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Phase 18: The long road to Mandalore

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Part 5

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Observation lounge

Republic cruiser Solace

Lantillies

When last Reaper element engaged us, I allowed myself to manifest my Battle Meditation. My whole body ached with the strain of channelling the necessary power and my mind wasn't much better. Everything I've been through since arriving to this time, left a mark upon me. I had to rely too much on my powers, without sufficient time to recover, nor access to the artefacts and facilities needed to help me. In such circumstances, every little bit helped – like being on the open and vulnerable observation lounge. Standing in a place so open to space helped the mind handle influencing anything outside the metal walls of the ship. It could never come close to using a proper meditation chamber, however it was still better than nothing. More than enough to justify the risk.

My awareness jumped forward and I got struck by how tired and on edge my crews were. Even if I knew it from the time I spent training them by experimenting with this power of mine, the sheer mental exhaustion that washed over me as I connected with my soldiers, gave me pause. I gathered my wits and sent them reassurance and promise through our bond.

We were almost home, I told them. We were almost safe and in place where we could rest... and this enemy force stood between us and respite. I guided their emotions and soon my crews were gripped by cold, focused fury. They pushed their weariness aside and concentrated upon the enemy with a vengeance.

The Silencers and Daggers spoke as one and nearly a quarter of the Separatist Munificents broke apart under energies they were never meant to endure. Concentrated fire began reaping through the rest, burning through shields, melting the comparatively light armour of those oversized frigates as if it was made of wax and biting deep within their decks. My ships manoeuvred independently within our formation, instinctively aware where every one of their consorts was going. We flushed our remaining missiles as the enemy came closer, yet even that wasn't enough. I couldn't sense a single organic mind aboard the Separatist ships. If they had a living commander, he or she died with one of the other Reaper elements. That was both a blessing and a curse. There was no one to influence on the other side and at the same time, that fact significantly reduced the strain the Battle Meditation put upon my body and mind.

The enemy threw everything they had got at my remaining Silencers and the cruisers that had them installed went into emergency deceleration with the rest of the fleet manoeuvring to place itself between them and the Separatists. Damaged Venators lost shields, cracked and abused armour failed and decks got opened to space. I felt it when hundreds of my people, then thousands got sucked into hard vacuum where they were fried by radiation coming from fusion warheads or the magnetic fields shaping and containing turbolaser bolts. The lucky ones died when they passed too close to ordnance flying every which way. Others, expired as corridors and compartments turned into their own personal crematoriums or with pieces of broken decks tearing through them with contemptuous ease.

The Hyperion became the next Venator to be rammed by the enemy, with a Munificent catching her in the side at a bad angle that broke her spine. The forward third tore away with the rest of the ships and the enemy frigate shredding themselves in series of bright explosions that culminated with a hypermatter reactor going critical and erasing them both from existence.

At such a range, deflectors were close to useless with ships often passing close enough that their shields interfered with each and stripped each other of power. Turbolasers, Ion Cannons and missiles hammered unprotected hulls at rangers sometimes shorter than the lengths of the ships themselves. This was the kinds of cauldron where fleets went to die and this time it was no different. If it wasn't for the Silencers, the best my Battle Meditation could have achieved would have been mutual annihilation.

Yet we had the two remaining super-weapons and the fleet held cohesion thanks to my will for long enough that their capacitors recharged and they took aim. If it wasn't for the Battle Meditation, it would have been impossible to use them for effect in the melee, not without hitting our own ships too. With my power active and guiding everyone, a single stroke removed almost all remaining Munificents. Only three frigates survived the Silencers and two of them got shot apart as they tried to close to one of them. The second, figuring out the impossibility of succeeding, redirected and despite desperate last ditch defensive fire, it managed to ram the rear of a Venator that stood its ground between the enemy and the Silencer she protected.

