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Phase 18: The long road to Mandalore

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Part 1

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Observation lounge

Republic cruiser Solace

Kashyyyk

The ambush I feared waited for us failed to materialize a second time in a row. That didn't really make me feel any better. Sensor feeds streamed from the CIC showed me the disposition of all detected enemy assets – a battle group hung above Kashyyyk in a close support formation with multiple freighters and engineering vessels that were busy assembling a few Gollan battle stations. There were fain sensor ghosts that indicated either minefields, weapon platforms trying to be inconspicuous or both. All our sensors could tell us about Kashyyyk was what we already knew – it was a lush forest world with a lot of rivers, lakes and more than a few seas with the odd ocean spread out across the surface. The last time I was ground-side, there were some pleasant places to visit and I did hold a few fond memories with Ashara of that world. Still, it's been close to four millennia and who knew how things had changed even before the Separatists arrived. Enemy jamming prevented us from getting anything from the surface or pushing messages to anyone friendly down there. The Separatists' force in orbit was a tempting target. Hitting those stations before they could come online would be good.

However, bait or not, I refused to bite.

"Admiral, we're heading straight for our next jump. Ignore the enemy forces at Kashyyyk unless they move to intercept us." The last thing this fleet needed was an unnecessary engagement, that might very well be a trap. I had to assume that Separatist fleet we left behind at Randon was tailing us, possibly with reinforcements. We would still need to pass though one or two systems controlled by the enemy and that was if we were lucky and Taanab was still in friendly hands.

Still, letting such juicy targets unmolested offended my sensibilities.

Twenty tense minutes later, the supply ships and their escorts jumped towards Lantillies and we followed in their wake. There was still no trace of enemy ambush. What were the Separatists planning?

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Observation lounge

Republic cruiser Solace

Lantillies

A day later, we entered Lantillies and finding a lot of enemy ships waiting for us there was actually a relief. Six distinct battle groups that when combined outnumbered us close to three to one patrolled the system. Half of those flew on vectors that would allow them to easily plot a hyperspace insertion near any ships that arrived from Kashyyyk. While the enemy numbers were still quite a bit fewer than I feared and I wouldn't be surprised if they had more in reserve waiting for their obvious forces to pin us down before pouncing, I was still glad that the other shoe finally dropped.

Besides, I did have a few surprises up my sleeve, like the Silencers that I didn't have to unleash at Randon. Now the trick was going to be getting the mobile dock and the supply ships safely away without getting ourselves killed. They still trailed behind and unless we called them to expedite their arrival were thirty minutes behind despite leaving earlier.

I saw Joanna's staff designate the enemy battle groups Reaper One to Six, with the first three being the ones in a position to intercept us.

"Target Reaper one with the Daggers. Let's see how they would play this. Have half the Silencers on stand by along with the special payloads." I ordered. If those ships wanted to jump into effective range they would need to keep their deflectors up and rely on evasion for avoiding the railgun rounds... and while the enemy battleships did have respectable straight line acceleration, they were never the most agile of combatants. With the fire-rate of the Daggers, they could bracket and reasonably expect to hit a ponderous Lukrehulk at up to three or four light seconds, depending on respective speed and approach vectors of the converging fleets.

"On my mark go to maximum deceleration and shift formation alignment forty sixty degrees up." I continued. My latest orders were a risk. I know what would be the logical thing for the enemy to do in such a situation, it was quite obvious what their six formations implied. The question was if they were smart enough and good enough to risk something like that instead of going with a more conventional and crude tactic?

Two crippled battleships and one obliterated Munificent that got particularly unlucky later, the enemy jumped at us, bracketing us on three sides. The Separatist commander deposited a battle group on each of our flanks with the third one, Reaper Two, which got the Dagger's undivided attention, arriving above us.

The bastards had learned. Their formations and coordination was still crude, as one might expect, however they were doing their best to maximize the fire-power at the points of contact between our fleets. If they were able to bring their remaining three battle groups to bear and didn't kriff things up, they should be able to win. At least in theory.

In practice, there were various way to mitigate the effects of their tactics and that was without having access to my pride and joy. Twenty seconds after Reaper Two exited hyperspace to find it was badly undershot its desired position due to our last moment change in speed and direction, it got two of its remaining battleships crippled by Silencers. Their remaining capital ships received the undivided attention of the Daggers instead of bypassing their firing arcs by exiting hyperspace too close above them.

