with the data-pads we used to get the AAR done. Gideon did have an efficient staff it seemed, though there was the nagging question of security concerns percolating in the back of my head. Just in case I used the Force to examine my cup and couldn't found anything out-of-order. Meanwhile, my bleary-eyed companions were busy drinking Caf as if their lives depended on it.

Well, not feeling like dying from hangover did.

My train of thought derailed moments after I laid my eyes on the supposed AAR in my hands. I scrolled down a few pages, took a sip of my own cup – it was scolding hot and strong enough to raise the dead – proper Navy Caf that was and only then did I turn my attention to Joanna and Gideon. They were beginning to stir and appear a bit less like shambling zombies.

"You know, this isn't how I remember the battle." I waved the data-pad for emphasis. "Fearlessly throwing ourselves at the enemy to protect Eriadu against genocidal droid legions..." I read from the complete and utter fiction we somehow committed into writing.

Gideon raised a finger and moaned. "I remember leading our right flank into glorious counter-attack that kinda saved your ass."

"That's one way to put it, I guess."

"There's another?" Joanna arose from the dead too to ask quietly.

"Sucking in the bulk of the Separatist's battleships in a nice kill-zone while playing bait." Besides, I wasn't too keen on having another ship get kamikazed from under my feet so it was a nice thing there was a way to ensure that discretion was the better part of valour and still use my battle-group's retreat to kriff over the machines coming to kill me.

"I thought that you just didn't want to get rammed. Again. Couldn't you have done the same with my Freedom?"

"That too. You did notice that the enemy was too keen on erasing me from the face of the galaxy to pay much attention to your own commands? Besides those Munificents at the start no one tried to ram you, did they?" That was just to clear up some space so the rest of the Separatists could get to me with less interference. "Now can someone tell me why I see we're claiming we blew up trice as many battleships as they brought in the first place?"

Gideon mumbled something.

"What was that? I can swear you just said you were drunk enough you saw double when you tried to remember how many ships we killed yesterday?" I levelled an incredulous stare at Tarkin.

"Why are you so chipper anyway? You drank as much as both of us combined." Joanna groaned. "Speak more quietly too." She added with a pained expression.

"The Force, duh. I got rid of my hangover as soon as I awoke."

"Bastard." Joanna accused, while Gideon just moaned piteously and drained his Caf in a futile attempt to chase off the hangover.

"Please tell me that your men are trustworthy enough not to have taken a copy of this exercise of science fiction and posted it on the holonet." I waved the AAR. "We've got to make it somewhat plausible before presenting it up for scrutiny, you know."

"It's plausible." Joanna frowned. "I think."

"Really? The only bomber strikes I remember were to silence those two crippled battleships in the end after their Umbrella got crippled from battle-damage. We certainly didn't send any small craft wings to... 'have their way with those sorry excuses for battleships', end quote..." The hell did I just read?

"I don't remember adding anything like that." Joanna shook her head and winced at the motion.

"We used bombers yesterday?" Gideon gave me a confused look.

"Did we actually write this tripe or are we being trolled by you staff?"

=RK=

Observation deck

Republic cruiser Shining Light

Eriadu

I made my way to one of the tables in the re-purposed former bridge of my new Flagship while thinking about last night's shenanigans. In the end we had to redo the AAR to give it at least a veneer of plausibility that would pass a smell test once someone decided to compare what we wrote with the sensor records of the battle. We did make it look like that it was all a carefully planned trap meant to eliminate the last large concentration of Separatists ships in the region besides the armada they were presumably throwing right now. Once that was done, Gideon got himself presentable and headed for the surface to present it in person.

My presence was politely declined as redundant given the circumstances. I got the hint that it might be for the best that I leave for Naboo and then the Core ASAP. Letting the local worthies calm down by making myself scarce would hopefully be enough to not complicate our alliance further.

I let those thoughts go away and buried myself in the stack of reports prepared by Joanna's staff. On the bright side, so far Tarkin's people were actually abiding to the terms of our alliance and providing the fleet with what at least looked like maximum support. With the help of the locals we were going to have a not insignificant amount of battle-damage more or less fixed on schedule and the ships rearmed and restocked by the time we intended to leave for Naboo.

Everyone carefully avoided mentioning that all that was only possible because we lost a significant number of ships at Sullust and then yesterday. At least half of the supplies as well as a lot of the parts came from damaged ships the were deemed either too wrecked to repair or outright write-offs due to battle damage. We also had salvage parties crawling all over the CIS wrecks purging them from droids and stealing everything of use. Preliminary reports even claimed that eventually Gideon might actually get to play with couple of fully operational Lukrehulks rebuilt from the combined wreckage left by the battles across Eriadu since the war began.

My conservative read of the situation was that we lost at least a third of the fleet I extracted from Kamino, perhaps more depending on what happened with the other parts of the operation to purge this part of the Mid-Rim from CIS naval assets. My best guess was that barring a disaster the raids were somewhat successful before being forced to retreat to Naboo while the Separatists threw everything they had at them – not unlike what happened here yesterday. My fear was that it could be all over there before we were ready to leave, which could either mean that I would have a lot of enemy ships waiting for me or if Tarkin the Elder and company won, they would have lost too many of our assets to achieve it. Ideally, when we got there we could take the Separatists from behind and achieve another nice victory.

Of course, the worst case scenario – that the CIS decided to rid themselves of the thorn in their side that was myself and the Mid-Rim Alliance and actually committed the necessary assets from other theatres of operation, well that didn't bear thinking about. We were so kriffed then it wasn't even funny.

If that happened, there wasn't much I could do besides fleeing for friendly space and hoping to break to the Eastern part of the galaxy without being trapped and wiped out. That's why once I got over the reports demanding my attention I would be busying myself planning our exodus back to Republic space. One way or another we would be heading thereafter going to Naboo.

There were my few new minions too, who I had to get back under my watchful eyes before they got any ideas and made my life harder than it had to be...

Strictly speaking, after hitting Naboo, we were going to have three options. First, head straight for Hutt Space. That had the benefit of striking through territory captured by the CIS during their latest offensives and thus unlikely to be fortified. It would also mean we would have to travel longer, though once we reached Tatooine we would have more than a few decent options, including trying a high risk run at a few systems that were supposed to be staging grounds for GAR assets just like Naboo was. Manda, Rishi and perhaps even Bothawui. The latter we could reach even if we took the second potential road – which took us deep in CIS space. There was sheer audacity going for that option and the potential opportunity to hit at least a few soft targets before the enemy knew what hit them. However, going there would take us through no less than five major Separatist systems with who knew what defence forces waiting there, until we got to Nexus Ortai and could either head for Bothawui or Lanos before hitting Hutt Space again.

The third option was a mixed bag. It would require hitting only two proper Separatists planets before we could either swing back to Hutt Space... The reason why all roads lead to the slugs' domain was simple. Unless we took a detour through there we would have to fight our way through at least five to ten additional Separatist worlds before getting to friendly territory. I personally was torn between options one and two. They should mean lesser enemy resistance and the potential of linking up with additional friendly forces if Bothawui or Lanos still held. Then we would swing through Hutt Space again and hit Randon, which would take us a single hyperspace jump from Kashyyyk. From there, if we were lucky we would be just a jump or two from friendly lines, not to mention that there was supposed to be a significant naval and ground detachments holding the Wookies' homeworld and thus complicating the CIS logistics in the East.

I had about a day or so to make up my mind and run my ideas through Gideon and Joanna for second opinion before leaving for Naboo. Now I had to figure out the logistics of reaching friendly space, especially if we had to make a run for it...