Star Wars The Other Side of Eternity V3

MrBirthday

Agent of Catgirl Genocide
@LordSunhawk, I noticed a few typos (which I'll note individually later). One that stuck out to me was a few times you typed "sunlight engines" when you meant sublight engines.
 

deathzealotzero

Mecha Guru
Blink. Wow. I am actually quite glad that another version of this story is being written. Still kind of harsh that much of the Firestorm crew are killed in this version of events. This does lead me to believe that the first contact between the OTL Empire and the ATL Empire is going to be bloodier then it was in the last version of this story. Since we had the Executor chasing the Firestorm this may end up with an ATL ISD plus a few support ships going up against an OTL SSD. Instead of ATL ISD going up against OTL ISD.
 

Ash's Boomstick

Well-known member
Blink. Wow. I am actually quite glad that another version of this story is being written. Still kind of harsh that much of the Firestorm crew are killed in this version of events. This does lead me to believe that the first contact between the OTL Empire and the ATL Empire is going to be bloodier then it was in the last version of this story. Since we had the Executor chasing the Firestorm this may end up with an ATL ISD plus a few support ships going up against an OTL SSD. Instead of ATL ISD going up against OTL ISD.

Remember that there;s a task force and a larger numbered fleet on their way to the area so its more likely that it'll be a number of superior small ships against one large ship and inferior copies of their own.
 

ShadowArxxy

Well-known member
Comrade
Keep in mind that while ATL ships are generally better optimized and more advanced due to being refined across decades of warfare against a near-peer opponent, they're not magically better.

The big difference is that because the ATL Empire is engaged in war against a near-peer opponent and the OTL Empire is not, the ATL Empire's major capital assets are in active use (that's what a numbered fleet is), whereas the OTL Empire's major capital assets have been mothballed in the Deep Core (along the lines seen in the Dark Empire comics from the Legends continuity) since the end of the Clone Wars.

This is fundamentally why the previous incarnation of TOSE was something of a Large Curbstomp. The ATL Empire had full-fledged capital ships in play and the OTL Empire did not, because Palpatine canonically had them mothballed and held in the Deep Core under strict orders that *he and only he* could order them deployed.
 
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deathzealotzero

Mecha Guru
Remember that there;s a task force and a larger numbered fleet on their way to the area so its more likely that it'll be a number of superior small ships against one large ship and inferior copies of their own.
Yeah, who says that they may arrive in time? In the original version of events the ATL Imperator plus its arrived support ships got the crud kicked out of it by three of its OTL compatriots that arrived through the anomaly. The only reason the ATL ship managed to survive is that the OTL Imperials used their ships differently from how the ATL Imperials used their Imperator Class ships. So in this version of events, we have the Executor on the other side plus maybe a couple of other Death Squadron Ships hence things are going to be a bit bloodier for the ATL Imperials this time around I think with maybe the Impetuous becoming a floating wreck of a ship or all-out destroyed. Shrug. Don't know if that is going to happen or not but I wouldn't be surprised if it did.
 
Chapter Seven

LordSunhawk

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Chapter 7

The last Imperial Navy ships in the local area had finally arrived, a Gladiator-class escort carrier along with a pair of Dart-class gunships serving as escorts. It only added a single squadron of older T-70A Imperial X-Wings along with a squadron of ARC-175 ‘Spark Arc’ attack fighters, so named due to the paired Ion cannons mounted on the older birds intended to knock down shields so that the follow on bombing runs were more effective.

Ayres now had a potent little squadron under her command, although only Impetuous, Tyrant’s Bane (the Vindicator light cruiser) and Adina (the Nebulon-B) were actually modern designs. She had 2 squadrons of Imperial X’s, although one was of the older variety that was being phased out as quickly as possible, a squadron of older but still effective attack birds, and an entire wing of obsolete interceptors.

