De Imperatoribus Galacticis: Chapter the Fourteenth
Posted: 2004-04-24 11:33am
Due to the awarding of a GSD to this fiction, I have decided to continue it. Please do enjoy.
De Imperatoribus Galacticis
"On the Galactic Emperors"
Chapter the Fourteenth.
(As continued from Chapter the Thirteenth.)
The Corellia System,
The Hawk of Trinadora.
The Vong were caught, surprised, by the arrival of the Kuati fleet, and now vicious hoardes of missiles fell against them, racing the distance as a ten-thousand salvo of projectiles that would shatter the enemy's cohesion, locked as they already were in deadly and equal contest. Concentrated, the volleys came on against flanks lightly, or entirely unguarded by dovin basals, as they concentrated their defence toward the Corellians. The effect was very bad for the Vong. With comparatively weak hulls, each salvo could and did tear through those rocky caraprices in a mounting number, shattering hulks and unleashing their motive energies, that detonations rended down ruined mass into molten remnant--gone from it, the trace of warriors who had once strove to conquer, and now found their flank instead mastered.
Millennium Falcon led the charge, straight into the re-deploying squadrons of Vong 'skippers. For a moment the famed Corellian ship was alone, save her two Chiss wingmen, amongst hundreds of the Vong fighters. Han Solo picked a wing of them to attack and charged right in, salvoing missiles as the old quads spat bolts in a torrid mass of energy. The sheer audacity of the attack left its mark, and Jaina, fighting with her father in the famed old Falcon, left a lane of bloody chaos amongst the 'skippers that to the watching fleet could only bring to mind that ill-fated but hard challenged First Coruscant. Hardly any of the fighters in this situation could bring their guns against those bold cavaliers, and they burst through the Vong ranks, leaving the strewn wreckage of a squadron abaft.
Before more of their enemies could turn to come against them, and let the advantage of numbers start to tell, the squadrons of the Kuati fleet were upon the Vong. They tore into the disordered ranks of the enemy, energy and missiles engaged in the moment of contact, hulls of metal and rock shorn with plasma and nuclear fire all across a ten-thousand klick front of void that was constantly being interspersed by the heavy exchange of missile fire from the great capital ships. Sometimes a missile might find its path abruptly caught by one of the weaving little snub-fighters, the explosion capturing several of its fellows, and in this one's side did not matter: there was very little sense to the brief intensity of the action, except where the plots of the commandships rendered it down into cool and mechanical lists of trajectories and losses by squadron.
Range for energy weapons was reached even as the Vong fighter perimetered collapsed, dying in the same haste with which it had been thrown up to cover that flank. Teratons of energy eclipsed the stars as the Kuati salvoes tore from every forward-bearing gun, recoil thrumming into the great hulls as they commenced to fire full batteries, concentrating on the Vong heavy ships, pounding them as fast as the guns could take it. They were in excellent condition, these ships built in the finest yards of the galaxy, and their commanders knew the exact tolerances to which the huge energy capacitors could be pressed. The speed with which the salvoes were got off was thus high, even by Imperial standards, and the volume of fire quite intense.
The Vong ships reeled, punch-drunk between two fleets, as the victorious Kuati fighters pressed on to attack their outer picket screen. A massive exchange of energy was taking place, but the Vong were being hit on their flank as well as forward and were taking the brunt of it by far. As overburdened dovin basals began to fail, heavy ships started to explode under the concentrated salvoes of Kuati cruisers, and a great execution was done amongst the centre of the Vong squadron. The fire of the Corellian ships added to the intensity, and with the Vong unable to concentrate their dovin basals, the collapse and destruction only occured all the faster. The rate at which ships were beginning to be destroyed now was really quite amazing for the gallant Corellians and the stalwart Kuati alike, who were emboldened to press in; but Mystrela had seen it before, fighting the Borg.
On the flag-bridge of the Hawk of Trinadora, Mystrela was indeed observing as her fleet bore in close to the Vong, those ships revealing their principle weakness--the same one demonstrated against the warp-missiles--that they really had very weak structures. Over-pressed from multiple angles of attack, as when Pellaeon had brought in the Remnant forces and now as she outflanked them here, they didn't have enough dovin basals to cover against the energy output of the Kuati ships--and vessels which could survive days of pounding in a broadside-to-broadside struggle suffered progressive hull failure in minutes, torn apart when the full strength of the Kuati salvoes was directed against hulls instead of the overstretched dovin basals.
Captain Idan di Syminar, her Chief of Staff, stepped around the plot and brought up a display of the fleet trajectory as the violence raged ahead of them and drew steadily closer. "Director, if we begin to deaccelerate now we can place ourselves at their rear and maintain the energy combat during the entire evolution. That fleet will be completely annihilated, even with the counter-manoeuvre they're beginning."
"Noted, Captain; what sort of firing times do we have, however, for a zero-thrust engagement through the enemy force?" Mystrela asked by way of reply, her mind on the uncovered planets of the inner system.
"We would be engaged for a cumulative seventeen standard minutes from now; four at point-blank range. May I ask your intention, Director?" The expression on the man's face was quizzical, and deservedly so. They had in their grasp the chance for the total annihilation of a Vong fleet--something which, prior, only Mystrela herself had indeed accomplished, though this gave her a particular status in the realm of naval officers, even if the popular imagination had been eclipsed by the relief of Coruscant.
"I intend to pass through them and break their formation, Captain, and then proceed to the defence of the inner system. If they cede the inner system, then we've done our job here." The plot shifted, the calculations and projections complete, and Mystrela's glance overtook it for a moment, before she nodded in affirmation. "Very good. The fleet signal is for zero-zero thrust; Eight and Ninteen squadrons of pickets are to be detached to support the fighters. Squadron commanders engage at targets of opportunity.
"We take them enpassant."
"Understood, Director."
Behind them, Miat Temm smiled and watched her fiery handiwork expand.
The Corellia System,
The Kuati allied fleet.
Jaina sent another burst into 'skipper rendered vulnerable by her abilities, and then stripped open of defences by the first. The quads, still those best and most powerful weapons for the packed old Falcon, did their job well, shredding the rock-hewn craft before them. That certain feeling, the dangerous and the pulsingly eager intensity of battle, was forward and high, that game of the Jedi. She fought the ventral turret, the dorsal quad covered in part by automatics, and the rest by the actions of Fel and his wingman. Ahead, the forward armament of the Millennium Falcon blazed, Han Solo not stinting in giving a single one of the devastators of his family the warrior's death they so desired.
Jaina could feel, even from here, the bleed of emotions from her father, the black passion of a man who had been forced to bury both his friend, and his son; and had found, both in heart and soul, the belief that he might save another by the call of the war before him--and perhaps, distantly, the old Corellian solidarity fueled the last of it, besides. It was a very bleak outlet, indeed, and one that threatened to well up over a Jedi who had never had the most sanguine of spirits. She could, however, only avoid it in her own combat, which grew all the more desperate as her father led them deeper and deeper into the Vong formation. There could be no condemnation for feelings which she had known, and indeed might envy; and the ease with which a soul without knowledge of the force could express them against her own desperate and ever-more fraught composure.
Another contact, and she fired again, the force guiding her in the detection, and guiding her in the combat. Nothingness, black-holes in her perception all around, sticking out and becoming as shadows laid out by a search beam. And each must be fought down. This was of the clearest intensity, a simple logic that was simply known in her mind. So she fought, until even what seemed as frayed temptation faded. The battlefield, a dimly discerned thing which became her realm of targets.
The smile on Miat Temm's face was faintly disturbing for the middle of a battle. It was nearly beautific, not really at all showing the seriouness of the action. She was, indeed, quite aware of the action, but her perceptions were somewhat distracted. Good, then, it's begun. Abruptly the look of her face tightened, but she was not displeased in any way by what had occured; though surely misinterpetation would not bother her. Ahead, now, the first ranks of the fleet's capital ships were at point-blank range.
