Chapter 71 (2/2)

Rendili Approach, Rendili System
Rendili Sector

This isn’t good.

That much was obvious as the Coruscant Home Fleet crunched down its jaws around us. The air aboard Chimeratica felt suffocating, as if I was one with my fleet, being strangled alive by the enemy. Two flanks of Victory-class Star Destroyers closed in on us, pinching out throats, whilst a heavy anvil of Venators pummelled us in the rear. The 28th Mobile Fleet had been packed so tight into the corridor that there was hardly any room to manoeuvre, leaving us no option beyond returning fire as hammer after hammer of missile blows rained down on our beams. But we returned fire all the same, overclocking our weapons and overloading firing capacitors until every ship glowed with the fierce, vibrant gold of its own superheated hull.

Our lighter ships, ironically, were able to escape the worst of the slaughter; frigates and light cruisers managing to minnow through the enemy lines and slipping into open space. Our heavier ships however, Chimeratica among them, shouldered the worst of the Home Fleet’s relentless assault, Admiral Honor Salima ferociously focusing down on our main body with the bulk of her firepower. Bearing the worst of it were our Lucrehulk-class battleships, four in number and all under the command of the Neimodian Commander Krett. Their relatively exposed engine blocks were prime targets for the Republic LACs, and it wasn’t long before all four were crippled. In a desperate move, Krett used the last of his attitude thrusters to draw his ships into a tight, cube-like formation, the bristling wings of the Lucrehulks flaring outward like the petals of a steel flower.

“This might be the end for us, frog,” Horgo Shive grunted as he struggled to screen Krett’s battleships.

“Your ships are not disabled,” Krett replied harshly, “Mine are. Get out of here.”

There was a pause in the comms–

“–Don’t have to tell me twice,” the Muun muttered, and took his 2nd Strike Division after the rest of the fleet. 

The exchange was quickly lost in the heat of battle, but as I looked back, I saw the fortress of Lucrehulks fade out of view. Not by distance, no, but the sheer number of Republic signatures swarming onto their position, battlecruisers and cruisers and starfighters and all. The Republic rear had no choice; disabled as they might be, Lucrehulk-class battleships were still one of the most if not the most terrifying conventional warships the Confederacy could field. Each battle-fitted Lucrehulk was one-and-half billion tons of hull and guns, and over a hundred times as heavy as a Venator-class Star Destroyer.

The Home Fleet had no choice but to eliminate the combat potential of those rearguard battleships before they could press the offensive on the rest of the fleet, lest they be pincered themselves. But without Horgo Shive’s protective screens, the lumbering and unwieldy nature of the Lucrehulks became all too evident. There was a reason the behemoths were always accompanied by swarms of Vulture droids and screening vessels; without that support, they were prey for starfighters—albeit very large and heavily armed prey. With all of their LACs already in the black, the remaining warships of the 5th Division closed ranks, less than twenty in all, and prepared to go down in flames, determined to take down as many of the enemy with them.

“Krett is pinning down a number of their ships!” I wrangled control of the comms, shouting through the electrically-charged void and using our superior Separatist comms tech to punch through the scrambles, “Horgo, add your division to our left! Diedrich, keep your battlecruisers on our right! Illiet, can you find us a way out!?”

“They’re cycling their ships along our vector,” Dodecian Illiet gave the grave news, “They won’t let us leave.”

Ultimately, the Home Fleet now outnumbered us nearly two to one. Despite Krett’s efforts to hold off her rear divisions, the Bloodhound still commanded an overwhelming array of warships to hurl at us. She cycled her lines with ruthless efficiency, constantly rotating fresh warships to the front as those withdrawn from the front were sent ahead to maintain the ‘throat’ in which the 28th Mobile was forced through. Her intent was clear; she was going to grind us down minute by minute, hour by hour, until we were all dead. 

And then, just when the situation couldn’t get any bleaker–Chimeratica shuddered violently, lurching forward and throwing me off my feet. My hands snapped onto the edge of a console just before I kissed the floor, dragging myself back upright. Alarms blared throughout the bridge as the lights flickered, casting shadows in the usually well-lit pilothouse. Chimeratica’s sublight engines sputtered, then died with a final, agonising groan, leaving the 28th Mobile’s fleet flagship drifting helplessly in the void. Consoles sparked and flickered out, and the once-steady hum of the engines fell into a chilling silence.