And she felt naked, exposed, and vulnerable. The distorted curtain of the hyperspace anomaly hung before her, pulsating and shifting ominously. She had no idea what was on the other side, in truth, but questioning the survivors had indicated the presence of something called ‘Death Squadron’. Captain Liskin had never answered any of their questions about it, although Triselka had told them that the flagship of this Death Squadron was called Executor, which made Ayres very nervous indeed considering her relative dearth of modern snubfighters.

But all she could do was wait, drill the rest of the squadron, and prepare. The 1175th was a few days away and she’d not yet gotten a response as to whether or not a numbered fleet would be dispatched. But until then she worried.

---

Triselka still felt rather shell-shocked. Her brother, her only blood-family, the man who’d saved her from being a crime lords toy, was dead. Killed when the hatch that should have sealed off his turret had failed and the big guy had been unable to get to the emergency locker before dying.

She felt like something of herself had died with him. And just when she needed Aloni to be a shoulder for her to cry on, her skipper was a complete wreck herself, her encounter with her double had shaken her far more than she’d ever admit.

The Crescent was pretty nice, however, and if anybody had ever told her that Imperials would charter a luxury transport to take her to Coruscant she’d have thought them totally insane, but her surroundings were extremely comfortable. Fancy leather, wood paneling, carpets, gorgeous views. Aloni and her had their own private cabins, and the transport crew seemed quite determined to spoil them for any other kind of transport.

The steward who’d gotten them situated had somehow gotten her to tell him her homeworld and had somehow managed to whip up a breaded nerf steak dish she’d not tasted since she was a little girl, with all the right spices and everything. He’d actually managed to coax the same information out of Aloni and had served her a dish that could have come from any home kitchen on Ryloth.

Considering that the galley was roughly the size of a closet it was the closest thing to an absolute culinary miracle she could imagine.

It had briefly raised her spirits, then they came crashing back down as she thought to share it with Jaond, only to again remember that he was dead. But the steward had done his best and she managed to keep a brave smile on her face throughout.

The red-headed supposed Skywalker had given her a data disk with information about this Empire, and Triselka could scarcely believe most of it. No Palpatine? No Darth Vader? No ISB or Ubiquitorate? No COMPNOR? Something called the Imperial Declaration of Sentient Rights? An Imperial Senate with actual, meaningful, impact on the affairs of the Empire? The Skywalkers as the Imperial Family? Luke and Leia being TWINS? For crying out loud, she shipped those two!

No Moffs, no Tarkins, no Death Stars. She’d tried to discreetly look up information and found nothing about herself or Jaond in any of the holonet archives she had access to from the ship, not even any notices about rewards for her capture. In fact, it looked like she didn’t exist at all. She’d looked into Aloni and found basic public records about her counterpart, but nothing all that interesting as that only showed her name and rank with no other personal details.

She’d been rather surprised at just how open the holonet was here, access was publicly available even to civilians and while she was sure there were plenty of classified areas, that didn’t seem to extend to gossip and rumors and such, some of which she was morally certain would have gotten anybody in the Empire she knew and hated a visit from the ISB if they’d dared think them too loudly. But there were entire message boards that seemed to be devoted to scandalous rumors about the Royals. And holoshops. She’d certainly not mention the ones she’d made of… never mind, she was not going to think about that, thank you very much.

She did check and confirm that Luke and Leia were, in fact, fraternal twins.

And that Luke, Leia, and Mara had a pair of younger siblings, one of whom was listed as a junior Padawan to… Imperial Jedi Master Obi-wan Kenobi? The other was listed as attending the Corellian Academy of Medicine. Which from what she remembered (and from their listing on the Holonet) was ‘The Premier Medical Training School In The Galaxy’. She could believe that, since somehow there were still Corellians surviving to adulthood it meant that they had to have really good doctors.

She hated the Empire. But the evidence was very compelling that this wasn’t the Empire she knew and loathed. The Empire that had murdered her parents, the Empire that had turned a blind eye as she was sold out of a COMPNOR holding facility to be a slave. This wasn’t that Empire. And she didn’t know what to think.