Much further ahead, the fighters, led by gallant General Solo, completed the work that Sal-Solo had started. Miat resigned herself to being a spectator for the rest of the action, no matter the annoyance in it. Let them be annoyed, and that was enough for her--and enough for the future's surety that taunted her in her endless dreams. And enough for them.
Coruscant System,
Imperial Starfleet Forces.
"What's going on, Elise?" The voice of a very calm Emperor was a frightening thing to hear, crackling in over the relay channel with a steady certitude. That commander's tone was made to strip one down without really anything, and made her remember she might as well again be a commander being addressed by Grand Admiral Thrawn, not a Grand Admiral herself.
But you don't know a single damned thing about space combat, and even on the ground what you did is bloody foolish; here, with our extended firing boxes, it's insane, and Corvalis has just done a lot more than ruin your political game. Her determination was laced with the bitter memory of the dead. A gloved hand calmly activated the return relay. "I'm not certain, Your Majesty. It appears that Corvalis believes he received orders to relieve that sector of the line; or he never received the orders not to. As you can undoubtably hear from the quality of this communication, our frequencies are being heavily jammed and I cannot discount the possibility of a fragmentary receipt."
"Can a recall be successfully transmitted at this point, or is he already engaged?" Sule's force punched through the static, emotion nearly unreadable from it, if not yet resigned.
"Your Majesty, I believe it impossible to recall him. I am not yet sure due to the sensor conditions if he has met the enemy with his force, but even if he has not, should he turn back, he may still be exposed to fire from a disadvantageous direction; besides, he was our forward reserve, and if he manouevres away from the line now we have absolutely no hope of blocking that gap whatsoever." Elise took a breath and decided to gamble it all on her defiance. Sule had given her in his last message a bit of hope to work him out of the scheme; now she would play it for all she could.
"Indeed, it appears that the Vong are concentrating their principle resources against this sector of the line. With your permission, Your Majesty, I would like to advance my own squadron and all available regional reserves there. I believe that we can force a decision at that point. I would also like the missile cruisers moved into position there for the prepared supporting attacks should the Vong also concentrate."
Silence, then: "Let me consult with Grand Admiral Pellaeon."
Elise clenched a fist and bit her lip silently, gazing at the plot as she wondered why she was playing politics in the middle of this massive engagement. Sule had to know what Pellaeon would say. He had even been less of a proponent of the idea than Elise, and to that, Elise was already ashamed of herself. Sule, of all people, she should not have let roll her over. Around, the crew of the flagbridge studiously went about their duties, not daring approach closely enough to their Admiral to hear the conversation crackling from the earpiece, or Elise's uttered replies, or even to catch her line of sight. Among them, Commander Hallsburg was especially inconspicious; but in the tenseness of the moment that was completely ignored.
She focused in on a particular section of the plot was it was updated, and then toggled the selector to talk again. "Your Majesty, Corvalis is now confirmed engaged. I must move my ships in to support him immediately. With respect, Your Majesty, you already know what Grand Admiral Pellaeon will say on this matter." A breath, forcing herself to relax, a measure purely false. "Begging Your Majesty's pardon, but this is quite simply the moment of decision. If we do not counterattack now, we will not have the resources to attempt it again. The commitment must be made."
"Go forward, Elise, then. If I trust Martina to Intelligence then I surely must trust you in the navy. The eastern reserves are wholly your's." The voice scratched through in both frustration and relief, but for Elise it was all relief. She settled back and sighed, then, but as the connection ended what she had bought herself--time--had to be immediately utilized.
"Fleet signals: Advance to support positions of Twenty-second Cruiser; battle flank," she ordered. "Signals; TF-7; TF-9; TF-11; provide general reserve to Durrano Sector Forces."
Commander Hallsburg, for that matter, had never been more relieved in his life, though there was the dark suspection that it would only last for a while. "Preparing signals for transmission, Admiral," he answered fervently.
Elise watched the plot, hands pursed together, and hoped that she would indeed get the missile support. It appeared more and more as though the Vong were committing their own decisive force to this sector, and her arguments to Sule might have been very much optimistic. Two minutes later a gentle shudder ran through the ship as the engines engaged, steadily running up to maximum power, her flag captain guiding the force to contact, where the massive strength of the radiation bombardment steadily reduced the sensors to a worthless mess of confusion, and even more titantic energies would await.
Vice Admiral Corvalis' Twenty-second Cruiser was now in the midst of a very hot combat in the centre of the gap between the Durrano Sector Forces and the Nineteenth Battlecruiser. Captain Eduardo, his flagcaptain, had put the Firebird directly between two of the Vong two-klick cruisers, and the exchange between them was maintained with an incredible furor. The shields glowed with bleeding energy from the plasma bombardment, completely obscuring the Allegiance-class ship beneath them, and giving her perhaps the appearence of her namesake. The counterfire of the turbolasers was a steady and deep thrumming of salvoes from every gun, directed energy vanishing in clouds at the clustered dovin basals of the foe.
The gun crews sighted and laid their guns nearly by hand, now, with the jamming in the sector so intense that not much more than visual sensors offered a great effect. Enough of the powerful energies, however, got through, to sweep out their targets, and the range was close enough, that a steady and horrifically accurate fire could be maintained. On both sides, yet, the ships had been built for such a stiff fight, and there was no sign of any serious degregation to this point. But it was the Firebird that was outnumbered two to one, and slowly that was beginning to tell.
All around the action was maintained, the big cruisers of the Twenty-second and their dwarfed escorts serving to stoutly hold the line where the Vong had dared make a gap. To Corvalis' starboard flank, however, the battered Durrano Sector forces were hardly to be said to still be in the fight, and the sheer number of Vong ships meant that some would get around the fire boxes of the Imperial craft without infringing on other portions of the line; they would simply have to be ignored. Corvalis now began to wonder about the condition or liklihood of his own reinforcements, advancing as he had on such slim justification.
Jamming in the sector was very intense, but at last, an explosion of radiation erupted that clarified the situation for the embattled blocking force. Captain Louvis hastily adjusted the plot, a faint grin expressed on his face. Crackling remnants of a scout line of Vong corvettes, bracketed by multiple salvoes of the heavy warhead launchers of an Executor-class Battlecruiser, flared up behind them, and the sensor picture became clearer; nor could anyone miss it when one thousand heavy turbolasers engaged in unison, painting the stars awash with energy, a dagger burning with the green fire of its guns.
As usual, the engines of the massive battlecruiser, so overpowered even for her size, had given it such an edge over the rest of her force, that she arrived before them, and had the battle had any real spectators beyond Sule and Martina, their view obscured by distance and jamming, then that sight of the advance might have been seen, the brazen display of the single powerful ship moving ahead and scattering whole squadrons of light craft with massed salvoes. Each salvo, indeed, was casually set to detonate as flak, and the scattering of the light was done with such energy as washed from the heavy guns and simply completely overwhelmed the ships, utterly surrounding them in a massive sea of unleashed power, leaving charred hulks or limping, disabled ruins.
Despite the awesome arrival of Conquérant, who had solely by her own artillery closed the gap, Corvalis realized the contest for this sector of the line was still in doubt. The plot was constantly being updated, and not merely from the rear: more ships, indeed, were arriving from ahead than from behind. Besides this, the Durrano forces were in total disarray by this point, though before they had held very well. The enemy was exploiting this, and would have even more time to do so as it appeared that Elise's reinforcements for that sector had not yet arrived. The Twenty-second would have a long fight on the front.
Conquérant cruised through the remnants of the forces that she had ruined, obsidian against the dark, and which had threatened to outflank the twenty-second Cruiser. Now she was approaching closely to the frontal sector, her missile tubes already tracking and engaging several destroyers as she moved to close the gap between the Twenty-second Cruiser and the Nineteenth Battlecruiser. Other ships from the reserve were moving into additional supporting positions, either around the flagship or around the Twenty-second.