“Engines are unresponsive!” Taylor yelled, “We can’t reach the engine room either!”

Do we even have an aft section anymore? I was forced to wonder. It was not just the lights, too many of Chimeratica’s displays have been knocked out, like dominos over the course of the battle, leaving her–and me–half blind and deaf. I didn’t even know what was happening on my own ship anymore, much less the rest of the fleet. Half the plots were dead, the other half scrambled by enemy interference. The only reason I could still vaguely keep track of the battlefield was thanks to our communications array, which vastly outstripped anything the GAR could levy against it. Small mercies.

“Dispatch a squad to the aft!” Tuff commanded hastily, before turning to me, “Rear Admiral, we need to get you off the ship. Chimeratica is no longer in any shape to escape.”

“Off the ship…” I croaked, looking up at the cracked viewports, at a galaxy consumed by steel and fire in every direction, “And to where?”

⁂

“Behind us, Admiral!” Flag Captain of the Arlionne, Terrinald Screed, roared as enemy contacts blazed in from behind the Home Fleet.

Admiral Honor Salima swung around, clicking her tongue. Words of rebuke for the Open Circle Fleet were already at the tip of her tongue as she re-evaluated the situation, but she swallowed them just as quickly as she saw exactly what was happening. The Separatist fleet had been cut down to around a quarter of its original number, and the remainder–no more than a hundred and fifty–had been re-intercepted by General Kenobi’s forces. However, while the Open Circle had intercepted the 19th Mobile Fleet, it was clear to everybody aboard Arlionne that the Separatists clearly didn’t consider themselves intercepted.

The Jedi fleet was like a fierce tiger snapping at the heels of a pack of savage hounds, who had long since forgotten the meaning of fear. Honor traced the vectors on her display, noting with a piercing realisation that the 19th Mobile Fleet had doubled back to support the Battle Hydra. The Open Circle Fleet had re-intercepted them, but the Separatists were unfazed, continuing their desperate sprint toward their allies. Each time the Jedi drew close, a Separatist warship would suddenly cut its engines and “fall” into the midst of the Open Circle’s formation—only to self-destruct in a blinding explosion. It was an act of sheer, mind-boggling insanity and sacrifice, repeated over and over again, as the 19th Mobile Fleet sacrificed itself ship by ship to slow their pursuers.

“They…” even Screed was at a loss for words, sheer disbelief colouring his voice, “They… what are they doing? Are they even human anymore?”

“They’re aliens,” Honor gritted her teeth, “Gods know what they think! Captain Autem, bring your ships around to intercept the enemy! Do not–at all costs!–let the enemy fleets link up! The rest of you; sink the Battle Hydra! I say again; SINK THE BATTLE HYDRA!”

At that moment, it was as if the Nine Hells of Corellia rose to consume the galaxy at once. The 19th Mobile Fleet crashed into the rear of the Coruscant Home Fleet. Calli Trilm’s attack wasn’t just erratic, it was formationless, directionless, unified only by single-minded purpose in a wavefront of steel and destruction heading in generally the same direction. The Republic Navy might have the upper hand when it comes to quality of ships and weapons, but at that moment, Honor Salima found herself entirely struck into stupor by the Separatists’ frenzied madness.

Calli Trilm smashed into the Home Fleet’s formation, warships striking past each other in a blur at respectable fractions of light. They opened all gunports, loosing arrows of light from multiple directions as they barreled at high speed through the crowded brawl. Warships fearlessly disabled their own anti-collision systems, slicing enemy destroyers in two with their hulls. Cruisers volleyed their main artillery into enemies directly ahead of them, engulfing their own ships in balls of explosive light. It was a mad rush that broke all reasonable rules of self-defence, spreading out a banquet of destruction, fueled by the undeniably berserk nature of the offensive.

“Jam the enemy!” Calli Trilm barked out her orders as her flagship duelled three enemy destroyers at once, even as half her primary armaments laid dead, “Do not let them reorganise!