---

Aloni knew she was letting Triselka down, but she couldn’t be what the younger human needed her to be right now.

She’d always prided herself on being cool under pressure, of never breaking down, of never letting emotions overcome her. When she killed it was in cold blood and only when she was sure of her target. She acted, never reacted.

And yet somehow she’d gone mad. She’d allowed the rage that had always bubbled beneath the calm, cool exterior to overwhelm her control. She’d wanted to kill somebody just for existing, not for any crime they may have committed, but just for daring to look just… like… her.

And it shook her terribly. Losing Nik, Jaond, and Scrish at the same time ripped a hole in her heart. They were her people. And… her mind shied away from the thought like a skittish gizka hiding from a hsiss.

Learning that her uncontrolled rage might not have been her fault? It didn’t help nearly as much as the redhead had thought it would. So what if it was because of some Force malarkey? She was stronger than that, she had to be stronger than that. She should have been able to resist it herself.

She hadn’t.

Triselka wouldn’t believe her if she said it, and she was pretty sure none of these Imperials had the slightest clue, but she knew, in her gut, that they were telling the truth. The moment she’d seen her double she’d known. She was just too bloody-minded and stubborn to admit it.

This wasn’t their universe. This wasn’t their home. These weren’t her people. And there was nothing she could do here. She had no ship, no crew, no knowledge, no contacts. She was adrift in this place, cut off from the Alliance as surely as if she were in an Imperial Prison Camp being tortured by the ISB.

So what, she was sitting in a luxury yacht being whisked off to Coruscant. A golden cage was still a cage, and she was cynical enough to consider this a very polite and genteel prison transport. No doubt she’d meet more very polite people who’d be very nice about things, because that was how it seemed this Empire worked.

But she still was caged.

---

Taber was frustrated, but in a way that she couldn’t even complain. In her opinion moving from piloting her own Imperial-X to being the co-pilot and gunner on the Hydaspes Star was a severe demotion. She was no longer flying her own snubfighter, after all. Sure, the Intersector was a lethal little combatant in her own right, but still, Mara would be flying her, not her.

And she was frustrated by the lightsaber lessons. She’d never met a clumsier Jedi than Irolia. The Chiss seemed to have two left feet, ten left thumbs, and all the grace of a drunken bantha. OK, she thought to herself, she might be doing a disservice to drunken banthas.

Intellectually she knew that learning physical grace was far harder for those who came to it later in life, but she’d not thought the Chiss to be old enough or that to matter although, obviously, it apparently did.

If she tried to get Irolia to go above one tenth speed on a velocity she’d inevitably get crossed up and wind up falling flat on her face. If she tried an ultra-slow speed training duel that any youngling in her memory would be bored to tears by, the Chiss would inevitably manage to not only fail to parry any of her attacks but was more likely to hit herself than her Twi’lek opponent.

But Taber was determined to stick it through. She firmly agreed with her Master that no Jedi is worthy of the title if they weren’t at least minimally competent with the lightsaber. Of course, intellectually she was quite aware that her standard of ‘minimally competent’ was high enough that most Imperial Jedi would dub them ‘near Master grade’, but the Twi’lek was very proud of her saber skills, and by the Force she’d push her peers to attain similar skill levels if she could.

Of course, the tables turned completely when Irolia worked with Taber on Force techniques. Taber was at this point completely certain that there was no situation in the Universe for which little blue didn’t have an obscure technique to deal with. Whenever Mara or herself challenged Irolia on how the Chiss would solve a situation, the phrase ‘there’s a technique for that’ seemed to be the single most common response, to the point that the two of them would now include ‘barring obscure Force techniques’ in their questioning.

And the damn thing was that the little Chiss would still manage to find a completely orthogonal use of a common Force technique to solve the problem most of the time.