Elise, however, now had the information necessary to realize that her orders had been based on a decayed perception of the situation. The Durrano force had finally cracked, and in fact it might very well be that Sule had got his wish after all: Great of the Darshkarbat Dynasty was no longer in evidence, nor indeed several of the heavy ships of the force. But from the way the chaos in the survivors was folding out, she suspected she had a better answer for it. Tranjak-sar had finally accepted the conclusion which must have been inevitable--far later than Elise would have expected him too, thankfully, or else the whole line would have caved--and had fled.
Or perhaps he feared we would destroy him in the process of securing the line to make sure the job was done. Of course, Sule wasn't silly enough to suggest such a thing; there was a difference between 'inadvertantly' exposing a flank and attacking an ally in coalition warfare, and it was very large. Regardless, she had to deal with the aftermath. "Signals, attempt to establish a direct link into the Durrano force." It was quite unlikely to work, but issuing direct orders to the force might carry enough authority to get the remaining squadron commanders to order.
The rest of the time, as usual, would have to be bought with Imperial blood: "Sixteen and Thirty Destroyer squadrons are to angle starboard on forming starboard flank; reserve to advance into flank position." The TFs would arrive soon enough from their own positions along the line and that would deal with the gap, but ahead the stars were dense with ships and there was little that Elise could do except to hold.
The Corellia System,
The Millennium Falcon.
Behind the Falcon, silent blooms of radiation tossed their mighty flare into the visual spectrum. The thermal detonations of missile warheads mingled in brilliant radiance with the terrible energy release of destroyed ships; with the harsh blue-white of the glaring, flaming drive tails. The flicker of massive charged turbolaser blasts completed that scene: The triumph of a radioactive god. It made one feel safe in the midst of a still hot action of the lights, for when the guns of great ships thundered, all else paled.
The Kuati battlesquadrons drifted out of the rubble in their gleaming white majesty, one moment obscured and the next clear and white and bright, their hulls lit by the play upon them of the radioactive sea they had left. They came through in fighting trim and the scene of their leaving behind the blasted rubble of the Vong force gave one the urge to stand and cheer. Mystrela of Kuat had destroyed a second Vong fleet by main force. For a moment the ships seemed slow and graceful, manoeuvring like squadrons on review. But they were in fact traveling very fast, and the moment was gone and replaced by the dazzle of their drives as they quickly receded.
They had seen from afar, and from afar the ships were still gleaming; they were still ordered, serene and victorious in the void. Their resolution did provide to show the burned out marks on the ships that still held their place, marring the proud white but not marring the grim pride of their crews. There were dead in those spaces and there was damage to the force. A few ships had not made it out, as the steady order of the Kuati starfleet insured that there would not be a hint of the losses. But the fleet was there, and now it was thrusting past them on course for Corellia, the second Vong force suddenly seeing an angry and victorious force coming down upon them.
Jaina had caught just one glimpse of that brilliant sight as she worked the guns. It was there and then it was gone, a hazy memory of that heavy force plowing their way clear, a seared afterimage of combat that would tease the future. Her focus never even left the enemies around them, the coral skippers that were still fighting hard. The Falcon was wrenched and twisted about in a dizzying cycle of gyration; her experienced pilot demanded everything of her again, and the old hunk responded to every affectionate demand. Jaina could only manage to keep the gunsights level by the certitude of the force.
It was in certitude that the guns of the Falcon blazed, two 'skippers bunched into the furious path of the quads by deft manoeuvre and hypernatural sense. Jaina felt the gun, and she felt the hideous voids flash into space. In a moment she had iluminated them, killed the deathly silence and opened up her vision in the hidden world once more. It was a cycle that had not ended for the past twenty minutes and abruptly she realized how exhausted she was; her body drenched in sweat despite the cool atmosphere of the Falcon, muscles left to ache.
As soon as she tried to press herself into the exertion once more, a voice sounded over the 'com that seemed far more exhausted than she even imagined herself to be, but offered in it a quiet sort of satisfaction. "We're in the clear, Jaina." Familiarity and relief flooded over her at once, and she slumped in the gun harness, with a distressing sense of weakness but one that she could not care about now. Both that the ferocity of the action was over, and that her father was himself. The black, cruel determination of before had passed and she could sense a sort of serenity as one could only have when one defended their hearth and family.
"Roger that, dad." She could feel the Falcon accelerating as she spoke. The affair wasn't done yet, then, and dutifully the requirements of the human body pressed in on her. "I'm going for the ration packs. I'll bring something up to you."
"I'll be waiting," her father answered, his own voice that of someone who, having given their full energy to a cause, could not even force out more than the crisp words of necessity. But the words themselves spoke welcome volumes, reassuring. Her spirit brightened, Jaina unstrapped and crawled down, carefully negotiating the access tube for the turret. First the 'fresher, then the ration packs..
It was only as Jaina had downed one of the high-energy, comfortably bland spacers' rations that her mind really began to work again, that she realized something about the situation. Her father had been consumed by a hatred that would veer any Jedi off the right path; yet in the end it had left him with a comfortable soothed spirit, perhaps for the first time since tragedy had wrought its course on her family. Is it because he cannot sense the force, or.. Her mind asked herself, and without a ready answer.
The idea of the responsibilities of a Jedi stemming from natural imperative seemed suddenly a dangerous, a lurking, tempting offer of absolution for capricious use of one's abilities. But then where did they come from? Why was that cleansing anger of father's denied to her? It seemed that an answer, then, drifted to her; one comfortable and reassuring and disturbing all at once. It was with that philosophical challenge on her mind that she headed toward the bridge of the old and gallant freighter.
Coruscant System,
Imperial Starfleet Forces.
The remnants of the Durrano Sector forces had pulled back, battered and ravaged by the Vong fire but still in some sort of order: that only to the orders of the Grand Admiral in their sector. They had kept their order long enough and now nothing more could realistically be expected of them, their flagship gone, massive losses in their ranks, and every ship damaged, save one lucky frigate that passed Conquérant in her solitary splendour, a gleaming beacon to the random whim that guided the gods of War.
Imperator-class ships held the line to the starboard, and more were pushing in to fill the lingering gap. The Vong were fully committed here and they were dying here. Their ships could not get through, the gap was saved. Corvalis' Cruisers of the twenty-second were holding firm with Elise's defensive reserve. They had terrible damage upon them but the testament to the Admiral's decision was in the wreckage of their enemies ahead, and the space closed to them behind. At the heaviest moment of the battle the Imperial starfleet held firm, and wave after wave of Vong attacks was driven back under their steady fire.
It was a moment given as a gift to Elise. The Vong lapped at the formations of the defenders, and their efforts to probe out for gaps met coordinated fire beyond. Their main efforts were ground into rubble under the heavy guns. The critical seconds had passed and they left the Imperial starfleet holding its ground against the maximum directed Vong assault. They had been drawn in by the error of the Imperial commanders; but the stalwart action of the lower ranks carried the engagement. It truly was a different military that fought there, from that of Palpatine's whimsy. The ghost of the old walked with the new, but whatever else one could speak for Sule, he taken initiative by the reins and in doing it he had given it back to the rest of them, for good or ill, and here, for victory.
With the full strength of the Vong coming in on them, a fixation developed in their enemy, the serious diversion of resources that had been hoped for, there now came a possibility. Elise sent her status report to Pellaeon and with it was the advice that came of the situation: "Let the torpedoes loose."
Pellaeon did not wait long, not now. The heavy transmitters of the flagship sent a single but steady signal, lost in the morass of battle. But an old Romulan Warbird caught it and relayed it on. It was one of several resting at cloak beyond the main field of battle. Beyond it were the Strike-class frigates of the fleet, the ones modified with heavy torpedoes and with cloak, that had blasted apart the Vong squadrons twice before.
Their formations engaged warp drive on order, and flashed out behind the Vong fleet. It had been shorn of pickets in the probing and in the hurtling of reinforcements into the battle around the Durrano fleet, and now it looked ripely vulnerable. The frigates began to fire massed salvoes and again a Vong fleet had been caught between two fires, with nothing it seemed to prevent it.
Coruscant System,
The Red Talon.
