Captain Relquan looked out over his beautiful ship, the Guardian, from his vantage point on the bridge. Everything was running smoothly on the massive v-shaped carrier. Nothing beat a Venator. Sure, those new victory-class ships brought more firepower to a fight, but they gave up too much. Meanwhile the Venator was a true workhorse. Ship-to-ship combat, plenty of fighters, and more than enough carrying space to act as a troop transport; there was a reason it was indispensable.
Need to lock down a system? Send a few Venators and you’ll have all three zones of combat covered. Not that Tarkin understood. Ever since that boney vulture became the new leader of the armed forces, more and more Venators were being scrapped and replaced. It was a travesty that even his Guardian was set for Bracca in a few months.
“Sir, we’re receiving a request for aid from the fortress.” His communications officer roused the man from his musings with a report.
“What? A prison riot?” he asked. There was nothing down there but broken children.
“No sir, it appears to be a prison break,” the officer replied.
“Scramble the LAAT’s then, send a whole shift out. If they are calling for back-up it will have been serious,” the captain commanded.
“Yes sir!” the officer replied before getting back on the coms.
Relquan thought for a moment. “Did they receive outside help?” the captain asked.
“It appears someone broke into the fortress, sir” came the reply.
“Scramble the V-19s and have them run patrols looking for a starship. Cast a wide net, I don't want anything escaping the atmosphere,” Relquan commanded. His flyboys never seemed to get any action. The Guardian had always been a patrol boat, so it rarely made it to the front lines. That was why they were still using outdated starfighters and hadn’t been given the headhunters like everyone else. It’ll be a good practice run for them if nothing else.
“I’d like to see a victory do this,” he muttered to himself as the massive hangar opened on the bow of the ship. The moving doors ran almost the entirety of the ship’s topside and allowed an near immediate launch of its full compliment of fighters. Soon a steady stream of Torrent fighters and landing craft were flying out and away towards the surface of Nur.
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“It’s our time to shine,” said Caleb. He was sitting in the pilot’s chair of the Fury. Wanting to be as useful as possible, he spent the entire time since the others left going over the various controls of the ship. It was a good thing he did it. The system was totally foreign to any other starship he had ever flown, and as a padawan, he had plenty of chances to fly starships.
Everything was incredibly clunky and low-tech. It had more in common with an antique hover-hauler than a starfighter.
“Did they get in contact?” asked Merrin, who jogged into the bridge.
“Yep, looking for a pick-up,” Caleb replied slowly powering up the engines. “I’ll try to keep it in the water, so you shouldn’t have to give us camo yet.”
“Fair enough,” she replied before taking a bite from one of Zaros’s nutrient blocks and plopping down into the captain’s chair.
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“Alright brothers and sisters, those of you who chose this path please move to the right. You’re with me. If you were coerced, kindly take it up with Master Billaba to the left,” I said to the five inquisitors in front of us. I really wanted to fight the Inquisitors. It was like every nerve; every feeling in my body was telling me to go to battle. Again, I was reminded just how different I was now. In my old life, I would not be wanting to fight. I would not be actively trying to anger people with laser swords. And yet, now I was totally ok with it.
None of them moved. I tried to recognize them, though I could only remember two. The massive hulking woman was Ninth Sister, while the tall, green-faced man was the Fifth Brother. There was a petite woman wearing a black helmet who might have been the Seventh Sister, but I couldn’t be sure. The other two also seemed familiar but I couldn’t remember their numbers. They were a tan, white-haired man dressed like a space ninja and a short and a green-faced man with a weird helmet that obscured his eyes
“I suppose that means they don’t want saving,” I said to Billaba.
She ignored me and instead addressed them. “There is no need for us to fight. Please come with us! Nothing is keeping you here,” she offered. Her voice was filled with compassion and tinged with guilt.
“You don’t understand the strength of our leash,” replied the Ninth Sister.