The same was true to a lesser extent for the enemy flanking forces. One of them undershot its mark while the other did overshoot so instead of finding ourselves in the middle of a three sided cross-fire, we managed to tear the heart of Reaper Two before engaging Reaper One for good. One high speed pass later and our hyperdrives were ready for another jump and we had the coordinated locked for further in system. We exited real space for a few seconds just in time to avoid the other Reaper elements from jumping right on top of us. Now it was time to make them really made and firmly fix their attention on us.

"Turn us around, have another jump calculated and the coordinates ready." I ordered and finally allowed myself to look over what our sensors and tactical had for me on the situation at large within the system.

There were lots of debris and wrecks in orbit around Lantillies. This was a wealthy sector capital relatively close to Hutt Space so they could never afford to be complacent in their security or gain any weird pacifistic notions. While that obviously hadn't been enough to keep the Separatists from taking control of the system, the wrecks and damaged ships in orbit told me that the locals and the Republic navy had pulled one hell of a fight before retreating. From our position before the in-system jump, we could see no less than twelve battleship wrecks surrounded by a whole ghost fleet made of Republic and Separatists hulks at the Lantillies L2 point. The power readings and jamming coming from the planet meant that there were theatre shields on even though the huge beacon of a full planetary one was conspicuously missing. Sabotage, treason, the enemy getting lucky? I guess I would find out once we got back to a Republic controlled system.

"General, we just received a transmission from the asteroid field surrounding the outer system. It's from someone claiming to be Commander Jolin Nabi, of the Lantillies Space Defence Forces frigate Sweet Dreams. We can't confirm their recognition codes, though they do appear genuine. As you know, those we have available are out of date and we didn't have the latest war-books covering this part of the galaxy when we left." Admiral Holt informed me.

"What does he want?"

"We received an intelligence update of known enemy dispositions, both on the ground and in space, records of Separatist ships transiting the system over the last few weeks too, among other things. Tactical and our intelligence officers are going over the raw data as we speak. After our display so far, the good Commander, if he's for real, has no doubt we're friendly so he sent us everything his ship has gathered up to this point. He has been there for the past sixteen days after relieving another scout vessel keeping an eye of the enemy."

Wasn't that interesting.

"What does he claim about Gizer if anything?" This certainly perked my interest. "Better put him on."

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Part 2

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Observation lounge

Republic cruiser Solace

Lantillies

Commander Nabi was a thin, reedy man with the distinct long limbs and height of someone born and raised in low gravity environment. For a human, such a thing had been unusual four thousand years ago, much less today. Such "adaptation" didn't give any tangible advantages for members of species not evolved in low gravity environment. Anyone sane who had the choice avoided having children and then raising them on worlds with gravity significantly lower than one standard G. Ways around that had been abundant in the past, before millennia of further spread and growth of civilization and industrial bases.

For someone serving in the navy of a Sector Capital? While there might be a plausible explanation, his appearance alone was enough to ring alarm bells in my head. That begged the question why wasn't Joanna even more wary about the Commander and his information? Did she know something I didn't? I would be asking later.

"Commander Nabi, General Veil. I understand you've been busy these past couple of weeks. Please summarize the most relevant data about the Separatists space forces in the area."

I didn't get the expected reaction of him after my introduction and it took me a moment to figure out why – he had been stuck here, maintaining comm discipline since before Bothawui. If he was telling the truth anyway. Instead of being scared, horrified or disgusted, what I could vaguely perceive through the comm link was relief. According to my emphatic sense it appeared to be genuine too, though that wasn't saying much. A traitor would be relieved that those who he wanted to betray were willing to listen to him.

"Three days ago a Separatist fleet went to raid Gizer, it was about half the strength of the ships they had here upon your arrival sir. This area has been relatively quiet since the enemy took control of the system. I believe the Confederacy has been concentrating their efforts in taking Zeltros so they could open an additional supply lane to Commenor and the rest of the Core. Last I heard Manaan, Cona and Emorus still held, however they were under heavy assault with the enemy attempting to reduce our forces in their sectors and secure their lines of communication. They've been cut off ever since Lantillies fell."

An interesting insight in the strategic situation. If true, we might have to get out of here promptly. For all I knew, the Separatists had recalled a lot of their forces in the region and they might be dropping in any moment now. As soon as our supply train was on its way to Gizer we would be leaving.