They had barely had enough warning. But the sensors operators and the masterminds who had worked behind them had not been fruitless in their search for a counter against the weapon that once again was unveiled behind them. They had done their very best, and it availed to save them now. A moment's warning had been given by the flare of the warp drives, barely detected.
It did not save the rear-echelon ships. They had not directly planned for this by modifying their fleet deployments to directly deal with it. There had not been enough time and Vong attack patterns were very much locked in a doctrinal tradition. So the support ships of the fleet, shorn of their pickets in the haphazard reinforcement of the battle's stages, were the worst hit. Three score vessels were destroyed or crippled with the first massed salvo, and more damaged.
But now Tsavong Lah could watch from his flagship as the preparations to defend against the new missile attack went into place. Massed salvoes were timed into the path of the previous, riding down toward the cruisers and focusing in on the flare-points of their drives. When the counter-fire of the second salvo appeared, masses of fire set to flak burst exploded along predicted channels. The War Coordinators were hard at work today. Through the massed fire missiles got through, of course, far to many of them did.
There was a last recourse, if the drive wave of the warp system could be detected in time a targeted ship might now know which bearing to aim its point-defence on and let loose with a broad spread. But it was hard to detect from the much smaller missiles, and the response hard to enact in time, even fully directed by the coordinators of the individual ships. The result was still severe for the Vong fleet, but now it was tolerable, another risk of battle.
And the Vong ships hit back. Several of the fragile frigates behind them were ripped apart by a lucky pattern, or by the success of the Vong's dispersal of fire. The missiles were far less effective, when fire continued from those batteries while the plasma cannon were used for flak. They could not get locks on the cloaked Strikes, and only scored a few blind hits at best. But they were actually fighting back, now! It was a tremendous reinforcement in comparison to the grim helplessness of the prior engagements against the torpedo frigates.
Coruscant's defenders were held on the defensive by that partial-success of the Vong. The squadrons stayed in their interlocked ranks, and the Vong held up enough firepower against the committed battlecruiser to keep even that strongpoint, where once they had tried to break through, firmly back in place. There was no desperation, and soon the firepower of the Vong fleet began to eat away at the torpedo frigates.
The torpedo frigates were to valuable to waste in a protracted engagement like that. They were inflicting highly disproportionate damage, but even the loss of a limited number saw complex engineering and vast expenses annihilated in a heartbeat. They broke off, that manoeuvre quite successful, and left the Vong to lick their wounds, still forming a dangerous harassing force that Tsavong Lah was well aware of.
What those frigates had also left in their wake, however, was the effective crippling of Tsavong Lah's supply train. His ships were in extended combat and a stalemate had been achieved by the defenders, at least. Though it did not occur to him at once, with his ships fighting on their stored ammunition, it soon became obvious that additional supplies from Talfaglio would be required to continue the battle. After a few more hours of desultory fighting, the Vong fleet retired to the outer system and messages began to fly through hypersace.
Corellian System,
Eye of Yun-Haarla
Vidang Tahng had watched the destruction of Estang's force quite hapless to affect the outcome. Now the fleet which was definitely identified as Kuati was coming after him, and it was backed by the operation units of the Corellian defence force, finally caught up to the hard-charging Kuatis. They would be damaged, of course; but his own force had also been in extended combat, and his men had just seen an entire major Vong force demolished, while these enemies had been the demolishers. His people were arrogant and expected victory, and even they had limits.
He could not, however, retire from the system. That would leave Tirlin Vasong's force, of primarily light ships, to be defeated as Estang had been defeated. The danger to Talfaglio would have to be mitigated by the maintainence of his fleet in the outer system, where he could effect a combination with Tirlin Vasong and again offer battle.
Vidang Tahng did not need to hesitate. "We will shape a course for the outer system and manoeuvre in the area of Tirlin Vasong's expected arrival, that we may keep the enemy from preventing our combination with him. Then the offensive may be resumed."
By this point there was no protest. The order was obeyed and the Vong fleet manoeuvred to evade the oncoming Kuati and Corellians. The planets of the system lived, and their salvation seemed to parody the Vong's obsessions with the biological. But Tirlin Vasong was still coming and the mission of Vidang Tahng's fleet was still in play.
The Corellia System,
The Hawk of Trinadora.
"He was expecting reinforcements," Mystrela commented as the display of the enemy's fleet slowly ground to a relative stop, the Vong ships now positioned on the outer system after their evolution of some hours. But they did not stay stopped for long, accelerating again in another direction and using their gravitic systems to start a gradual evolution through the area. An area of space on the edge of the Corellia system that Mystrela's force was rapidly approaching as well.
Miat Temm smiled in a slight and amused gesture, as though she were glad to discover that the cognitive abilities of the force-blind might occasionally match her own. It was disquieting to observe. But Miat Temm was well aware of the abilities of the woman beside her, and it faded quickly. There was, besides, work to be done.
"You have been keeping up on the dispatches we have managed to receive from Coruscant, I assume, Director?" Miat asked, her eyes however still gazing toward the holodisplay.
"I'm aware of the situation of the fleet."
"It would be very fortuitous if we could strike Talfaglio now," Miat spoke softly, but the implication in her statement carried the weight.
"I agree completely," Mystrela replied, dancing against that certain tone that Miat had used. "But we don't have enough strength to go after the blocking forces they must have left and still defend Corellia."
Miat Temm turned and looked to Mystrela, then. "Are you sure about that?" Her eyes were quite unfathomable.
The question made her think, not as if she hadn't been doing it during their entire following of the retiring Vong force. But now a specific context was laid to the problem. "Yes; however..."
Their eyes met and for a moment Mystrela understood the madwoman she was harbouring. "We just need an interdiction squadron to halt the convoys to Coruscant. The local commander at Talfaglio is sure not to uncover the staging facilities until he's certain that we have been defeated. It would just be a matter of getting part of our force clear without giving"--she gestured toward the holoproject--"our friends there an idea of what we had done, and he's a smart fellow at that. ....However, I do believe it can be done. I do believe so indeed."
Mystrela stepped toward her fleet astrogator.
Some thirty minutes later, the Kuati and Corellian fleets jumped in hyperlight. The Vong were immediately at alert, thinking the evolution was intended to bring them into range. However, Vidang Tahng knew that the angle was bad for such a jump. Thus it did not surprise him when the ships appeared--even though the end-point of their was in the Oort cloud, hardly an ideal place to be leaving hyperspace--and swung around toward him and toward battle. That gave him time. He used it, and thus as Mystrela's force bore down to give battle, he denied her the opportunity for a close engagement and instead just a few desultory broadsides were exchanged.
After the exchange of honours the Kuati force began another wide manoeuvre to keep close once more, a long and delicate dance in the outer portion of the Corellian system. But in the mass of jamming, and due to the confusion around the Oort Cloud and the following engagement besides, the Vong had not detected the detachment of several ships from the Kuati force. It was not to be faulted, considering the strength of the fleets involved and their strength of jamming; it was, however, critical. The results would simply take some time to become apparent.
The Planet Terra,
Region of Tibet within
Administrative District China.
A planetwide alert was blaring across Terra, the various police districts coordinating with their military counterparts and becoming progressively more worried at the scale and nature of the emergency. It was not, however, something they could do anything about. The exact nature of the alert, even, had been kept a secret from all but certain response teams in the early minutes of the crisis. When it finally became apparent, there were many men who, fearing their lives, overreacted.
The overreaction to the escape of Grand Moff Davion had been duly predicted, and it factored in to the escape plans. Bureaucrats and desk officers who had decided for Sule were understandably concerned; it was a typical aspect of their behaviour to respond with the heaviest hand they could to a danger to their privilige, let alone lives--and all of them knew they'd be far to exposed if the Grand Moff reasserted his authority. So did they react, and with a meticulous calculation, that insured the escape of Grand Moff Hamner Davion. Captain H.E. Quir, Imperial Starfleet, had his prize.
Now he had to balance between two cunning men and the interests of his nominal allies, all for a purpose that only he really knew. But that, also, had already been decided, an irrevocable demand of the moment his opposition had been fixed in his mind.
