The closer we got to our destination, the more the tension in the ship began to climb. Our plan hinged on what was essentially our opening move, and if that failed, our only real options were to put up a fight and potentially ruin our ships in the process or to put full energy into shields and run.
Potentially leaving the covert to die.
When the timer ran down to the last hour, final preparations began. Droid deployment patterns were double and triple-checked, as were the flight checklists of all accompanying ships. In total, we had the entirety of 1st group on board, as well as the , which was half-filled with a sort of emergency crew.
My team was standing by inside the as was Corvak's team, since the their usual ride would be focusing on combat. Meanwhile, I was on the bridge, having taken command from the ship's captain. A typical captain would have no doubt had issues with that, but I had chosen the captain of the to function more like a station manager than a combat leader. That was what the super tactical droid was on deck for, to fill the gaps in their experience in case I wasn't around to take command during combat. Not to mention that I could just turn B4-88 off without worrying about insulting it.
Time passed slowly, the captain keeping me updated as more green light confirmations came through the comms, our ships and ground forces prepped and ready for deployment. Finally, the final countdown began, a droid counting down the last minute, noting every ten seconds, then every five, then counting down from ten
"Dropping out of hyperspace," The droid intoned, the view from the bridge shifting from a partially blocked bright, light-streaked sky to a normal one.
A large planet, its surface a mix of red, greys, and blues, with cloud cover and obvious storms, was in front of and below us. Our primary target, the Star Destroyer, was directly in front of us, as were its escorts.
"Comms?" I called out. "Are you picking up anything?"
"Lots of chatter, all encrypted," the comms droid responded. "More ground forces than our data suggested have been deployed."
"Good, that means they are still looking," I commented, shifting my focus to the large, wedge-shaped symbol of tyranny in front of me. "Release the payload and deploy the droid starfighters."
"Releasing!"
As we were brainstorming on how to turn a space battle that would likely be a slugfest, one we would most likely lose, into a straight victory, it didn't take long for us to look at past victories. After all, if it wasn't broken, why fix it? However, considering our last battle against poor odds involved a whole host of disposable resources in the form of droid-piloted starships, something we didn't have on hand, the comparison wasn't immediately helpful. We tossed around the idea of sacrificing several ships, piloted by droids, to at least take down the Star Destroyer's shields, but we quickly dismissed that. Then Tatnia remembered something.
"We don't need a ship. We already have two purposely modified battering rams ready to go," she pointed out, clicking on her table before sliding it to me.
There, on the screen, was an image of our modified defense stations, all of them covered in a patchwork of used starship armor. Two of them, however, were more reinforced than the others and also had extra sublight engines strapped to them. Tatnia was right, we had specifically modified the two damaged stations to function as battering rams or laser sponges should anyone attack our home. No one had considered them because, without , a ship we worked hard to use, they couldn't leave orbit.
But the would be leading this battle.
It had taken some time to get the station in place, and the Lucrehulk's attaching grips, located on either side of the cargo bay "arms" firmly affixed to the station's hull, but considering we had done it several times before to get the station to Nirn in the first place, we made quick work of it.
Now, as we had jumped as close to the Star Destroyer as we could, or at least as close as we could according to the info we had, we detached from the station, and the droids on board did the rest.
The sublight engines, both those we cobbled onto the station and those already built in, burned brightly as the station pulled away from us, a swarm of droid starfighters speeding past it. It only got a few thousand feet before the Star Destroyer, as well as the single Arquiten and the two Guardians that were escorting it, opened fire, turbolasers impacting its shields.
Meanwhile, nearly three dozen TIE fighters clashed with around two hundred vulture droids and seventy Tri-fighters. Explosions detonated around the station as our numerically superior force worked to decimate the Imperial starfighters while the larger ships attempted to take down the increasingly fast-moving station.