Scores of Separatist frigates unleashed all of their power, filling the whole battlespace with an impenetrable electronic fuzz that made any and all Republic coordination impossible. 

Against all odds, the Separatists had turned the tide, indiscriminately slaughtering the Loyalist forces as comrades from both 28th and 19th Mobiles fought side-by-side and back-to-back with a familiarity and wordless coordination that would bewilder any battlefield tactician. After all, these ships and crews haven’t seen each other in months, and yet they fought in tandem as if they’ve known each other all their lives.

Unable to dispatch orders and rearrange her ships, Honor Salima exhausted every medium available to him before finally seizing a young messenger by the shoulders.

“Get a fighter out to the Open Circle Fleet!” she snarled, “Tell that kriffing Jedi to open fire!”

“B-But sir!” the messenger spluttered, “We’re still–”

“That’s an order!”

Outside the fleet flagship Arlionne, however, Admiral Honor Salima’s orders were very different. Cut off from command by berserk Separatist frequencies, the Loyalist captaincies, completely drunk with carnage and havoc, fell upon Arlionne’s last known standing order. 

SINK THE BATTLE HYDRA!

SINK THE BATTLE HYDRA! 

SINK THE BATTLE HYDRA!

The Home Fleet’s most valiant commanders–Dodonna, Autem, and Screed–each launched their counterattacks individually from their own ships, with seemingly predetermined precision, drawing those around them into the fray with lightcodes and aura alone. The entirety of the Home Fleet released a soundless tremor, as if accepting an unheard order. Sink the Battle Hydra. 

Three-hundred warships converged onto the core of the 28th Mobile Fleet simultaneously.

⁂

Outside of the chaotic melee taking place in the Rendili Star System, Jedi General Obi-Wan Kenobi heard the pilot’s orders aghast.

“Admiral Honor wants us to do what?”

“That’s what the orderly told me, General,” the wing leader relayed, “Fifty-six of my boys died getting her orders to you, sir. Better make it count.”

Without waiting for confirmation, much less a response, the flight wing wheeled around and dove back into the fray, racing headlong back into the melee and certain death. It was as if they had become indifferent to their own lives—or perhaps, like the rest of the fleets, both Loyalist and Separatist, they had been consumed by the battle mania. Obi-Wan could feel the intense stares of Commander Cody and Olge Plavi-Dol fixed on him, their eyes heavy with expectation, and it took everything he had to not falter. It would not do to falter, not at this crucial juncture.

“Give the order, General,” the Clone Commander told him, “Admiral Honor is willing to give up her life for victory. We would dishonour her and every spacer and soldier in that fleet if we do not open fire.”

“We will be shooting at our own allies, Master!” Knight Olge cried, “We will defeat the Perlemian Coalition–but at what cost? For every dead Separatist, three dead Loyalists! Citizens of the Republic! We would drench our hands with the blood of our allies and countrymen!”

“And if we do not, we will be wasting the blood they’ve already spilled,” Commander Cody retorted coolly, “General, with all due respect, this is a direct order from the Admiral of the Coruscant Home Fleet–the closest Admiral to the Admiralty and Navy Command itself.”

“–General!” a sensor officer reported, “We’re detecting Cronau radiation!”

“A fleet jumping in?” Obi-Wan swung around, secretly thankful for the brief respite in which he could use to make up his mind, “Have the Rendili returned?”

“No, General! It’s from the north! On the other side of… of the brawl!”

To the north? On the other side of the brawl? Obi-Wan checked his chrono–it’s been half a standard day since the battle began. 

Then its Task Force Hyperion. Master Plo Koon. At last!

“Hail them!” he barked.

The officer frantically returned to his station and patched the Jedi Master through.

“I see I’m not too late to the party, Obi-Wan,” the Kel-Dor Master’s presence was a reassuring one, and Obi-Wan felt like a mere Knight once more, under the tutelage of a Jedi Master many years his senior. 

“I could use your advice, Master Plo,” Obi-Wan told the senior Jedi honestly, and felt no shame for it, “Admiral Honor has ordered me to fire into the melee that you see.”

“She intends to pin down the Separatists while we deal the finish blow,” General Plo Koon surmised in a thought, “Very well. As the situation presents itself, I see no better time than now.”