De Imperatoribus Galacticis will be continued in Chapter the Fifteenth.
De Imperatoribus Galacticis
"On the Galactic Emperors"
Chapter the Fourteenth.
(As continued from Chapter the Thirteenth.)
The Corellia System,
The Hawk of Trinadora.
The Vong were caught, surprised, by the arrival of the Kuati fleet, and now vicious hoardes of missiles fell against them, racing the distance as a ten-thousand salvo of projectiles that would shatter the enemy's cohesion, locked as they already were in deadly and equal contest. Concentrated, the volleys came on against flanks lightly, or entirely unguarded by dovin basals, as they concentrated their defence toward the Corellians. The effect was very bad for the Vong. With comparatively weak hulls, each salvo could and did tear through those rocky caraprices in a mounting number, shattering hulks and unleashing their motive energies, that detonations rended down ruined mass into molten remnant--gone from it, the trace of warriors who had once strove to conquer, and now found their flank instead mastered.
Millennium Falcon led the charge, straight into the re-deploying squadrons of Vong 'skippers. For a moment the famed Corellian ship was alone, save her two Chiss wingmen, amongst hundreds of the Vong fighters. Han Solo picked a wing of them to attack and charged right in, salvoing missiles as the old quads spat bolts in a torrid mass of energy. The sheer audacity of the attack left its mark, and Jaina, fighting with her father in the famed old Falcon, left a lane of bloody chaos amongst the 'skippers that to the watching fleet could only bring to mind that ill-fated but hard challenged First Coruscant. Hardly any of the fighters in this situation could bring their guns against those bold cavaliers, and they burst through the Vong ranks, leaving the strewn wreckage of a squadron abaft.
Before more of their enemies could turn to come against them, and let the advantage of numbers start to tell, the squadrons of the Kuati fleet were upon the Vong. They tore into the disordered ranks of the enemy, energy and missiles engaged in the moment of contact, hulls of metal and rock shorn with plasma and nuclear fire all across a ten-thousand klick front of void that was constantly being interspersed by the heavy exchange of missile fire from the great capital ships. Sometimes a missile might find its path abruptly caught by one of the weaving little snub-fighters, the explosion capturing several of its fellows, and in this one's side did not matter: there was very little sense to the brief intensity of the action, except where the plots of the commandships rendered it down into cool and mechanical lists of trajectories and losses by squadron.
Range for energy weapons was reached even as the Vong fighter perimetered collapsed, dying in the same haste with which it had been thrown up to cover that flank. Teratons of energy eclipsed the stars as the Kuati salvoes tore from every forward-bearing gun, recoil thrumming into the great hulls as they commenced to fire full batteries, concentrating on the Vong heavy ships, pounding them as fast as the guns could take it. They were in excellent condition, these ships built in the finest yards of the galaxy, and their commanders knew the exact tolerances to which the huge energy capacitors could be pressed. The speed with which the salvoes were got off was thus high, even by Imperial standards, and the volume of fire quite intense.
The Vong ships reeled, punch-drunk between two fleets, as the victorious Kuati fighters pressed on to attack their outer picket screen. A massive exchange of energy was taking place, but the Vong were being hit on their flank as well as forward and were taking the brunt of it by far. As overburdened dovin basals began to fail, heavy ships started to explode under the concentrated salvoes of Kuati cruisers, and a great execution was done amongst the centre of the Vong squadron. The fire of the Corellian ships added to the intensity, and with the Vong unable to concentrate their dovin basals, the collapse and destruction only occured all the faster. The rate at which ships were beginning to be destroyed now was really quite amazing for the gallant Corellians and the stalwart Kuati alike, who were emboldened to press in; but Mystrela had seen it before, fighting the Borg.
On the flag-bridge of the Hawk of Trinadora, Mystrela was indeed observing as her fleet bore in close to the Vong, those ships revealing their principle weakness--the same one demonstrated against the warp-missiles--that they really had very weak structures. Over-pressed from multiple angles of attack, as when Pellaeon had brought in the Remnant forces and now as she outflanked them here, they didn't have enough dovin basals to cover against the energy output of the Kuati ships--and vessels which could survive days of pounding in a broadside-to-broadside struggle suffered progressive hull failure in minutes, torn apart when the full strength of the Kuati salvoes was directed against hulls instead of the overstretched dovin basals.
Captain Idan di Syminar, her Chief of Staff, stepped around the plot and brought up a display of the fleet trajectory as the violence raged ahead of them and drew steadily closer. "Director, if we begin to deaccelerate now we can place ourselves at their rear and maintain the energy combat during the entire evolution. That fleet will be completely annihilated, even with the counter-manoeuvre they're beginning."
"Noted, Captain; what sort of firing times do we have, however, for a zero-thrust engagement through the enemy force?" Mystrela asked by way of reply, her mind on the uncovered planets of the inner system.
"We would be engaged for a cumulative seventeen standard minutes from now; four at point-blank range. May I ask your intention, Director?" The expression on the man's face was quizzical, and deservedly so. They had in their grasp the chance for the total annihilation of a Vong fleet--something which, prior, only Mystrela herself had indeed accomplished, though this gave her a particular status in the realm of naval officers, even if the popular imagination had been eclipsed by the relief of Coruscant.
"I intend to pass through them and break their formation, Captain, and then proceed to the defence of the inner system. If they cede the inner system, then we've done our job here." The plot shifted, the calculations and projections complete, and Mystrela's glance overtook it for a moment, before she nodded in affirmation. "Very good. The fleet signal is for zero-zero thrust; Eight and Ninteen squadrons of pickets are to be detached to support the fighters. Squadron commanders engage at targets of opportunity.
"We take them enpassant."
"Understood, Director."
Behind them, Miat Temm smiled and watched her fiery handiwork expand.
The Corellia System,
The Kuati allied fleet.
Jaina sent another burst into 'skipper rendered vulnerable by her abilities, and then stripped open of defences by the first. The quads, still those best and most powerful weapons for the packed old Falcon, did their job well, shredding the rock-hewn craft before them. That certain feeling, the dangerous and the pulsingly eager intensity of battle, was forward and high, that game of the Jedi. She fought the ventral turret, the dorsal quad covered in part by automatics, and the rest by the actions of Fel and his wingman. Ahead, the forward armament of the Millennium Falcon blazed, Han Solo not stinting in giving a single one of the devastators of his family the warrior's death they so desired.
Jaina could feel, even from here, the bleed of emotions from her father, the black passion of a man who had been forced to bury both his friend, and his son; and had found, both in heart and soul, the belief that he might save another by the call of the war before him--and perhaps, distantly, the old Corellian solidarity fueled the last of it, besides. It was a very bleak outlet, indeed, and one that threatened to well up over a Jedi who had never had the most sanguine of spirits. She could, however, only avoid it in her own combat, which grew all the more desperate as her father led them deeper and deeper into the Vong formation. There could be no condemnation for feelings which she had known, and indeed might envy; and the ease with which a soul without knowledge of the force could express them against her own desperate and ever-more fraught composure.
Another contact, and she fired again, the force guiding her in the detection, and guiding her in the combat. Nothingness, black-holes in her perception all around, sticking out and becoming as shadows laid out by a search beam. And each must be fought down. This was of the clearest intensity, a simple logic that was simply known in her mind. So she fought, until even what seemed as frayed temptation faded. The battlefield, a dimly discerned thing which became her realm of targets.
The smile on Miat Temm's face was faintly disturbing for the middle of a battle. It was nearly beautific, not really at all showing the seriouness of the action. She was, indeed, quite aware of the action, but her perceptions were somewhat distracted. Good, then, it's begun. Abruptly the look of her face tightened, but she was not displeased in any way by what had occured; though surely misinterpetation would not bother her. Ahead, now, the first ranks of the fleet's capital ships were at point-blank range.
Much further ahead, the fighters, led by gallant General Solo, completed the work that Sal-Solo had started. Miat resigned herself to being a spectator for the rest of the action, no matter the annoyance in it. Let them be annoyed, and that was enough for her--and enough for the future's surety that taunted her in her endless dreams. And enough for them.
