"Ships Emerging from hyperspace!" the voice screamed out

A single Star destroyer appeared and then four more and then a dozen frigates followed and the cruisers followed and more destroyers, and carriers, cruisers. By time no more ships were coming back into real space, a dozen destroyers escorted by nearly a hundred smaller escort ships. Greg and the Major both stared at the approaching armada with slack jaws.

It wasn't until a different tone sounded that Greg came back to his senses the last of the salvaged ships had just jumped "Get us the hell out of here" he called out snapping the bridge crew back to their senses. The bridge became a whirlwind of activity as the last of the calculations were crunched by the computers and then they jumped leaving the imperials behind.

Safe in hyperspace Brian looked at Greg as the streaking stars filled the bridge's viewport "well that was a close call."

Before Greg could respond a snigger in the pit led to quiet chuckling to full blown laughter as the stress at almost being drawn into a battle against overwhelming firepower and assuredly losing.

"Yeah I agree." Greg said chuckling "but lucky enough we were able to salvage an extensive number of ships." Greg looked at the only Dornean on the bridge, a female Greg judged by the almost translucent scales on her face; the men he had met all had darker scales. "I bet the Dornean droid production is going to ramp up production to properly crew them all." Greg teased

The female lifted her whiskers in a smile "Yes sir, nearly three hundred warships a good number of them capitol grade. The droid foundries are going to be busy for a while, good thing the shipyards are going to be just as busy updating their computers to cut down on the crew numbers."

Greg nodded and turned his attention back to the mission clock as it reseted to show the time remaining in jump ten hours forty five minutes "take a breather everyone we are home free." Greg turned and started walking towards the lift "I'm going to walk around the ship and breathe."

The bridge crew nodded and most of them likewise rose and started heading for the lifts as they went to standard hyperdrive crew rates. On the ride down to the gunnery deck he sparked up idle conversations with various people as the lift stopped several times allowing people to disembark and go on their way until he was alone.

Greg arrived at the broadside gunnery deck and absently started walking around looking at the anti vehicle cannons thinking of the number of ships they had left behind and rather or not the empire would just destroy them or station a permanent guard flotilla there as they continued breaking the ships down.

The next four hours flashed by as Greg absent mindedly wondered the ship it feeling slightly empty now that the ship's complement of battle droids as well as the quarter of a million they had taken aboard were gone the aimless walking eventually led him back to his quarters and he collapsed into his bed thinking of everything that had happened before drifting off to sleep.

Greg awoke with a start looking at his pad seeing he had slept four hours. With a groan he washed his face in the sink and grabbed a ration pack from his drawer chewing as he walked and rode the lift back to the bridge.

The doors opened on the bridge with an hour to spare. The rest of the bridge crew were already back at their stations as Greg walked the center catwalk looking down at them with nods of acknowledgements to various little waves and nods most of them looked well rested and bright eyed.

As Greg approached Major Christensen he immediately noticed he looked exhausted and sleep deprived. "Brian did you stay on the bridge the entire time?"

Christensen nodded slowly but before he could say anything Greg straightened to attention and barked "Major!"

A lifetime of military service caused him to jump and snap to attention looking straight forward.

"As Task Force Cerberus commander I order you to your quarters for no less than five hours of sleep, is that understood?" Greg ordered

The Major looked ready to refuse but slumped when Greg placed his hand on his shoulder "go get some rest my friend you need it i've got the conn."

He nodded and slowly stalked his way toward the lift.

Greg announced to the Bridge "I have the Deck"

Greg walked around for the next forty five minutes preparing orders and instructions upon arrival and talking with various personnel. Until the word came.

"5 minutes to emergence to real space."

Greg finished with the last instruction to ensure the Allegiance flight wing was brought back to standard strength and headed back to the command area of the Bridge just in time to see the stars slow down back into pinpricks of light as the ship dropped back to real space.

As the sensors updated Greg and then the whole bridge stared in shock there were thousands of ships all over the system. Dozens of Star Destroyers, hundreds of carriers, cruisers, frigates, corvettes, even freighters Greg could easily see the massive cluster of republic warships iconic in their red and white paint schemes compared to the bland light gray and white of imperial ships.

"Task Force Cerberus arriving ships vector to 65 degrees 45 mark 3." looking at the navigation chart that placed them with the rest of the ships they had sent ahead.

The voice spoke again a moment later "Allegiance proceed to Formidable for debriefing."

Chuckling Greg looked over his shoulder "I guess take us to Formidable."

The Allegiance made good time and the shuttle carried Him and the ship's executive officer since the Major was still in a medically induced coma. When the shuttle doors unlocked they could hear the cheering and as the door opened the thunderous applause could be felt.

They were ushered by dozens of B2s to the conference room through the mass of beings cheering and congratulating them; they couldn't hear themselves think until the airtight doors sealed, cutting the cheers off abruptly.

Greg and the XO looked around at the other fleet commanders and Greg paused; there were only eight task force commanders here.

"Where are the others?" Greg asked the room of solemn officers.

The reply took a few moments "they didn't make it…"

The story was heard like pulling nails: four Task Forces had been completely wiped out; nearly two hundred warships and two thousand people were extinguished. There had been a few survivors able to make the emergency jump bringing short footage with them.

The first had hit the Pammant dock shipyards Greg did a quick bit of research and saw they had been a Primary shipyard of the CIS until a Praetor class Republic Battle Cruiser was damaged and hit the planet killing everyone in radiation. The empire, seeing the opportunity to gain control of a massive ring of shipyards, used droids to scrub the ring and set up shop. The ring was capable of building forty Destroyers and a hundred smaller escort ships at a time as well as space stations.

The brief footage showed the forty five warships of TF Bantha dropping out of hyperspace and coming face to face with a Maelstrom class battlecruiser with a escort of three star destroyers and a few dozen smaller ships. The Dornean ships didn't even have time to flee as the cannon heavy ships opened fire. With no chance of getting the bigger ships out the organic crew abandoned ships aboard anything that had a hyperdrive hundreds of droid fighters attacked, drawing the fire of the imperials allowing for about 20% of the crew to escape.

The second and third did the same as Greg hitting planets charged with dismantling the iconic symbols of the Republic but instead of focusing on a few dozen ships at a time they started working on hundreds. Getting only around a hundred or so ships active but instead of sending them all ahead they kept them in orbit, and it was as their fleet was almost a thousand ships strong when the empire arrived the critically undermanned ships couldn't fight back and were completely destroyed a few ships escaped but by the large they ceased to exist.

The last had hit the decommissioning facility on Corellia in the hopes of capturing the mobile droid manufacturing factory ships that were queued to be destroyed with several hundred other CIS warships but the moment they appeared the imperials in charge reactivated the droid droid armada in orbit awaiting scrapping and it was a slaughter no one escaped.

Greg went to speak when General A'baht entered speaking only when the doors shut, cutting the still cheering crowd off.

"First of all I'm glad you all made it back….