"Gizer is still holding then?" I focused on the Commander as I asked the question. It was vital to know the truth.

"More or less. At least that was the case two weeks ago." Nabi nodded in emphasis. "Most of our surviving forces fell in good order to Gizer and in conjunction with the local defence fleet and additional Republic reinforcements they've kept the system contested. Gizer herself was untouched when we passed through on our way here, though not for lack of trying. The Separatists managed to significantly reduce the orbital defences and wrecked at least half of the orbital infrastructure."

He seemed genuine. What I could see with my eyes told me as much and I could hear how earnest he was. Nor could I sense deception through the Force, however when using it that way, through a comm channel, it wasn't entirely reliable.

"Sir, with you back, we can surely get back on the offensive!" Nabi continued. "We've been stalemated for months all across the quadrant and there isn't sufficient support from the Core to do anything but hold the line and hope its enough! You're one of the most renowned Republic Generals and Mandalore too! They will listen to you on Coruscant! We need more ships, more people and supplies to push the Separatists back!" Nabi outright pleaded.

The kriff has been happening while I was away?! My knowledge of the political and military situation of the Republic as a whole was patchy at best and far from up to date. I've been hoping that with Satine as Chancellor and Obi-Wan in charge of the GAR, they would have kicked the Republic war machine in a high gear despite any obstacles they might be facing. However, the way the Commander looked at me with desperate hope that I would shake thing up didn't fill me up with confidence.

"I intent to, Commander. We will get our homes back and make the enemy pay tenfold for what they did and are still doing to our people." My words came unbidden and only after I said them I figured out that I meant every single one of them.

"Good." Nabi sagged with relief. "The situation down on Lantillies is bad and all we could do was helplessly watch from the outer system."

"Commander, reposition and go silent. We'll see what we can do to make liberating your home easier when we come back." I was reasonably sure that he was for real, though I wouldn't count on his intelligence to be complete or truthful. It wasn't like we had a realistic option besides Gizer. It was the one viable route towards Republic space from here. The alternatives were going deep into enemy territory or making our way towards a hyperlane the slow way, which simply wasn't an option.

I looked at the projection of the tactical situation. The enemy battle groups had almost finished their turns and would soon be able to come after us through in-system hyper insertions. We had almost twenty minutes left before the supply ships would arrive and I would need the enemy to be out of position to molest them when that happened.

I looked at the icons of the Separatist ships and wondered what would their commander do. A well trained and experienced fleet with the number the Separatists still had would be enough to make our lives very, very difficult. It was fortunate that properly learning to coordinate and utilize multiple independent formations in manoeuvre warfare took a long time to master. Otherwise, our first encounter would have ended much, much less one sided.

Would the enemy gather his force in two larger fleets or continue to play with the smaller formation? The one we mauled did dissipate and its remaining ships spread out among Reaper One and Three. The remaining battle groups didn't move to join together. That was probably good news. It kept the option of defeating them in detail on the table, though on the downside, if they didn't mess up again the situation would become tougher. At least after Nar Shaddaa we had the fuel for some creative manoeuvring of our own, otherwise we would have been in deep trouble already.

Now, what would I do if I was in the shoes of the enemy commander? The answer was simple, really. Put one or two of the battle groups right in our faces and then flank us with the rest. We would get mauled fighting our way through such an improvised blockade at a knife range slugging match would bring my Dagger destroyers and Silencer equipped ships within enemy range. Those would be the primary targets along with my flagship if they could locate it.

"Joanna, we're going to concentrate our fire-power to the front of our formation. I want all lighter ships pulled to the outer flanks. Daggers and silencers at the back within mutual support range. Enemy frigates are primary targets."

It was a complex manoeuvre, with ships accelerating or decelerating and moving in all directions within our formation. Without a week spent training first the Dagger crews and then the rest of my force into the ground I wouldn't have dared attempt something like this without Battle Meditation. The fact that by now many of the crews were veterans accustomed to working together after months

of battles helped tremendously too.

I hoped that I made the correct assumption. The light ships covering our flanks were going to be mauled for one last time. We didn't have that many escorts left and even if I guessed right, they were going to play their role and pay the price for it... and if I was mistaken, many if not all of those crews were going to die for no gain. If the enemy decided to come for a high speed strafing run with his formations instead the slugging match that I bet on, it was going to get very ugly.

I felt a warning coming through the Force and I knew that the Separatists just entered hyperspace.