Coruscant System,
Imperial Starfleet Forces.
"What's going on, Elise?" The voice of a very calm Emperor was a frightening thing to hear, crackling in over the relay channel with a steady certitude. That commander's tone was made to strip one down without really anything, and made her remember she might as well again be a commander being addressed by Grand Admiral Thrawn, not a Grand Admiral herself.
But you don't know a single damned thing about space combat, and even on the ground what you did is bloody foolish; here, with our extended firing boxes, it's insane, and Corvalis has just done a lot more than ruin your political game. Her determination was laced with the bitter memory of the dead. A gloved hand calmly activated the return relay. "I'm not certain, Your Majesty. It appears that Corvalis believes he received orders to relieve that sector of the line; or he never received the orders not to. As you can undoubtably hear from the quality of this communication, our frequencies are being heavily jammed and I cannot discount the possibility of a fragmentary receipt."
"Can a recall be successfully transmitted at this point, or is he already engaged?" Sule's force punched through the static, emotion nearly unreadable from it, if not yet resigned.
"Your Majesty, I believe it impossible to recall him. I am not yet sure due to the sensor conditions if he has met the enemy with his force, but even if he has not, should he turn back, he may still be exposed to fire from a disadvantageous direction; besides, he was our forward reserve, and if he manouevres away from the line now we have absolutely no hope of blocking that gap whatsoever." Elise took a breath and decided to gamble it all on her defiance. Sule had given her in his last message a bit of hope to work him out of the scheme; now she would play it for all she could.
"Indeed, it appears that the Vong are concentrating their principle resources against this sector of the line. With your permission, Your Majesty, I would like to advance my own squadron and all available regional reserves there. I believe that we can force a decision at that point. I would also like the missile cruisers moved into position there for the prepared supporting attacks should the Vong also concentrate."
Silence, then: "Let me consult with Grand Admiral Pellaeon."
Elise clenched a fist and bit her lip silently, gazing at the plot as she wondered why she was playing politics in the middle of this massive engagement. Sule had to know what Pellaeon would say. He had even been less of a proponent of the idea than Elise, and to that, Elise was already ashamed of herself. Sule, of all people, she should not have let roll her over. Around, the crew of the flagbridge studiously went about their duties, not daring approach closely enough to their Admiral to hear the conversation crackling from the earpiece, or Elise's uttered replies, or even to catch her line of sight. Among them, Commander Hallsburg was especially inconspicious; but in the tenseness of the moment that was completely ignored.
She focused in on a particular section of the plot was it was updated, and then toggled the selector to talk again. "Your Majesty, Corvalis is now confirmed engaged. I must move my ships in to support him immediately. With respect, Your Majesty, you already know what Grand Admiral Pellaeon will say on this matter." A breath, forcing herself to relax, a measure purely false. "Begging Your Majesty's pardon, but this is quite simply the moment of decision. If we do not counterattack now, we will not have the resources to attempt it again. The commitment must be made."
"Go forward, Elise, then. If I trust Martina to Intelligence then I surely must trust you in the navy. The eastern reserves are wholly your's." The voice scratched through in both frustration and relief, but for Elise it was all relief. She settled back and sighed, then, but as the connection ended what she had bought herself--time--had to be immediately utilized.
"Fleet signals: Advance to support positions of Twenty-second Cruiser; battle flank," she ordered. "Signals; TF-7; TF-9; TF-11; provide general reserve to Durrano Sector Forces."
Commander Hallsburg, for that matter, had never been more relieved in his life, though there was the dark suspection that it would only last for a while. "Preparing signals for transmission, Admiral," he answered fervently.
Elise watched the plot, hands pursed together, and hoped that she would indeed get the missile support. It appeared more and more as though the Vong were committing their own decisive force to this sector, and her arguments to Sule might have been very much optimistic. Two minutes later a gentle shudder ran through the ship as the engines engaged, steadily running up to maximum power, her flag captain guiding the force to contact, where the massive strength of the radiation bombardment steadily reduced the sensors to a worthless mess of confusion, and even more titantic energies would await.
Vice Admiral Corvalis' Twenty-second Cruiser was now in the midst of a very hot combat in the centre of the gap between the Durrano Sector Forces and the Nineteenth Battlecruiser. Captain Eduardo, his flagcaptain, had put the Firebird directly between two of the Vong two-klick cruisers, and the exchange between them was maintained with an incredible furor. The shields glowed with bleeding energy from the plasma bombardment, completely obscuring the Allegiance-class ship beneath them, and giving her perhaps the appearence of her namesake. The counterfire of the turbolasers was a steady and deep thrumming of salvoes from every gun, directed energy vanishing in clouds at the clustered dovin basals of the foe.
The gun crews sighted and laid their guns nearly by hand, now, with the jamming in the sector so intense that not much more than visual sensors offered a great effect. Enough of the powerful energies, however, got through, to sweep out their targets, and the range was close enough, that a steady and horrifically accurate fire could be maintained. On both sides, yet, the ships had been built for such a stiff fight, and there was no sign of any serious degregation to this point. But it was the Firebird that was outnumbered two to one, and slowly that was beginning to tell.
All around the action was maintained, the big cruisers of the Twenty-second and their dwarfed escorts serving to stoutly hold the line where the Vong had dared make a gap. To Corvalis' starboard flank, however, the battered Durrano Sector forces were hardly to be said to still be in the fight, and the sheer number of Vong ships meant that some would get around the fire boxes of the Imperial craft without infringing on other portions of the line; they would simply have to be ignored. Corvalis now began to wonder about the condition or liklihood of his own reinforcements, advancing as he had on such slim justification.
Jamming in the sector was very intense, but at last, an explosion of radiation erupted that clarified the situation for the embattled blocking force. Captain Louvis hastily adjusted the plot, a faint grin expressed on his face. Crackling remnants of a scout line of Vong corvettes, bracketed by multiple salvoes of the heavy warhead launchers of an Executor-class Battlecruiser, flared up behind them, and the sensor picture became clearer; nor could anyone miss it when one thousand heavy turbolasers engaged in unison, painting the stars awash with energy, a dagger burning with the green fire of its guns.
As usual, the engines of the massive battlecruiser, so overpowered even for her size, had given it such an edge over the rest of her force, that she arrived before them, and had the battle had any real spectators beyond Sule and Martina, their view obscured by distance and jamming, then that sight of the advance might have been seen, the brazen display of the single powerful ship moving ahead and scattering whole squadrons of light craft with massed salvoes. Each salvo, indeed, was casually set to detonate as flak, and the scattering of the light was done with such energy as washed from the heavy guns and simply completely overwhelmed the ships, utterly surrounding them in a massive sea of unleashed power, leaving charred hulks or limping, disabled ruins.
Despite the awesome arrival of Conquérant, who had solely by her own artillery closed the gap, Corvalis realized the contest for this sector of the line was still in doubt. The plot was constantly being updated, and not merely from the rear: more ships, indeed, were arriving from ahead than from behind. Besides this, the Durrano forces were in total disarray by this point, though before they had held very well. The enemy was exploiting this, and would have even more time to do so as it appeared that Elise's reinforcements for that sector had not yet arrived. The Twenty-second would have a long fight on the front.
Conquérant cruised through the remnants of the forces that she had ruined, obsidian against the dark, and which had threatened to outflank the twenty-second Cruiser. Now she was approaching closely to the frontal sector, her missile tubes already tracking and engaging several destroyers as she moved to close the gap between the Twenty-second Cruiser and the Nineteenth Battlecruiser. Other ships from the reserve were moving into additional supporting positions, either around the flagship or around the Twenty-second.
Elise, however, now had the information necessary to realize that her orders had been based on a decayed perception of the situation. The Durrano force had finally cracked, and in fact it might very well be that Sule had got his wish after all: Great of the Darshkarbat Dynasty was no longer in evidence, nor indeed several of the heavy ships of the force. But from the way the chaos in the survivors was folding out, she suspected she had a better answer for it. Tranjak-sar had finally accepted the conclusion which must have been inevitable--far later than Elise would have expected him too, thankfully, or else the whole line would have caved--and had fled.