Surprise bloomed inside Obi-Wan’s heart, “Truly, Master Plo? We will be… firing on our own allies.”

“At our ally’s behest,” the Jedi Master corrected, not unkindly, “We must steel our hearts for the battles to come, Obi-Wan. Come, let us end this terrible affair.”

By being more terrible than the Home Fleet and Perlemian Coalition combined? At that moment he could only wonder if ‘Master’ Plo Koon and ‘General’ Plo Koon were two different people. Which was the wise master of the Jedi Temple, and which was the hero of the Hyperspace War? Obi-Wan shared a glance with Olge Plavi-Dol as Commander Cody departed to carry out the orders. Meeting her eyes, the young Knight deflated, but marshalled her features and gave him a brisk nod. Her hologram blinked out soon after.

Just like that, the entirety of the Jedi forces, over four-hundred in total, condensed two sickle-shaped formations on each side of the melee, and swooped down on the battle. In a grim reversal of fortune, the Separatists went from perpetrators of a slaughter to its victims. They were assaulted from within by the melee’s glittering firestorm, whilst from the north the divisions under General Plo Koon hurled hundreds upon hundreds of lance-like missiles into the fray. And from the south, the Open Circle Fleet spat out flaming tongues of energy and gas, starfighters leaping into the black and plunging into the chaotic storm laden with fresh torpedoes and missiles.

The explosions were so bright it was as if the arms of the galaxy were burning to their ends, and the melee, now the target of concentrated fire from all sides, was being cremated alive. Ray shields absorbed the radiant heat effused onto the battlefield, steel hulls glowing hot at the gunports. Even if the outer walls of a ship could withstand the heat, the men inside them couldn’t.

Spacers were thrown against the compartments, slammed onto decks, and into the pleasantly cold embrace of death in stark contrast to the soaring temperatureFor others, the agony stretched on for minutes, their bodies convulsing from the unbearable torment of boiling internal organs and choking of their own thrown-up blood, which then evaporated into white smoke. Melting floors consumed the bodies of the living and the dead, Loyalist and Separatist alike, as blinding light tore ships apart, then sucking out the bodies into the freezing release of hard vacuum and wiping away the horrors that took place within.

The two Jedi fleets continued firing, gritting their teeth or biting their tongues as they rained hellfire and brimstone on their allies and enemies indiscriminately, whittling down the melee as weather control satellites would tame a raging hurricane. 

⁂

It was like watching fireworks. Missiles from the pits of hell rampaged through the darkness, blue and red bolts of energy lancing out from everywhere at once, seeking targets known only to them. Starfighters turned into flowers of flame all around me as laser bolts sparked useless blue spirals and whorls off the deflector shields. I watched six frigates gone within the minute, right within the eye-distance, vaporised by battlecruisers. I didn’t know whose frigates, or whose battlecruisers. Another two cruisers charged at each other, as if they were not interstellar warships but jousting knights. They collided head-on, atmosphere boiling out of their cracked hulls and revealing the glow of fires consuming everything inside their steel bardings.

For a brief moment, I wondered why it seemed as though Chimeratica was remaining relatively untouched, like we were in the eye of the storm. And then I realised that we were in the eye of the storm. Chimeratica was still gliding along on its momentum, and all around her Republic warships were trying to intercept us, and counter-intercepting by surrounding Separatist warships. Even with the naked eye alone, the scene was absurd enough for me to realise Honor Salima must have put a bounty on my head.

Then–from the distance, somewhere right and up, there came a Victory-class Star Destroyer painted in the blood red GAR livery. She was crashing through a gap in the Separatist lines, broadsides lighting up with fire smoke, the edges of her hull glowing red-hot and drive cone like a blinding star–and she was aiming directly for the Chimeratica. Like a heated knife poised to cut through a slab of butter, the Victory fell upon my head like an executioner’s ax.

“Get the Admiral to an escape pod!” Tuff roared, louder than I’ve ever heard him. My eyes were still transfixed on the descending Victory as I vaguely felt the tactical droid shove something sharp and small into my hands before shoving me towards the blast doors. 