To be fair she’d never even thought of some of the uses for Telekinesis that Irolia so casually threw out there for consideration. And she knew full well that she’d aced every single training class on Force Telekinesis that was offered at the Temple. The Chiss lacked her extremely fine-grained and hard-won control over her TK, but little blue didn’t need that level of control given the sheer power she could apply. That didn’t stop her from giving tips and ideas that were perfectly usable by Taber, as if the younger woman could fully understand how to use tiny bits of power to solve a problem, but just didn’t bother.

Despite that she was finding that she and Irolia were quickly becoming friends, the Chiss was perfectly willing to suffer through the indignity of flailing around like a loon during saber practice and readily acknowledged Taber’s abilities unlike many other more Force-powerful Jedi in the Twi’leks experience. And it was rather enjoyable to have somebody who had even more scholarly chops than she did to debate with.

Now if only little blue would show any improvement in her saber technique, that would be great.

---

Irolia knew she was utter rubbish with a saber. Knew it and, truth be told, didn’t mind there being something she wasn’t naturally brilliant at. Or at least that others could easily tell she wasn’t brilliant at. Growing up in the ruins of the old Jedi Archives on Ossus had left her quite isolated. Apart from Master Bnar and the work crews she’d not had any other people to talk with for years and had thus devoted her time to her studies.

She loved researching things, she loved finding obscure little bits of lore and figuring out how ancient and lost techniques actually worked from fragmentary descriptions. To her, the Force sang all around, a mesmerizing melody that often left her rather distracted from the ‘real’ world. The Force was like an eager puppy, all happy to lick her palm and do tricks and play. Master Bnar had seen the Force much like she did, although he did warn her that the Dark Side could turn the Force into a snarling, raging monster eager to consume all in its path.

And she could sense just that sort of snarling kath hound growling and scratching and snarling on the other side of that anomaly. There was a coldness, a cruelty, that seemed to ooze from the anomaly like a stain of hate and despair and madness. She shied away from it, but forced herself to observe it, to study it, to attempt to discern what it would do next.

Oddly it seemed that much of that loathing and hate was turned inward on the being projecting it. She wanted to talk with Master Bnar about that, because it struck her as very odd.

But her meditations had yielded other things. On the bright side, there were no other Rebel strike fleets within her rather considerable range, at least this portion of the sector should be clear of that menace.

On the dark side, however, she could sense that the dark being on the other side was intending to probe the anomaly in some way. She doubted it would come through itself, there was a sense of frustration at not being able to lead that she interpreted as that at least. But something would come through, and she was working to pinpoint what and when. The why was obvious, that consuming hate sought to conquer and destroy, if only to distract from its own self-loathing. The how was also obvious, just enter hyperspace as normal on a course that intersected the anomaly.

OK, obvious to her. She’d need to warn Captain Ayres and Master Skywalker and Knight Ban about it, once she finished her meditations.

---

Mara Skywalker was busy. When she wasn’t consulting with Captain Ayres she was busy communicating with Sector and Imperial Command. When she wasn’t doing that she was sending reports straight to her father. When she wasn’t doing that she was trying to get in some saber practice with Taber and some Force training with Irolia, shamelessly making use of two prodigies to sharpen her own considerable skills. And when she wasn’t doing that she was working on the Hydaspes Star to further tweak her. She was only a backup Intersector from the Palace pool, so while it had all of the standard upgrades for an Imperial ‘shuttle’ meant for the Imperial Family, it hadn’t yet gotten the personal attention of dear old dad on one of his tinkering binges. And, unfortunately as far as Mara was concerned, her honorary (don’t tell mom!) uncle Raith hadn’t been by to visit since the vessel had joined the pool.

Well, unfortunate in her opinion, the Treasury would probably have a conniption like they did the last time Raith had ‘upgraded’ some of the Imperial Family’s Intersectors. Who knew that diamond-boron armor plating wasn’t cheap? Not that Raith seemed to understand the concept of ‘budget’, to hear mom grumble. Usually with ‘and he’s such a bad influence on Anakin and the kids’ thrown in there at some point.