“There is nowhere safe from the master,” said the girl who I figured out was the Seventh Sister
“Oh well, you tried Master Jedi,” I said before spreading my legs and settling into a fighting stance.
“Please, we need not come to blows,” she pleaded. "We can keep you safe, I swear it."
“Your death will bring us much favor Billaba. You are very high on the list,” Fifth Brother said.
In response, Billaba closed her eyes for a moment and then settled into the classic Soresu stance. Her blade was held high above her head and her left hand outstretched towards the opponents.
My own form was a kind of rough Juyo, it had all the vicious offense and little of the grace. Perfect for utilizing my overwhelming strength and power.
The five in front of us activated their sabers and slowly crept forward to try and surround us. Inquisitors used a special type of lightsaber. It was dual-bladed, but also featured a circular hand guard that covered the entire handle. Once they had ample room, they began spinning their blades in unison before slowly coming together. The special guards allowed the blades to spin in complete circles, much like the classic opening move Greivous would employ. They were trying to box us in, but even now it was hard to take these gimmicky tactics seriously. Spinning sabers almost never worked. Sure, they looked cool and made great blaster shields, but they weren’t very effective against a saber.
I rushed the inquisitor, the space ninja, to the far right and clashed blades with him. The force of the attack stopped his blades mid-spin. My strength quickly overwhelmed and would have brought him to his knees had I not been forced to evade a slash from the Ninth Sister. The two of them squared up against me and the dance began in earnest.
Billaba was faring well. Her graceful use of the more her defensive form allowed her to hold her own with deceptive ease. Each of her movements, no matter how small, were calculated for maximum effect as she dodged and parried everything that came her way. Soresu wouldn't often give you knockout blows, but it would allow you to last a long time in a fight.
The Fifth Brother joined in the fight against me, and their united onslaught forced me onto the back foot. Both the Fifth and Ninth were physically powerful, while the Ninja, though much weaker, was far better at positioning himself in my weakest positions.
Just after I blocked an overhead cut from the ninth and dodged the Fifth’s horizontal slash, the Ninja was able to pierce through my left shoulder armor with a lunge. It immediately burned through my skin. The searing pain from my shoulder muscles being literally cooked forced me to jump back out of range. I could smell the burnt skin and feel my arm losing strength.
To stave off the pain and weakness, I drew on more of the dark side than I had since coming here. As the pain subsided and strength coursed through me, my vision narrowed, and my senses aligned. It blocked out all save for the three inquisitors in front of me. Before now, it had felt almost like playtime. Probably because of how they were portrayed, I didn’t take the Inquisitors seriously. That would change starting now.
I let out a guttural roar. The noise twisted itself into an unnatural sound by the dark side. Then I changed my stance to Shien and let the battle rage consume me.
With an almost empty mind, I launched myself at the three. The ninth brought her blade up to defend against my own overhead slash. Our blades met, so I allowed mine to travel down until it met her hand guard. Though the robust metal didn’t yield at first, I channeled more strength into the blade to try and break it.
Before I could finish the Fifth tried to step in and attack my back, though he was caught off guard when my left hand reached out and sent him tumbling across the floor with a force push.
The Ninth’s guard broke and her saber short-circuited. I was about to stab deeply into her chest but was forced to pivot and bat away the Ninja’s blade before it impaled my head. The strength of my spin and swipe forced him to stumble and gave me a wide opening. I wasn't able to take advantage of it though.
Suddenly two massive arms picked me up and locked my arms to my side. The now saber-less Ninth was trying to restrain me and give an opening to her teammates.
The Ninja jumped to his feet.
I tried to simply break her grip with my own strength, but her long arms were locked together and prevented me from using any leverage. Instead, I was forced to whip my head back with all my might and catch her chin. While she stumbled from the blow, I maneuvered my blade to cut through her hand. It was sloppy, and I ended up cutting through my armor and singing my own chest in the process. It didn’t matter, I wasn’t feeling pain at this point. Besides, it did the job.