Or perhaps he feared we would destroy him in the process of securing the line to make sure the job was done. Of course, Sule wasn't silly enough to suggest such a thing; there was a difference between 'inadvertantly' exposing a flank and attacking an ally in coalition warfare, and it was very large. Regardless, she had to deal with the aftermath. "Signals, attempt to establish a direct link into the Durrano force." It was quite unlikely to work, but issuing direct orders to the force might carry enough authority to get the remaining squadron commanders to order.
The rest of the time, as usual, would have to be bought with Imperial blood: "Sixteen and Thirty Destroyer squadrons are to angle starboard on forming starboard flank; reserve to advance into flank position." The TFs would arrive soon enough from their own positions along the line and that would deal with the gap, but ahead the stars were dense with ships and there was little that Elise could do except to hold.
The Corellia System,
The Millennium Falcon.
Behind the Falcon, silent blooms of radiation tossed their mighty flare into the visual spectrum. The thermal detonations of missile warheads mingled in brilliant radiance with the terrible energy release of destroyed ships; with the harsh blue-white of the glaring, flaming drive tails. The flicker of massive charged turbolaser blasts completed that scene: The triumph of a radioactive god. It made one feel safe in the midst of a still hot action of the lights, for when the guns of great ships thundered, all else paled.
The Kuati battlesquadrons drifted out of the rubble in their gleaming white majesty, one moment obscured and the next clear and white and bright, their hulls lit by the play upon them of the radioactive sea they had left. They came through in fighting trim and the scene of their leaving behind the blasted rubble of the Vong force gave one the urge to stand and cheer. Mystrela of Kuat had destroyed a second Vong fleet by main force. For a moment the ships seemed slow and graceful, manoeuvring like squadrons on review. But they were in fact traveling very fast, and the moment was gone and replaced by the dazzle of their drives as they quickly receded.
They had seen from afar, and from afar the ships were still gleaming; they were still ordered, serene and victorious in the void. Their resolution did provide to show the burned out marks on the ships that still held their place, marring the proud white but not marring the grim pride of their crews. There were dead in those spaces and there was damage to the force. A few ships had not made it out, as the steady order of the Kuati starfleet insured that there would not be a hint of the losses. But the fleet was there, and now it was thrusting past them on course for Corellia, the second Vong force suddenly seeing an angry and victorious force coming down upon them.
Jaina had caught just one glimpse of that brilliant sight as she worked the guns. It was there and then it was gone, a hazy memory of that heavy force plowing their way clear, a seared afterimage of combat that would tease the future. Her focus never even left the enemies around them, the coral skippers that were still fighting hard. The Falcon was wrenched and twisted about in a dizzying cycle of gyration; her experienced pilot demanded everything of her again, and the old hunk responded to every affectionate demand. Jaina could only manage to keep the gunsights level by the certitude of the force.
It was in certitude that the guns of the Falcon blazed, two 'skippers bunched into the furious path of the quads by deft manoeuvre and hypernatural sense. Jaina felt the gun, and she felt the hideous voids flash into space. In a moment she had iluminated them, killed the deathly silence and opened up her vision in the hidden world once more. It was a cycle that had not ended for the past twenty minutes and abruptly she realized how exhausted she was; her body drenched in sweat despite the cool atmosphere of the Falcon, muscles left to ache.
As soon as she tried to press herself into the exertion once more, a voice sounded over the 'com that seemed far more exhausted than she even imagined herself to be, but offered in it a quiet sort of satisfaction. "We're in the clear, Jaina." Familiarity and relief flooded over her at once, and she slumped in the gun harness, with a distressing sense of weakness but one that she could not care about now. Both that the ferocity of the action was over, and that her father was himself. The black, cruel determination of before had passed and she could sense a sort of serenity as one could only have when one defended their hearth and family.
"Roger that, dad." She could feel the Falcon accelerating as she spoke. The affair wasn't done yet, then, and dutifully the requirements of the human body pressed in on her. "I'm going for the ration packs. I'll bring something up to you."
"I'll be waiting," her father answered, his own voice that of someone who, having given their full energy to a cause, could not even force out more than the crisp words of necessity. But the words themselves spoke welcome volumes, reassuring. Her spirit brightened, Jaina unstrapped and crawled down, carefully negotiating the access tube for the turret. First the 'fresher, then the ration packs..
It was only as Jaina had downed one of the high-energy, comfortably bland spacers' rations that her mind really began to work again, that she realized something about the situation. Her father had been consumed by a hatred that would veer any Jedi off the right path; yet in the end it had left him with a comfortable soothed spirit, perhaps for the first time since tragedy had wrought its course on her family. Is it because he cannot sense the force, or.. Her mind asked herself, and without a ready answer.
The idea of the responsibilities of a Jedi stemming from natural imperative seemed suddenly a dangerous, a lurking, tempting offer of absolution for capricious use of one's abilities. But then where did they come from? Why was that cleansing anger of father's denied to her? It seemed that an answer, then, drifted to her; one comfortable and reassuring and disturbing all at once. It was with that philosophical challenge on her mind that she headed toward the bridge of the old and gallant freighter.
Coruscant System,
Imperial Starfleet Forces.
The remnants of the Durrano Sector forces had pulled back, battered and ravaged by the Vong fire but still in some sort of order: that only to the orders of the Grand Admiral in their sector. They had kept their order long enough and now nothing more could realistically be expected of them, their flagship gone, massive losses in their ranks, and every ship damaged, save one lucky frigate that passed Conquérant in her solitary splendour, a gleaming beacon to the random whim that guided the gods of War.
Imperator-class ships held the line to the starboard, and more were pushing in to fill the lingering gap. The Vong were fully committed here and they were dying here. Their ships could not get through, the gap was saved. Corvalis' Cruisers of the twenty-second were holding firm with Elise's defensive reserve. They had terrible damage upon them but the testament to the Admiral's decision was in the wreckage of their enemies ahead, and the space closed to them behind. At the heaviest moment of the battle the Imperial starfleet held firm, and wave after wave of Vong attacks was driven back under their steady fire.
It was a moment given as a gift to Elise. The Vong lapped at the formations of the defenders, and their efforts to probe out for gaps met coordinated fire beyond. Their main efforts were ground into rubble under the heavy guns. The critical seconds had passed and they left the Imperial starfleet holding its ground against the maximum directed Vong assault. They had been drawn in by the error of the Imperial commanders; but the stalwart action of the lower ranks carried the engagement. It truly was a different military that fought there, from that of Palpatine's whimsy. The ghost of the old walked with the new, but whatever else one could speak for Sule, he taken initiative by the reins and in doing it he had given it back to the rest of them, for good or ill, and here, for victory.
With the full strength of the Vong coming in on them, a fixation developed in their enemy, the serious diversion of resources that had been hoped for, there now came a possibility. Elise sent her status report to Pellaeon and with it was the advice that came of the situation: "Let the torpedoes loose."
Pellaeon did not wait long, not now. The heavy transmitters of the flagship sent a single but steady signal, lost in the morass of battle. But an old Romulan Warbird caught it and relayed it on. It was one of several resting at cloak beyond the main field of battle. Beyond it were the Strike-class frigates of the fleet, the ones modified with heavy torpedoes and with cloak, that had blasted apart the Vong squadrons twice before.
Their formations engaged warp drive on order, and flashed out behind the Vong fleet. It had been shorn of pickets in the probing and in the hurtling of reinforcements into the battle around the Durrano fleet, and now it looked ripely vulnerable. The frigates began to fire massed salvoes and again a Vong fleet had been caught between two fires, with nothing it seemed to prevent it.
Coruscant System,
The Red Talon.
They had barely had enough warning. But the sensors operators and the masterminds who had worked behind them had not been fruitless in their search for a counter against the weapon that once again was unveiled behind them. They had done their very best, and it availed to save them now. A moment's warning had been given by the flare of the warp drives, barely detected.