But it would sure be nice to have a Sienar Special at her disposal right about now. She might not be as powerful as Irolia, but her Senses were more than acute enough to feel the Dark from the anomaly and know that it meant that they were on the clock. There was an enemy on the other side who would come for them at a time of its choosing.

And Mara would be waiting for them. She’d been at Third Alderaan. She could handle anything after that nightmare. Come, bring on all that you got, come the Sith Hells, come high water, never stop.

Because she wouldn’t stop until the threat was gone. She was the adopted daughter of Anakin Skywalker. Sister to Luke and Leia Skywalker, an Imperial Jedi Knight in her own right.

Bring. It. On.
 

Ash's Boomstick

Well-known member
Are those smaller ships just better versions of canon ships, like the ISD is?

LMAO- She shipped those two, bad luck on that part young lady.



Love the Corellians here, sound like an SW version of the Krogans. Perhaps they instead of other races are the pre-eminent creators and users of cloning and life-like cybernetics, given that would help more survive and actually keep the race from coming to extinction.


One small though about how to help the Alliance by the Imperium, now I don't know if you have done it deliberately but there's a line in this chapter that says that they are using an older type of X-wing that is being rapidly replaced, which means there should be thousands to tens of thousands or more of these things either in the boneyards or being melted down for scrap. So obviously what you can do is send those fighters aboard a fleet of smaller ships as something akin to escort carriers or assault ships, crewed with volunteers, possibly most made up of those who are retired or aren't quite good enough for imperial service but would be for alliance service and send them through as raiding units, have most of them the same classes and using the same IFFs and external markings to hide the true numbers.


Poor Irolia, not getting fair treatment really. Still think whoever dropped the ball needs a swift kick up the arse, maybe she can get some help back at one of the temples to improve, would be interesting if someone offered to help her and it turns out to be Anakin who is just sitting in the room of a thousand fountains and senses her very repressed frustration.


The weird thing with Reith Sienar is that he’s not actually evil, a bad guy or an antagonist. He’s responsible for a lot of the designs the empire use but that’s in, he designs and builds but that’s it, I’ve very rarely seen anything written with him in where he’s seen as a bad guy (Unlike those nutbars at Kuat).


Mara’s gonna have issues when she crosses over if she’s anything like the OTL one, she’ll be at risk of connecting with the force bond between OTL Mara and the Emperor, which might be helpful in overhearing things but would put her life at risk. Although anything happens to her and Palpy will die not long afterwards as Anakin slaughters his way to Coruscant and levels the palace.
 

ShadowArxxy

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Comrade
Are those smaller ships just better versions of canon ships, like the ISD is?

The Gladiator class is canonical for both Legends and Disney.



The Dart-class is one of the supremely talented FractalSponge's fanon designs.

 

Ash's Boomstick

Well-known member
The Gladiator class is canonical for both Legends and Disney.



The Dart-class is one of the supremely talented FractalSponge's fanon designs.


What I meant was, are these just the same as in the OTL are are they superior versions as the ISDs and X-Wings are in the Imperium Universe?
 

deathzealotzero

Mecha Guru
Huh. Wait. The Impetuous had only been carrying the one X-Wing Squadron? Kind of got the impression she sported more than one squadron of the fighters during the fight with the ATL Rebels earlier. Or did the ship carry one X-Wing Squadron plus a couple other squadrons of another type of fighters. I ask this since an OTL ISD carried six squadrons of fighters.
 

LordSunhawk

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One squadron, 12 fighters.

It's one of the major differences between the two, the ATL ISD isn't trying to be a jack of all trades. Instead of a large fighter compliment, large ground forces compliment, etc, she has layered shields, heavier armor and armament, and more powerful drives. Not as much as the Tector, which in OTL follows a similar philosophy (no hangar, more armor and weapons, it's the ship seen in RotJ that has no hangar bay when the action goes underneath it). The ATL Tector, BTW, sports a smaller number of much heavier turbolasers, no fighter compliment at all, and trades the more powerful drives for even more armor.
 