With a screech, her grip broke, and I jumped towards the now charging Ninja.
On his own though, he was no match for me. We exchanged clashes, but each one was liable to send the man’s saber flying from his hands. Retreat and deflect was all he could do. With a few more attacks he would be finished.
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He was only saved when the Fifth came flying towards us in a great leap forcing me to break off my onslaught. The man jumped and telegraphed himself far too soon, which allowed me to ready another powerful force push. It caught him in the air like a massive punch and sent him spinning end over end back from where he came.
The ninja jumped back, he was too exhausted from our clash to press any advantage. It gave me a moment to look around. The Ninth, now down a saber and a hand was retreating away from the battle. The Fifth barely caught himself. Instead of landing on his head, he flipped over and came to a sliding stop on his feet. Our eyes met and instead of charging me again, he ran towards Billaba.
She had taken no damage thus far, but also dealt very little. There were several burn marks on her two opponents, though they were shallow and hadn’t really slowed them down.
I returned to my other opponent. After catching his breath, he seemed wary to engage, especially since his allies had abandoned him. Instead, he tried to stalk around me. It didn’t matter, once again I pressed the attack. Each time we clashed, I slowly overpowered the weaker man. With one particularly hard overhead slash he was forced to his knees when he tried to defend from above.
Using my previous strategy, I accelerated my slash’s movement on the downswing. When the two swords clashed, my blade traveled down his own and cut into his saber guard. To stop this, he activated the saber’s spinning action, but it wasn’t strong enough to move my blade. Instead, I cut through and with a flourish removed both his hands. He slumped to his knees in pain and screamed out. I raised my sword and readied a clean slash to kill the man.
Again, I was forced to stop my attack when I felt ping of danger from Billaba’s location. Trusting in my force senses, I spun and immediately launched my blade as hard as I could to where I felt it needed to go. It spun in the air at an incredible speed before clashing with Fifth brother’s blade. He had maneuvered behind Billaba and raised his saber in a powerful overhead swing. Billaba couldn't dodge and was currently held in place by the Seventh's blade. Thus the Fifth would have bisected the woman had my own blade not knocked his own off its trajectory.
I sprinted over to her with leaps and bounds while calling my blade back to me. Just as it re-entered my grip, I swung it above my head and attacked with my own overhead swipe. Fifth was much stronger than the Ninja I fought and held up admirably well as we clashed.
From behind me I heard a man screech in pain and could tell Billaba had disarmed one of her opponents finally. By that time my seething rage was slowing down. I was starting to feel more of the pain in my body with each swing of my sword.
Just as I was back to a normal state, my com pinged.
“We’re ready to go, but…” came Alha’s voice over my com as we retreated.
“But what?!” I shouted while our blades locked again.
“They scrambled their fighters,” she said.
“Fine, call in the cavalry,” I said as I jumped back and away from the fifth brother. “Billaba, we’re done!”
“Good to hear,” she said while ducking under a swing from the Seventh. With quick footwork, she managed to position herself inside the woman’s reach and delivered another shallow cut. The pain caught Seventh off guard and allowed Billaba to channel her own force push that sent the woman towards the large doors.
Billaba crossed the distance between us in a flash, and the two of us made our way to the exit. The Fifth didn’t give up the chase though and he caught up to us by the time we were out into the tubular hallway. He didn’t seem to understand that the trap was set, so I enlightened him.
I readied another force push, though this time he finally put up his own protection to defend against it.
The blast never hit him though. Instead it broke the glass above him and sent a torrent of water into his face, and quickly started to fill up the hallway. We made it into the diving-room and Billaba broke the terminal to seal the door. The two of us then dove into the water and made it to the fury, which had docked with the outside hatch.
Caleb must have seen us close the door because, without a moment’s notice, we immediately went near vertical and shot out of the water. Both of us were thrown to the back of the hatch. The g-forces made it annoyingly hard to open up the hatch into the main hold. Worse, the ship suddenly shuttered from an explosion, telling me we were probably not invisible.