It did not save the rear-echelon ships. They had not directly planned for this by modifying their fleet deployments to directly deal with it. There had not been enough time and Vong attack patterns were very much locked in a doctrinal tradition. So the support ships of the fleet, shorn of their pickets in the haphazard reinforcement of the battle's stages, were the worst hit. Three score vessels were destroyed or crippled with the first massed salvo, and more damaged.
But now Tsavong Lah could watch from his flagship as the preparations to defend against the new missile attack went into place. Massed salvoes were timed into the path of the previous, riding down toward the cruisers and focusing in on the flare-points of their drives. When the counter-fire of the second salvo appeared, masses of fire set to flak burst exploded along predicted channels. The War Coordinators were hard at work today. Through the massed fire missiles got through, of course, far to many of them did.
There was a last recourse, if the drive wave of the warp system could be detected in time a targeted ship might now know which bearing to aim its point-defence on and let loose with a broad spread. But it was hard to detect from the much smaller missiles, and the response hard to enact in time, even fully directed by the coordinators of the individual ships. The result was still severe for the Vong fleet, but now it was tolerable, another risk of battle.
And the Vong ships hit back. Several of the fragile frigates behind them were ripped apart by a lucky pattern, or by the success of the Vong's dispersal of fire. The missiles were far less effective, when fire continued from those batteries while the plasma cannon were used for flak. They could not get locks on the cloaked Strikes, and only scored a few blind hits at best. But they were actually fighting back, now! It was a tremendous reinforcement in comparison to the grim helplessness of the prior engagements against the torpedo frigates.
Coruscant's defenders were held on the defensive by that partial-success of the Vong. The squadrons stayed in their interlocked ranks, and the Vong held up enough firepower against the committed battlecruiser to keep even that strongpoint, where once they had tried to break through, firmly back in place. There was no desperation, and soon the firepower of the Vong fleet began to eat away at the torpedo frigates.
The torpedo frigates were to valuable to waste in a protracted engagement like that. They were inflicting highly disproportionate damage, but even the loss of a limited number saw complex engineering and vast expenses annihilated in a heartbeat. They broke off, that manoeuvre quite successful, and left the Vong to lick their wounds, still forming a dangerous harassing force that Tsavong Lah was well aware of.
What those frigates had also left in their wake, however, was the effective crippling of Tsavong Lah's supply train. His ships were in extended combat and a stalemate had been achieved by the defenders, at least. Though it did not occur to him at once, with his ships fighting on their stored ammunition, it soon became obvious that additional supplies from Talfaglio would be required to continue the battle. After a few more hours of desultory fighting, the Vong fleet retired to the outer system and messages began to fly through hypersace.
Corellian System,
Eye of Yun-Haarla
Vidang Tahng had watched the destruction of Estang's force quite hapless to affect the outcome. Now the fleet which was definitely identified as Kuati was coming after him, and it was backed by the operation units of the Corellian defence force, finally caught up to the hard-charging Kuatis. They would be damaged, of course; but his own force had also been in extended combat, and his men had just seen an entire major Vong force demolished, while these enemies had been the demolishers. His people were arrogant and expected victory, and even they had limits.
He could not, however, retire from the system. That would leave Tirlin Vasong's force, of primarily light ships, to be defeated as Estang had been defeated. The danger to Talfaglio would have to be mitigated by the maintainence of his fleet in the outer system, where he could effect a combination with Tirlin Vasong and again offer battle.
Vidang Tahng did not need to hesitate. "We will shape a course for the outer system and manoeuvre in the area of Tirlin Vasong's expected arrival, that we may keep the enemy from preventing our combination with him. Then the offensive may be resumed."
By this point there was no protest. The order was obeyed and the Vong fleet manoeuvred to evade the oncoming Kuati and Corellians. The planets of the system lived, and their salvation seemed to parody the Vong's obsessions with the biological. But Tirlin Vasong was still coming and the mission of Vidang Tahng's fleet was still in play.
The Corellia System,
The Hawk of Trinadora.
"He was expecting reinforcements," Mystrela commented as the display of the enemy's fleet slowly ground to a relative stop, the Vong ships now positioned on the outer system after their evolution of some hours. But they did not stay stopped for long, accelerating again in another direction and using their gravitic systems to start a gradual evolution through the area. An area of space on the edge of the Corellia system that Mystrela's force was rapidly approaching as well.
Miat Temm smiled in a slight and amused gesture, as though she were glad to discover that the cognitive abilities of the force-blind might occasionally match her own. It was disquieting to observe. But Miat Temm was well aware of the abilities of the woman beside her, and it faded quickly. There was, besides, work to be done.
"You have been keeping up on the dispatches we have managed to receive from Coruscant, I assume, Director?" Miat asked, her eyes however still gazing toward the holodisplay.
"I'm aware of the situation of the fleet."
"It would be very fortuitous if we could strike Talfaglio now," Miat spoke softly, but the implication in her statement carried the weight.
"I agree completely," Mystrela replied, dancing against that certain tone that Miat had used. "But we don't have enough strength to go after the blocking forces they must have left and still defend Corellia."
Miat Temm turned and looked to Mystrela, then. "Are you sure about that?" Her eyes were quite unfathomable.
The question made her think, not as if she hadn't been doing it during their entire following of the retiring Vong force. But now a specific context was laid to the problem. "Yes; however..."
Their eyes met and for a moment Mystrela understood the madwoman she was harbouring. "We just need an interdiction squadron to halt the convoys to Coruscant. The local commander at Talfaglio is sure not to uncover the staging facilities until he's certain that we have been defeated. It would just be a matter of getting part of our force clear without giving"--she gestured toward the holoproject--"our friends there an idea of what we had done, and he's a smart fellow at that. ....However, I do believe it can be done. I do believe so indeed."
Mystrela stepped toward her fleet astrogator.
Some thirty minutes later, the Kuati and Corellian fleets jumped in hyperlight. The Vong were immediately at alert, thinking the evolution was intended to bring them into range. However, Vidang Tahng knew that the angle was bad for such a jump. Thus it did not surprise him when the ships appeared--even though the end-point of their was in the Oort cloud, hardly an ideal place to be leaving hyperspace--and swung around toward him and toward battle. That gave him time. He used it, and thus as Mystrela's force bore down to give battle, he denied her the opportunity for a close engagement and instead just a few desultory broadsides were exchanged.
After the exchange of honours the Kuati force began another wide manoeuvre to keep close once more, a long and delicate dance in the outer portion of the Corellian system. But in the mass of jamming, and due to the confusion around the Oort Cloud and the following engagement besides, the Vong had not detected the detachment of several ships from the Kuati force. It was not to be faulted, considering the strength of the fleets involved and their strength of jamming; it was, however, critical. The results would simply take some time to become apparent.
The Planet Terra,
Region of Tibet within
Administrative District China.
A planetwide alert was blaring across Terra, the various police districts coordinating with their military counterparts and becoming progressively more worried at the scale and nature of the emergency. It was not, however, something they could do anything about. The exact nature of the alert, even, had been kept a secret from all but certain response teams in the early minutes of the crisis. When it finally became apparent, there were many men who, fearing their lives, overreacted.
The overreaction to the escape of Grand Moff Davion had been duly predicted, and it factored in to the escape plans. Bureaucrats and desk officers who had decided for Sule were understandably concerned; it was a typical aspect of their behaviour to respond with the heaviest hand they could to a danger to their privilige, let alone lives--and all of them knew they'd be far to exposed if the Grand Moff reasserted his authority. So did they react, and with a meticulous calculation, that insured the escape of Grand Moff Hamner Davion. Captain H.E. Quir, Imperial Starfleet, had his prize.
Now he had to balance between two cunning men and the interests of his nominal allies, all for a purpose that only he really knew. But that, also, had already been decided, an irrevocable demand of the moment his opposition had been fixed in his mind.
De Imperatoribus Galacticis will be continued in Chapter the Fifteenth.