Knowledgeispower

Ah I love the smell of missile spam in the morning
Hmmm I don't get why you'd get rid of any starfighter capacity though instead of something like reducing or eliminating the AT-AT compliment
 

ShadowArxxy

Well-known member
Comrade
What I meant was, are these just the same as in the OTL are are they superior versions as the ISDs and X-Wings are in the Imperium Universe?

The alternate ISD isn't strictly superior, it's differently optimized. More refined, but for a different combat environment as well.

The OTL Rebel Alliance finds them extremely scary because they mount so much point-defense firepower and can completely no-sell the snubfighter based hit-and-fade tactics that the Alliance prefers. The OTL Imperial Navy, on the other hand, will point out that they carry a grossly excessive amount of anti-fighter weapons and that this actually substantially diminishes the relative firepower they have available against peer opponents.

The World Devastators at full bore were literally the only time in OTL-canon that anyone deployed numbers of fighters that actually justified ATL-scale point defense; they have it because unlike anyone in OTL, the ATL Rebels *do* regularly deploy droid and slave fighters on that scale.

-----

If you compare the ATL ISD to the OTL ISD. . . in terms of ship-to-ship configuration, it's roughly halfway between the ISD-I which had a "panzerschiff" style main armament of few but relatively oversized main guns in twin turrets and the ISD-II which flipped to the opposite extreme of extremely numerous smaller-caliber main guns in octuple open barbettes.

In terms of offensive/defensive firepower balance, the ATL ISD falls between the OTL ISDs where both models strongly favored firepower over defenses and the OTL Mon Calamari cruisers which favored defenses over firepower. It has more power overall because the removal of troop facilities means it has a bigger reactor to begin with, but much of the "bonus" power goes into defensive systems.
 

ShadowArxxy

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Hmmm I don't get why you'd get rid of any starfighter capacity though instead of something like reducing or eliminating the AT-AT compliment

The ATL ISD has *no* AT-ATs or other ground forces at all, just an Imperial Marine contingent for ship security and boarding operations. The reduced starfighter capacity is because she's not intended to deploy offensive fighter strikes at all; she's more like a Kiev class heavy aviation cruiser, where she's not intended as a "proper" carrier at all, but as an actual heavy cruiser with a small aviation complement so she can provide her own CAP.
 

ShadowArxxy

Well-known member
Comrade
As for the Dart class:

Well, out of character, FractalSponge designed it as an Imperial counterpart to the DP20 Corellian Gunship, just as the Intersector class (which is also one of his designs) was designed as an Imperial counterpart to the Millennium Falcon.

In character, it's an older anti-fighter corvette. One of the earliest Imperial-era designs, in fact, replacing the Clone Wars era DP20 but seeing only limited service. What we see it doing here is pretty much its only job, serving as an anti-fighter escort for smaller warships that lack adequate (by ATL Imperial Navy standards) point defense. In practical terms, it only has six guns, but they are extra-light turbolasers rather than capital ship laser cannons. These weapons are absolute murder to fighter squadrons -- they are extremely rapid-fire and are mounted on fast-track mounts with articulated swingarms for maximum field of fire.

It's basically the same armament concept as the OTL's specialist Lancer frigates, but with the equivalent of twin 3"/50 guns instead of quad 40mm Bofors, and mounted on on a fast CEC blockade runner hull.
 
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Chapter 8

LordSunhawk

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Chapter 8

“They’re coming.” Irolia said quietly, looking up from where she was meditating within the meditation chamber of the Hydaspes Star.

Taber looked sharply over at the Chiss, who promptly clarified. “Two of what they call Imperial-II Star Destroyers. Same size as an Imperator. They will come through within the hour, the orders have just been given.”

Taber nodded and looked over towards the cockpit, only to see Mara already opening a comm channel to make the report. Moments later the lights inside the Intersector switched to their combat settings as Taber straightened up from her own meditations to get ready.