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“We’ve found the ship, sir!” cried one of the officers on the bridge.
“Good, bring it on screen,” Captain Relquan said. A view of the skies above the Fortress Inquisitorious appeared. At first, nothing was in sight save for what looked like an explosion in the water. Then a few shots that looked like they were firing randomly ended up connecting with something. As they did, an entire starship appeared in the air rocketing away from the fortress.
“What model is that? I’ve never seen such a craft,” remarked the communications officer.
“Of course, you have. It’s one of the most wanted in the galaxy,” replied the Relquan before bringing up a report from Coruscant. Sure enough, the two ships were identical.
“Redirect all fighters, I want that ship out of the sk-“ he began to command before being cut off by hyperspace alerts from one of the scanners.
“Three ships are about to exit hyperspace, sir!” cried the scan-operator.
“How large?!” questioned Relquan.
“At least cruisers. They’re going to exit behind us!”
“Full power to the engines, get us in position!”
“Yes, sir!” replied the pilot before pushing the accelerator forward and activating the repulsors. The ship groaned as it started to swing around.
“Kriff! Get fighter command! I want enough protection broken off that kriffing ship to give us a defense. And scramble the bombers!” roared Relquan before picking up the mike connected to the ship-wide announcement system. “All hands to battle stations, this is not a drill!”
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The Munificent-2 shuddered as it and its two counterparts came out of hyperspace. Immediately, the shipboard computers brought up a holo-map of the battlefield. The M2 was in the center of the formation. The M3 came out of hyperspace above and to the left, while the M4 arrived far below. It was an unorthodox formation to be sure.
All three ships coordinated with the computerized efficiency. The sublight engines roared to life while a stream of vulture droids immediately activated and began leaving the hangars en masse. In a matter of seconds 144 of the droid star fighters swarmed towards the Venator ahead of them.
As they were moving forward, the three ships were able to begin firing their long-range Ion cannons. Each ship had two of these guns set in a forward position and soon a stream of massive blue bolts were firing at full power from them.
“Reduce speed. All power to forward guns and deflectors,” Telro commanded into the coms.
All he recieved was "roger, roger." in return.
In unison, they all slowed and the two heavy turbo lasers at the front of each ship began firing alongside their ion counterparts. The alternating blasts began ripping into the Venator’s shields. At this rate, they were bound to fail within minutes.
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“Why aren’t those Y-Wings in the air yet?!” roared Relquan. The hair under his cap was growing increasingly wet.
“They weren’t cycled to the front of the hangar when the other fighters left. The mechanism only restarted when we got the warnings, sir.”
“I didn’t think flight control was filled with nerf herders, I’ll have their head if-“ Relquan was stopped midsentence when a series of explosions rocked the ship. He ran to the window and saw the issue. A few squadrons of vultures had just let loose their payloads on the massive open hangar. They were underneath the ships shields and were able to send a barrage of missiles into the unprotected hangar. Everything inside was reduced to fire and slag.
“Kriff! Get that hangar shut yesterday!” he barked. “Break off all fighters, we need protection!”
“That might not be an issue sir,” explained the ship’s scanner. “The vultures have already bypassed us and are heading straight for our torrents.”
“Are our fighters aware?!”
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Things were not looking good from Calebs point of view. This clunky transport was not built for dogfighting. Sure, Alhoy and Crosshair were doing a great job in keeping things off our tail, but the number of fighters on our trail were growing exponentially. More and more squadrons were appearing out of nowhere. Soon it would be too much for the ship.
“What’s our status 2V??” he yelled.
“Rear shields are at 30%, sir.”
“Does this rust bucket go any faster?” he cried. As if in answer, another explosion rocked the ship. Then, what looked like a hundred fighters started pinging his scanner.