Unfortunately for them, with no weapons to divert energy to, the station's shields were cranked to eleven, as were its thrusters. They also clearly didn't recognize us or what was going on until it was too late. They started to turn Star Destroyer on its side, attempting to provide less of a profile for the station to hit, but it wasn't enough.
Over two hundred meters of reinforced metal and mostly depleted shields slammed into the shields of the Star Destroyer. They held long enough to collapse the station's remaining energy barriers, but then the remaining mass, just about as much as an Arquiten, slammed against them. They held for a moment before collapsing with enough force that both shield generators detonated, casting light along the Star Destroyer's bridge.
At first, due to the angle of the SD, the skipped and slipped across the hull, tearing a great gash across it, fire and debris pluming up from it. Then, the point of the station, already considerably worn down, caught the edge of the first raised section on the top side of the hull. The station's sliding and skipping momentum ceased in seconds, all of it being redirecting downward.
The station plunged into the Star Destroyer's heart, explosions already popping out of viewports as both ships violently merged. Armor plates crumpled like paper, and both starships rotated away, the impact shifting both of them. But the damage was too much. The station cored out the SD with enough force that it peeled off the bridge mast, almost detaching it from the ship before something finally gave, and the SD reactor failed, detonating it like a massive fusion bomb.
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The resulting wave of energy obliterated one of the Guardian escorts, while the Arquiten partially shielded the second Guardian, allowing it to survive, but losing its shields and taking some damage as well. Our droid starfighters used this opportunity to wipe out the remaining TIE fighters before I could even think about ordering them to stop.
"Call back our droid starfighters and advance on the wreck. Fire a warning shot between the two surviving ships to catch their attention," I ordered, the droids moving before I even finished the second half of the order. "Lock onto them with our tractor beams and order them to use their escape pods and jettison down to the planet's surface, or we will destroy them."
The tractor beams were some of the most powerful models available, and could easily hold the two ships still, as long as we could get them in range. The Arquiten attempted to flee, but then we popped what little remained of its shields, followed by a blistering salvo of warning shots, before it stopped. Once we were close enough, we latched onto it, and the Guardian, both ships were frozen in place.
It took a few minutes, but eventually, escape pods began to launch from the Imperial starships, each full of people. When the two ships were empty, I launched a few boarding parties using some of our transports. I then ordered the to leave the two ships in a stable orbit and make a beeline for where the emergency message said the covert was. As we moved, the once CIS capital scanned the surface, revealing nearly a dozen groups of Imperial forces, as well as several small groups of TIE fighters, which must have deployed as support but were now focused on running from us.
As we got closer to the covert's location, still staying high in orbit, we spotted the other Imperial ships, all of them flying low in the planet's atmosphere. They were flying in support over a massive grouping of ground forces, the largest on the planet by far, which was directly on top of the Mandalorian covert. The second the three starships spotted us, they turned and burned atmo, evading our approach. We fired several salvos at them, encouraging them to run, chasing them until they jumped.
It would have been nice to force them to surrender, but anything we had that could have kept up with them would have struggled to take them down. Plus, we were on a tight schedule, and we had wasted enough time securing the other two ships.
"Alright, deploy our starships and launch the manned starfighter squadrons," I ordered. "Take down the air support, then hammer any armored asset they have. Then, harass the remaining ground troops until our forces can land and fight them. No explosives or heavy turbolasers, I do not want to collapse any of the underground structures."
I watched as four squadrons of starfighters, two A-wings, a squadron of V-wings, and a squadron of ARC-170s flew out of the hangar, followed by the ships of 1st Group and the They were then followed by four C-9979 carriers, loaded down with B2s, AATs, Dwarf spider droids, and, which were themselves stuffed with droids. A good thirty percent of our droid army was descending to the planet's surface.
After I watched them leave, I passed the bridge to the ship's captain, who reactivated the super tactical droid for assistance. I then all but sprinted out of the bridge and down the hall. Thankfully, the wasn't in one of the main hangar bays but a much closer one, allowing me to arrive in just a few minutes. I quickly climbed on board, the ramp sliding up even as I jumped the last step.