Hydaspes Star requesting launch clearance.” she heard Mara say as she slipped into the co-pilot's seat. Behind them she could dimly sense Irolia strapping into the shock couch in the meditation chamber.

She slipped her headset on just in time to hear Bay Control give Mara permission to launch and looked out the cockpit as the swift little craft slipped past the atmosphere shielding and into her normal habitat of deep space.

“Annoyed statement. Organics have lousy timing. Two more hours and the 1175th would have been here.” R1 muttered while plugging in to a droid interface port to do his part in this battle.

“Just think, R1, they are being so considerate as to give you something to complain about.” she cheerfully pointed out to her grumpy droid. “Now you won’t have to wrack your circuits coming up with something.”

She didn’t have to turn around to know that R1 was giving her the Glare Of Death To The Living.

Mara grinned slightly and joined in on R1 tormenting duty. “That’s a good thing, because you don’t have enough non-blown out circuits to spare to blow some more out trying to think that hard, R1.”

The Intersector arced away from Impetuous, heading for a position far enough away from the anomaly that her built-in stealth systems should make her nearly impossible for the hostile vessels to detect, let alone lock on to. Their mission in this upcoming battle wasn’t to fight themselves but to rather ensure that Irolia was unmolested as she made use of her Battle Meditation to seriously skew the battle in their favor. The Star didn’t have a Stygian Cloak, but it did have a seriously reduced sensor cross-section and several smuggler’s tricks built into the system to reduce her signature even further.

Outside the makeshift squadron was deploying as planned, with the two carriers moving off a ways while launching their birds into a pre-positioned strike package. The Darts that normally escorted the aging Gladiator had slotted into screening formation for Impetuous while Tyrant’s Bane and Adina formed a separate division placed between the expected battle ground and the carriers. All of the Imperial X-Wings and Spark ARCs had full external ordnance racks loaded with anti-ship concussion missiles and were prepared to unleash a full volley as soon as their targets were confirmed.

Impetuous herself was positioned in such a way that as much of her heavy armament as possible would bear on any ships that emerged from the anomaly. Her primary, secondary, and backup shield generators were all fully spooled up and the ship was completely buttoned up at full action stations. In accordance with Imperial Doctrine when facing a major battle the entire crew were already in vacuum suits and as much of the ship as possible had been depressurized, with those sections not in use during combat completely evacuated and powered down to prevent cascading electric failures in the event of battle damage.

Final preparations took only about five minutes. After that all anybody could do was wait.

Behind her Taber could already start to sense Irolia’s initial Battle Meditations as she felt her customary pre-battle nerves fade away into quiet confidence that they could and would win. It was faint, so much so that it was almost impossible to notice, but just enough to dull the jitters that inflicted even seasoned veterans if made to wait for too long and to help keep everybody alert to their duties.

Still time seemed to crawl. Each second seemed to stretch into hours. Taber found herself slipping into her own meditative state, drawing on lessons learned from Master Dooku. Once they were in position Mara did much the same, leaning back in her flight couch to wait.

“They’re here.” came the soft voice from behind them and the two Imperial Jedi immediately tensed up, even as they felt that faint touch of confidence and determination emanating from the Chiss’ Battle Meditation step up a few notches. Mara tapped a macro, sending the confirmation message to Impetuous as the squadron flag.

Just two seconds later a pair of very familiar dagger-hulled vessels streaked into view out of hyper, although the formation they were in was unacceptably ragged for any Imperial unit. It was like they were trying to be in an echelon formation, but weren’t quite good enough to make it work, being just a tad too far apart for properly interlocking defensive fire.

Ayres didn’t bother trying to communicate with them, the small squadron immediately opened fire as soon as they had targets to fire at. A bare split second later the enemy vessels returned fire with far more, albeit somewhat smaller, ravening bolts of turbolaser energy being flung back at Impetuous.