Taylor seized be my the arms as he all but dragged me into the flaming depths of the flagship–and as the blast doors groaned towards each other, I caught a glimpse of a second ship–a Separatist Providence ramming straight into incoming Victory right in its ventral flank and shoving it off to the side. A split second later, an explosive shockwave burst outwards–and I heard the telltale crackle of shattering transparisteel just before the doors thudded shut.

The interior of Chimeratica was a cacophony of chaos I could barely keep up with. It seemed like every droid aboard the ship had been activated, stampeding the corridors and hallways. Fire fighting crews charged into smoke-filled compartments, the maze of blast doors closing off here and there to isolate damages and hull breaches I could not see. There was a terrible gale blowing through the hallways, tearing the breath from my lungs. Sirens blared, lights flashing red and amber.

“Master, you’re alright!” Hare’s voice reached my ears, though I could not see her. Was she at my feet? I did not know when she had joined me, but I felt a palpable sense of relief at her safety.

“The lower pods have been compromised!” Artisan shoved us in another direction, on hand holding onto an emergency repair plank.

“We need to make our way across the artillery deck, sir!” it was Stelle who shouted that in my ear, despite it being Taylor dragging me along earlier. It wasn’t Stelle’s shift–he had been recharging. I looked around. Taylor was gone. I was in an evac suit, despite having no memory of ever donning it.

Running along the deck, right beside massive mass-driver cannons that thundered away autonomously, I instinctively pressed my ears shut as the deafening hammer blows rocked the flagship in erratic intervals. Through a bluish atmospheric containment shield, I watched a volley of missiles rocket out towards an enemy Venator downrange. Who was ordering it? What of Chimeratica’s organic crew–the officers, marines, and the like–had they managed to reach the escape pods? Were they remaining on the ship?

The hull plating of the artillery deck bulged inwards right in front of us.

Oh, fuck–!

The next thing I knew, I was floating in space. I didn’t know how I got there–which appeared to be a prevailing theme in the last hour or so of my life–though I can only conclude I had been sucked out of the hull breach. So instead of being atomized with the artillery deck, I was ejected from her. Small mercies. Maybe I’ll be cut to ribbons by high velocity micro-debris instead.

It was scant reprieve. Something was wrong with my suit. It was torn, or a seal had melted. Patting around was a futile effort. Either way I could hear the hissing and feel that my body was growing numb. I looked in my palm, and found a chip. I held it close to my chest. 

As I took in my surroundings, I realised I was now just one of tens of thousands of spacers drifting aimlessly in the abyss. All around me were the remnants of the battle—twisted chunks of durasteel, scorched and blackened. Lengths of wire and conduit floated by, slowly wheeling end over end in the vacuum. Drifts of shattered transparisteel spun like jagged shards, catching and reflecting the eerie glow of distant laser fire. And there were men. Some were whole, their bodies bloated and blue, faces frozen in expressions of shock—mouths agape, eyes staring lifelessly into the void. But most were in pieces, human and alien and droid bodily parts I could not name.

Aha, I thought in dry humour, Chimeratica had been cut in half. Well, not quite half, but the entire aft section of the ship was missing. Likely blown away in the strike that cut our engines. And the bridge, where I had been–gone too. The entire beaked prow of the ship, flattened by the shockwave of two colliding giants. And the giants in question–above me, fused into a single great monolith blocking out the stars. The Providence had pierced halfway through the Victory, somehow avoiding a reactor detonation, though there evidently had been detonations.

My heart faltered as I studied the livery of the Providence. It’s callsign, splendidly scrawled across her shell in cursive script. Star of Serenno.

Calli, I whispered. I heard nothing, only the sensation of vibrations dispersing through my head to my ears, giving the illusion of noise. You saved my life…

Hare. Stelle. Where were they? I tried to twist my body around, but the effort proved futile. Fumbling with my evac suit, I managed to activate a few of the RCS thrusters, sending me careening through the debris for a few precious seconds and wasting valuable fuel. My academy training kicked in, though brief, and I adjusted my movements, finding a semblance of control. I breathed a sigh of relief.

I found Hare quickly. I couldn’t mistake those rabbit ears anywhere. The LEP droid was no astromech, and wasn’t equipped with boosters, so I headed over to her. Her vocabulator was blinking, indicating speech, but I couldn’t hear her. She waved something in front of my face. 