“More fighters?!” cried Merrin. Her cool persona was completely shed at this point.
“Yes!” replied Caleb.
“No wait, those are vultures. I can’t believe there’d come a day that I was happy to see vultures,” he said with a laugh. For years the droid fighters had filled the boy with dread. They were some of the fastest ships in the galaxy and droids had no conscience with their payloads. It didn't matter how many you shot down either, since they were being built so fast. They were like a never ending flock of death.
A stream of red plasma bolts filled the sky and erupted around the ship. The V-19 torrents that surrounded them utterly melted away in the crossfire as the vulture droids screamed past them. It was a near perfect kill zone since the torrents were trailing our ship like a massive tail and weren’t prepared for the onslaught.
Just then a thoroughly waterlogged Sith Lord crawled into the near vertical bridge. With a force-assisted jump he made it to the co-pilot’s chair and settled in.
“How we lookin kid?” he asked as he went over the controls.
“Surprisingly good,” Caleb replied. Despite the now chaotic battlefield around them, there were almost no torrents still on their trail. Most had either broken off the attack to enter the dogfight or were shot down at this point.
“I’m taking the helm. Let’s get the crink out of here,” he said.
"Are you sure you can fly with that arm?" asked Caleb. As if realizing it for the first time, the man noticed he had been operating the controls without using his left hand.
"Ahh whatever, just don't crash and keep us away from their flak guns," he replied.
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“Shields are not looking good!” explained the one of the officers. "We are below 50%!" Relquan didn't need to hear the numbers to understand their predicament. The shield was visibly straining at the onslaught of ion blasts and turbo lasers.
“Add it to the list,” replied Relquan. “Alright, we have to rush them. We won’t be getting any fighter support, but if we can get a broadside, they’ll melt in seconds.”
“Increasing speed, sir!" said the helmsman before slamming the accelerator forward. Most thought Venators were jacks of all trades. But there was one thing that they excelled at above most other capital ships. Their top sub-light speed was incredible.
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“The Venator is rushing us Commander Telro,” one of the B1’s informed the super tactical droid.
“Its just as the Supreme Martial Commander expected,” Telro noted. “Full reverse but keep us facing the enemy ship.” In unison, the M2 and M3 began moving backwards without turning their guns away from the Venator. The M4 was doing a similar maneuver but it was angled so that it slowly dipped farther below the other ships. The three never let up their stream of lasers and ion blasts.
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"They seem to be retreating," reported one of the officers.
"What are you on about? They're still firing on us," replied Relquan. He had since sat back down in the captain's chair but was nervously tapping his foot.
"Well they are in a full reverse," explained the officer.
"What does that matter? Our top speed should be 3x their reverse speed, just stay the course!" Relquan commanded. These were just droids, it would be an embarrassment to lose here.
"Sir...we've lost almost our entire compliment of fighters," reported the communications officer.
"...Kriff! How long till our batteries are in range?"
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"M4 is in position, the Venator has reached its top speed as well," reported the B1.
"Noted. Begin Zaros Formation B," replied Telro. The M4 began to roll in space and didn't stop until it was upside down. Then all three ships moved forward together.
The current formation took advantage of a Munificent's strengths while trying to minimize a Venator's. Where a Venator's large guns were placed on top of the ship and couldn't shoot below it. The majority of a Munificent's guns, save it's forward facing installations, were placed on the bottom and could not shoot above. The M2 was only slightly above the Venator, so that it could fire its guns while still hiding behind its heavy forward armor and shields. The M3 would stay above, behind, and to the left of the M2. This would allow it to engage its full armament, while staying protected from any batteries blocked by the bridge and the M2. The M4 was where the formation differed from ship doctrine. Far below the rest of the ships and upside down, it would ideally have an unobstructed view of the Venator's unprotected underside.
To defend against it, the Venator would be forced to get onto the M4's level. At full speed, such a maneuver would expose the entire top deck of the ship to every gun Telro had at his command.