Both of the enemy vessels focused their fire on Impetuous, even as swarms of unusual looking fighters spilled out of massive launch bays on their bellies. The scratch mixed snubfighter group moved in to engage after volleying off their external ordnance at the enemy warships. The A-7 Hunters screaming ahead of the Imperial X’s to meet the enemy first while the larger, slower, but far more heavily armed and shielded snubfighters continued volleying concussion missiles from their internal launchers at the big ships before they had to break off to deal with the swarm of fighters that were screaming towards them with their own version of the famous Imperial X-Wing Ion Whine.

Soon the space between the two squadrons was an ugly melee pockmarked with explosions signifying the death of enemy or friendly snubfighters alike. So far the friendly casualties seemed to be confined to the Hunters, but that would change. The Spark ARCs pressed their attacks, relying on their turret gunners to drive off attacking fighters while pounding on the shields of the big vessels with their ion cannons before sharply pulling up and releasing unguided heavy bombs to coast in to impact with the enemy.

It was an ugly battle. For all the numbers of the strange little… ball sandwiched between two plates of various designs snubfighters, there still weren’t nearly enough to match the typical swarms of droid fighters used by the Rebels. The anti-snubfighter armament of the big ships had almost nothing to do other than adding their own tiny tithe of firepower to the thunderous exchanges of the giants.

In truth, Impetuous was taking far more hits than she was giving out, so much of her firepower was oriented towards anti-fighter purposes that she had a relatively light anti-capital ship weaponry, and her opponents appeared to be wholly optimized for fighting other capital ships with next to no defensive armament whatsoever. Plus there were two of them and they were completely ignoring the lighter division.

Which in the end may prove decisive, because that division was angling around to get shots into the stern aspects of the barely maneuvering enemy ships. Impetuous and her Dart escorts, meanwhile, was maneuvering about freely, attempting to keep presenting fresh shield faces to the enemy fire before they were battered down, and thus give the backup generators time to refresh the shield strengths in those sectors. She was taking many more hits, because her efforts to spread the enemy fire resulted in her own guns being regularly masked, but those hits weren’t all that effective thanks to her multiple shield layers and the advanced backup shield generators based on Mon Calamari designs that were standard on all Imperial warships above light cruiser grade.

And throughout Irolia was adding her own contribution to the battle. The effects of her Battle Meditation were most profound in the swirling death clench of the snubfighter battle, as Imperial pilots fought with near perfect coordination, oftentimes performing an evasive maneuver moments before they had to, causing the enemy to more often than not miss in their attacks.

“One of the enemy pilots is an untrained minor Force user, but not a dark sider.” she suddenly said in that quiet voice. “Should I keep… her… alive for questioning?” her voice was calm, assured, with no trace of fatigue to it.

“You can do that?” Mara asked, watching on the scope as the battle played out and reaching out with the Force to try to identify what the Chiss had sensed.

“Easily, there’s a technique for that.” Irolia replied, a trifle smugly.

Taber shook her head, she’d known that phrase was coming as soon as Mara opened her mouth to ask.

“Do it then.” Mara responded, rolling her eyes slightly at Taber’s amusement.

Suddenly one of the enemy snubfighter’s icons turned from the lurid red of enemy IFF to the flashing orange as the IFF switched to Emergency mode at the time as the fighter seemed to suddenly lose power and start drifting away from the main action. None of the friendly snubs were in any position to do anything about it, but Taber did mark the track on her display.

Taber did, however, tense when she saw one of the shield facings on Impetuous turn orange itself, showing impending failure, then relaxed as the cruiser managed to shift vector to bring that sector away from enemy fire. Only to tense up again as that sector promptly turned yellow as it hadn’t been able to come up to full strength.

Then that sector turned Orange… then Red as it failed.
 

Bear Ribs

Well-known member
You have to feel bad for these TIE pilots. They're already canon-fodder in fighters made by the lowest bidder, and now they're facing an enemy optimized for killing swarms of fighters. I'm guessing TIE fighter pilot life insurance premiums are about to skyrocket.
 

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