With the Separatist frigates gone, we only had to deal with five intact battleships that slammed into our formation and began reducing my cruisers one after another. The remaining Daggers crippled one and soon my surviving Venators put the battlewagon out of action. At such a close range, the other battleships managed to cripple most of my remaining fleet before the Silencers recharged and along with the Daggers caused enough damage to finally turn the tables.

I slowly let go of the Battle Mediation along with the agony and screams of my wounded and dying crews. The strain and relief made me fall to one knee, panting for air.

It was only then that our support ships finally arrived. Was it just thirty minutes that passed since we entered this system?! It felt like a lifetime ago.

"Joanna, get what's left of the fleet to assume defensive positions around the supply ships and get us to Gizer ASAP. Be advised that we still might have to one last fight on our hands before getting to safety." I took a deep rasping breath. "And give me a status update once you've got it."

I looked at the tactical plot. Less than a fifth of the ships I entered Lantillies with were still designated as space-worthy and all were freshly damaged to some extent. In fact, the escorts detached to guard the supply ships both outnumbered us and would out-gun us if it wasn't for the two Silencers we managed to preserve.

I grimaced. There was no way in hell I could bring this fleet in another battle unless I absolutely had to. Liberating Mandalore with it? That was out of the question. Now that bloody vision from before Bothawui made even more sense. If we had to fight our way through all enemy forces at Randon, I doubted we would have had any fleet to bring home. Even now, most of the remaining fleet might still die if we ran into the Separatist force Commander Nabi warned us about.

Once we got to Taanab, I had to figure out how to beg, borrow and swindle my way into command of a force that could liberate Mandalore.

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Interlude: Historical Notes

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"Professor, what is your explanation on why the Republic's political collapse and refusal to fight during what is now commonly known as the Second Phase of the Clone Wars?"

"This myth really needs to die."

"What do you mean?"

"The Republic, at least its military in the face of the GAR never ceased fighting the Separatists. Even at the height of the infighting that engulfed the Core. That in fact is the best explanation I can give. This perception is a very Core-centric thing that has been a source of resentment for decades now. Yes, after Corellia and Kuat the Separatists ceased their major operations in the Core. They concentrated on fortifying their positions in a rough line from Duro to Commenor. The GAR and various SDFs in turn made places like Perma, Fedalle and Kattada into fortresses backed by massive mobile forces. Of course, Kuat was in a league of its own with almost all Star Dreadnoughts and Battlecruisers the Republic possessed concentrated in a single system. Still, fighting on that front never really ceased with at least two Sector Fleet Equivalents dispersed and raiding on both sides ever since Corellia fell. However, there were no sweeping offensives or counter-offensives. No real estate changed hands on that front for months, only raids aimed to disrupt the enemy."

"That's..."

"Certainly less interesting than the circus ongoing on Coruscant and that was before Chancellor Kenobi got elected and the excitement that followed."

"I can't really dispute that fact. Everyone watched the events on Coruscant with bated breath."

"Everyone, at least in the Core, apparently forgot that while politicians bickered on Coruscant, in the East, on the fighting never really ceased on a front that was more than ten thousand years long and hundreds to thousands of light years deep. It was there where fleets and armies went to die in that 'quiet' period when the Republic didn't fight. Do you know that more than sixty percent of completed Republic naval construction since the fall of Corellia was sent to the east to replace ongoing losses? From Keith um to JanFathal, from Ord Mantell to Genassa, from Corsin to Myrkir and Mandalore, from Alpheridies to Taanab and the thousands of worlds in the sectors between them. There wasn't a day since Corellia's fall that didn't see hundreds of active space battles, often dozens of worlds swapping hands. There were whole regions like the dead zone between Ord Mantell and Genassa where the front-line repeatedly shifted for hundreds of light years as reinforcements became available to one side or the other. The Republic never stopped fighting, yet the Core didn't really care for most of those places. Between the fall of Lantillies and its liberation after General Veil smashed the Separatist naval forces when he returned to friendly space, almost none of those countless battles were deemed important enough to make the news. Chancellor Palpatine's ghost exposing the Senate's dirty laundry, the controversial way Chancellor Kenobi got elected, the number of secessions that followed, a large number of Clones going rogue that led to infighting on Coruscant and a number of other worlds in the Core, the Separatist propaganda about General Veil's actions that culminated with Bothawui, those were the news everyone was interested in. Who cared about fighting above some planet they hadn't heard of nor could they figure out in what sector of the galaxy it happened? People were more interested in what happened closer to home. That was of course true for the citizens in the Mid Rim and the Expansion Regions too! For them, the troubles on Coruscant and the constitutional crisis kicked up by Chancellor Kenobi's controversial election were distant things. They seldom mattered! People on the frontlines or close to them didn't care what problems the Senators on Coruscant had! All they wanted was for the Republic to fulfil its mandate and protect them."