A distress beacon. Likely with my signature on it.

I hugged my droid tight then, though I kept my helmet well away from her ears. I didn’t how long we had to wait afterwards, but soon enough a familiar sight breathed some hope back into my bones.

Kronprinz was a sight for sore eyes, and a sight that made sore eyes. The Tionese battlecruiser did not look one bit as if it belonged on the battlefield, her mirror-polished chrome armour gleaming way too brightly in the starlight, despite having been blackened some. She approached underneath us like a gargantuan sailfish, and I was unsure how far she was away. Your brain can’t trust your eyes in vacuum—without an atmosphere to dull detail, everything is equally sharp. And when it’s robbed of the ability to judge distance, the mind scrabbles for purchase. Is that chunk of durasteel a foot across and about to hit your faceplate, or a metre wide and the length of a landing field away? Watching Kronprinz coming, I tried to remember how large she was, tried to figure out how far away she was, tried to calculate if she would hit me.

When I realised I was able to count the ladder rungs on her sensor masts, I kicked my feet in a panic, as if trying to swim upwards. No use. I tried to reach out and grab the mast instead, but my gloved hands scooped vacuum. Did I miss by a centimetre, or a kilometre?

Then I spotted a grey figure clinging onto the ladderwell. A B2-series super battle droid, and one evidently equipped with a booster pack. It launched itself off the Kronprinz and towards us. I let myself go slack, still holding onto Hare and the chip, and allowed the droid to drag us towards one of Kronprinz’s airlocks, hidden behind her sails.

The very moment the airlock was sealed and regular gravity returned, I unceremoniously collapsed like a sack of spuds. My entire lower body was numb. Fuck. My legs. I can’t feel my legs. And the droid was forced to drag me deeper into the ship.

“Rear Admiral!” Diedrich Greyshade’s voice was filled to the brim with relief when he saw my broken form leaning against a bulkhead, “You’re alright! That droid of yours is a resourceful one.”

“That she is,” I groaned, patting the LEP droid.

“Stang, that looks bad,” the Commodore of the 3rd Battle Division appraised my form, “Can you walk?”

“If I could–”

“Go get a hover-stretcher!” Diedrich commanded one of his accompanying orderlies.

“Right away, sir!”

“You should be commanding your ship,” I grunted, eyeing him in pain as I dragged myself more upright.

“They’ll be fine,” Diedrich was dismissive, “We have good news, Admiral. The Dodecian found us a way out. We’ll head down and jump to Baraboo, then Manaan. We’ll rendezvous with Dua Ningo there.”

“Manaan… why Manaan?”

“That’s what our Countess Clysm told us.”

That caught my attention– “Calli! You know where she is?”

Diedrich grimaced, “I know where her ship is–can’t really miss it–but herself? She told me to come find you, before ramming the Arcenciel. Thank god for your droid, otherwise we’d be sweeping this whole coordinate for hours.”

I slouched, then winced in pain, “Something’s broken there.”

The Columexi officer straightened, “Help’s here. Let’s get you to the medbay.”

I sensed myself rising into the air with the help of several pairs of arms, before settling onto the hover-stretcher. The steady hum of the repulsorlifts beneath me was reassuring. It told me I wasn’t quite dead yet.

“...Here,” I gritted my teeth, handing Diedrich the chip, “You command the fleet now.”

“I’ll get us out, Admiral.”

“As for the Nineteenth–” I let out a gasp as some drug was injected into me.

 “I’ll command them too,” Diedrich Greyshade reassured, “As for Calli Trilm… she’ll be fine. She dislikes the idea of dying more than all of us combined.”

“That I agree with you,” I chuckled–then hacked out a cough. It tasted like wet iron.

That I agree with you…

⁂

Commodore Diedrich Greyshade commanded the joint 28th-19th Mobile Fleet retreat to the Manaan System. Many ships were lost in the insertion and transit, and would begin to trickle in towards the rendezvous point in the following days. 

Six-hundred warships of the Perlemian Coalition entered the Galactic Interior for Operation Starlance. Two months later, the retreat from the Rendili Star System saw only one-hundred make it to Manaan–though the number continues to rise as more stragglers rejoined the fleet.