"How did it go?" Tatnia asked, both her and Corvak waiting by the boarding ramp.
"Pretty well," I responded. "The SD is trash, we captured two of its escorts and convinced the crew to abandon ship. The rest of the rest of the fleet just jumped out of the system."
"That means we are on a timer," Corvak said with a frown.
"We were always on a timer," I countered as we made our way to the bridge. "I think the Imperials have homed in on the covert, but the fact that they didn't just level the place tells me they have confirmed it or were looking to take prisoners. Either way, we need to move fast."
As we walked, I could feel the ship taking off from the hangar, accelerating fast enough that the inertial dampers and antigrav systems couldn't quite handle it. By the time we reached the bridge, we had passed out of the massive capital ship's shadow, distantly following the formations of our fleet.
We watched as the starfighters and starships slammed into another large squadron of TIE fighters, the combined fire of all ships shattering the group, a few A-wings peeling off to paste the survivors. Then, as they sank lower and lower into the atmosphere, the starships spread out, tearing through AT-ATs, AT-STs, and several other ground vehicles, blazing through strafing runs that obliterated anything with even remotely enough firepower to threaten our troops or the ships transporting them.
After a landing space was cleared, the C-9979s followed in, swooping down and disgorging tanks, DSD1s, and MTTs, which spread out and began releasing their troops, forming them into squads and battalions. As we flew over, we could see the troops clashing directly with large groups of surviving stormtroopers, though rarely for long, as without the protection of their armored units, our armored units ran absolute roughshod over them.
As our ground and air forces engaged the Imperial ground teams, the vast majority of their forces turned to meet them, meaning the army stopped focusing on whatever they were hunting for and turned towards the west, desperately trying to fight off the arrival of a vastly superior force, with overwhelming air and armored support.
All this gave the the perfect opportunity to pull in as close as possible to our target. Rather than stop, Calima only slowed down slightly and turned the Chariot on its side. Meanwhile, we opened the hangar bay door and waited for just the right moment before running and jumping free of the ship's artificial gravity with a boost of our repulsor packs. We then plummeted downward toward our target, a massive sinkhole-like cave entrance that would lead to the incredible underground network that housed this covert.
The air whipped and pulled and tugged as we fell, but we stayed together, falling more and more. I spotted a small river that flowed down over the side of the cave, while on the opposite side, a large loom of black smoke billowed up and out, whipped away by the wind. As we plummeted closer and closer, we could see various Imperial forces landing at the bottom. Luckily, with a lack of flying air speeders, they couldn't exactly crawl an AT-AT down the shear walls.
We started to slow as we dropped below ground level into the cave, first fifty feet, then a hundred, then a hundred and fifty. It was around there that the stormtroopers noticed us and opened fire, blaster bolts racing up to meet us. Of course, we returned fire, the two teams picking off troopers while I rained Elemental Blasts down on them by the dozens.
By the time we landed, most of the troopers around the bottom of the massive pit were dead, and those that weren't were finished off quickly, now that we could take our time and aim properly. Once the space had gone silent, I took a look around.
Along one wall, three caves pushed back, the smoke I noticed earlier billowing out, though now I could see it was coming from three ships, all of which were clearly destroyed or at least heavily disabled by the Imperials. Seeing several cave openings other than where the starships were, I turned to Corvak and gestured for him to take the lead.
"These are your people, and you know the way," I explained, the ground team leader nodding in understanding.
"Very well," he responded as he stepped forward. "Let's have a few people cover our exits while the rest of us move deeper."
He walked past me, and I followed, gesturing for Nal and Vaz to stay behind, while three of Corvak's group took up defensive positions as well. The distant sound of our ground and air forces stomping the Imperial army flat on the surface slowly faded as we stepped into one of the nearby cave entrances.