"That's a most fascinating revelation. What are you basing your conclusions upon?"

"I've interviewed a lot of people in places like Ord Mantell, Corsa, even Mandalore for my documentary series. Nowadays, we have access to recently declassified military and government archives from the Clone Wars era and all of them support my conclusions. Reading through them, it becomes painfully clear why the Republic faltered during its darkest hour. The people and politicians on Coruscant, Kuat, Anaxes and all the other major centres of power in the Core, they had very different interests and agendas from each other, the Republic as a whole, not to mention the governments in the Mid Rim and Expansion regions. It was an even starker contrast when you compare them to what worlds in the Outer Colonies and Rim cared about. Certainly, there were many people intellectually supporting the Republic, believing in it. It was an ideal that brought us a golden age... yet in practical terms, even before the war, in day to day interactions, local interests and agendas superseded any loyalty that governments had towards the Republic. The and their Senators supported its interests when it suited them and more often than not unless it was a political suicide, they would back and push for policies that benefited their worlds, systems and alliances even if that came at the price of weakening the Republic as a whole.

That's what people even today somehow fail to understand deep down, even if they know it intellectually. More often than not, the interests of the Republic as a whole clashed with those of many member states. Senators and local governments, their job was never to push for what was best for the Republic. Instead, it was to do their damn best to work for the interests of their citizens, even if that meant that their neighbours and the Republic as a whole would be in an inferior position as a result. The Republic, the Senate, they were always a carefully balanced act.

Further, and this is very important, before Chancellor Palpatine came to power, it has been hundreds of years since anyone in a position of power within the Core would suffer someone in his post wielding real power. While not a figurehead, the position of Chancellor had been limited by design and through it, what the Senate and Republic could wield in practical terms. No major government was ever comfortable with Coruscant dictating to them what they should do and many of them spent the centuries following the Rusaan Reformation slowly changing the Senate and the Republic to better serve their interests.

It was a testament to Chancellor Palpatine's political skills, charisma, personal connections and the turbulent times when he arose to power that he was allowed to actually lead the Republic. The Republic we knew was never meant to operate with someone in his position having so much power. It was an unprecedented event and once he was assassinated, with no clear acceptable successor, the system broke. Legally, the next Chancellor would have had the same powers Palpatine wielded at the height of his power, they would need them to prosecute the war, yet no one could be trusted with such a power. Palpatine had the trust and ear of many local governments. Without it, he could have never pushed for the reforms that gave him the power he needed to fight the war. It was not so for any potential successor, which explains the how the Senate ground to a halt for over a month after the Jedi's attempted coup.

This is in part how the myth of the Republic not fighting after Corellia was born. Everyone in the Core had their eyes on Coruscant. Many were afraid that no matter who the next Chancellor would be, they would push the agendas of their local governments to the detriment of everyone else. The most likely candidate to succeed Palpatine was seen as a puppet of Kuat; electing him as capitulating to Kuati interests and turning the whole Republic as their vassals in practice if not in name. It was that same fear combined with the history between Mandalore and the rest of the galaxy that tore the Republic apart when Chancellor Satine was finally elected and once again events in the Core overshadowed the war at large..."

Transcript from a GNN interview with famous history author Mer Kilex